Joe Biden Plans To Ban Logging in US Old-Growth Forests in 2025 - Slashdot
source link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/12/26/216218/joe-biden-plans-to-ban-logging-in-us-old-growth-forests-in-2025
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Joe Biden Plans To Ban Logging in US Old-Growth Forests in 2025
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The US Forest Service oversees 193m acres of forests and grasslands, 144m of which are forests. In its inventory conducted after Biden's executive order, the agency found that the vast majority of forests it oversees, about 80%, are either old-growth or mature forests. It found more than 32m acres of old-growth forests and 80m acres of mature forests on federal land. The land management bureau defines old-growth forests as those with trees that are in later stages of stand development, which typically means at least 120 years of growth, depending on species. The giant sequoias in California, for example, are old-growth trees. Mature forests, meanwhile, have trees that are in the development stage immediately before old growth.
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We will not be logging on any of the forest land that we have not logged on in the last 100 years or more.
Logging on the 20 % (32 m acres) that we have been logging on for the last 100 years will continue exactly the same.-
This will at best go in effect if and after he wins the elections. Consider it part of the election campaign and not much more.
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If the polls hold up, it's a lot more likely old Joe himself will be banned in 2025.
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The pollsters have all been busy changing their weighting methodologies over the last few years, trying to figure out how they can better represent Trump voters after failing to predict the 2016 election. It's possible they've over-corrected, and/or that Trump voters are louder than they were in 2016.
Not that I think he can't lose. He's certainly the wrong pick for the Democrats. The best thing going for him is he's not Trump, which is a sad state of affairs. If they nominated someone with a strong, transfo
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Biden said something recently that I think summed it really well, "If Trump wasn't running I might not be either" (and I take that as he definitely would not be).
If Trump fell out favor with Republicans after 2020 (like he should have) chances are we are watching Democratic primary debates now and the recent Newsom/DeSantis debate is a probable reality for the office.
I don't think the Democrats have a viable candidate again Trump and that's unfortunate. Stack that with the existential dread a 2nd Trump ter
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Trump's main message lately has been that all democrats are evil and must be destroyed in every way possible. If the democrats subbed in a 35 year old with no political experience as the next candidate for POTUS from their party, Trump and his cult would still label that person as evil and part of the "deep state", and his followers would be riled up to vote for Trump to "save America" from this person.
There is no substance to Trump's campaign. This makes it really, really, difficult to run against.
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It's kind if mind boggling that Trump even has a chance after last time, and with all his legal problems. But then again look at Argentina.
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That's the whole point of protection...to protect these forests against logging in the future.
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No shit?
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Allow me to translate for you. The GP is saying nobody wants to log those forests anyway, and likely never will, and this ban changes exactly nothing.
I disagree with them, actually, because if you click past the predictably trash journalism of guardian article, the proposal isn't a ban on logging.
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by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @04:19PM (#64107209)
Install systemd in those forests so the logs become monumentally harder to use.-
Do binary logs burn more, or less, efficiently than ordinary logs?
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So out of the 144 million acres that the federal government has an agency to oversee (and the federal government generally has way too much land overall, especially in the west, but that's a different topic), 32 million of it qualifies as "old growth", and they don't want that stuff logged.
That seems just fine. That seems like a totally normal policy that won't mess up anything, because 32 million acres is really small compared to the total forested acreage in America (like 800+ million acres), and even small compared to the 144 million acres in question.
This government policy seems totally fine.
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I agree.
Logging old growth forests does substantially more damage than logging on land that's already being used for that purpose. Even if it's only a small percentage of the total area, this is an important step to protecting what little natural habitat we have left.
This government policy does, in fact, seem totally fine.
=Smidge= -
A lot of federal forest is already logged, so it isn't really a big deal to continue allowing logging. The reason a lot of it exists is leftover from WWII when access to good quality timber was a national security issue. Explicitly protecting old growth is explicitly protecting the environmentally important portions for habitat and biodiversity.
