thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

Thank you, My head was spinning like linda blair. I think what people say to you is frequently very counter productive. I also think much of what is said to you says much more about them than it says about you. At the same time it's not hard to understand why you piss some people off.

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

Trump is removing us from it in a misguided attempt to show his manhood.

ken hubert Loc: Missouri

Manhood. Something you wouldn't know anything about.

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

If and when you have anything to contribute we can discuss it. As long as you aren't interested in contributing anything positive I don't care to interact with you.

mwalsh Loc: Houston

Thank you!

btbg

The clear cutting that you are talking about is Western Oregon. We are talking about Eastern Oregon. There has never been clear cutting in Eastern Oregon. They clear cut douglas fir because the roots are interconnected so if you selectively cut a lot of other trees will eventually fall anyway because their root structure is weakened.

They may well have cut too much timber in Western Oregon, however, that isn't where the fires have been.

As far as the drought issue, there is a connection between what I answered and what you said, you just aren't seeing it.

In arid areas it is never as simple as low rainfall totals = drought. As far as rainfall totals go much of Eastern Oregon is technically desert. However, it doesn't look like desert.

The area gets less than 10 inches of rain a year. Some years significantly less. However, low rainfall totals and drought in the region are not necessarily one and the same thing. That is because the region relies heavily on snowfall in the mountains for moisture.

In 1967 and again in 1996 we had heavy snowfall, and then a warm period in January or February that led to sudden melt. Because the ground was still frozen nothing soaked in from the melt and there was severe flooding downstream.

That left no moisture in the ground, and although it was heavier than normal snowfall, we ended up with drought in both summers despite heavier than normal precipitation.

On the other hand the last three years were drier than normal, but because of when the snowpack melted only one of those years actually had drought.

In spite of your definition if there is water in the reservoirs and good moisture content in the ground in the spring the symptoms of drought don't actually appear until there have been multiple successive dry years.

The reason I keep coming back to trees is because of how much moisture juniper trees take out of the system. If you read the study that architect posted you will see just how much moisture juniper can take out of the system. The study shows that in some cases it can be as much as 79 percent of the moisture.

Since that never makes it into the ground and past the root system that leaves the surrounding ground cover dried out and vulnerable to fire, but more importantly every gallon of water that a juniper tree takes, and they can take up to 55 gallons of water a day is that much less water that percolates down to the aquifer or gets into the springs and eventually into the springs and rivers.

By the same token when the forest is allowed to get thicker than is natural that takes moisture out of the system. Then when you get a dry year you have vegetation under stress and drier than normal, which makes for explosive fire conditions.

The funny thing about fire in the high desert is that when you have a dry winter the fire forecasters say that it may be a bad fire year because of how dry it is, but when there is a wet winter then they say it may be a bad fire year because of how much ground cover grew, leaving lots of fuel for fires once the terrain dries out.

In the one situation the fire danger is from drought, but in the other condition the fire danger came from a wetter than normal winter and early spring.

And once again when the forest hasn't been thinned that makes it more vulnerable to fire and makes the fires bigger.

In other words the symptoms that look much like drought are often caused by poor forest management. Historically ponderosa pine had about 10 mature trees per acre. There are areas in the national forest currently with 100 plus trees in the same area.

That means a fire that might have burnt up a tree to it's branches would only k**l the one tree. Now the trees are so close together that once a fire crests atop one tree it spreads from treetop to treetop k*****g the trees that would have previously been unharmed by the fire.

As they have begun to remove juniper the grasses have begun to regrow and the springs have started flowing again and the water in the small creeks and rivers has become better. Unfortunately they have only done forest management projects in a small fraction of the forest.

Once again that goes back to logging. The forest projects were all financed by logging and it is no longer allowed in virtually all of the east side forest.

What is especially galling about that is that the logging in eastern Oregon was stopped because of faulty information.

I know that you will probably not believe this, but it is the t***h. My uncle was a forester in the forest service for 40 years. He has a doctorate in forest management and spent most of his time with the forest service doing research on proper replanting techniques.

He retired when the forest service chose to ignore the data from the research that my uncle and his partner did. However, both Wyerhouser (sorry about the misspelling) and Spain are currently using their data.

That's just a side note. My uncle and his partner were both GS15s, so very high up in the forest service.

