Yeegads.
The serial regurgitation in media is impressive. Here’s the money quote:
And the new research dispels the notion that beetle-killed trees present no greater fire danger than live ones, a theory that had gained traction after a couple of wet, cool summers tamped down fire activity in the region, Jolly said. On the contrary, beetle-killed trees can hold 10 times less moisture than live trees, Jolly found. That means they not only ignite more quickly than live trees, but they burn more intensely and carry embers farther than live trees, Jolly said.
I’m not trying to make fun of the pine beetle threat, which is serious, but it seems pretty darned obvious to anyone who has ever has a Christmas tree or seen one of those fire department Christmas tree videos that brown dead pine trees burn quite a bit faster than green ones.
While a model for such a thing in wildlands might be useful, it would seem an almost impossible fire to fight.
Dead pine trees, whether beetle killed or by something else, burn much faster than live ones. On the plus side the article does not mention climate change or global warming.
Full AP story here h/t to reader Steve Keohane
Are the beetles going wild because the Groonies (green loonies) managed to ban the spraying of pesticides?
Sensational news from the Jolly Parson?
This discussion is quite disappointing except for John S. and a few others. Most of the time I don’t know enough about global warming topics to understand if the comments are inane or not, but this time I do. Most of the people talking here have never seen a forest fire. In most fires, the needles burn and the trunks of the trees are left intact. And anybody who has seen a forest fire knows that green needles can burn very very quickly. It is a legitimate question to wonder whether dead needles burn more slowly or more quickly and the answer isn’t obvious because previous studies have found very little difference between the two. There is a separate question which is whether the forests of dead pines we have in BC represent a increased fire hazard. Again, this is not a simple question because for example, when they measure fuels on a block after logging, sticks bigger than 7.5 cm are not counted as fuel because they ignite so much more slowly than finer materia. After trees have been killed by beetles and their needles and fine branches have fallen off, they don’t burn very well. Think of big sticks in your campfire without kindling and spaced too far apart to feed off of one another. In many cases, dead forests don’t burn very well once the needles have fallen off, but last year we found that many of the older dead trees had cracked sufficiently that they began to support a flame and burn again. So the results are not as easy to predict as the ignorant expect. This thread reminds me more of a Real Climate thread where people just start yapping off with very little data or comprehension of the complexity of a problem. I think Anthony should retract his cynical comments on this topic.
That should be 7.5 cm diameter.
I’m keeping that video for next Xmas for when my wife demands another live tree.
How long before someone who really understands what needs to be done helps nature along?
http://wildfiretoday.com/2010/09/08/firefighters-should-calm-down-about-beetle-killed-forests/
This discussion reads like a comment session at Huffpost … sigh. John S, BC Bill and a couple others got this right. I’ve reposted the link from Jeez above – people should read that first before posting nonsense. Lodgepole forest fires are characterized by rapid crown fires in the canopy of green trees. This study http://www.esa.org/papers/pdf/emon-81-01-04_3.24.pdf showed that red (1-2 yr) and grey (3-5 yr) needle stages averaged 42% less canopy fuel load than green trees. They conclude “Our results suggest that mountain pine beetle outbreaks in Greater Yellowstone may reduce the probability of active crown fire in the short term by thinning lodgepole pine canopies.”
Mike says:
On May 2, 2011 at 9:40 am, Mike suggests, “Perhaps some anti-science blogger was spreading this disinformation.”
Could be, but apparently enough people to warrant a formal study believed that dry wood burns no faster than green wood. If so, who might these people have been?
DonS says:
May 2, 2011 at 9:23 am
Has the pine beetle increase been associated with global warming? You bet. Google “pine beetles global warming”.
==========================
not positive, but i think this has been debunked by a recent study in British Colombia….
i can’t find the link on google though – maybe someone else has heard about it?
“beetle-killed trees can hold 10 times less moisture”
I may be an ignorant fool who was only educated to year 10, but how can you reduce the amount of moisture more than one?
Desert Yote asks:
Amazing new policy from His Holiness:
Ursa Major, the new Pope, announced today that he was moving the Vatican to a more sylvan environment in the woods. This will facilitate his lavatorial arrangements.
This doctrinal about turn (so far all previous Popes have favoured urban settings), is believed to have been brought about by a reinterpretation of the sacred ancient texts ‘verily I say unto ye that bears do indeed s**t in the woods’
Wow, Something with a lower moisture content burns faster than something with. I’m now informed. I guess I can give up on trying to heat my bath by sticking a burning match in it now.
@BC Bill:
Having grown up and spent the first 40 years of my life in Riverside, CA, and having worked with the Red Cross taking care of our firefighters while they worked their tails off trying to keep many fires under control, I can tell you that this study seems rather inane to me. I’ve known since my first forest fire the difference between how live green trees and dead brown ones burn. First hand & up close.
#
#
Latimer Alder says:
May 3, 2011 at 1:12 am
Desert Yote asks:
But what if a bear becomes Pope?
Amazing new policy from His Holiness:
Ursa Major, the new Pope, announced today that he was moving the Vatican to a more sylvan environment in the woods. This will facilitate his lavatorial arrangements.
This doctrinal about turn (so far all previous Popes have favoured urban settings), is believed to have been brought about by a reinterpretation of the sacred ancient texts ‘verily I say unto ye that bears do indeed s**t in the woods’
###
So then, when one asks “Does the Pope s**t in the woods?” the answer would be yes.
Sic transit gloria mundi!
