Radioactive boar? Let's talk bark beetles and wildfires.

[wtmusic]

A buddy just returned from a cycling vacation in Utah and Colorado, and was aghast at the amount of mountainside vegetation being destroyed by bark beetles.



Though this problem seems to have fallen off the map recently, it's reasonably certain that the main cause for the explosive growth of bark beetle infestation (and decimation of Western forests) is global warming, and it will only get worse (several days each year of subzero weather are necessary to kill off beetle larvae, and that isn't happening).

Additionally, the dieoff of pine forest is a global warming positive feedback:

"Utah is in the midst of a vicious beetle cycle: Climate change is being blamed for causing a boom in the bark beetle population. Bark beetles are killing trees. Dead trees become fuel for wildfires, which experts say cause more global warming.

In some areas, the beetle population is considered to have reached outbreak proportions, with the potential to devastate entire forests. In Dixie National Forest, hundreds of thousands of acres have been wiped out by the wood-boring insect, according to Colleen Keyes, forest-health program manager for Utah’s Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands.

In August, the National Wildlife Federation released a study that said global warming is increasing the wildfire risk in the West, which leads to an unsafe accumulation of fuel loads that also are ideal breeding grounds for the beetles. Once the insects take over in a forest, they add to its volume of fuel for wildfires, which contribute greenhouse gases to the atmosphere."

http://www.fs.fed.us/ccrc/topics/bark-beetles.shtml

Aftermath of Los Angeles' Station Fire, which destroyed 160,000 acres of forest:



Now, it's time for a little perspective. According to the Bavarian Hunting Federation, "The problem (of radioactive boar) has been at a high level for a long time...it will likely remain that way for at least the next 50 years." Though this is certainly a tragedy for boar-eaters, what will be the condition of pine forests worldwide in 50 years if global warming continues unabated? What local wildlife populations have been affected, or killed in wildfires exacerbated by global warming?

We need more safe, proven, carbon-free nuclear energy now.

[bananas]

1. No, we don't need more nuclear energy - it will make global warming worse

because the money can be more effectively used in other ways which will reduce global warming faster and cheaper.
None of the major environmental organizations support nuclear energy as a solution to global warming, and most are opposed to it.

[Webster Green]

2. We need solar and wind, not nuclear.

It's time to move ahead. Get rid of the nuclear and coal-fired plants, and invest in cleaner alternatives.

[wtmusic]

3. We need nuclear until other technologies are proven

No time to waste.

[bananas]

4. Funny you should use the word "waste" when trying to hype nuclear energy.

:rofl:

[Webster Green]

5. The technology is "proven".

The sun is still there. Some new design to increase collector efficiency and decrease cost is announced almost every week.

[wtmusic]

9. It's not even close to meeting our energy needs.

Even if everyone drastically cut back on their energy consumption (won't happen) solar couldn't make a dent - short of an unforeseeable game-changing breakthrough. It makes no sense whatsoever to plan on that happening. And despite the talk about how expensive nuclear is, it's still a much better investment than either solar or wind.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_evnqQdPsjKE/SXOCl6C4lDI/AAAAAAAAALY/J1oiPbnz4W4/s400/solar+vs+wind+vs+nuclear.jpg

[Webster Green]

12. Um, yeah, that's why we need more of it.

As I said in a previous post, there are "game-changing breakthroughs" occuring regularly. The technolgy is exploding! Combining clean generation methods with more efficiency in the devices using the electricity (LED lighting comes to mind), is where the excitement is.

[wtmusic]

14. If solar is so viable, why isn't the DOE providing $56B in loan guarantees

like they are for nuclear? Are both Obama and Stephen Chu stupid?

:shrug:

[Webster Green]

15. Good question.

That would be great.

Is that your evidence that solar power has no potential? You still have time to edit it, and save some embarrassment.

[wtmusic]

16. Maybe we should answer that question first.

Either:

1) Obama and Chu are stupid or grossly misinformed;
2) They're on the take from the nuclear industry and don't give a crap about the environment;
3) Solar and wind could never deliver enough energy in time to make a difference

Call me an incurable optimist, but my money's on #3.

btw, not sure where I said solar has no potential. Show me where, and save some embarrassment. :D

[Webster Green]

19. Indeed.

1) The latter, as near as I can figure.
2) You said it, not me.
3) We could actually agree here. Personally, I think it's too late, but we should still try to save the planet.

