Posted on 07/30/2016 2:05:00 AM PDT by Kaslin
First the Obama EPA came for coal mines, coal-fired power plants, miners, workers, investors, and all who depend on reliable, affordable electricity. Then the EPA, Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service and other agencies came after oil and gas drilling and fracking, and the workers, industries and families that need petroleum. They’re also targeting farming, ranching, airlines and manufacturing.
It’s all to stop “dangerous manmade climate change,” rising seas, warmer and colder weather, wetter and drier seasons, and other “unprecedented” calamities. Now the Feds want us to believe worsening forest fires threaten communities, wildlife and wildlife habitats because we continue to use fossil fuels.
Thousands of fires have already burned millions of acres, amid yet another dangerous and costly fire season. It happens every year, and has for centuries. But now, the Department of the Interior misinforms us, “climate change is making it worse. Wildfire seasons are now hotter, drier and longer than in the past.” Sure they are. Wanna buy a cool bridge?
I lived out West for a decade, back in the 1970s, and saw wildfires and dozens of burned-over forests. I hiked, camped and skied during extra wet and ultra dry years. During a flight from Denver to Seattle, I watched multiple fires rage across tens of thousands of acres in four states.
I’m in Whitefish, Montana this week, where hundreds of trees are just a few inches in diameter, packed in clusters of a half dozen or more, inches from one another – perfect kindling for vicious wildfires. Over time, most will get crowded out and die, leaving just a few hardy specimens to grow into hefty 50-100 foot beauties – assuming they are not engulfed in a super-heated inferno first.
Vase stands of densely packed, water- and nutrient-starved trees – skinny matchsticks waiting for a spark – are far too common in our western states, because land mis-managers refuse to thin the trees.
The resulting fires are not the “forest-rejuvenating” blazes of environmentalist lore. They are cauldron-hot conflagrations that exterminate wildlife habitats, roast bald eagle and spotted owl fledglings alive in their nests, boil away trout and trout streams, leave surviving animals to starve, and incinerate every living organism in already thin soils … that then get washed away during future downpours and snowmelts. Areas incinerated by such fires don’t recover their arboreal biodiversity for decades.
Homes in and near the forests become ashes, chimneys and memories. Residents die in their homes or trying to flee the infernos. Smoke jumpers and other firefighters perish trying to extinguish them.
The fires can certainly be farworse in drought years. But droughts are nothing new, either. We all recall the seven-year drought that brought Joseph to prominence in pharaoh’s Egypt, and the eight-year-long Dust Bowl during the 1930s. Historians describe a 50-year “water famine” that drove Anasazis out of the American Southwest, the 200-year drought that ended Mayan civilization, and other parched periods in China, Africa, Mesopotamia and other regions.
In short, whatever “hotter, drier, longer” forest fires we are witnessing today have nothing to do with “dangerous manmade climate change.” They have a lot to do with idiotic forestmismanagement policies and practices.
Far too many environmentalists, bureaucrats, politicians and judges would rather let forests burn, than let anyone selectively cut timber, thin out overgrown trees – or even let loggers harvest usable timber left from beetle kills, devastating fires or volcanic explosions like Mount St. Helens. (Do you suppose they’d alter their policies if loggers promised to use chain saws powered by little wind turbines or solar panels?)
Eco-purists want no cutting, no thinning – no using fire retardants in “sensitive” areas because the chemicals might get into streams that will be boiled away by conflagrations. They prevent homeowners from clearing brush around their homes, because it might provide cover or habitat for endangered species and other critters that will get incinerated or lose their forage, prey and habitats in the next blaze. They rarely alter their policies during drought years.
The Obama Administration spends billions of dollars annually on manmade global warming “research,” billions more on renewable energy boondoggles for crony corporatist campaign contributors, billions more to convert more private land to federal control. But it never seems to have enough money for expanded or modernized fire control.
Meanwhile, the Administration is gearing up to plant thousands of wind turbines across these areas, to slice and dice whatever raptors and other birds aren’t obliterated by fires.
In line with environmentalist ideology and Democratic Party ideals, it’s also expanding efforts to eliminate the last vestiges of drilling, mining, timber harvesting, ranching, farming and property inholdings (private lands grandfathered within subsequently designated parks, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas) on government-controlled lands in America’s western states and Alaska. (Many call it cultural cleansing, to create private recreational domains for rich and famous liberals.)
The Feds haveguidelinesthat say fires in certain areas can be extinguished if they are of human origin (arson or untended campfires, eg) – but must be allowed to burn if they are “natural” (caused by lightning, for example). One must take it on faith that anyone could make that distinction in the midst of an inferno, and hope that small fires won’t become raging infernos. They even havejurisdictional policiesthat prevent aircraft from dropping water on a fire, if the crew cannot tell whether the blaze is on Bureau of Land Management or Forest Service land.
