On Fri, 19 Aug 2005, Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Thanks for posting, Chris. I was in British Columbia in June and saw > plenty of ugly black stands of dead pine.
> Ed > [The Future of Work in Canada] >> ...could be cleaning up the pine beetle before it destroys all forests. >> This is for those who think that increased CO2 is good because it makes >> plants grow faster... >> >> Chris >> >> <<Unless there is a severe winter cold snap, all recently attacked >> trees will have to be logged or burned before the beetles fly again. >> In many cases, such work will require crews going into forests that are >> not commercially viable to get rid of the infested trees. Work crews >> will also have to identify all newly attacked trees and get rid of them >> too. The heartening thing is that in parts of BC where the outbreak is >> not too intense, such efforts have worked. And they could again, if the >> will is there.>> Yup, with all the harvesting required, the US may finally have a justification for suggesting we are dumping softwood, literally at fire-sale prices (the major threat of the dead forests is that they will catch fire and burn in vast amounts). We could also invoke the word "windfall" in something resembling its original meaning, as that's another likely hazard - winter storms knocking down stands which knock on like falling dominoes. There is simply nowhere near the infrastructure currently to harvest all the dead timber, so in the next couple of years we will see a massive short term increase in the lumber industry to salvage as much as possible before rot sets in. The lumber will have to be processed to ensure that it is beetle-free, then it will be put on the world market. It would be nice if some of the money accrued from its sale went to some sort of fund for managing the forests more intelligently in future... -Pete _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
