
The High Sierra forest is dying, and you can't count the loss in dead trees - Mz
http://www.latimes.com/travel/california/la-tr-changing-landscape-20160912-snap-story.html
======
thaumaturgy
I live in the foothills of the sierra, and I've been a search and rescue
volunteer for a while now, so I'm in some part of the Tahoe national forest
about once a week on average.

The damage, when you see it up close, is stunning. You'll be driving along a
highway and see miles, and miles, and miles of dead trees standing there,
waiting to burn.

It's catastrophic, and that's not a word I use lightly.

The prediction for this year is a mostly dry and cold Winter. If that happens,
I expect next Summer to be one of the worst fire seasons in state history.
There's so much dry material out there now in areas that require tremendous
resources to combat.

If/when superfire season happens, there's a good chance it'll overwhelm state
resources and there's going to be a lot of damage that will take decades to
recover.

I was in Kings Canyon for a state SAR conference not too long ago and the fire
scars from a few years ago still look fresh. Most of the stretch of highway 20
through Clear Lake is just black and brown. That's gonna be a look that's hard
to get away from pretty soon, and I doubt we fully grasp the impact of that
yet.

~~~
npsimons
I too spend a lot of time in the Sierras, though more of the Southern end. I
would concur with your conclusions. While I'm not the most cognizant of
foliage, I can say that the watershed has dropped noticeably over the years.
People might say "who cares? you only need water for overnight trips.", but
that's not only wrong, but missing the big picture. The Sierras have been
getting less snow, and LA is literally sucking them dry with the aqueduct,
refusing to even consider solutions such as desal plants. Public
transportation to reduce AGW is also a no-brainer that no one seems to want.
Damage has already been done, but there are actions that could be taken to
improve the situation. No one seems to care, though.

~~~
paulmd
The reality is that it's too late at this point. The easy fixes might have
worked if we could get worldwide buy-in 20 years ago but short of a planetary-
scale engineering project or outright banning fossil fuel usage we're in for
some bad times even before we factor in economic growth from India, China, and
Africa.

Levelling off is no longer good enough, it's too late for that, we need a
massive decrease in global carbon emissions. And beyond that we need to start
thinking about levelling out energy consumption entirely, even independent of
CO2 emissions.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc1vrO6iL0U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc1vrO6iL0U)

Classic Newsroom clip but fact-checked as accurate, minus the hyperbole at the
end about permanent darkness. We're already seeing majorly shifting weather
patterns, movement of the jet stream, droughts, unprecedented wildfires, etc.
We're already starting to see the first major cities lost due to rising sea
levels - Miami is already sinking beneath the seas and it's only a matter of
time before it exceeds the limits of engineering to fix it. It's built on
porous limestone and borders directly on hundreds of square miles of swamp, so
it's something of a worst-case scenario. You can't pump out water when it just
comes right back in through the limestone, and even if you could we would be
talking about hundreds of times as much wall as the Netherlands uses.

Every single building in Miami will need to be elevated Chicago/Seattle style
or abandoned within the next decade or two. Otherwise people are going to
start leaving rather quickly once the sewers start backflowing on a regular
basis. All of modern society is built on the shoulders of sanitation
infrastructure and it's going to get nasty once it stops working.

[http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/11/climate-
desk-...](http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/11/climate-desk-fact-
checks-aaron-sorkins-climate-science-newsroom)

[https://newrepublic.com/article/123216/miami-sinking-
beneath...](https://newrepublic.com/article/123216/miami-sinking-beneath-sea-
not-without-fight)

I wish I had something positive to say like "maybe this will finally get us to
proactively solve our problems instead of assuming they can always be fixed at
some future date" but I don't actually believe that will happen. We are
unwilling to systematically factor in future risks into present costs. Heck,
even we as a community don't do it properly - how many times are we going to
get hacked before we learn to lock things down from day 1?

