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Today as I listened to Randi Rhoades (and if I misspelled her name I could care less) she told the granddaddy of all lies about the Forest Service. I could not believe my ears as she claimed that the Forest Service helped cause these fires in California by choosing to put out fires in the past as they burned thus not clearing out the fallen trees and old growth. Is it possible that she could be so stupid as to have forgotten the last 25 years of environmental organizations meddling in Forest Service affairs?
Any fire that the Forest Service contained was first of all on land near homes and private property, something I believe we pay our taxes to ensure. Secondly, those areas they do let burn are those areas that fit certain parameters.
From a US Forest Service Website: "Q: If fire suppression leads to bigger fires, why not just let them burn?"
"A: Where lightning fires are burning within desired parameters, those incidents can be managed for the beneficial effects of fire. However, that is not appropriate to every situation. The growth of the wildland-urban interface in the last 50 years means that lives and homes are at stake if a forest catches fire. The Forest Service does not “just let them burn”, every fire receives an appropriate management response. Fire will burn when conditions in the forest and the weather are right for it. However, fire is important part of the forest ecosystem. Some oaks and pines, for example, need fire to crack their seeds and regenerate. Suppressing fires had the unintended consequence of building up vegetation, debris, and other flammable materials on the forest floor. Add to this mix, drought and the crowded conditions in the forests. Once ignited, severe forest fires can occur. Unnaturally dense forests contribute to big fires. For instance, where 50 years ago only a few hundred trees grew on an acre, today thousands of trees are crowded in the same space. Multiply that by millions of acres of forests and you get the “combustible” picture. For another, many urban areas are being situated closer and closer to forested landscapes for their aesthetic and economic values. There is inherent danger in building homes in or near forestlands. People are not the only victims of forest fires: wildlife loses their habitat, hillsides erode into and silt up rivers, burnt mountains allow floods and floods wash away homes and businesses."
It is people like those who claim membership in the Sierra Club who are to blame for many of these fires. Thinning of old growth is a proven solution to big fires. But as in the Black Hills in 2001 the Sierra Club has gotten involved with the mountains around L.A. too and now their hard work is coming home to roost. While lighting, arson and downed power lines are thought responsible for starting these most recent fires, years of legal entanglement with the Sierra Club has kept the U.S. Forest Service from doing their job. Black Hills info can be found here: http://www.deadwoodmagazine.com/article.php?read_id=174
The Forest Service as wanted to get in there and clear that old tinder (yes tinder, as in tinder box) for years. Restrictions placed on them by legislation and law suits have prohibited much of the needed clean up, that along with the belief that lumber companies involved would be profiting in some sinister way from doing much of the work.
As people continue to buy this line of bull crap from environmentalist about how the land is sacred and can not be touched this will continue to happen. We must manage the forest as we manage any other piece of land. Farmers are well schooled in soil conservation because it is in their best interest to ensure they do not strip the soil of the nutrients needed for the next crop. This is the same with the water supply in this country as we scramble to ensure Atlanta does not run out of water in the next 90 days. But mention doing something proactive to stop raging fires and you might as well take out a gun and pop a cap in Smokey the Bear's head or pull the trigger on Bambi's mother yourself.
Perhaps this latest tragedy of lost of homes, fortune and life will weigh heavy enough on the hearts of Sierra Club members and other such organizations that they will come to the table with a new outlook on the necessity of true management of the forests and not just pay lip service to their members that want to save the spotted owl. Logging, forest management and recreation can all benefit from a healthy forest.
Randi claims she fact checks all her stuff before she runs with a story but she sure didn't on this one. Perhaps she needs to ask a question from a professional once in a while instead of relying full time on the internet for her answers. Oh she touts this machine for her fact checking and information gathering but as we all know, garbage in = garbage out...
This time the Sierra Club put the garbage into cyberspace and Rhoades was there to shovel it out and onto the airwaves for her faithful to hear and repeat... I thought Rush had the mind numbed robots....
But what would I know; I'm just an Average American.
Fact Checked my ASS!
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Posted By: Average American Posted on: Oct. 24, 2007 at 12:00 AM  52 Comments
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1.3 / 5
Based on 4 ratings.
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Comments:
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Oct. 24, 2007 at 09:50:01 AM
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| Mike, AA is given the spin from the right. Understand this, he won't change his mind or maybe he doesn't have one.