During the early 1980s there was a debate about the spotted owl and whether or not it was endangered.

My uncle lives in the San Francisco Bay area, but their research projects were near Yosemite, near Lassen, and in the Klamath Basin in northern California and southern Oregon.

They started counting spotted owls during there trips and plotting where they found nesting pairs. Eventually the forest service looked at their data on owls and asked them to write a spotted owl recovery plan. My uncle refused because he said that the data showed that they weren't endangered.

His partner, however, agreed to write the plan. They then took that plan minus the first two or three paragraphs and used it to stop logging.

The start of his document said something very much like "This is a recovery plan for the spotted owl for in the event that it is to ever become endangered. The owl currently has good population numbers in it's normal range, and therefore has no need of any assistance. However, if that were to change the following steps would become necessary in order to protect habitat."

That section of the plan was quickly eliminated and one other major change was also made. The forest service arbitrarily labelled the owl as the northern spotted owl and the southern spotted owl and said that any owls north of the Klamath River were northern spotted owls and any south were southern spotted owls.

The reason that is significant is the Klamath River is near the northern edge of the spotted owls range. The reason is because the barred owl lives in Washington and much of Oregon and they attack spotted owls. Spotted owls live in old growth forest in the northern end of their range because the cover protects them from the barred owl. Consequently virtually all spotted owls in Oregon were in the Cascades and the west side forests.

Interestingly in California where the owls have no predator they often nest in scrub oak.

The forest service scientists used that difference in nesting pattern to say that it was two separate subspecies and quickly labelled the northern spotted owl as endangered. They then used that to stop virtually all logging in the east side forests under the guise that the owls were most endangered there since there were virtually no nesting pairs. That fact was correct, but the reason is because it was never part of their primary habitat.

Since the forest service had already been suppressing fires and the forest had been getting thicker since the 1940s the fires began to grow larger by the early 1990s and that has continued to happen.

Seriously, if you would take three or four days and come visit, I can show you around and you can see for yourself what impact forest management has on the watershed and on fires. It is easy to see by just comparing the private land to the public land.

If you were to come and see for yourself, you would clearly see the connection between juniper, forest management and the size of wildfires as well as the amount of damage they cause.

I can't speak to drought and fire in any area other than regions that have a similar terrain and w*****r p*****n to Eastern Oregon. For all I know you are completely right for other areas of the world, but since what I can see with my own eyes does not support what you are saying it makes me skeptical until I actually have the opportunity to see the other areas for myself.

You should seriously do the same thing before you automatically assume that what I am saying is nonsense. But once again, I have yet to see an environmentalist or g****l w*****g proponent who is willing to come and objectively compare the federal land versus the private land.

btbg

I recognize that is your interpretation as well as Obama's, however, there are a lot of members of congress who have publicly stated that it is a treaty, and it certainly meets the definition of a treaty. So I guess in this case we will have to agree to disagree, since neither one of us is going to change our interpretation of either the definition of a treaty or of the accord.

Keenan Loc: Central Coast California

Holy sh#t you do not know what the hell you are talking about AT ALL. Your very first claim, "They clear cut douglas fir because the roots are interconnected so if you selectively cut a lot of other trees will eventually fall anyway because their root structure is weakened," demonstrates yet again that you just make sh*t up and are completely full of it. No, that is not why they clear cut, i***t! I'm too busy to respond to the rest of your bullcrap. I've had it with you. You are insane and not worth my time. Bye

ken hubert Loc: Missouri

Too bad, sis.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

Stilly whining, huh, snitchboy! When will you realize that your little sucking sounds have no impact on anyone other than yourself? Yeah, right, you're more mature...kind of like the smelly POS you are. Get a life, Cupcakes! Your crap is worn out here...

btbg

You are correct that there is a second reason that they clear cut douglas fir and that is that they grow in even aged stands. Ponderosa pine on the other hand does not. Just look up douglas fir logging and you will see that there are only the two primary reasons that they clear cut it.

Now, back to the juniper. Since you are obviously not going to accept my invitation to come and see for yourself, here are two photos I took today when I was sent out to take photos of a wreck.

The first is a field that had the juniper cut and then most of the slash burnt last year. The second photo is the other side of the highway on B*M land that has not been cleared. Both photos were taken from the same spot. You will note how much more ground cover there is in the first photo than the second and how much greener it looks.