Sorry to be pessimistic but that's the reality at this point. Objections to
this are political slant and wishful thinking. The US military's job is to be
apolitical and make realistic assessments about future threats to our nation,
and they're planning for increased levels of conflict due to climate change in
the 21st century. It's happening and it's going to suck pretty bad.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-
idUSKCN1...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-
idUSKCN11K0BC)

[http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2016/10/u-s-intel-alert-
cl...](http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2016/10/u-s-intel-alert-climate-
change-aids-terrorists-destabilizes-entire-world-stresses-military/)

~~~
Mz
_I wish I had something positive to say_

When the oil wells in Kuwait were set on fire as the Iraqis left, the
prediction was that it would burn for _years_ and be a global environmental
catastrophe. When crack teams from around the world converged on Kuwait,
invented new techniques on the spot and put the fires out in a mere six
months, that did not get anywhere near the hype that the initial dire
predictions got.

In the 1990's, they were predicting a global financial meltdown due to y2k and
people were prepping for it -- putting away food stocks, etc. That got quietly
solved and no one wakes up every day going "THANK GOD THEY SOLVED THAT AND WE
AREN"T LIVING IN THE POST Y2K APOCALYPSE!!!!"

I think we can solve this. I also think if we do solve it, people will act
like the fears we are expressing now about it were overblown. People are
terrible about being unable to count the disasters that did not happen. When
things go well, we seem to think that is "normal" even though it really is
not.

I am aware we may not solve it and the world may, in fact, go to hell the way
everyone is predicting. But _may not_ and _cannot_ are different things. But,
you know, we are all dust in the wind anyway. In another million years, none
of this really matters.

My experience is that if you have something positive to say, people pretty
much ignore you. I am still trying to figure out how to get traction for being
able to talk about things that actually work in various problem spaces. People
mostly do not want to hear it. They are far more interested in being all emo
about the state of the world while carrying on with their lifestyle as usual
for the most part.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I fixed my fair share of Y2K bugs in COBOL in 1998-1999. I agree with you. I
know from the work I did then that there _would_ have been some pretty
serious, life-disrupting issues had there not been the colossal effort to fix
it all (payroll jobs in fact did fail to run, as did financial reports, report
cards, etc.).

I'm generally an optimist. I think there will be fairly widespread support for
environmental engineering in our state to protect and repair our natural
areas. (There already is a lot of that.)

But it looks like a really big, scary problem from the boots-on-the-ground
perspective.

~~~
Mz
_But it looks like a really big, scary problem from the boots-on-the-ground
perspective._

I know that you are aware that I am homeless in California and have been for
about 4.5 years. Every place I camp with my two sons, we urinate on the local
bushes and trees to intentionally try to grow better cover for our campsite.

Where we currently are, we are camped behind what we thought was a dead tree.
Large parts of it are covered in lichen. With being peed on for months, it
grew a whole new section and developed berries. Birds began nesting in it.
Nearby, what was previously essentially a dead zone is alive with insects and
smaller animals.

The large bird that routinely perches above us has stopped screeching
constantly -- a territorial behavior intended to drive off competitors for its
food -- and we recently witnessed multiple birds of the same species gather
nearby in a copse of trees. We think these are all golden eagles and we think
they may have paired off to mate, though we aren't sure. It was somewhere
between 8 and 11 birds that we could count and it may have been more.

I am homeless and live without a car (and gave up my car a few years before I
walked away from my corporate job) and everywhere I pee, the flora and fauna
flourish.

My "boots" are probably on the ground a lot more than yours, and to me it
looks like it isn't that hard at all to make a positive difference in this
situation. Though I have no idea how to start a "please walk more and please
pee on a tree" campaign. Nonetheless, everywhere I go, people begin walking
more and the local environment visibly improves -- a thing I have written
about some: [http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/08/for-just-
few...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/08/for-just-few-dollars-
more.html)

I also have a deadly medical condition that is incurable and I am getting well
when doctors claim that cannot be done. So I spent over a year at death's door
and have spent a lot of years coming back from that. Thus, what we are doing
to our environment looks solvable to me. I have done harder things.

But I am a homeless woman that everyone dismisses as insane because,
obviously, only men in white lab coats can figure out how to help deathly ill
people (for scads of money, of course) not former homemakers who are dirt poor
because of a) being a woman that no one will listen to and b) having an
expensive debilitating medical condition.

