Meadows' National Climate Trust idea brings strong reactions
Wilderness Society President Bill Meadows proposal for National Climate Trusts has already prompted some great debate that I thought I would share.
The debate of course began in the question and answer period of the Frank Church Institute luncheon where Meadows revealed his plan to preserve a series of federal reserves chosen on the basis of their carbon density, to store the substance that contributes to global warming when released. A questioner asked Meadows to respond to the view that intensively managed forests sequester more carbon than old growth forests.
Wilderness Society Landscape Ecologist Bo Wilmer wrote a response and sent it to me:
“Yesterday at the Frank Church Symposium luncheon, (the questioner) suggested that storing carbon in the form of houses and wood products is more permanent than storing carbon in forests. There are several reasons why this idea is wrong.
First, the assumption that no carbon is emitted during the process of converting forests into wood products is an obvious omission from your carbon accounting.
Second, wood products and homes are certainly not permanent. Beyond the carbon emitted during the process, there is waste associated with every step of building a home.
Third, (the questioner) might claim that when forests burn, they emit carbon. While this is true, history has demonstrated that fire-proofing a forest is not only impossible, but it is also expensive both economically and in terms of the carbon budget (the carbon emitted by trying to mechanically thin stands would add to the carbon emitted once it inevitably burns).
Fourth, a paper published by TWS colleagues Drs. Tom DeLuca and Greg Aplet concludes that burned forests actually store more carbon than unburned forests.
Finally, (the questioner) also suggested that intensively managed forests sequester more carbon than older, unmanaged stands. Again, this presumes that no carbon is emitted during the process of intensive management. Moreover, because fire will continue to burn, despite futile efforts to stop them, there will continue to be sufficient young regeneration after this natural, habitat-sustaining disturbance to sequester carbon, without the effort and cost and through a natural process.
Moreover, the goal of climate reserves is to store carbon like a bank, not to only to sequester carbon, and as I explained, natural processes, such as fire, insect infestations, floods, and windthrow, do create young stands that will continue to sequester carbon. Trying to intensively manage a forest either to reduce carbon in the atmosphere or to remove fire from the landscape is costly, futile and more problematic than helpful.
There are places across the landscape that do require mechanical thinning, but the goal of these treatments is to restore a burnable, yet fire-resilient, naturally functioning ecosystem, not to reduce carbon emissions or fire-proof a forest.”
Roy Heberger, a retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, send a letter to Wilderness Society Boise Office Representative Craig Gehrke and copied me. He challenges Meadow’s view.
“The carbon in trees harvested and put to use as lumber or any wood product in any kind of construction remains tied up in the wood until such time the wood in that constructed product is destroyed, intentionally or not, via fire or decay. Agreed? Even considering if some of the waste products find there way to market as fiber or in forest compost, a goodly portion of that carbon remains sequestered for a time.
However, I realize that such a time frame may be short for wood bio-volume used in forest compost. If the slash left over from harvest or any other portion of the waste is burned, that portion of the sequestered carbon would then go into the atmosphere unless captured -- not a current practice. I think those are all kind of straight-forward givens but remain open to other ideas.
Now it gets a bit more complicated to my way of thinking. Moving to productivity - the elaboration of woody tissues over time and space, tree growth rate, CO2 uptake, O2 production at a community level in forests [capital "P" (O2 production) and "R" (CO2 production)], etc.
I think one needs to consider forest succession in light of all of those variables. If one does, I suspect that one would find that the rate of carbon sequestration is higher in younger forests than in old. If so, you might then think about the dynamic of gas exchange from forests to the atmosphere and back (what plants with chlorophyll do rather well), it seems more likely that one could argue from a technically-supportable position that old growth is not necessarily a best answer to the problem of excess atmospheric carbon. Younger forests may actually do a better job per unit area of land or per unit volume of the biosphere (however one wishes to pose it) than old growth forests.
I suspect that old growth - especially large expanses of undisturbed old growth - may be very compatible with Wilderness Society goals and objectives, but I do not think that the carbon sequestration argument is valid.”
Now Tim Hermach, a long time old growth forest activist and critic of mainstream environmental groups like the Wilderness Society doesn’t want to get into the scientific argument.
“Protecting" the remaining "old-growth forests" is great. But The Wilderness Society's collaboration and capitulation is "releasing" most of the remaining uncut national forests to "heavy-commercial-thinning", biomass production and logging. Because of their loser's perspective of "political reality" they are sacrificing our forests to the barons of Wall Street and their political lackeys in the White House and Congress.
They are willing to deal and are allowing the liquidation logging of the remaining publicly-owned, native, uncut, baby-old-growth forests; all the adolescent-old-growth forests; all the middle-aged- and mature-old-growth forests; even though these forests are the old-growth forests of the future.”
Obviously, Hermach's argument raises the question: What really is an old growth forest?
Boise State University Political Science professor and an expert on the mix of science and policy had this quick off the cuff analysis of much of the reaction to climate change:
“It seems that all this talk of forests as carbon offsets is continuing to be framed in the same old arguments,” Freemuth wrote. “We haven't changed much; climate is a surrogate for the other older arguments values and positions.”
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Freemuth is right...
Science is great, but ultimately it comes down to people and the values they hold, especially when it comes to protection of forests.
Old Growth
I recently read a study of old growth decline - most of our old growth is being lost to fire and insects, not to cutting. Most of these remaining old growth forests are untouchable - are over grown and ready to burn. With the fuel loads the fires will be hot, leaving no seed trees and hydrophobic soils.
As any gardener worth their salt knows, thinning allows the remaining plants more water and nutrients to grow better. Healthy (thinned) forests store more carbon than dense unhealthy ones.
Meadows and his group only
Meadows and his group only care about controlling access
(not only to old growth areas, but, ultimately all public
lands). They believe any means justifys the ends...they will lie, skew, invent, any info that will help their cause. They do bring in a few real conservationist's, but
when they see what this group is about they end up leaving....Q: What was Meadows "salary" last year?
hint: He is raking it in and living the good life
on fools donations.....
Bo Wilmer, Paid "Ecologist"
Bo Wilmer is either dishonest, a gullible nitwit, or simply ignorant. Why is he paid, and why is he being quoted by the press? What are his credentials? Publications?
I am a fire historian. My research shows that the Tillamook Forest was fire-proofed. It's a historical fact. My research on the B&B Complex further demonstrated that even the smallest gaps in a forest canopy resulted in reduced mortality and reduced soil and understory damage. Where is Wilmer getting his information? It's certainly not "historical," as he claims.
The idea that a burned forest emits less carbon than an unburned forest is likewise nuts. If accurately quoted, I don't doubt for a minute that DeLuca and Aplet are Wilmer's "colleagues." Common sense dispels this nonsense. Bonnicksen puts numbers on it. Dead trees rot and/or reburn. It's another historical fact that Wilmer either doesn't understand, doesn't know about, or is being dishonest about.
According to public information, the President of the Wilderness Society was compensated with $308,465.00 in 2007. Not sure what Wilmer, DeLuca, and Aplet were paid, but they should be embarrassed. What a load of self-serving crap.
See: http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2009/10/19/the-highest-paid-arsonistseco-terrorists-in-america/
(Hermach's "baby old-growth" arguments became silly and irrelevant a decade ago, Rocky. He doesn't seem to have a clue about forest history, forest dynamics, or forest management.)