[diane in sf]

36. Oil, coal and nukes have purchased quite a few politicians, doesn't matter if newer power

sources are better--the centralized industries are hogging r&d, tax subsidies, etc. Most people in these new industries are hoping for a level playing field in terms of government support.

[XemaSab]

21. How much power does the largest solar facility on earth produce in a day?

And how much power does largest nuclear plant produce in a day?

(I'm not asking about installed capacity, I'm talking about actual power production.)

Go check out these numbers, and then we'll talk about which is a better power source.

[Webster Green]

22. It doesn't matter.

You are stuck in the past. I'm discussing the future.

I don't give a fuck about what we've done in the past, or what we're doing now, it's time to move beyond old technologies such as coal and nuclear.

[XemaSab]

24. What model of flying car would you prefer?

You want a big one that seats 10 people, or do you want a little one-seater? Do you need to tow stuff, or haul cargo?

Tell me what features you'd like to see in your flying car. :shrug:

[Webster Green]

25. You are licked before you start, aren't you?

The future has no place for innovative technology?

Okay, then. :eyes:

[NickB79]

34. We don't have time to wait for the future of alternative energy to arrive

If we don't start implementing carbon-free energy sources NOW, and in massive amounts, catastrophic climate change is virtually unavoidable. And that means we must use what we have today, not what we might have in the next few decades.

[Webster Green]

27. Check it out...

Exactly the kind of innovations I'm talking about. It's hard to keep up with all the advances taking place in solar, in solid state lighting, electric vehicles etc.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=255039&mesg_id=255039

[XemaSab]

28. I've been reading about these "radical new innovations" for a decade

and none of it has happened yet. Hell, people have been talking about solar technology for 50 years and it hasn't happened yet.

We need to get off coal and oil TODAY, not at some magical time in the future when we have LED's in the backs of our eyes powered by photovoltaic panels on our earlobes, or whatever.

The only technology that will get us off coal and oil TODAY is nuclear.

[Webster Green]

29. Stuck in a rut.

Of course you've been reading about them for a decade. The technology has been improving for decades. I was living off the grid in Humboldt County 30 years ago. A couple of solar panels on the roof, 2 big deep cycle fork lift batteries, and 12 volt lights and appliances.

You can deny that the technology is exploding right now, but it's pretty obvious that it is doing exactly that. To say that something can't happen because its never happened before is just absurd, particularly when discussing advances in technology. :wtf:

* edit for stray apostrophe.

[XemaSab]

31. So you were able to live off the grid in Humboldt county 30 years ago

In 30 years of technological developments (and I won't deny that there have been many) how have these technological innovations changed the way we produce electricity and how much closer is the United States to getting off fossil fuels?

Solar energy has been a decades-long song and dance. It's useful for some things, such as living off the grid in Humboldt county, but even if we built every proposed solar facility in the state (of which there are many) we'd still be in the low-single-digits as far as percent of our energy generated from solar.

Riddle me this, Webster: If you were the emperor of California, what would be the percentages of electricity generated from different existing sources? What are some of the problems or barriers between your ideal portfolio and what could practically be accomplished in, say, the next 20 years?

[Webster Green]

32. Carter's energy plan would have moved it along.

The will to change has to be present alongside the technological innovations. When both are in harmony, then we'll see real advances. I'm frustrated that it hasn't happened sooner, but that has nothing to do with what could happen now. Do you get that part? The fact that it hasn't happened yet doesn't make it impossible. You can cite all the stats and percentages you like, but it's meaningless. If some new technology just increased solar panel efficiency by 30%, do you not think that will change the equation?

If I was Emporor of California, I would legalize hemp along with the killer dank, start manufacturing hemp products, including bio-fuels. The frames we mount our solar panels in will be made of hemp-cellulose. We'll produce hemp textiles, and oils and all kinds of great stuff. The biggest problem will be keeping the hemp pollen away from the dank.

[XemaSab]

33. The part that's frustrating for me is that I think we're on the same page in general

and sometimes discussions with people you 95% agree with are harder to have than discussions with people you 20% agree with, ya know?