So, to my eyes, the big challenge is figuring out how to get an audience and
how to present the information in a manner that will be palatable. If I can
get off the street in the near future, I imagine I will work on that --
because we all need a hobby, I guess.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Well, there are some important differences between berry-bearing trees and the
larger conifers, as well as all the various different microbiomes we have
around the sierra. There's chaparral, scrub, high desert, foothill, subalpine
and alpine environments, and they all have different needs and react
differently to environmental changes. The high desert stuff, for instance, is
really good at coming back from extended dry hot periods. Chaparral, scrub,
and foothill aren't likely to change drastically, I don't think (in my totally
uneducated opinion).

I'm more worried about the subalpine forest, the kind of stuff you see in the
western Sierra from about 3,000 to 8,000 foot elevation. That's where we're
seeing the worst of the tree die-off and wildfire disasters, and it's an
ecology that takes much longer to return to what we think of as "healthy". The
watersheds in these areas is also a major, very important part of the state's
water supply, so impacts on these ecosystems have the potential to affect
communities all over the state.

Best wishes to you. Good to hear from you again.

~~~
Mz
_there are some important differences between berry-bearing trees and the
larger conifers_

Yes, one of which is that some pines only reproduce in the aftermath of fire.

[http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BOREASFire/](http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BOREASFire/)

[http://creationrevolution.com/plants-that-need-fire-to-
survi...](http://creationrevolution.com/plants-that-need-fire-to-survive/)

~~~
headShrinker
"So other than that Lincoln, how did you like the play?"

------
beloch
In Canada, pine beetles have been spreading further and further North in
recent years. Warm winters help beetles spread, but keeping old forests
untouched by fire many decades past what is typical in the area has also
played a big part. Forest fires control pine beetles.

In this area, forests do not live for thousands of years. Fire is a natural
part of the life cycle, but we've kept unprecedented amounts of forest "safe"
from fire in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Pine beetles are
forcing their way into very touristy areas, and pretty soon people will have
to accept having their view spoiled, either by pine beetles or by fire.

Nature is often ugly. We need to perform more controlled burns, both to
restrict the spread of pine beetles and reduce the risk of mega-fires. People
need to accept forest fires as a natural part of forest ecology rather than
seeing them solely as natural disasters. By clinging to our pretty, green
views of what we think forests should be, we are actually harming our forests.

------
pvaldes
The planet has suffered climate changes before and there is a common trend in
this cases. The forest will move.

Entire forests migrated to the north or south to return again after some
thousands of years. After the ice covering Europe melted, hazelnuts and
poplars regain quickly its territory and arrive first. Oaks came later slowly
migrating toward the north from its mediterranean refuges. Finally we have the
beechs still trying to extend its distribution towards the south and living in
the cold north side of the mountains whereas oaks live in the sunny side.

If pines finally give up, a new forest based in different trees (more adapted
to dry places) will slowly take over. Maybe oaks. It is worth to mention, that
if this species need shadow in its first years, could need the dead pines in
place for a while.

The new forest will be shorter also. Trees are living creatures that spend a
lot of energy to assure that thousands of Kg of matherials will climb up
inside the trunk each day. When water gets scarce, there is a point when the
roots have problems to win against the electrostatic and gravitational forces
that keep the water in the soil. By the laws of physics, greater the distance,
bigger the work that you need to do against the gravity to move a given
weight. Therefore, taller species of trees are less efficient using water and
will be gradually excluded from the drying area.

~~~
rojobuffalo
The timescale of change is important to remember. Yes, forests have migrated
in the past--but this current trend of climate change is happening so much
faster than anything we see in the geological record. They don't have
generational timescales to adapt and move this time.

~~~
pvaldes
This is a problem that can be solved. We know by the "Chernobyl experience"
that nature can return really fast as long as the soil is not reclaimed by man
for other uses. We can accelerate that process easily, creating new "highways"
for our forests. Most birds don't need it, but big mammals, forest birds and
smaller plants and arthropods would benefit a lot of the life-line of having
ecological corridors.