Perhaps you should actually look up information about why they clear cut instead of just assuming someone who worked for years in the industry knows nothing about it.

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mwalsh Loc: Houston

Snitchboy's favoritye candy...buttmunch:

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

That rectum just keeps talking to himself and all of his friend. The one and only cupcakes!

Keenan Loc: Central Coast California

Well folks, the usual man-child trolls have come and crapped up another thread with their worn out juvenile sh*t. Isn't that great! They must be so proud of themselves showing what complete a$$es they are all the time.

Keenan Loc: Central Coast California

Btbg, I previously made a request of you that you ignored:

Keenan wrote: "If you want to keep going with this discussion, then come back when you have facts, evidence, logic, knowledge."

You instead continue to double down with your spewing of baseless opinion, conjecture, and made up bull crap, while refusing to address any of my points.

From your last few posts it is obvious that you completely ignored and dismissed my discussion of and the definition of droughts. After I held your hand and reviewed the actual dictionary definition of drought, you still have ZERO comprehension and went straight back to your made up notions that have no basis in fact or reality. You are even arguing with the dictionary at this point! Your manner of discussion/debate is stupid, disrespectful, and pointless. There is no reason for me to continue trying to have a rational, fact based discussion with you.

Here's your biggest problem, btbg: You feel that doing no actual research, but rather just making SWAGs (silly wild ass guesses) based on some rumor or anecdotal story, passes for scientific study. Like for example the claim you heard that springs on federal land run dry because not enough trees have been logged, but do not run dry on private land because they logged a sufficient number of trees. This is a child-like claim in the over-simplicity and fairy tale aspect of the belief system being employed, the asinine way you jump to conclusions that are so completely lacking in rational thought and careful study. This is completely opposite of the scientific approach. I'm actually embarrassed for you that your mind is so childlike. It is shocking that a supposedly educated adult is so childlike and simplistic in jumping to conclusions like this. You almost seem like you are straight out of the middle ages, when superstition and myths were the basis of most people's knowledge.

You continue to believe that fabricating your own far out theories based on nothing but your own untrained, uneducated opinions, rumors, and anecdotes/stories, is somehow sufficient to be able to know more than the experts who actually have the knowledge of what is going on with the biology, the environment, forest ecosystems, hydrology systems, climate science, etc. Your posts on these matters are completely free of facts and evidence. You cite no research, no science, and nothing that can be backed up or verified. And then you arrogantly present it as if it is "so obvious all you have to do is go see for yourself", when it is based on nothing beyond your weak and baseless suppositions and rejection the scientific approach. This is lunacy. You are shockingly unreasonable and irrational.

What you are doing, btbg, is the equivalence of someone decided that they can be a heart surgeon without any professional training or knowledge. You are deluding yourself into believing that you can be a better heart surgeon than the professionals, and you don't need to be professionally trained and to gain the deep knowledge and expertise that it takes to be a professional heart surgeon. In addition, you have ludicrously convinced yourself that all of the professional heart surgeons are a bunch of i***ts who don't really know anything, and you yourself have figured it out all on your own based on nothing but anecdotal stories, SWAGs, and childlike simplistic conclusions, and therefore are smarter than all of the hundreds of professionally trained heart surgeons.

This is not normal, btbg. It indicates that you:

1) Have no comprehension, or insist on making up your own word definitions that suit your narrative
2) Have no critical thinking ability and no understanding of the scientific method
3) have no understand about how to make claims based on facts and evidence that can be verified
4) Have no ability to have an honest and rational debate
5) Tend to make really stupid delusional assertions ("It's better to clear cut Douglas Fir forests rather than selective cut, because all the roots are interconnected, so selective cutting will cause the others to die off, causing a worse problem.") that don't even pass the most basic common sense test that children could grasp.

After this discussion, btbg, I have changed my perception of you. I no longer can consider you an intelligent, honest, reasonable conservative. I will never be able to take you seriously ever again after this.


I expect that in the future, you will be bloviating and opining multi-page piles of bullcrap claiming:

1) That toxic sludge is good for you
2) That cigarette smoking is good for you and does not cause cancer
3) Environmental problems all boil down to one problem - too much nature is still living, not enough of the earth has been covered with concrete