[TheClimate.Vote] November 5, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Thu Nov 5 08:38:17 EST 2020

/*November 5, 2020*/

[good to know]
*Biden vows to rejoin Paris climate accord on 'day one' if he wins*
U.S. officially withdrew from global pact Wednesday
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/biden-vows-to-rejoin-paris-climate-accord-on-day-one-if-he-wins-11604549000

[NASA says]
*Severe Drought in South America*
https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/147000/147480/southamgw_grc_2020300.jpg 
...
Large parts of South America are in the grip of a serious drought. Signs 
of the drought began to appear in satellite gravimetry observations of 
southeastern Brazil in mid-2018, and had spread into parts of Paraguay, 
Bolivia, and northern Argentina by 2020...
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147480/severe-drought-in-south-america

[from the Hill - There is no "right way" to do the wrong thing.]*
**Seven lessons we've learned from wildfires*
There are several lessons learned from this experiment. The first is 
that the vast majority of all fires are small and inconsequential. These 
fires remain small, not because of a lack of fuel, but because the 
climate and weather do not support their spread.

Indeed, extreme fire weather is the ingredient common to all large fires 
across the country. When you have the right climate and weather 
conditions of drought, high temperatures, low humidity and, most 
importantly, wind, you get blazes that cannot be controlled -- until the 
weather changes.

While "fuel reductions" like thinning, prescribed burning and logging 
may control or stop blazes occurring under low-to-moderate fire weather 
conditions, they fail under extreme fire weather. Not to mention, the 
probability that a fire will encounter a fuel reduction before plants 
grow back is extremely low -- typically less than 1 percent.

Why is this important? Because the very fires we seek to control are 
those burning under extreme fire weather conditions.

The recent fires that charred more than 750,000 acres in Oregon's 
Cascade range is a classic example of how climate and weather drive 
large fires through all "fuel reduction" efforts. These fires raced 
through clearcuts, thinned stands, prescribed burns, and across 
highways, parking lots, lakes, rivers and other areas where there is no 
fuel, all driven by 70-mph winds after a summer of severe drought.

So, what are the lessons to be learned?

First, we cannot log or thin our way to any massive fire reduction. 
Logging can even enhance fire spread by opening up forested stands to 
more significant drying and wind penetration.

Second, logging has significant collateral damage, including 
sedimentation into streams from logging roads, the spread of weeds, 
reducing carbon storage, displacing sensitive wildlife and, in many 
instances, costing taxpayers money to subsidize timber removal on public 
lands.

Third, climate change is exacerbating the weather conditions that are 
driving large blazes. It is lengthening the period when any ignition can 
grow into large blazes, drying fuels, so they more readily burn and 
increase the wind that ultimately drives flames through, over, and 
around "fuel reductions.

Fourth, forested landscapes, even burned landscapes store a tremendous 
amount of carbon. What burns in a forest fire are fine fuels like grass, 
needles, cones and so forth. That is why we have snags left after a 
blaze. And those snag forests all store carbon and are among the most 
biologically diverse ecosystems in western forests.

Fifth, logging is one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) 
emissions, especially in some Western states, so proponents of more 
logging are only increasing the very climate and weather conditions that 
sustain large blazes. For instance, in Oregon, logging related GHG 
emissions contribute to 35 percent of its carbon releases.

Sixth, until we get GHG emissions under control, we should work from the 
home outward to safeguard communities. Reducing the flammability of 
structures can help avoid the tragic loss of life and homes many people 
experience.

Seventh, large, mixed-high severity fires are the "natural" burn pattern 
for nearly all ecosystems in the West except for dry pine forests. These 
ecosystems, including sagebrush, all fir, lodgepole pine, hemlock, 
spruce, west-side Douglas fir, juniper, chaparral, aspen and others, 
tend to have long intervals without any significant burning but then 
blaze away at great intensity when the right climate and weather 
conditions permit.
There is no "right way" to do the wrong thing. Focusing on fuel 
reductions (except in the immediate area of homes and communities) is 
unlikely to achieve the results advocates of "active management" desire.

Instead, our best way forward is to promote firewise home protection 
policies, reduce rural sprawl into fire-prone landscapes and ultimately 
get a handle on carbon emissions.

George Wuerthner is an ecologist who has spent decades researching 
fires. He has published two books on wildfire including "Wildfire: A 
Century of Failed Forest Policy."
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/524349-seven-lessons-weve-learned-from-wildfires

[text and audio]
*Despite what the logging industry says, cutting down trees isn't 
stopping catastrophic wildfires*
By Tony Schick (OPB) and Jes Burns (OPB)
Gates, Ore. Oct. 31, 2020
For decades, Oregon's timber industry has promoted the idea that 
private, logged lands are less prone to wildfires. The problem? Science 
doesn't support that...
- -
In the decades since government restrictions reduced logging on federal 
lands, the timber industry has promoted the idea that private lands are 
less prone to wildfires, saying that forests thick with trees fuel 
bigger, more destructive blazes. An analysis by OPB and ProPublica shows 
last month's fires burned as intensely on private forests with 
large-scale logging operations as they did, on average, on federal lands 
that cut fewer trees.

In fact, private lands that were clear-cut in the past five years, with 
thousands of trees removed at once, burned slightly hotter than federal 
lands, on average. On public lands, areas that were logged within the 
past five years burned with the same intensity as those that hadn't been 
cut, according to the analysis.

"The belief people have is that somehow or another we can thin our way 
to low-intensity fire that will be easy to suppress, easy to contain, 
easy to control. Nothing could be further from the truth," said Jack 
Cohen, a retired U.S. Forest Service scientist who pioneered research on 
how homes catch fire...
- -
Late last year, Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat and her 
party's nominee for vice president, sponsored a bill to create a $1 
billion grant program for making homes more resistant to wildfires. 
Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden co-sponsored the bill in September. He 
also filed a separate bill seeking a $300 million federal investment in 
the use of prescribed fire.

Neither bill has received a hearing.
more at - 
https://www.opb.org/article/2020/10/31/logging-wildfire-forest-management/

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - November 5, 1965 *

President Johnson's Science Advisory Committee issues a report, 
"Restoring the Quality of Our Environment," that cites the hazards of 
carbon pollution.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/nov/05/scientists-warned-the-president-about-global-warming-50-years-ago-today 

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