I'll drop one of my stupid ideas; what if we start thinking about implement
the next level of environmental parks?. The first "nomad national parks" in
the planet with gradually movable boundaries designed to minimize the
consequences of climate change. Some coastal forests could need a safe exit to
move towards the inner land for example. We could change a strip of protected
soil with dying trees by some agricultural land in the border of the forest,
protect strictly this area and plant there a new extension of the forest. We
could include the died wood in the contract to buy a bigger extension in other
place and use a mix of native trees (designed to be more resilient against
plagues than natural monocultures). The right time to start planning how to do
this is forty years ago, but today would be also fine.

------
neilsharma
This is sad. I could see this causing a lot more problem than all the fires
we're getting in CA.

This is a slight tangent, but are there jobs for people in tech to help fight
this (or drought, logging, etc)? Wouldn't mind spending a few years trying to
protect the environment, but want to put the engineering skills to use.

~~~
mabramo
I see that the USDA has some software related to conservation up for download
[1]. Anything from water budgeting on farms to Animal Waste Management. I did
not download or test any of this software, just found it after a quick search.

Then there's this organization that ran out of funding, but contacting one of
the former team members may help you. [2]

There is development of software that doesn't directly affect the environment
but rather helps dictate what work should be done to improve/conserve
conditions. This book seems to address this topic. [3]

Here are some other random related things. [4] [5]

Unfortunately, it seems like software engineers are mostly used to develop
management software. Modeling software is closer to the type of action I
suspect you are interested in. It is needed, though I doubt the software
engineers are helping analyze data and building solutions based on that
research. I could be very wrong.

EDIT: I should clarify. A SE COULD analyze the data, but in the context of a
paid full-time position I doubt your employer would want you to spend your
time doing that.

If you find any information regarding "environmental [activism/conservation]
with software", or something like that, please let us know.

DISCLAIMER: I don't know what I'm doing ;)

[1]
[http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/ndc...](http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/ndcsmc/?cid=stelprdb1042198)

[2] [http://se4s.ics.uci.edu/](http://se4s.ics.uci.edu/)

[3] [http://www.journals.elsevier.com/environmental-modelling-
and...](http://www.journals.elsevier.com/environmental-modelling-and-software)

[4]
[http://www.conservation.org/NewsRoom/pressreleases/Pages/sof...](http://www.conservation.org/NewsRoom/pressreleases/Pages/software_indentifies_key_areas.aspx)

[5] [http://www.capterra.com/environmental-
software/](http://www.capterra.com/environmental-software/)

~~~
neilsharma
Thanks a bunch for the resources :). Gonna play around with some of these.

Modeling software is definitely something that's interesting, but also just
helping these organizations not seem so unappealing. Their websites are old
unusable, their career tracks are pretty bad, pay is low -- they sell these
jobs terribly.

I wouldn't even mind working a degree away from environmental endeavors just
to get smart people motivated to solve these problems and learn more. Think
data journalism on environmental educational pieces. Or helping local
governments preserve the nearby environments. Kinda just shooting around in
the dark hoping to hit something, but thanks for the start :)

------
Analemma_
I mean, I get that this is a serious problem, but before we get too hasty
about doing anything about it, imagine all the shareholder value that could be
lost by hasty actions, or all the economic liberty that could be destroyed by
environmental regulation. They're the real victims here.

~~~
Oletros
I think people has missed the sarcasm, because it is sarcasm, isn't?

~~~
arca_vorago
The brilliance of that comment is that around here I wouldnt be surprised _if
it wasn 't!_

------
guest
When people speak about it's too late and ad the words "we" i always get
nautious. Don't project your generalisations onto others, do something about
it - and if you do what you can do help someone else to turn around. There are
millions of people working to do so _. And yes, there will be a high peak if
nothing is done but there is still time to avoid extinguishing (or close to)
the human race in it 's current technological advancement.

There is still time to realingn the military to fight an actual war that
matters, for continued human progress. There is still time for powerful
regulation of the commons to avoid the tragedy therefor in so many areas.
There is still time to buy those solar panels and spread information about
those that exist ready to increase the efficiency a handful of times. There is
still time for city planners to stop allowing new buildings in areas that will
not be sustainable. There is still enough time to do alot of things...

_Excluding conservatives worldwide, who are finally coming along as looking
beyond their noses they've started smelling blood in the water - possibilities
to prosper in the new climate.