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Oct. 24, 2007 at 10:25:36 AM
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| To further belabor the point: [link:thinkprogress.org] Bush said this morning: "I'm looking forward to visiting California tomorrow." Yeah, like he looked forward to seeing the devastation wrought by Katrina from 30,000 ft. It should be an excellent photo-op for the man who thinks Smoky the Bear is a baseball mascot. He might as well complete his sentence with, "I'm looking forward to visiting California tomorrow . . . to see the extent of the death and destruction myself." When Bush comes out to survey the damage, you know you're f**ked. Seems the state and federal response was much more coordinated this time around. No doubt the decision to dedicate federal resources to the problem caused the Bush Administration much consternation. "We need to show that we got our act together, but do we really have to put out the fire at the Baldwin compound?" It must be an existential crisis for the neocons. "We need to help the rich, but we might be helping George Clooney, Sean Penn, and Sheryl Crow this time. s***!!!" |
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Oct. 24, 2007 at 12:44:37 PM
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| You forgot to mention Al Gore, BAA Boy! And, with Faux News reporting the fires as an al Qaeda plot, I'm surprised you decided to take on such wimps as the Sierra Club. RE: "The Forest Service as wanted to get in there and clear that old tinder (yes tinder, as in tinder box) for years. " Besides Randi Rhodes (yes, that's R-H-O-D-E-S) and Mick, try this: "The trend to more superhot fires, experts say, has been driven by a century-long policy of the US Forest Service to stop wildfires as quickly as possible. The unintentional consequence was to halt the natural eradication of underbrush, now the primary fuel for megafires. "Three other factors contribute to the trend, they add. First is climate change marked by a 1-degree F. rise in average yearly temperature across the West. Second is a fire season that on average is 78 days longer than in the late 1980s. Third is increased building of homes and other structures in wooded areas." [link:www.csmonitor.com] |
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Oct. 24, 2007 at 01:18:01 PM
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| This time when Bush flies overhead. They will get the help! it is an opportunity for Bushy to redeem himself! And this time it is WHITE PEOPLE (The master race), stuck in a football field! And this time it is the somewhat Republican Governator Blackforest instead of a Democrat WOMAN! Help is on the way . . . as it should be
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Oct. 24, 2007 at 02:06:47 PM
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| But Prom, they are WHITE liberals . . . Hollywood types, you know. Probably a lot of gays and transgenders mixed in . . . all traitors. And their illegal immigrant landscapers too! What's a President to do?!!! I suppose he'll help them now, for appearance sake, and let them burn for all eternity later. |
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Oct. 24, 2007 at 04:38:53 PM
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| bAA says: I thought Rush had the mind numbed robots.... Hey when your right, you're right..... |
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Oct. 24, 2007 at 07:36:41 PM
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| AA, why even try? When Randi isn't planting her face on the pavement after having too many Bloody Mary's do you really expect her to worry about facts for the sheeple that listen to her? Just remember it's all Bush's fault and move on. Hell Bush was probably out there with a lighter so he could let Blackwater build a detention center. You know the fires are in the exact place that Blackwater want to build the detention centers to put us all in when the facist regime cancels all elections. I mean the bastard Malloy said last night that the Bushies started the fires and you know he's the leader of the "truth seekers" Well gotta go now and make out a check to the Sierra Club. p.s. screw you Adam |
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Oct. 24, 2007 at 08:20:11 PM
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| It's obvious that you aren't trying, postman. Way to go coming to AA's defense. Did you even make one point in your last comment? Such an irony that you would use the term sheeple to characterize liberals. Every point I made above is my own thinking and research. If it sounds just like what Randi said, that's because we are both capable of arriving at the truth independently. Everything you just said was an ad hominen attack or a deflection. That sounds just like the talking heads on the right. Baa baa, postman. No blame game here. The fact is that in large degree, our wildfire problems today stem from our previous well-intentioned but wrong-headed fire prevention policies of the past, and as June points out, the complicating factors of global warming and housing development spreading into forests. Prove that statement wrong. Then again, why try when you know you already lost. |
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Oct. 24, 2007 at 09:18:27 PM
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| MiC, why even try? When Rush isn't losing his hearing after having too many Oxycotins do you really expect him to worry about facts for the sheeple that listen to him? |
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Until relatively recently, the Forest Service policy was to put out any and all forest fires, where ever they occurred. This was not a malicious or stupid policy -- it was born out of conservation. Forests were an increasingly scarce commodity in a growing America, and no one wanted to lose even more trees unnecessarily to fires, whether natural or caused by man. What was not appreciated back then was that a natural cycle of fire, regrowth, and maturation was needed to keep indigenous forests healthy; otherwise the mix between mature trees and undergrowth would be disturbed, and the ecosystem dependent on the forest would suffer the consequences.
The more enlightened Forest Service policy today, based on an improved understanding of forest growth and evolution, is to generally allow natural fires to burn, put out man-made fires, put out fires that threaten populated areas and, in places where our previous overzealous fire-prevention efforts have allowed the forest floor to be choked off with brush and tinder, conduct prescribed/controlled forest burns. Thinning out the forests, as you say, was a solution of the logging industry, not the Forest Service. In most cases, it was simply an excuse to deforest rather than thin. The Forest Service does not oppose the true "thinning" of trees in areas of forest overgrowth, as an alternative to controlled burns; neither does the Sierra Club. That has rarely been the intent of the logging industry.
Keep in mind that large congregations of houses didn't exist in the forested hills of Southern CA until recently. But a century of forest fire suppression in those formerly unpopulated hills allowed these woods to become dense tinder boxes. Then we moved in and built our houses, thinking we had the situation under control with our advance fire-fighting technology. Wrong. Our innocent but misguided past forest-fighting efforts only set us up for the firestorm of the century. There will be more.
At this point, we have spread out our population far from the urban areas, into forests all over the country that have not seen a forest fire for way too long because of our past "no fire is a good fire" forestry policy of yesteryear. It's a challenge to put out a lightening or campfire blaze even in a growth of trees and brush that has been exposed to a natural cycle of burn and growth; it is next to impossible to put out fires in forests that are long overdue. Likewise, it would be unwise to attempt a controlled burn in a populated area, because as you know, some controlled burns can become "uncontrolled" no matter how much you try. I believe such attempts have indeed meet with legal challenges, as you mention -- from the homeowners. And I would highly doubt that homeowners in the SoCal hills would allow the logging of trees in their subdivision.
Of course, complicating the matter of the tragedy in CA is the fact that much of our National Guard manpower and equipment, that has been used in the past to help put out the bigger blazes, are now in Iraq.
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