A relatively new product calledFireIcesmothers fires, by taking heat and oxygen away from combustible materials. Dropped directly onto a fire from airplanes, it penetrates through smoke, fire and treetops down to burning trees and brush. It can also be carried to blazes in standard fire and tanker trucks, or blended on location using dry FireIce powder and on-site water. Homeowners can brew up their own batches, using the dry chemical and water, and use the concoction to coat their houses, shrubs and other property – protecting them against onrushing flames.
Unfortunately, state and federal officials have employed this highly effective fire killer only sporadically. The results are predictable, as recounted above.
The Justice Department has prosecuted farmers and ranchers for trying to protect their property from current or potential fires, by starting “controlled burns” or “backfires” that got out of control and burned a few hundred acres of US forest. But when intentional Bureau of Land Management or Forest Service fires in Oregon or South Dakota got out of control and burned thousands of acres of US and private forestland, forage and livestock, no repercussions, prosecutions or compensation were forthcoming.
As to the Interior Department’s convenient claim that today’s forest fires are due to US emissions and climate change, let’s not forget that rapidly developing countries are emitting increasing amounts of carbon dioxide and methane every year – way beyond what the USA can possibly eliminate – and there is still no Real World evidence that humans have replaced natural forces in climate change.
It’s time to give America’s forest management and fire control policies a thorough review and revision, before we lose more habitats, wildlife, homes and human lives.
This undeniable factual.
Way back, as Islamic terrorism was just getting started in the USA, some captured documents revealed their terror tactic. One that startled me was the setting of forest fires. Perhaps that is why numerous fires burn thousands of acres in the western states each year.
since there is no law there is no legal recourse. and, since there is no law, there is no law protecting the EPA leaders lives
Amen.
Exactly. Summer is supposed to be hot. I’d be worried if it were cold.
Apparently, the wet dream has become a wet nightmare.
Another phenomenon being associated with AGW is "Rain Bombs".
I had never heard of microbursts until one took down the airliner at DFW airport in 1986.
30 years later microbursts are much more common and have grown in size which are called macrobursts and are collectively called rain bombs.
That makes sense
You wrote: “I had never heard of microbursts until one took down the airliner at DFW airport in 1986.”
It was only when we had Doppler radar available that micro bursts were detectable. My read of your comment is that they just didn’t happen before then much like everything else you seem to give credence to the whole AGW scam.
http://www.nsf.gov/mobile/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100485&org=NSF
I'm sure Matt Moneymaker will approve.
In other words...”GO GAULT”!
Time to do away with the alphabet agencies and Federal ownership of lands.
These are State issues.
Married,so what
Part of the problem is fires are a very natural process that removes detritus and forest litter converting it into nutrients. Old tall trees with thick barks and tall canopies were safe in these smaller fires. Fire suppression over the last +100 years allowed stuff to build up resulting in very hot fires that burn everything including the trees instead of cleaning up the forest floor.
The situation does now conveniently fit into your interpretation that demands everything under the sun be attributed to global warming.
Ding ding ding! We have a winner. There is a lot of money in fires. Most research money now goes not into technologies to put out fires but to software to track fires as they watch them burn.
I live in the southwest right in the middle of the largest Ponderosa forest in the world.
I have seen, first hand, what these diabolical enviornMENTALists have done to my state.
Every timber company, boom, out of business.
Ranchers who were able to use fed. lands to graze, boom, out of business.
Many businesses in town, boom, out of business.
Construction, boom, gone.
None of my kids, save the youngest, live here, gone to the big cities.
Never used to worry about forest fires, never had too.
Now we have summers of fire. Yuge fires!
And it is nerve racking.
Many here, including myself, are trying to fight back.
We write and call a lot of congress critters, both local and national.
We vote and try to get those who understand this problen, NOT McPain. Vote Dr. Kelly Ward.
And we pray a lot!!!
Urban/suburban sprawl into previously uninhabited forest areas has increased the destruction caused by fires. Not more, hotter fires.
In short, whatever “hotter, drier, longer” forest fires we are witnessing today have nothing to do with “dangerous manmade climate change.” They have a lot to do with idiotic forestmismanagement policies and practices.
All true! Now look for who mismanages. shazam, none other than the Forest Service, Park Service, BLM, and a host of others. Get this disaster out of the hands of the Feds, and maybe there is a chance of recovery before we lose much more of our forests.
http://www.americanlandscouncil.org/
We are going through same thing in CA. forests used to be thinned diseased trees done away with NO MORE due to wacko environmentalists, VERY DRY conditions I guess people losing their homes, animals and sometime life is a small price to any for them saving DEAD TREES!!! My heart goes out to these fire fighters unbearable heat and winds!!!
“It’s time to give America’s forest management and fire control policies a thorough review and revision, before we lose more habitats, wildlife, homes and human lives.”
I also grew up in the west. It was time to restructure federal fire control policies back in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
The federal bureaucrats just don’t care about the country and the citizens that they are supposed to be managing federal land for. They think they are working for the bugs, trees, and “the environment.”
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