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Steven Meister / Mt. Taylor Hotshots via Reuters
Burned terrain in the Gila National Forest, New Mexico, is seen in a photo supplied by the United States Forest Service on May 30. The Whitewater-Baldy Complex fire was the largest fire ever in New Mexico, burning about 300,000 acres.
GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- Big changes are in store for the nation's forests as global warming increases wildfires and insect infestations, and generates more frequent floods and droughts, the U.S. Department of Agriculture warns in a new report.
The study released Tuesday is part of the National Climate Assessment and will serve as a roadmap for managing national forests across the country in coming years.
It says the area burned by wildfires is expected to at least double over the next 25 years, and insect infestations often will affect more land per year than fires.
Dave Cleaves, climate adviser to the chief of the U.S. Forest Service, said climate change has become the primary driver for managing national forests, because it poses a major threat to their ability to store carbon and provide clean water and wildlife habitat.
"One of the big findings of this report is we are in the process of managing multiple risks to the forest," Cleaves said on a conference call on the report. "Climate revs up those stressors and couples them. We have to do a much better job of applying climate smartness ... to how we do forestry."
The federal government has spent about $1 billion a year in recent years combating wildfires. Last year was the warmest on record in the lower 48 states and saw 9.2 million acres burned, the third-highest on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website.
Insect infestations widely blamed on warming temperatures have killed tens of millions of acres of trees.
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The Reefer Madness of Climate Blame Explained:
There is no such thing as a little climate crisis outside of Harry Potter movies so how is this a crisis when not one single IPCC warning over the last two decades has ever been issued without "maybe" and "could be" and "might be"? Science has NEVER said it “WILL” happen. They only agree it’s real, but not a real crisis. A crisis that isn’t a crisis isn’t a crisis.
How close to the point no return from unstoppable warming will they take us before they say a crisis is; imminent or impending or inevitable or certain or unavoidable or assured or guaranteed or “will happen” not just “might” and “could” etc. happen?
The evidence for exaggeration is astounding and the world has moved on:
*Occupywallstreet does not even mention CO2 in its list of demands because of the bank-funded carbon trading stock markets ruled by corporations and trustworthy politicians.
*Canada killed Y2Kyoto with a freely elected climate change denying prime minister and nobody cared, especially the millions of scientists warning us of unstoppable warming (a comet hit).
Meanwhile, the entire world of SCIENCE, lazy copy and paste news editors and obedient journalists, had condemned our kids to the greenhouse gas ovens of an exaggerated "crisis" and had allowed bank-funded and corporate-run “CARBON TRADING STOCK MARKETS” to trump 3rd world fresh water relief, starvation rescue and 3rd world education for just over 26 years of insane attempts at climate CONTROL.
ugh...I'm just too tired to refute your all-over the-board talking points. What is your feeling about reefer? :)
Climate change could be good for the crop. man...:)
God's punishment for our burning of fossil fuels.
When Eskimos start buying air conditioners we can be sure of global warming.
Climate change is real! Just get up in the morning before daylight and face east. You will witness climate change first hand. This huge ball of gas comes into view heating our atmosphere.
Our planets climate has been changing since the beginning of time. It just wasn't profitable to blame it on anything besides that huge ball of gas till now.
Earth's climate has always been changing, but the changes occurred naturally over millions of years. Animals had time to evolve and adapt with the changes. However, the glorious human industry complex changes things. The rapid changes to the forests, water, and atmosphere (in regards to global warming and beyond) are happening at such a rate that the world, and humanity, is having trouble adapting.
So while deniers are busy kicking the can down the road with their fingers in their ears, their children's children will be doomed to live in a cesspool smoggy city air, overly-acidic water, empty oceans, and clear-cut forests.
But you know, that's all natural right?
"These drought cycles have gone on pretty consistently throughout the last 4,500 years," said Jim Clark, an ecologist at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences in Durham, North Carolina. "They are pretty severe, so they have a large impact on the full set of ecosystem processes."
