Can most urban dwelling members of the Cult of Climastrology even find the great outdoors? Other than to take a quick selfie for social media than escape back to a Starbucks, of course
Climate change will make a walk in the woods a much rarer pleasure
If you like to take a walk in the woods in the United States or you prefer to decorate a Douglas fir at Christmas, you should know that climate change is making both of those activities a lot harder.
Looking at two ecologically and economically important species — the Douglas fir and the Ponderosa pine — scientists found that fires and drought exacerbated by climate change make new growth difficult, especially in low-elevation forests, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Some forests in four regions in California, Colorado, the Northern Rockies and the southwestern part of the United States have crossed “a critical climate threshold for postfire tree generation,” the study says.
Climate conditions over the past 20 years have accelerated changes that would have otherwise taken decades or even centuries to play out across broad regions of the country. This is leading to the abrupt decline of trees and making these lands increasingly unsuitable for tree regeneration.
Climate change is endangering our forests now, not just in some distant future.
First, this is simply doomsaying. Second, this doesn’t provide proof that it is mostly solely caused by Mankind. Third, for most of the last twenty years the global temperature was in a pause. Yes, it was elevated, but, that’s what happens during a Holocene warm period.
Adult trees have better survival mechanisms to deal with poor climate conditions, but intense wildfires are wiping out these Ponderosa pines and Douglas firs. The trees have thick bark that make them typically good at surviving surface level fires, but they can’t survive the more intense fires that move through the canopy, like this region has seen. Had there not been such intense fires, these trees may have lived for centuries.
So, wildfires never happened prior to fossil fuels? And, let’s not forget, that many of these fires were actually caused by humans, but not from ‘climate change’.
Anyhow, no more long walks in the woods for you. Instead, please get into a prostrate position and hand your wallet to the Government.
