150 million dead trees could fuel unprecedented firestorms in the Sierra Nevada

LA Times ^ | 09/13/2020 | Bettina Boxall

[notpoliticallycorewrecked]

I have lived in and visited and/or had family live in everyplace you mentioned for your visits to California. I have seen a lot more with my two eyes in the 60+ years that I lived in CA. The Eastern Sierras are not even close to what the Western Sierras are like. They are like comparing the Olympic Pennisula to Spokane.

[Paul R.]

Is not the problem partially one of a vast oversupply of scrap wood?

A competent operation, say, Weyerhaeuser, is going to know fairly accurately before a sawmill is ever built what % of their intake will go to lumber, how much to chips for chipboard or power generation, and so on, and they will build the mill accordingly. Of course, they have to have some flexibility, but if normal intake never goes beyond, say, 50% by volume for chips, they’d be pretty crazy to build for 75% capacity to be chipped, and then have that equipment just sit around until the beetles decide to go on the march. OTOH, if the mills apply for permits to begin to build for much greater chip processing (for whatever product, including large scale power production), will the beetle-dead forest still be there to harvest* once the expanded facilities are up and running? In a lefty state? I don’t even want to think about the regs, lawsuits, and other legal hurdles...

Additionally, access roads have to be built (if even practical*) in many cases. More fodder for the enviro-nazis.

*Almost surely some remote beetle-dead forest areas should just be left to burn, or deliberately burned a.s.a.p. — but then you have to be able to control the fire if it gets near populated places. (Obviously prescribed burns are not done in fire season, so they make the most sense for this case. But capacity to do those on a large scale is limited too, even if approvals are given.)

However, assuming most of the dead trees are to be chipped (along with normal chipping operations), after the dead forests have been reduced to a manageable threat, the sawmills are still left with the excess chipping (etc.) capacity - and all this assumes the surge in supply does not depress the market during the supply. The whole thing might be a big money loser even before overhead costs are considered, and even in the short term, if the intent is to get it done in time to have a large impact.

Maybe the $$ numbers would work out, but if so, I’d think someone would be taking advantage of it, by now.

150 million dead trees is a lot of chips. That’s just in the Sierra, I take it! And beetle-killed trees are only part of the problem(s)... :-(

FWIW, the link to the CalFire study:

https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/fettig/psw_2019_fettig003_larvie.pdf

P.S. I nearly choked when I saw that the 1st author listed has the last name of “Larvie”. Some stuff you can’t make up.

[VTenigma]

Earth First, we’ll log the rest of the planets later.

[VTenigma]

Earth First, we’ll log the rest of the planets later.