This is somewhat tangential to the main thread, but when Adam says
he’s furthering a myth started by Washington Irving in his biography of Columbus. The wise men of the Spanish court didn’t object to his expedition because they thought the world was flat; they (correctly) objected to his estimates of the size of the planet.
…Hmm. Perhaps it isn’t so tangential after all… 🙂
Theo Goodwin says:
May 2, 2011 at 9:43 am : ” When I was a teenager, I got a job in a mobile home factory.”
Are you allowed to reveal where in those homes the tornado magnet is installed? ;).
Casey
May 3, 2011 at 9:49 am
###
What is really interesting is that Columbus estimated the travel distance to asia based on the reports of the Vikings and others (like Brennon). He had assumed that they had reached Asia. Columbus was not saying that the Earth was round and the critics saying it was flat, but rather Columbus was saying that the Earth was pear shaped and the critics were saying that it was round. Columbus did indead find land exactly were he calculated it to be, problem is, that the Vikings had been visiting the new world.
There is a lesson in here somewhere!
@TonyG
I fought fires for five years to support myself as I did my undergraduate degree. I fought considerably more than 100 fires. Last year 120,000 ha of lodgepole pine (primarily) burned in this area and I have been on most of the fires doing hazard assessments. I have seen them while they are burning and afterwards. There are many kinds of forests, but I do a lot of work in beetle killed lodgepole pine which this study was examining. Green trees can burn so fast that when they are crowning you would have a very hard time outrunning the fire. Dead trees with needles move at about the same speed, but with a lot less smoke. The difference between green trees and brown ones is in many cases is inconsequentially small. When the needles have fallen off of dead trees, the rate of spread in those stands is usually, but not always, much slower. Fire behaviour is complex. While it is nice that you did first aid on fire fighters, it is a cheap rhetorical trick to try trump rational argument and observation with vague experience. If you have can assure me that you have actually seen both a living and dead lodgepole pine forest burning I will take note of what you observe. “Everybody is entitled to an “informed” opinion.”
DesertYote says: May 3, 2011 at 12:58 pm
In the interest of thermometers and measurement
‘Any sailor worth his salt can gauge his latitude well enough by the length of the day, or by the height of the sun or known guide stars above the horizon. Christopher Columbus followed a straight path across the Atlantic when he “sailed the parallel” on his 1492 Journey. The measurement of longitude meridians, in comparison, is tempered by time. To learn one’s longitude at sea, one need to know what time it is aboard ship and also the time at the homeport or another place of known longitude – at that very same moment. The two clock times enable the navigator to convert the hour difference into a geographical separation.
Precise knowledge of the hour in two different places at once was utterly unattainable up to and including the era of pendulum clocks. On the deck of a rolling ship, such clocks would slow down, or speed up, or stop running altogether. Normal changes in temperature encountered en route from a cold country of origin to a tropical trade zone thinned or thickened a clock’s lubricating oil and made its metal parts expand or contract with equally disastrous results. A rise or fall in barometric pressure, or the subtle variations in the Earth’s gravity from one latitude to another, could also cause a clock to gain or lose time.
For lack of a practical method of determining longitude, every great captain in the Age of Exploration became lost at sea despite the best available charts and compasses. From Vasco de Gama to Vasco Nunez de Balboa, from Magellan to Sir Francis Drake, they all got where they were going willy-nilly, by forces attributed to good luck or the grace of God. ‘
(The above directly taken from Dava Sobel’s novel, Longitude I imagine)
http://www.whitmansailing.com/html/leaves/pagefifty1.htm
http://www.historytoday.com/helen-wallis/what-columbus-knew
Jessie,
Thanks for that comment. I’ve always been fascinated by the search for a reliable way to determine latitude. Harrison, the citizen/scientist, bested all the government scientists of the day, and showed how to do it:
http://www.surveyhistory.org/john_harrison's_timepiece1.htm
“Longitude” is an easy but highly recommended read.
Harrison, James Cook, Joseph Priestley …..
….. those are some tough shoes to fill for people born in Yorkshire.
One can but try.
http://acswebcontent.acs.org/landmarks/landmarks/priestley/
Smokey says: May 3, 2011 at 7:21 pm
Thank you Smokey, that is a very good synopsis of Harrison’ (and Kendall’s) work.
I imagine there are other bloggers who have great knowledge of Ptolemy.
Cpt James Cook of course is well known in Australia, having used the invention on two of his three voyages, as written in the log of ‘HMS Resolution. The second voyage being Cook’s demise where he was mistaken for the God Lono.
In regard to the mischief surrounding [science]; the Parliamentary reward, goalpost changes and changes to Acts of Parliament which Harrison encountered, The Times provides an insight into the politicisation and funding of science.
A series of correspondence: The Imperial Institute, TH Huxley (Thurs 20th Jan 1887 p8*); A Criticism of the Royal Society anonymous (Thurs, 1st December 1892 p4) A Criticism of the Royal Society (Sat, 24th December 1892 p8) may be of interest to historians of science.
* Willis may read in the sixth column, ‘no notice to anonymous communications!
Jessie
May 3, 2011 at 6:41 pm
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Looks like an interesting read. The history of time measurement is fascinating. BTW, the state of navigation was not quite as dire as the quote implies. The great navigators had a number of proxies to estimate time, and unlike climate scientists, they knew how to use them. They most certainly would not be looking for confirmation of preconceptions.
DesertYote says: May 3, 2011 at 9:35 pm
Thanks for that DesertYote.
The quote states ‘any sailor’ and then goes onto ‘Christopher Columbus’.
A substantial degree of and in difference?