------
fred_is_fred
California should consider itself lucky if the pine beetle has just hit in
2015 and not really that bad from the pictures. Probably 50% of the trees in
Colorado are dead, 90% in some places.

~~~
RangerScience
There's no mention of the pine beetle in the article. He heavily implicates
drought and climate change.

~~~
camiller
I would think, although possibly wrongly, that if this was drought induced the
die off would be more uniform. The pictures look similar to what I saw in
Wyoming a decade ago due to pine beetles.

Both are likely related, reduced water makes the trees more susceptible to the
ravages of the pests?

~~~
ktsmith
I spent half my childhood in South Lake Tahoe and have lived in the region
most of my life. During the 80's and 90's, much of which was a period of
drought for the region, beetles were a problem and being actively mitigated by
the forestry service. You can go through the national forest all through the
sierras and see trees that have been tagged for removal due to beetles. The
problem is very severe right now and certainly the worst I can remember. I've
got a couple of friends that work for the us forestry service and they say
it's so bad they can't keep up with it. Other sources point out that beetle
infestation is part of the problem.

Local news site for Tahoe specifically:
[http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/california-tahoe-
area-...](http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/california-tahoe-area-tree-
deaths-climb-to-record-levels-thanks-to-bugs-drought/)

SF Chronicle on the beetle problem and commenting on the excess wood:
[http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/California-
has-66...](http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/California-
has-66-million-dead-trees-and-nowhere-8337745.php)

------
gerty
There was a nice article in The Economist [1] a few months ago on just about
this issue - how it relates to global warming, forest densification,
mismanagement, etc.

[1] [http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21701751-stricken-
tre...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21701751-stricken-trees-
provide-clues-about-how-america-will-adapt-global-warmingbut-little-hope)

------
M_Grey
If only people got the message a few decades ago, we'd have a modicum of hope.
It's too late now.

~~~
zo1
The big environmental movement started in the 70's. I remember as a very young
kind in the 90's that it was drilled into our innocent minds at school. People
have been worrying about resources and the environment for a very long time
before that, as well.

~~~
ashark
I remember in the late 80s/early 90s it seemed like all the environmental
stuff was about the ozone hole and acid rain. By the late 90s it seemed to be
all about preserving the rainforest to the exclusion of almost anything
else—incidentally, did we... win that one? Or hopelessly lose it so everyone
gave up? It seems like the chatter there has dropped to almost nothing, though
for a while it was _the_ environmental issue.

Global warming _per se_ didn't get center stage until later. I don't remember
hearing much about it back in the days of soda-by-the-pitcher and Made in
America signs on racks at Wal-Mart (gave up on _that_ one pretty fast, haha).

~~~
dalke
I think Asimov might have disagreed. In 1989 he said:

> I thought the most interesting scientific event of 1988 was the way everyone
> started speaking about the greenhouse effect just because there was a hot
> summer and a drought, when I had been talking about the greenhouse effect
> for twenty years, at least. -
> [http://www.ubcome.com/AsimovSaveCivilization.html](http://www.ubcome.com/AsimovSaveCivilization.html)

He also talks about the rainforest in '89:

> I said therefore, when Brazil begins to cut down the rainforest of the
> Amazon, not only is it destroying a habitat for vast numbers of plant and
> animal life which could be of great use to us, there are perhaps
> pharmacological products we know nothing about that are produced by these
> forms of life that if we knew about could advance the art of pharmacology
> and the practice of medicine, enormously. And we'll never find out, we're
> going to drive them to extinction. We're going to destroy the ground,
> because the soil of a rainforest isn't very good, and when you chop it down
> it doesn't make for good farming, what it makes is for good deserts. And
> finally, we're going to cut down on absorbing the carbon dioxide and on
> producing oxygen, so that we are actually tampering with the climate of the
> Earth and with the very atmosphere that we breathe, so that under those
> circumstances it is useless for Brazil to say that she can do what she wants
> with her own, that the rainforest belongs to her and if she wants to cut
> them down, she can. The rainforest doesn't belong to her, it belongs to
> humanity, she is merely the custodian of the rainforests.