I'm cynical about everything.

To illustrate what I'm talking about, let's take a look at our friends over in the Republican party.

They've spent decades getting people out to the polls on abortion and illegal immigration. These two issues are red meat issues for them. These issues get voters ANGRY.

When they had all three branches of government, what did they do about these issues?

NOTHING. They did NOTHING.

Seriously, there was a symbolic cutting of international family planning money right out of the gate, and I guess there was a sale on chain-link fencing at the Nogales Home Depot and they bought 20 rolls, but they really did not accomplish anything meaningful in either of these areas.

Why not?

Well, first of all, republican girls have unwanted pregnancies too, and secondly, illegal immigrants are good little worker bees who don't complain about low pay or dangerous working conditions, but finally, if they actually did anything about these issues how would they get people to the polls? How would they raise money? How would they keep the sheep in line?

Having the two carrots of abortion and illegal immigration to dangle out there is very valuable for them.

Which brings us back to renewable energy.

It's always about 10 years away from really taking off. Like, seriously, for real this time. If we just continue shopping and driving and doing what we're doing, the renewables market will painlessly take over the energy market.

Last week I posted my own conspiracy theory about large solar projects:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x254556

But I think the conspiracy goes even deeper than that. I would almost say that there's a conspiracy to hype renewable energy in order to keep the American public totally in the dark about the actual percent of electrical generation that comes from different sectors of the energy market; and I would definitely say that the fact that oil companies haven't invested heavily in renewables points to major structural flaws in the sector that indicate to me that renewables will not be a significant part of our electrical generation for many decades, if ever. (ARCO, of all companies, created one of the first large-scale solar projects in California. They sold off their solar unit in 1989.)

Renewable energy hype has been a little juicy carrot to keep environmentalists from rioting in the streets.

[Nihil]

38. You have a lot of good points in that post.

Reading your conversation with Webster, I think you *are* both on the
same page in general but that just means that the differences between
you are strangely accentuated - a point that is true for most of the
E/E discussions for that matter.

Your observation of the Republican talking points (abortion & illegal
immigration) is spot on: they are flags to get the herd moving in the
right (pardon the pun!) direction but once the cattle drive is under
way, they only need to be waved around once in a while to keep them
going on the chosen route, not to actually do anything about them.

I read your "conspiracy theory" thread yesterday while catching up after
a short break but think that your expansion in the above is much better:

> It's always about 10 years away from really taking off. Like, seriously,
> for real this time. If we just continue shopping and driving and doing what
> we're doing, the renewables market will painlessly take over the energy market.
> ...

I think that the similar behaviour in the fusion arena performs the same function
for the technophiles who are being led along, encouraged to "continue shopping
and driving and doing what we're doing" whilst being fed a suitable story for
*their* consumption - i.e., that the problems will be painlessly solved in the
background by the wonders of modern science.

Different "markets" (= mindsets), each with a suitably tailored "future solution"
to keep them on the straight & narrow.


> ...
> But I think the conspiracy goes even deeper than that. I would almost say that
> there's a conspiracy to hype renewable energy in order to keep the American
> public totally in the dark about the actual percent of electrical generation
> that comes from different sectors of the energy market;
> ...

I think this thought goes further than it needs to: "renewable energy" is often
used as a slogan, as a facade to hide the same old shit behind (e.g., when used
by the oil companies to show that they aren't just polluting multinational
corporations but that they have a "new", "clean" side). The public (American
British or otherwise) is largely too damn ignorant to know or care about where
their electricity comes from so there is no need to expend effort in order to
cover up the truth. The companies could put up 40' billboards shouting out
"We burn puppies to generate your electricity!" and the public would still go
off to plug all their shit into the wall, leaving it running while out of the
house and only raise a murmur of complaint if the puppy supply got low enough
that there was a blackout in the middle of their favourite programme.


> Renewable energy hype has been a little juicy carrot to keep environmentalists
> from rioting in the streets.

Just another tailored solution for a segment of the population that had started
to get beyond the "panem et circenses" of mainstream media.

The opportunities for protest (much less "rioting in the streets") are getting
shut down more each year by the combination of psy-ops & overt police violence.
Agent provocateurs combined with selective reporting of events leads the mass
of the public to understand that "protests" are only for the violent hotheads
"who are better off being locked up for everyone's sake".