Many climatologists believe that devastating droughts like the 1930s Dust Bowl are not abnormal when viewed in larger historic context. Physical evidence of the cycle was found in sediment deposits at the bottom of North Dakota's Kettle Lake. Core samples taken there revealed layers of charcoal, plant fragments, and seeds. Scientists used a form of radiocarbon dating to determine the ages of the layers.
The new study reports that northern Great Plains droughts have recurred at roughly 160-year intervals... references - news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0614_050614_drought.html & June 2005 journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
For a more in-depth review using another form of physical data read -
North American Droughts of the Last Millennium from a Gridded Network of Tree-Ring Data,
by CELINE HERWEIJER, RICHARD SEAGER, EDWARD R. COOK, AND JULIEN EMILE-GEAY
of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, New York.
(Manuscript received 18 November 2005, in final form 19 June 2006). Reported by usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/17/16570470-as-drought-persists-town-dries-up-and-states-scramble-to-save-every-drop-of-water?threadId=3649020&commentId=73486159#c73486159
Plus the contributions made by RESTRICTING 'Clear Burning' & Commercial Logging. Practices used by the US Forest Service to limit damage caused by uncontrolled fires. And the BAN on building fire access roads into natural preserves, ALL of these pushed through by the Tree-Huggers, to protect their trees... Ha! Ha!
Mother Nature NEVER pumped water out of the ground 3.5 times faster than it goes in. Curren human activities are not sustainable.
Unfortunately if you look at the data and the facts the number of wildfires has been going DOWN.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/02/09/1112839109
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/07/new-paper-finds-wildfires-in-western-us.html
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/11/04/2012-us-fire-count-fourth-lowest-on-record/
There is no trend regarding droughts in the last 60 years.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7424/full/nature11575.html
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/16/global-warming-to-drought-links-shot-down/
This scatterplot shows that there is no trend between temperature and rainfall.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/michaels_pdsi-vs-gistemp_scatterplot.png
When it takes just minutes to find data that proves the words of people incorrect you have to stop and wonder what the role of the news media is these days.
Whatever happened to fact checking, research, investigation by reporters and journalists?
Real cute picking the number of campfires instead of the total acres burned.
The most recent research indicates that while climate change does seem to be increasing the number of beetles that kill the pines, it is not the bugs that are killing the trees...its just the changing climate. Heat, drought, and disease.
I find it fascinating that people will pore over minute factual inconsistencies and blithely ignore the big picture. GIve it up folks- CLIMATE DISASTER is here. Old analogy but, if your house is on fire, are you going to spend much time arguing about whether its really a bad fire, or who started it?
Do none of you read the news? Man made carbon can be measured in the worlds atmosphere. Matter of fact it has. Man has increased carbon levels world wide. The oceans and trees and lakes and rivers soak up this carbon to some extent. This affect was also measured. The world before man was pretty stable this information came from ICE Cores taken from the worlds poles and the atmosphere was studied by scientists.
Studies were also done to see how much more carbon man was dumping into the atmosphere. The ocean is getting more acidic due to this massive wave of carbon. Man is changing the worlds oceans as we speak and not for the better. This is a fact as proven by scientific studies conducted today all of which have been posted in the news. One can not ignore the FACTS as presented by science.
A warmer world means many things, Bigger stronger storms, more desert, lower lake levels like the great lakes as reported in the news and river levels. Harder times for farmers with drought in some areas in creased and some areas of farm land getting to much water. Man kind has even affected the ozone layer due to man made chemicals we have thinned it and created a hole in it.
Man numbers in the Billions. It would be more shocking to say man kind has had zero noticeable impact on the world at all. Lets all just pretend one can not see the amazon forest shrink form space as I write this and all the world oil spills have had zero impact on the oceans.
That billions of cars world wide as well as factories and roads and cities have had zero impact on nature as a whole when everything is added together.
that would be called denial, plane and simple.