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by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @04:21PM (#64107217)
In his youth Biden actually planted many of these forests.
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One of the reasons this may be reversed is because the rules will be overly broad and do more bad than good. Look at California wildfires proliferated because of bans of managing the underbrush near habited areas and nearly half a century of aggressive suppression of natural wildfires.
I agree we shouldnâ(TM)t just be cutting down old forests on a whim, but the US has 30% more tree coverage than during the Industrial Revolution. What is considered âold forestâ(TM), what does it mean to be
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If they stay wet they do this
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I live at the 3000' level in the North Sierra Nevada mountains. We would love to see some aggressive logging because of the fire danger. The trouble is that most ot the wood is second and third growth and not big enough/good enough to log for lumber.
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Why do you want others to pay your insurance for you?
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The US Forest Service already has categories and already catalogs this, they literally put out an inventory
No, this about logging. This is pretty straightforward, it's even in the announcement:
“Our forest ecosystems and communities are struggling to keep up with the stresses of climate change, whether it’s fire, drought, or insect infestations, i
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The announcement is PR and has no substance which Iâ(TM)m afraid most of this rule making will be. There are plenty of gaps in the US agenciesâ(TM) definitions, scientific gaps and errors that havenâ(TM)t been repealed because legal processes are slow and stupid. You donâ(TM)t want the âoeSmokey the Bearâ agency in charge of wildfires.
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Ok well let's revisit this in 2035 and if there are no EV's that fit peoples use cases we can revisit.
But to be technically correct (the best kind) there is no law forcing anyone to buy an EV today.
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I'll take a swing at this since I'm in the middle of it.
I've owned an EV for 4 years and live in the northern Midwest where range really is impacted by cold weather. I use my Bolt EV to commute ~60 miles a day for work, soon to be ~75. It works for me, I have a heated garage and level 2 charger installed at my house.
Never have level 3 charged, and never worry about charging while I'm out and about during the day. I also own a full size truck and 6 person SUV for all our other family needs. I would never
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I think what's lost in that conversation is that "year X" is 12-15 years down the road, plenty of time to get them and the infrastructure "ready for prime time". And "can't buy gas cars" is a bit of a misnomer. Assuming nothing changes (not likely) you won't be able to buy a NEW dino-burner in about 15 years. Nobody's talking about the used car market getting up-ended.
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The gas tax is only very loosely related to the cost of road usage and wear. Its only loosely related to miles driven and miles driven is only loosely related to fuel burned. And none of those are connected at all to the costs of using a specific road at a particular time of day. The real advantage of the gas tax is that you are paying for expensive facilities in very small increments which makes it go down easier.
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This is completely false. Democrat "work across the aisles with Republicans" just means "do what we want or you are evil"
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You're forgetting that many Republicans are also very stupid. It's the stupid that is fucking up the country, since even evil people try not to shit in their own bed. (The biggest current example of this is the red states that refuse to implement the Obamacare Medicaid policies.)
Basically you're saying that the Democrats' name-calling is as bad for comety as Republican name-calling (eg, groomer, Pedo Joe, etc.), obstruction (up to the point of national insolvency) and an attempted autogallope. Sometimes 's
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Yeah, AOC and Maxine Waters are geniuses. There is enough stupidity and senility to go around
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" It's the stupid that is fucking up the country,"
No, its very smart people running the country. Most of these folks went to Harvard or Yale. Smart people with terrible judgment based on narrow experience and knowledge and parochial self-interest underscored by the motto "insiders don't listen to outsiders". Its just a reminder that intelligence is overrated. These folks are smart, ambitious and arrogant. They are insiders. And there is nothing for them to gain by considering either the opinions or inter
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Well, when someone's being "evil", generally you want them to stop doing that. That transcends politics.
As far as not being able to work across the aisle, there's one party in the US who's made obstruction their signature strategy. They recently decided to remove their Speaker in the US house because he dared to try negotiating a budget with the other party as the deadline was coming up.