The control of the mass media (and hence the presentation of information) is
almost total. The "free" reports on the internet are being swamped by on-message
drones whilst the reliability of the medium is being both undermined from within
("Can't believe anything that you read on the internet") and without (bids for
control of the core naming & routing provision, intelligence service taps into
and data mining of the streams).


> ... about the actual percent of electrical generation that comes from different
> sectors of the energy market;

"They" have no problem with a few people going off-grid, with a small percentage
of the motor vehicle market going to hybrid or full electric, with incremental
improvements in domestic efficiency and other such sidelines (face it: each of
these provides employment for some and profit for others). All that is necessary
is to keep the herd moving and round up any group that strays from the drive.


The sheep really like the sheepdogs as the latter protect the former from any
wolves that are out there ("Al-Qaeda!", "Anarchists!", "Athiests!"). It's just
a shame that most sheep don't realise that wolves were wiped out centuries ago
and the sheepdogs are only needed by the farmer to drive the flock from pasture
to pasture and then to slaughter.

[XemaSab]

41. Thank you for your thoughtful response

Well stated!

[Nihil]

37. Many of those things will benefit us today, with or without solar as a major electricity source

> Exactly the kind of innovations I'm talking about. It's hard to keep up
> with all the advances taking place in solar, in solid state lighting,
> electric vehicles etc.

I'm taking advantage of LED lighting to reduce my consumption even though
the primary source for my electricity isn't solar. I'm taking advantage
of a hybrid car to reduce my fuel consumption even though it isn't a
fully electric one powered by solar cells on my roof.

You are right that there are a hell of a lot of innovative solutions coming
out into the mainstream (i.e., not just for the hobbyists or the wannabe
hippies of today who still shop at Sainsbury's).

Just don't blur the issue between the real progress and the hype advance
publicity of what is still in the pipeline, no matter how much the latter is
desired (and has been for the last 30 years plus).

Getting the replacement products that are available *now* into widespread
acceptance & use will provide major & rapid gains. Holding back for the
dream solution that will be available "real soon now" doesn't.

[nosmokes]

6. You speak as if nuclear is a proven technology. Google nuclear incidents

and you'll receive an eye opening education.Ain't nowhere near as safe as it's cheerleaders want you to believe.

[msongs]

7. if its so great let private companies bear the entire expense of developing it :-) nt

[wtmusic]

10. Let private companies bear the expense of developing solar too?

The industry wouldn't exist at all.

[nosmokes]

17. Why should they? 'Traditional'energy' sources have been subsidized since

day one, why shouldn't we allow the same consideration for sustainable energy sources? Or does it just make too much fucking sense?

[HillbillyBob]

8. Does that mean we can store the nukular waste

IN YOUR basement?

[Fledermaus]

11. The photo you posted does not show fire damage.

I'm not sure why you claim it does.
http://www.photographyontherun.com/default,date,2009-09-22.aspx

[wtmusic]

13. Here's one that's a little clearer for you.

[Fledermaus]

18. Why should this photo be any more believable than the last one?

You have been caught cooking the books once already. Its up to you to provide proof of your claim.

[wtmusic]

20. What on earth are you talking about?

What claim? You don't believe this is a photo of the aftermath of the Station Fire? Take it up with Thomas Hawk.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/4474256495/

And I think you were the one caught red-handed last time, doing a little creative rewriting to advance your point. :eyes:

[mike_c]

23. proximate causes vs ultimate causes....

The causes of Dendroctonus population cycles-- and outbreaks-- are more complex than you acknowledged. It's worth noting that climate change might indeed be a PROXIMATE cause of the beetle outbreaks you've cited. I've been out to Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah several times during the last couple of years to look at those outbreaks. The putative role that global warming plays is in helping beetle brood overwinter and complete development a little earlier, thus insuring greater beetle density. That's likely true, IMO, but it's not the whole story by a mile. Some argue that climate change contributes to tree stress as well, and while that's undoubtedly true to a degree, the effects will likely be significant at the edges of tree species distributions first, but the outbreak pattern we see doesn't seem to reflect that expectation.

