re: California Fires -- LISTEN TO DR. BILL WATTENBURG TONIGHT ON KGO (10:00 PM PACIFIC)

Dr. Bill Wattenburg show -- KGO ^ | Nov. 1, 2003 | dfu

[doug from upland]

LINK TO KGO TO LISTEN LIVE ONLINE

Dr. Bill Wattenburg, a man who has worked in the forest for 40 years and who has designed nuclear weapons at Lawrence Livermore, has a weekend show on KGO in San Francisco on Saturday and Sunday nights.

Dr. Bill is an expert regarding protecting our forests. I expect him to be absolutely ripping the ecofrauds tonight and tomorrow. It will be worth your time to listen to him.

[nicmarlo]

Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
Why Logging Exacerbates Loss of Lives and Property
By KARYN STRICKLER
and TIMOTHY G. HERMACH

Scores of people are dead, hundreds of thousands of acres are burned, 2,600 homes destroyed, with tens of thousand more threatened in California fires, and the toll is rising by the minute. It's very scary and represents profound loss for the victims. So, under the guise of fire funding or firefighting, congressional negotiators quickly allocated $3 billion (the most ever allocated to a one-time firefighting budget) in the coming year to fight and prevent fire. Hundreds of millions of dollars are allocated specifically for suppression, thinning, threat reduction, and management--all fear-mongering, code words for cutting down our national forests.

California's Fontana Pass and Grand Prix Fires have been blamed on arson. Still George W. Bush and those in the U.S. Congress who benefit from the timber industry's chainsaw windfall, capitalize on people's fear of fire and proclaim a need for suppression, thinning, threat reduction and management. They then grant enormous logging contracts to cut down trees in national forests where logging is otherwise illegal. The logging is not done in areas where lives and property would be spared, thinning small trees around homes, but rather in backcountry, valuable, old-growth forests.

According to Dr Richard A Minnich, Professor of Earth Science at the University of California at Riverside, an expert on the fire ecology of Mediterranean ecosystems in Southern California, "The Bush Administration's Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HR 1904) for forest thinning in the western United States is scheduled for a vote at a time when southern California is undergoing a massive fire disaster. Yet this bill will give little benefit for fire and fuel hazard management in the southern California region . . .The bill is earmarked for federal lands exclusively."

As forest fires rage, so does the debate about how best to suppress fire, reduce its threat and manage our forests. And the answer is -- DON'T! Don't "manage" our public forests -- and forest fires will be M-I-N-I-M-I-Z-E-D....

http://www.counterpunch.org/strickler11012003.html

[The Westerner]

Good job. Thanks for keeping this record.

[NormsRevenge]

Quotes posted on Wilderness.net.

Ironic , to say the least, to read some of them now.

[Calvin Locke]

"Hippies! Hippies! They want to save the world, but all they do is smoke dope and smell bad." -- E. Kartman.

[nicmarlo]

Caller saying she used to send donation money to an eco group....she didn't realize what they were doing.

These groups have been tying up a proposed medivac landing strip which would allow airlifts, protected from winds, for villagers who otherwise are without access to any hospitals. These eco groups are preventing the airstrip because it would be built on wetlands.

[nicmarlo]

The landing strip is in a remote area of Alaska.

[nicmarlo]

ty, Westerner; Dr. Bill now on break.

[Simmy2.5]

Now a caller is talking about the fact that the "evil logging companies" just wanted the beetle infested trees. NOT the healthy trees (which are probably gone now too due to the fires). Thank you for destroying the environment environmentalist.

[NormsRevenge]

This caller was also talking about the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska where bark beetles have created much the same conditions that befell SoCal. She talked about many who live there now who feel like they are living in a tinder box. Early attempts to log these beetle affected trees when they were a smaller number were stopped by, guess who? envirowackoes.

[nicmarlo]

thanks for posting that....I was getting the airstrip info down and couldn't catch all she said about the logging.

[nicmarlo]

It's 3:00 here.....need to sign off for tonight (this morning!) am getting a bit tired. : )

[NormsRevenge]

Me too... G'Nite

Thanks for your posts and the thread.

[doug from upland]

After exercising, I fell asleep in a chair. Thanks for continuing the reports. This is a great thread. Well, folks, Dr. Bill is on again tonight. I wonder if we can get a transcript of the show.

[nicmarlo]

Between 2:30 and 3:00 a.m. (east coast time), there was a caller talking about how the DMV shut down will affect him, a caller who I really couldn't understand what the heck he was talking about (not the fire though), and a relevant caller's discussions for a about a minute or so.....which I didn't get to post....after 3:00, I fell asleep. : )

[doug from upland]

We must get this info on talk radio. Dr. Bill needs to be on Hannity and O'Reilly.

[doug from upland]

The idiot says don't manage our forests. It is not surprising that he is a college prof.

[nicmarlo]

Very good idea, Doug; he'd be great on Hannity & Colmes.

[nicmarlo]

Yeah, I thought you'd "like" that article.....they make me sick. Right in their face, So. Calif. burned because of the ecofreaks' laws they got passed....and they STILL just want the forests to be left alone.....they're idiots.

[yoswif]

As a matter of public safety, local county governments should go into federal courts and demand injunctions against federal management of forests outside designated wilderness areas unless the federal government can prove the local government is incapable of managing potential sources of ozone destroying wood smoke within their jurisdiction in a safe, reasonable, and prudent manner. Without federal obstruction, local governments could break local forests outside wilderness areas into 60-80 sq. mile tracts so they can be managed like an average family owned business that would naturally employ economies of scale to create safe productive forests. Without federal obstruction and the potential for ownership, forest managers would have great incentive to manage forests safely while creating a diverse array of quality recreation opportunities.

Economies of scale are essential for making removal of fuel suitable only for firing a boiler practical. Without removal of fuel of limited commercial value, leave trees and local communities are still at risk from accumulations of dangerous fuel. Economies of scale would also make environmental friendly practices like helicopter logging, selective logging, and cheap temporary haul roads built for ease of removal more practical.

In a lease to own arrangement, local government would roll over lease contracts periodically if local standards are met, with the leasee gaining ownership if the leasee shows that the management plan is safe and sustainable. Local governments, in the interest of public safety, would require economies of scale to insure that a thorough cleanup is accomplished without great expense and waste of usable fuel. As long as local government enables public access similar to current levels and has an effective scheme for managing smoke emissions and levels of temperature, oxygen, and silt in streams leaving their jurisdiction, federal obstruction in local forest management should be limited.

A typical forest rehab project should cover a minimum of 20 sq. miles, remove usable boiler fuel and excess mature live trees, use helicopters where terrain prohibits use of modern processing equipment, use temporary haul roads to remove fuel and fiber, use proceeds from sale of wood fiber to pay for removal of boiler fuel and restoration of areas within the project damaged by fire and poor forest management practices, and leave a nicely dispersed supply of sturdy young trees with little fuel to threaten them and the local population.

Without the need for thousands of miles of permanent roads to access small clearcuts, local government can make forest roads essential for reasonable and prudent management of fuel loads and public access to recreational opportunities a lot safer and more user friendly for both business and recreational purposes. In order to improve stream quality, many existing roads could be removed or made part of an extensive recreational trail network.

[BurbankKarl]

dr bill is talk radio...you would be surprised how large his audience is...