That's just a very recent, egregious, top-level example that got major news coverage, but I could continue giving examples
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Disagreeing with something doesn't make it "evil". It's truly delusional that you believe only one party practices politics.
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There's politics but you have to intentionally obtuse to have seen a shift in the past 15-20 years.from the Republican establishment, not just in demeanor but in stated goals. Look at the recent Speaker kerfuffle over even just negotiating with Biden. Add in McConnell and the shit with Obama and Merrick Garland, nah dawg, fuck that. No more "both sides", that bird hasn't flown for a decade now.
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I'm curious if this will stop the necessary forest thinning that many western forests need to prevent larger wildfires. Is this just enshrining California's bad forest management policies at a national scale?
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Is this just enshrining California's bad forest management policies at a national scale?
The majority of those California fires were on [nbcnews.com] federal lands [politico.com], not state [latimes.com]. So long as Teslas stay out [yahoo.com], things will be fine. -
Does California practice controlled burns?
That's when you deliberately set fire to a portion of the forest in winter, reducing the load and allowing various seeds that are only propagated by fire to germinate.
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Tell that to the thousands of people whose homes were burned in the last few years. The ones that are still alive, at any rate.
100% of those wildfires were caused by mismanagement on the part of the state, whether it was poor forest management, not enforcing building codes requiring cleared areas around neighborhoods, or letting utilities get away with ignoring their responsibilities to keep transmission lines clear for years, or some other form of malfeasance.
More and more, I can't help but if it's deliberate, to drive people out of California, and reserve it for only the obscenely wealthy (Democrats all) and their indentured servants. If it's not, then they're so stupid they should - literally - be institutionalized for their own safety.
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Are you saying you didn't know what you signed up for?
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Gonna need a little more context to have any clue what nonsense you're jerking off to on this, perv. I suspect you will, too.
But enjoy your wank. You're clearly obsessed with my butthole now, following me around hoping for some attention.
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by bubblyceiling ( 7940768 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @04:38PM (#64107269)
Those trees are so old that if we cut them down, they will not recover in our lifetimes, not even in our children's lifetimes. With climate change looming, probably not a good idea to make irreversible decisions like cutting down old growth trees-
Yeah. Good. Old growth forests are carbon neutral. Losing as much mass to death and decay as they absorb from the atmosphere. Better to cut them down and replace them with young, faster growing species.
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Is a lower orifice your source?
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You seem obsessed with buttholes. You must be a lefty.
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Am I correct then that your source is in your imagination? (See what I did there, asshat?)
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Looks to me like it's your imagination, perv.
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Not totally correct to be fair based on some analysis:
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
Our results demonstrate that old-growth forests can continue to accumulate carbon, contrary to the long-standing view that they are carbon neutral. Over 30 per cent of the global forest area is unmanaged primary forest, and this area contains the remaining old-growth forests.
Half of the primary forests (6×108 hectares) are located in the boreal and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. On the basis of our an
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And then they die, fall over and rot. Walk through an old growth forest some time. It's fewer, large trees with a lot of windfall between them. And all that stuff lying on the ground goes two places. It decomposes, expelling CO2 into the atmosphere. And it provides a nutrient source for the remaining trees. Which may be adding carbon, but increasingly from stuff lying on the ground. Not atmospheric CO2. So old growth forests become a closed system, carbon-wise.
How about actually measuring it.
Soil carbon doe
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Do you not think the decay of the forest wasn't factored into those studies? Can you point that out please?
Do you have a counterfactual that old growth forests are neutral or carbon positive?
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If the study doesnâ(TM)t indicate it in their data which is in the paper, then no. Modern science is full of those gaps because you canâ(TM)t measure everything, and including all your data makes for less flashy headlines and thus grant revenue. However this makes it very hard to make policy decisions based on partial and cherrypicked data.
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Do you not think we can measure the amount of CO2 in a forest and therefore the amount of carbon that will be released over time? Or at the very least estimate to a degree you can build policy around?