The ULTIMATE cause of those Dendroctonus outbreaks is a century of fire suppression in the west. Look at the photos you posted and note how dense those forests are stocked with medium to large diameter trees. Stand density is directly correlated with tree stress and susceptibility to bark beetle attack. Here's some historical photos of pre-fire suppression photos from similar dry, interior western forests:






In sequoia forest, 1890 (top) and 1959 (bottom):



It's fire suppression and the resulting over-stocked stand density that set forests up for bark beetle attacks. Then all it takes is a triggering event to start the actual outbreaks. The fire suppression and stocking density are the ultimate cause, and the trigger event-- whatever it is-- is the proximate cause. Without the ultimate cause laying the foundation, the proximate cause would have little effect because open, less densely stocked forests won't support the super population cycles characteristic of outbreaks.

[wtmusic]

26. Interesting.

Thanks for photos, you make good points.

Do you have a link in support of your opinion that the spread of outbreaks depends on the density of forest biomass? It would make sense to me if younger growth was more susceptible to beetle attacks, but I don't know if that's the case or not.

[mike_c]

30. here is a good place to start....

http://www.wflccenter.org/news_pdf/222_pdf.pdf

First though, just to clear up a couple of points that I might not have been clear on (I was striving for brevity):

1) Dendroctonus population "spread"-- by that I assume you mean dispersal-- is enhanced by tree density within stands in at least three ways. First, tree density vastly improves the chances for population increase and outbreak. It increases tree stress and susceptibility to attack, and that alone increases the likelihood of outbreak. It also decreases dispersal mortality, which is directly proportional to the distance between susceptible host trees-- the longer adult beetles spend searching for susceptible trees, the less likely they are to survive and reproduce. Lots of reasons for that, but simple environmental exposure is probably the most important. Finally, during intense, high beetle density attacks, individual trees rapidly fill up with adults laying eggs. Too many brood in individual trees reduces resource quality, so the adults switch their pheromone production from aggregation pheromones to anti-aggregation pheromones, causing newly arrived beetles to switch their attacks to adjacent, unfilled trees. That's why infestations often develop as discrete "spots" on the landscape until beetle density becomes so great that the spots essentially become too huge to recognize as discrete. But if adjacent trees are very close-- remember, most Dendroctonus beetles are TINY, not much more than a few millimeters in length, so their experience of environmental scale is quite different from ours-- then attacks against adjacent trees are more likely to be successful than if they are widely spaced.

2) It's not so much that younger trees are more susceptible-- correlations between tree age and beetle susceptibility are deceptive. It's tree stress that's the real correlate of susceptibility. Stand age is often a contributor to tree stress when stands are over-stocked, particularly in even-aged stands where all the trees hit the same size more-or-less at the same time and either begin to compete with one another more vigorously or all begin to share debilitating diseases, like fungal attacks. In less stressed stands it's often older trees that are more susceptible because the older they become, the greater their chances of injury or disease-- both of which increase susceptibility to Dendroctonus attacks-- or they simply senesce and their ability to defend themselves against attacking beetles decreases. Those are the main ways that bark beetles maintain endemic populations during non-outbreak population cycles-- they utilize those "occasional" susceptible trees that are spread all over the landscape.

Do a search on terms like "bark beetles fire suppression" or "bark beetles stand density" to see lots of other references. You'll probably even find my doctoral dissertation-- it included chapters on assessing stand risk of D. frontalis infestation.

[wtmusic]

39. A complex problem, no doubt.

It seems 2006-2008 was a period of intense research in this area, but I found a recent article in NYT, unrelated to beetle infestation, promoting prescribed burns as a mitigator of global warming:

Study Calls for More Prescribed Burns to Reduce Forest Fire Emissions

A new study offers a prescription to increase carbon storage in western U.S. forests: Use more controlled burns to prevent a completely scorched earth.

Increasingly, forest managers are setting so-called "prescribed" fires to clear out underbrush and small trees that, if left to accumulate, can quickly escalate a single spark into a catastrophic blaze.

