Happy Earth Day

On April 22, 1970, I, along with 20 million others that day, attended one of the first Earth Day celebrations (Read the history of Earth Day here, written by the founder, Senator Gaylord Nelson). The one I went to was held at Santa Monica City College (yes, Dustin Hoffman’s and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s alma mater). In those days, most of us in the environmental movement worried about air pollution causing another ice age through global cooling.

I was a nineteen-year-old student attending SMCC, and my main concern was the over-harvesting of trees leading to the permanent loss of forests, especially the deforestation of the Amazon’s rain forest. Deforestation was my reason for entering into the field of forestry.

I transferred after a couple years to Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. I majored in Forest Management. It turns out forests in the United States and other countries (primarily in the OECD) are doing just fine. The information is contained in public records such as:

Forest Resources of the United States, 2002: A Technical Document Supporting the USDA Forest Service 2005 Update of the RPA Assessment by W. Brad Smith, Patrick D. Miles, John S. Vissage, And Scott A. Pugh.

RPA Assessments report on the status and trends of the nation’s renewable resources on all forest and rangelands, as required by the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act (RPA) of 1974.

So what are the trends and status our nation’s renewable resources?

  • About 33 percent of our nation’s 2.3 billion acres of land area is forest today as compared to about one-half in 1630. Some 300 million acres of forest land have been converted to other uses since 1630, predominantly agricultural uses in the East.
  • Fifty-seven percent of all forest land is privately owned. Private forest land is dominant in the East. Public forest land is dominant in the West.

The graphic shows that for the last 130 years or so the forest area of the United States has remained nearly the same or grown. Only the Pacific Coast has diminished slightly.

Forest area of the United States, 1630-2002, “Forest Resources of the United States”

Timber’s Term of the Week: Widowmaker

Widowmaker

n

  1. Something that looks innocuous that is, in fact, dangerous.
  2. A loose limb or top hanging in a tree that can be dislodged by wind or when struck by a falling tree; the impact of which can cause serious injury or death.


See also:

Timber's Term of the Week: Widowmaker

Widowmaker

n

  1. Something that looks innocuous that is, in fact, dangerous.
  2. A loose limb or top hanging in a tree that can be dislodged by wind or when struck by a falling tree; the impact of which can cause serious injury or death.


See also:

Reading the Rocks in Time’s Basement

Paul Sheehan at the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote an overview of the book Heaven and Earth by Ian Plimer. His article is titled Beware the climate of conformity. He says that he has been guilty of conformity in the past.

I think the 500 pages (230,000 words with 2311 footnotes) will be interesting to read. Plimer, who is “Australia’s most eminent geologist,” says “Past climate changes, sea-level changes and catastrophes are written in stone.” And since he’s a geologist he takes the very long view of Earth. One of his conclusions: Planet Earth is “currently in an ice age.”

Plimer will not be as easy to dismiss, perhaps, as Freeman Dyson or Michael Crichton, though I’m sure true believers will try. As he says, “The IPCC process is related to environmental activism, politics and opportunism. It is unrelated to science. Current zeal around human-induced climate change is comparable to the certainty professed by Creationists or religious fundamentalists.”

The title of this post comes from Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It, “[The river] runs over rocks from the basement of time.”

Reading the Rocks in Time's Basement

Paul Sheehan at the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote an overview of the book Heaven and Earth by Ian Plimer. His article is titled Beware the climate of conformity. He says that he has been guilty of conformity in the past.

I think the 500 pages (230,000 words with 2311 footnotes) will be interesting to read. Plimer, who is “Australia’s most eminent geologist,” says “Past climate changes, sea-level changes and catastrophes are written in stone.” And since he’s a geologist he takes the very long view of Earth. One of his conclusions: Planet Earth is “currently in an ice age.”

Plimer will not be as easy to dismiss, perhaps, as Freeman Dyson or Michael Crichton, though I’m sure true believers will try. As he says, “The IPCC process is related to environmental activism, politics and opportunism. It is unrelated to science. Current zeal around human-induced climate change is comparable to the certainty professed by Creationists or religious fundamentalists.”

The title of this post comes from Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It, “[The river] runs over rocks from the basement of time.”

Perhaps some other laws have been ignored too?

I mentioned a scientific paper the other day that is making its way through peer review titled, Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics by Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner.

It seems there may be other laws of physics that have been slighted, see On the First Principles of Heat Transfer: A Note from Alan Siddons on Jennifer Marohasy’s blog. I’ve learned heat transfer laws many times but it’s good for the refresher. Heat transfer is one of the first principles taught in any fire training because knowing how stuff catches fire and how to stop stuff from burning ranks high on the firefighter’s list of “stuff to know.” Water makes a good extinguisher because it can hold lots of heat especially compared to gas.

I’m not saying that the Earth is not heating up. I’m saying we should rigorously examine the cause.

Timber’s Term of the Week: Gyppo Logger

Gyppo Logger

n

  1. An independent, or small, logging contractor often working on a minimal operating budget with substandard, “haywire,” equipment.
  2. A busheler, someone who will do piecework.

The term “gyppo” (or “gypo”) is not necessarily the same as the Irish Traveller, though the etymology seems to share the same root. The term is thought to come from the term “gypsy,” from the days when log skidding would be contracted out to itinerant operators with a team of horses.

Syn packsacker (pine country)

See also:

  • U of Washington Press “Gyppo Logger” by Margaret Elley Felt.

Timber's Term of the Week: Gyppo Logger

Gyppo Logger

n

  1. An independent, or small, logging contractor often working on a minimal operating budget with substandard, “haywire,” equipment.
  2. A busheler, someone who will do piecework.

The term “gyppo” (or “gypo”) is not necessarily the same as the Irish Traveller, though the etymology seems to share the same root. The term is thought to come from the term “gypsy,” from the days when log skidding would be contracted out to itinerant operators with a team of horses.

Syn packsacker (pine country)

See also:

  • U of Washington Press “Gyppo Logger” by Margaret Elley Felt.

Drat, that pesky second law of thermodynamics

Authors Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner argue that within the frame of physics there can be no greenhouse effect.

Abstract: The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that many authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1861), and Arrhenius (1896), and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist [emphasis added]. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 degrees Celsius is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.

When you get down to it, this discussion of facts and their applicability is what makes science fun. Science should not be subverted by politics and ideology.

Here’s a draft of their paper, Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics:

http://www.tsch.de/a-falsification/pdf/0707.1161v4.pdf