If anything your position is the one that needs to show a positive effect of logging, leaving the forest unlogged is the status quo.
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When studies use terminology like "We expect", I can assume that not much rigorous analysis was done.
Yes. I've been in forests. And the difference between a thousand year old forest and a 10,000 year old forest just isn't evident. There isn't 10 times the mass in tree growth or topsoil.
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And maybe when we replant those forests, we plant different species, that are faster growing, and more suited to the warmer environment we have now and will have in the near future.
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This kind of hubris has never bitten humanity in the ass before.
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Actually, we probably need to stop replanting forests. One of the problems with forests is that they are planted with a single species of tree. Miles and miles of genetically identical trees. A natural forest sustains a mix of species, which makes it more resilient.
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Part of the American "culture and heritage" related to forests is hunting with rifles. Which requires rifles, that he wants to ban. So I don't see how that phrase is anything but political poopytalk. And if at least part of it is political poopytalk, all of it probably is.
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From the master of poopytalk. If at least part of what you have to say is poopytalk, all of it probably is.
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It's not all rifles, I think he's okay with the flintlocks that were popular in his youth. No, it's the super duper mega scary (looking) weapons of war (oooooooooohhhhh!) that he wants to ban.
That said, gun confiscation plans from a touched-in-the-head prog (pardon the redundancy) is roughly on par with the Pope lecturing on sex-ed.
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Matchlocks. Flintlocks were a more recent development for military-style weapons. Which none of you civilians need.
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Nah i'm good my city dwelling friend, but i do appreciate you telling me what i need.
=)
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>Part of the American "culture and heritage" related to forests is hunting with rifles. Which requires rifles, that he wants to ban.
Oh? If you need a high capacity rifle to go deer hunting with, or any kind of hunting with, you are certainly doing it wrong! As well,.223 is entirely the wrong caliber to take down deer except at short range with good shot placement. I like 30-30 or 30-06 myself. Bolt action preferred.
Here's Trump's take on taking away guns:
“Take the guns first, go through due proce
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I notice you don't cite any source for that. I suspect you never will, either.
(Trump's position on gun control seems tailored to the audience, with little regard for what he's said before. In front of the NRA, he rejects gun control, while in front of more liberal-ish audiences, he favors more restrictions. In other words, he's just like every other politician, telling potential voters what they want to hear with no intention of even remembering his promises, much less keeping them.)
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not the parent, but Trump did say this. i'm linking to a DDG search result page so you can pick whichever corroboration suits you:
"Take the guns first, go through due process second," Trump said. [duckduckgo.com]
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He also said he'd veto two bills (if they passed, which they didn't) that would have mandated stricter background checks on the grounds that they would violate 2nd Amendment rights, and suggested that teachers be allowed to carry concealed. He said a lot of things.
What did did was sign a bill that eliminated a rule requiring the Social Security Administration from reporting certain medical conditions to the ATF that would keep those people from legally buying firearms, and settled a dispute between the FBI
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The difference is that the other politicians, after failing to keep their promises, will at least try to offer some justification of why they didn't, or couldn't. Trump will say "You're a liar, I never promised that." (Should the issue of campaign promises be raised at all - not likely with the poor state of US media and the man getting his pick of venue.)
He talks to his audience like idiots, because that's all who's there. The other politicians who haven't built a cult of personality still have some normal
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Everybody wants to be a comedian.
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Well, no. I don't want to be a comedian. Most politicians don't want to be a comedian. Most people don't want to be a comedian. With Trump, the word "comedy" doesn't quite fit either, but he certainly likes being an entertainer. That's what he had the most success in, prior to politics - when CBS gave him his reality show. Between those years and the Presidency, he also had a decent run as a contributor on Fox News, providing his expertise in... validating birth certificates.
Of course Fox News is entertainm
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Why is it OK to make up shit like this about non-conservatives, yet if someone takes something actually said by Trump and extrapolates it to action, that is completely unacceptable?
Not once has Biden shown any support for a rifle ban. Not. One. Single. Time.