Prescribed practices mimic the natural, smaller burns, caused by lightning or set by Indians, that were all but eliminated by decades of unnatural fire suppression. Today, in many Western forests, piles of fuels are just waiting for a spark.

http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/03/18/18climatewire-study-calls-for-more-prescribed-burns-to-red-70715.html

but this which found that prescribed burns exacerbated beetle infestation:

Key Findings
• Tree mortality due to bark beetle attacks increases significantly after prescribed fire at Crater Lake National Park.
• Low vigor trees are more likely to die. But high vigor trees can also be prone.
• Trees of any vigor class increase resin flow, post-fire.
• Increased resin does not protect trees from death due to beetle attack.
• It is unclear whether resin chemistry changes as a result of fire. Beetles may home in on resin volatiles post-fire, to
find and attack trees.

http://www.firescience.gov/projects/05-2-1-92/supdocs/05-2-1-92_fsbrief72-final.pdf

Throw that into the mix with this pro-prescribed burn POV from the Australian Dept. of Conservation and I'm just glad I'm not in charge of making policy :D

My sister is an ecologist with the USFS in Alaska studying white spruce regeneration & invasive plants, you may even know her.

[mike_c]

40. one of the issues that makes prescribed burns complex...

...in this context is that as a management tool, prescribed fire is often limited to fuels reduction and-- to a lesser extent-- arresting encroachment of later successional tree species. That vastly complicates matters because such low temperature burns rarely kill significant numbers of trees. Applied to overstocked stands, prescribed burns HAVE to be cool to reduce the likelihood of wildfire, which is a dubious business anyway, as lots of recent wildfires that began life as managed burns attest. Anyway, such fires rarely change stand structure significantly-- managers don't usually want to risk that-- so most of the primary stressors that influence beetle attack success remain unchanged.

I worked on a project at the Blacks Mountain Experimental Forest (on the Lassen NF) a few years ago in which dense, fire suppressed stands were artificially manipulated by commercial thinning to achieve various combinations of stand structure attributes, ranging from unmanipulated old growth forest through stands that were thinned to pre-European stocking levels but with old-growth characteristics maintained, to stands that were thinned to lower density and made more-or-less homogeneous and intermediate aged. Then we used VERY well managed burns to reduce fuels in the usual manner, followed by silvicultural, botanical, entomological, and wildlife monitoring for several years. The short version is that the stands thinned to pre-European densities with old growth characters retained performed the best in terms of recovery from the disturbance, more-or-less as expected.

There was an unintended test of the relationship between fire and stand density during Oct. 2002 when the Cone fire burned 650 ha or so in the surrounding forest, but while still burning out of control it reached the boundaries of the experimental manipulations. While it burned freely in the surrounding forest, the fire stopped dead at the edges of our treatment plots (they were big, 100 ha EACH). Inside the treatment plots there was little damage, just a little more fuels combustion-- inside the thinned plots, the fire burned pretty much the way we expect the pre-fire suppression periodic fires burned, reducing fuels but causing little or no mortality of mature trees.

Here's the Cone fire, to give you some idea of its intensity:




Here is its aftermath, outside the thinned and managed plots (top) and inside one of them (bottom):





Pretty cool, huh?

[wtmusic]

42. Very cool.

:thumbsup:

Is it practical to put in place as a nationwide policy (expense/manpower)?

[mike_c]

43. it's tough....

There's lots of reasons. One is that manual thinning is expensive and ecologically destructive if it isn't done very conscientiously. On the vast scale we're talking about, it isn't feasible unless the management model is changed dramatically. Right now, it would be done by timber sale on each management unit, relying on commercial operators to do the actual work. That's just really expensive, especially since many rural communities no longer have the resources necessary, or the ability to absorb all the timber. The carrot usually dangled to entice them is to offer large blocks for sale, more often than not including some juicy units that are cut for profit, not management, shoulder the costs of road building and recovery, and so on. I just don't think that the current industrial forestry model can support the level of downright altruism needed to put things right in western forests any longer.

The other alternative is to let fire, weather, disease, and bark beetles do the management for us. Resetting the clock that way is extremely damaging, but it has built-in recovery mechanisms. It will take multiple cycles of disturbance and recovery to recreate the open, mature character of native western forests, and few constituencies have the stomach for it. Still, it is the best solution in my book. Good solutions to one problem often come with other problems these days.

[XemaSab]

44. Very cool

:D

[Dogmudgeon]

35. Radioactive? I remember something like this ...

?

Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig,
Does whatever a Spider-Pig does ...

--d!