The IPCC bases their atmospheric CO2 data on;
1. Prior to 1949 - On the Vostok Ice Cores in the Antarctic...
2. After the first direct atmospheric CO2 measurement technology was developed and then installed @ the observatory near the summit of the Mauna Loavolcano, 1948. These measurements were effected by:
a. The ACTIVE volcano, the test station was located on its side @ 11,135 ft...
b. The increasing numbers of commercial crops that were being grown on the slopes around the volcano...
c. The vehicle traffic that was INCREASING around the research station...
d. The original sampler was not changed until 2006 and then made a museum piece...
3. Besides sampling the air at its existing stations on Mauna Loa and at the South Pole, NOAA built and developed sampling stations at new observatories in *Barrow, Alaska (1973) and** in American Samoa (1974) where it continues to measure atmospheric CO2...
The questions to ask:
1. Why were the CO2 readings prior to 1949 almost flat line??? About 5+PPM increase from 1900 to 1948...
2. Why did the fire bombings across Europe/Germany & Japan, the dropping of TWO nuclear bombs w/resulting fires or the burning of the Iraq oil wells for almost a year. Have NO effect on the indicated measurements or their rates of increase???
3. Why did the IPCC IGNORE the CO2 measurement data by Ernst Beck's thesis about the historical CO2 measurements, "180 Years of atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods"??? Or the many other data bases for CO2...
BTY - These direct chemical measurements reflected a 1943 spike in CO2...
If you want to discuss the INCREASING acidic oceans:
1. Where is your historical data???
2. The CO2 concentrations in surface Ocean water is dependent on the ATMOSPHERE. Boyle's Law - Diffused gases...
3. The CO2 concentrations of sub-surface Ocean water is dependent on ANIMALS & Calcification...
BTY - Deep water Calcification is how the World has maintained its PH levels since the Oceans were formed...
4. The current data base for CHANGING PH levels is VERY LIMITED, both for time period covered and the locations sampled...
Currently the Earth's total arable land is 13.31% of the land surface, with only 1.5% Urban areas, which makes up only 29% of the Earths total surface. Or people living on less than 0.4% of the TOTAL Earth's surface...
If you amassed ALL the energy produced by man in ONE DAY and compared it to the Sun's energy that radiates on the Earth's surface in ONE DAY. It is equal to about 1/12,000 of the sun's input...
The 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan moved their islands 8+feet further from to China. It also has accelerated Earth's spin, shortening the length of the 24-hour day by 1.8 microseconds, according to geophysicist Richard Gross at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif...
Now tell me about how POWERFUL Man is, compared to NATURE... Ha! Ha!
OK NBC where's the new report on the earth worm, you know the one that states that the over population of the earth worm is responsible for 30% of the carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere? Looks like nature is changing the climate so what is man going to do? Heard talk of trying to control the earth worm population, when are those environmental fools going to leave nature alone? If nature is responsible there is a reason and man needs to back off!
Insect infestations are caused by not allowing the forests to burn occasionally. Humans seem to forget that before we arrived on this continent, the natural forests did just fine without us. Having all the tall trees and thick brush crowding the space is not natural. Fire is natural and is actually necessary for healthy forests.
True, but the warmer winters also increase the outbreaks.
This cannot be possible and cannot be happening.
The GOP party in the USA has said for decades and continues to say so to this date that there is no such thing as climate change.
Thank god for the GOP, without their wisdom where would we be.
It was the AGW and Global Warming that was being questioned...
Not the 'Changing Climate'...
This is nothing more than the government bilking the taxpayers out of money. For every claim that global warming is real there are many more legitimate claims that it is not real. I've been through claims of global cooling, acid rain and a miriad of other government money grab projects and this ridiculous faux climate disaster is no different. We have no control over climate and to think otherwise shows a total lack of common sense.
Climate change is known to be taking a serious toll on the health of forests; it isn't just plant life, but also the population of animals that it's come to affect. There are only a few hundred wolverines left in the forests of the continental US (http://empiricalmag.blogspot.com/2013/02/our-pacific-northwest.html). And the problems with insects that this article brought up could also potentially keep getting worse.
The insects infestation could be a sign of decreasing bird populations. I've recently also heard that there are earth worm infestations. These are all indications of sudden loss of bird populations.