Category: RT Newswire

USE ME! Essentially, this is a catch all for everything. This is probably the ONLY category where things that are not directly related to Rising Tide affiliates/allies should go. For example if a coal company goes out of business (and we didn’t directly cause it) it should probably only go here.

Wildfires: Cost of Building Homes in Harm’s Way

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As the climate warms, there will be more, larger, hotter forest fires…&
they won’t distinguish between public & private lands…

ASW

—————————- Original Message —————————-
Subject: Cost of building homes in harm’s way
From: “Lance Olsen” <lance@wildrockies.org>
Date: Wed, May 14, 2008 10:26 am
To: “cmcr-outreach” <cmcr-outreach@vortex.wildrockies.org>
————————————————————————–

————————-
“Big price to protect homes

“Suppressing wildfires in the wilderness-urban
interface accounts for 85 percent of firefighting
costs in the United States, according to the
report.”
—————————–

The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 05/14/2008 12:16:43 AM MDT

Growing focus on fires leaves other
Forest Service programs withering
By Steve Lipsher

The U.S. Forest Service plans to spend $1.9
billion – nearly half of its annual budget – to
prevent and fight wildfires this summer.

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Fire-Free Forests Store Less Carbon

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Note the US Forest Service official’s quote at the end: smells like something’s afoot…

ASW

———————————————
“The findings run contrary to expectation. It was
thought that more trees meant more carbon being
drawn from the atmosphere. ‘If you suppress fires
and lots of little trees show up, then you ought
to store more carbon,’ says ecologist Richard
Houghton of the Woods Hole Research Center in
Falmouth, Massachusetts.”
—————————————————————

Nature
14 May 2008   doi:10.1038/news.2008.818

News

Forest-fire management ‘raises carbon emissions’

California study suggests fire-free forests store less carbon.

Quenching forest fires leads to more carbon in
the air, says new research carried out in
Californian forests. The discovery suggests that
forests spared from fire may release more of the
greenhouse gas into the air than they absorb.

Decades of suppressing natural fires has
increased the number of surviving trees in
California’s forests. But this growth has been at
the expense of larger trees, which are less
resilient to drought and other stresses than
smaller, younger trees, resulting in a decline in
the total amount of carbon stored in these
forests.

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“Significant Changes” in Natural Systems Already Ongoing

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————————————————–
The new study is written by many of the people
who wrote the so-called Working Group I report,
the first of a trio of major assessments released
last year by the IPCC.

It concludes “significant changes” are already
occurring among natural systems on all
continents, with the exception of Antarctica, and
in most oceans.
—————————————————

Alalam News  (Tehran, Iran)
Wednesday,  14   May   2008

‘Significant’ Climate Change Occurring
<http://www.alalam.ir/english/en-NewsPage.aspnewsid=032060120080514111031>

PARIS, May 14–A wide-scale study published
Wednesday has strengthened warnings, spelt out
last year by UN scientists that climate change is
already on the march.

The paper, published in Nature, goes beyond the
scope taken by a landmark report issued by the
UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) in February 2007.

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Forests: More Than Carbon Sinks

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Good article-but this person also forgets that-even just in terms of climate stability-forests are more than carbon sinks. They serve as sponges, slowing the hydrological cycle & cooling the planet. Biodiversity itself also contributes to climate stability…

We need to connect ALL these dots-especially where ecosystems are concerned…some of us KNEW the damn timber beast was going to start arguing for liquidation of old-growth stands as a “green” capitalistic false solution…

Selective logging in old-growth stands as acceptable? Maybe-i have my doubts…but if it is to happen, we don’t need to big timber firms to move into Brazil, Indonesia, or Cascadia to do it.

ASW

—————————- Original Message —————————-
Subject: Indonesia: more than just a carbon sink
From:    “Lance Olsen” <lance@wildrockies.org>
Date:    Tue, May 13, 2008 3:25 pm
To:      “cmcr-outreach” <cmcr-outreach@vortex.wildrockies.org>
————————————————————————–

—————–
“They must not convert good-quality natural
forest into tree plantations. …. Natural forest
stands in conservation forest areas must be
preserved …. Forests have many functions, one
of which is preserving biodiversity. In our rich
natural forests exist a great multitude of living
things.”
————

JAKARTA POST
May 13, 2008

Opinion

Indonesian forests should be more than just carbon sinks
Wiryono, Bengkulu

In the last five decades, environmental awareness
among people has increased worldwide, but the
focus of attention has shifted from time to time.
In the 1960s and 1970s, pollution got the most
attention from the public, especially in Western
countries.

Continue reading