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if they stop logging how will they keep track of how many tress are cut down, geez... some people never think
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One of the reasons the western US has such a problem with wildfires is that those lands have been somewhat mismanaged for decades, and one of the big examples of mismanagement is the prevention of clearing out growth that should be cleared out. Thus, when the fires inevitably come, they are far worse because you have thousands of miles of very dry fuel.
Similarly, many previously healthy forests are being overrun by destructive beetles and other invasive bugs. Again, uncleared old growth is a major factor.
All of this has grown into a vicious cycle too: natural, managed burns are good for the long term health of the forests. They help stop the spread of invasive bugs and burn off a lot of dead fuel before it turns into an unmanageable bomb. While the state and federal teams do try to allow natural burns to happen, they often have to aggressively put out the fires sooner than is ideal for the natural ecosystem, because the massive amount of unconsumed fuel means greater odds that the fire can get out of control.
We've all seen the horrors of too much logging, and I'm 100% against that. But if you truly care about the environment, then there is actually a decent amount of logging that can happen that is appropriate, helpful, and probably required. Just like a blanket green light on unlimited logging would be terrible policy, any blanket ban on logging is equally bad in the long term. Hopefully whatever policies they settle on will allow for the right balance to exist.
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We don't need mass deforestation to control wildfires. That's dumb. Whoever told you that is either mad or insane, and either way they should be locked up either in a mental institution or in a prison.
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I didn't call for mass deforestation - maybe you were replying to a different comment?
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Is old growth more resistant? Have forests ever dealt with fires and global warming before? Why not just let nature take its course?
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Great question! The problem is that we want nature to take its course... but only to a point. We interfere to try and prevent loss of life, destruction of buildings and other property, and to keep in place forests we deem desirable (e.g. a national park we find pretty).
So what we're after - and this is why it's a tricky problem - is a policy that lets nature do its thing as much as possible, while allowing us to interfere to meet our "unnatural" goals, and then deal with the effects of that interference in
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Why not just insure everyone and let nature manage itself?
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I'll assume you're asking in good faith, so here goes: I already mentioned a few reasons (loss of life isn't exactly something insurance helps with if you're the one dying), but also insurance has to be economically viable to work. Just as insurance companies are starting to pull out of the southeast US due to recurring hurricane damage, the same would happen if we didn't try to prevent property destruction from forest fires, and then basically everyone in those areas would become uninsurable.
So the short a
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Old growth is actually more fire resistant. The problem is, for many decades, government agencies did NOT "let nature take its course" - the policy was to suppress all fires as much as possible. It's pretty widely accepted, now, that was a mistake because it led to the brush and other undergrowth not being cleared out - leading to longer, hotter fires that trees can't survive.
The policies have changed more recently, and they even will now set proscribed burns to try and correct the problem. But a problem th
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It does seem that Biden wants to repeat the mistakes of the past. We went all out for fire suppression and eventually got really big fires. One example;
https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn... [nps.gov]
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Even without climate change it's mad to deforest (even if we re-plant) given the epic scale it was done in the past.
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Why does every burned forest I've seen have lots of green?
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This land I bought 40 years ago and expressly planted for continuous logging will..
Whoa whoa whoa! That stuff's too old!
What? Every stick on that land was planted and tended with the express purpose of logging!
Too bad! We have an economy to destroy!
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This is a completely irrelevant commitment by Biden. It is basically a promise to not harvest trees that were never going to get harvested for other more rational reasons.
The entire point of the US Forest is to responsibly grow trees for harvesting. The agency was created because timber barons stripped the trees and moved west leaving desolated non-replanted land in their trail. The old growth trees on US Forest land are old growth because it is simply too costly to construct a road for harvesting that -
"let's not further destroy the only carbon sequestration mechanism we have working."
The question is why is he promising to do it after the elections? Why not now?
And are Republicans making similar promises? If not, why?
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Do we love old growth forests because you are only subject to nature's moderation, not man's?
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