Timberati on the Graveyard Shift Draft #1

Lee Lofland over at the Graveyard Shift has asked if I’d like to do a guest column. Lee’s a retired detective who’s “solved cases in areas including narcotics, homicide, rape, murder-for-hire, robbery, and ritualistic and occult crimes. He worked as an undercover officer for several jurisdictions, and he even spent a few years as a narcotics K-9 handler.” He’s written a first-rate book on police procedure, Police Procedure and Investigation, that I turn to when I want to make sure I’m in the ballpark with my descriptions.

Below is a first draft. I want comments.


For 35 years, I worked amid the chaos of life and death competition where only the strong and cunning survived.

Did I mention? We rarely wear body armor or pack our weapons.
Did I mention? We rarely wear body armor or pack our weapons.

It’s a place where no mercy is given, a place where no remorse is ever displayed, and a place where greed is the norm. Some of those where I worked plot overthrow of the status quo, then amid the scorched earth, move in, taking advantage of the devastation they helped create. Once in place, they create conditions for another catastrophe. Others insinuate themselves into the mix while siphoning off resources, biding their time, waiting for those above to die off so then they can takeover the top spots. Some poison competitors. Everyone uses the carcasses of the former inhabitants without regard.

And those are just the plants. Toss in people and you have a really interesting mix.

Makes ecology and forestry look a bit more intriguing doesn’t it?

The Dark Woods
The Dark Woods

What I wrote about the forest is all true. Plants exhibit survival strategies. Each order, family, genus, species, and variety has a way to survive and reproduce. Like the climate and weather, nothing in nature remains static.

In the Hero’s Journey, entering the (mythological) “woods” symbolized leaving the familiar and fully committing to the adventure. This part of the myth is called “the Initiation.” It is during the initiation the hero meets allies and enemies. I met both in my work in the forest.

I have been a forester all my adult life. My career started in 1973 with a summer job working for the (then) California Division of Forestry (CDF) on Mountain Home State Forest (MHSF) in the southern Sierra Nevada. I was hired on a permanent basis with the Forestry Division of Los Angeles County’s Fire Department for a couple years, and then returned to CDF (now the Dept. of Forestry and Fire Protection, a/k/a Cal-Fire) in 1977. I returned to MHSF in 1979. Since it was so far from any sheriff’s response, the full-time staff handled basic law enforcement. I went through our department’s Peace Officer Academy, which is certified by California’s Commission on Peace Officer’s Standards and Training (POST). When I was sworn in, I was bestowed with the same duties and privileges of any peace officer in California. I have training in all the usual evidence gathering and enforcement procedure given to police, plus wildland fire and structure fire investigation, forest practice rule enforcement, wildland fire behavior, silviculture, forest mensuration, wood technology, etc.

But, my bona fides don’t float my boat like what goes on the woods; I just happen to have worked for a regulatory agency that tries to enforce the laws of man to keep the laws of nature from going too far off the rails.

In Humboldt County, a friend of mine was walking a skid road (a path along which logs have been dragged by equipment) checking to make sure the erosion control measures were correctly installed. A man with an assault rifle walked out from behind a tree, poked his index finger into my friend’s badge and said, “the shiny badge looked awfully tempting in my sights.”

If Lee invites me back we can talk about Cal-Fire, forestry, the logging controversy the Boy Scouts seem to be involved with, or anything you like. And, while I have checked guys with guns who claim to be hunting, I’m not a fish and game guy. Game wardens are truly crazy.

=====================

Well, is it good enough?

Timber’s Term of the Week: Deadhead

Deadhead

n

  1. A log in the water, either completely submerged or primarily submerged.
  2. A sinker log

Before railroads and trucking, most goods came by water. Trees felled, would be cut into log lengths, lashed into log rafts,  and floated down river. Some logs would sink. Some logs would only reveal a small portion of itself, resembling a head. The log’s ultimate destination could be a mill for sawing into dimension lumber or a port where they might be shipped elsewhere.


See also:

Greatful Dead

Timber's Term of the Week: Deadhead

Deadhead

n

  1. A log in the water, either completely submerged or primarily submerged.
  2. A sinker log

Before railroads and trucking, most goods came by water. Trees felled, would be cut into log lengths, lashed into log rafts,  and floated down river. Some logs would sink. Some logs would only reveal a small portion of itself, resembling a head. The log’s ultimate destination could be a mill for sawing into dimension lumber or a port where they might be shipped elsewhere.


See also:

Greatful Dead

The Copenhagen Consensus

On one of my post the other day, Anne asked in a comment, “What, other than cost, is the downside of reducing our carbon footprint [to prevent global warming]?”

There are steps that we can take to reduce a footprint, carbon or otherwise:

  • Move to a metropolitan area. Urban areas, due to their compactness, are more efficient.
  • Eat less meat.
  • Buy less packaged food. It’s healthier for you and needs less energy to produce.
  • Use mass transit.
  • Use less.
  • Ride a bike or walk.

Now, those are things that are “other than cost.” Should cost be a consideration? Only if there isn’t enough money or the resources to do everything. Since money is a consideration, we need to determine where to get the best return on our investment.

For about a decade, the world’s greatest economists have gathered to generate the Copenhagen Consensus (of which Bjørn Lomborg is a part) in order to prioritize where to put money. Research and Development in low-carbon energy technologies to combat anthropogenic global warming (AGW) wound up at 14th on the list of the world’s ills to invest capital in.

Here’s Copenhagen Consensus’s top ten list of the world’s ills where we will get the most for our money:

  1. Micronutrient supplements for children (vitamin A and zinc) (Challenge: Malnutrition)
  2. The DOHA development agenda (Challenge: Trade)
  3. Micronutrient fortification (iron and salt iodization) (Challenge: Malnutrition)
  4. Expanded immunization coverage for children (Challenge: Diseases)
  5. Biofortification (Challenge: Malnutrition)
  6. Deworming and other nutrition programs at school (Challenge: Malnutrition & Education)
  7. Lowering the price of schooling (Challenge: Education)
  8. Increase and improve girls’ schooling (Challenge: Women)
  9. Community-based nutrition promotion (Challenge: Malnutrition)
  10. Provide support for women’s reproductive role (Challenge: Women)

You can see that concentrating on malnutrition and hunger,  freer trade, diseases, education and women’s issues will yield  greater benefits dollar for dollar. Attempting to mitigate AGW today ranks 30th on the Consensus list.

Download the results of the 2008 Copenhagen Consensus here.



Update from a Bjorn Lomborg Op-Ed in the April 24, 2009 New York Times:


Economic estimates … show that every dollar invested in quickly making low-carbon energy cheaper can do $16 worth of good. If the Kyoto agreement were fully obeyed through 2099, it would cut temperatures by only 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Each dollar would do only about 30 cents worth of good.




Rather than pledging to cut emissions and failing, let’s put our capital into getting wind and solar online.


Read an interview with Bjorn Lomborg: here.


Excerpt:


I think the main point of [The Skeptical Environmentalist book] was to challenge our notion that everything is going down the drain, and I don’t see any reason to revise that…I’m trying to recapture much of what the left stood for–when we believed in progress, when we believed that scientific understanding could lead us ahead and not just rely on tradition. … Unfortunately, I find that a fair amount of the left has turned towards a romanticized view of the world.

	


	





	

		
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. 

  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.
    3. 








See also:


	


	





	

		
Timber's Term of the Week: Widowmaker
	


	
	

		
Widowmaker


n


    

  1. Something that looks innocuous that is, in fact, dangerous.
    

    2. 

  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.
    3. 








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.