Climate Change

[terry f]

       For those who believe in climate change or global warming, is their anything you are doing or changeing in your practices, like going to more drought tolerent trees when you replant. I'm favoring the ponderosa pine and western larch when I thin, but I'm in a dry area already. We have a drought every few years, so I think most of the trees I have should be able to take any changes to come. Tonich posted a good video a few days ago that had some interesting ways of keeping water in the ground, that made sense to me. Water will be the key.

[Okrafarmer]

If there is serious climate change, I tend to think rainfall will be rather unpredictable. The sun will still be shining, there will still be oceans, and the sun will still evaporate water and the clouds will still go somewhere around the earth and release the water in them when the conditions present themselves. Unless the sun stops shining, it can't help but evaporate water, and sooner or later that water must condense and fall to the surface. Local weather patterns could very well change drastically, but if the global climate is experiencing that degree of upheaval, then I don't think we will be at all able to predict what places will become drier and which will become wetter. I suspect the parts of the world that are currently the driest will tend to remain among the driest places, and the places that tend to be wettest will tend to remain among the wettest. the biggest factors that could effect change are a significant change in the proportion of land area to sea area (also involving the level of the ocean rising or falling) and changes in the sun itself. Tremendous amounts of particulate matter in the atmosphere can also make big changes-- like if there were multiple volcanos around the world at the same time, or if all the coal in the world were burned in a single year, or something like that.

I definitely believe there will be some massive global climate changes occurring in the future, but if we got into WHY I believe that, this thread would be unceremoniously moved to the restricted topics forum. I am guessing that if anyone tries to say why they do or don't believe in global climate change, this thread could get moved there too.

[SwampDonkey]

From the perspective of an ex activist, not always environmentalist. For instance, saving whales is not environmentalism. You don't have to believe the message in the video, but you might think for yourself a little. ;)

Greenpeace's Ex-President - Is Climate Change Fake? - Patrick Moore | Modern Wisdom Podcast 373 - YouTube

[Roxie]

The topic doesn't always dictate whether a thread will be moved, so let's keep this discussion (of great importance to many members) from descending into political arguments. 

Our members are awesome and perfectly capable of sharing their thoughts without moving this thread. 

That being said, personally I am a fence sitter on climate change. I also saw the video that SwampDonkey shared and know massive changes have been going on for eons but I do get very concerned about the trash in our oceans. There's so much we should be doing in conservation of our resources. 

[nativewolf]

If I lived in the Southwest I would, if my title came with water rights, be very focused on systems to store water.   I'd keep my tree spacing out and look at more arid climates to understand what might work in the future if the SW keeps drying and getting hotter.  Find someplace a bit hotter and with even less rainfall.  It could be that normal trees just wont make it so you'll be looking for tree desert friendly trees.  I'm not really up on desert trees so I can't recommend anything.  

I see today that farmers across the SW are being notified (multiple water districts) of cutbacks or cut offs.  A very real possibility is that veggies get more expensive.   I'll be putting in a greenhouse this spring for growing veggies year round, if veggies get more expensive it's just a benefit but I've always enjoyed greenhouses.  

[mike_belben]

Dead soil wont retain moisture.  It requires a living soil microbiome to produce the soil aggregation that produces not only the porosity to hold necessary air and water to sustain plant and microbial life, but also the "glues" that bind soil particles together so they arent washed out or settled into tremendous compaction by rains.  I wouldnt ask permission.  Every gutter i could scavenge would go to buried totes behind my fence and a sump pump would irrigate off solar. Drip irrigators wouldnt even be visible. Theyd be covered in strawbale or anything to make a degradeable shade and keep the water in.  Cardboard with dirt to hold it down if i had nothing else. 


In a desert environment one should be looking at any free resources available to cover the ground in carbon and nitrogen bearing materials in any ratio.  Any is better than none. Starting where any living root is and fanning out from there would be the way to go. Any sort of wood product, animal waste, landscape waste, hay, straw... Even torn down building lumber will cover the soil, cool the dirt temp and slow evaporation which allows bacteria and fungi a chance to rebuild.  

Any weed that will grow is beneficial in this endeavor.  It requires a root exudate to feed the microbial life.  Plant life cannot sustain if microbes are not fed by a living root.

Sawdust in the desert would cost a premium if the masses understood soil biology. It should be going there by the traincar.  With just sawdust and poop a forest could be grown in arizona in a century or two and the temps would come down and humidity come up, sustaining other life.

If i were tasked with it, i would start in any little spec of natural shade available.  If there was none i would pile boulders to make some.  The sun is a real brute when you arent protected from it but it is also the giver of life here.

[DMcCoy]

Directly to your question - I logged this summer about 4 acres, clearcut with a few seed tress left standing- Douglas fir, western red cedar, western hemlock, and a rare tree called Tsuga mertensiana subsp. mertensiana var. jeffreyi - Jeffrey's mountain hemlock.  We are right at 1000 feet and Jefferey's mountain hemlock is an odd tree, built for heavy snow with short branches about 12' long.  To me it's an indicator of climate change-ability in that nature is covering her bases, we don't get mountain snows here today.  This tree is here because at some point it had an advantage.
The state forester said I should plant 'Valley Pine' - a drier climate tree that will withstand being submerged during winter.  He recommended against Western Red Cedar.  Both he and the logger said cedars are dying. We keep track of rainfall.  We get on average 86" of rain per year making us a temperate rain forest.  Cedar's thrive here.  The last couple of years have been drier than normal but this year is starting out very wet.
I'm on the fence about climate change as well.  I've been burnt by predictions.  Do we really know for fact what will happen in the future?  How many centuries ago did we think the world was flat?  I'm not saying we don't have an impact, we obviously do.  I just don't believe we are near as smart as we think we are.  Plants love carbon dioxide up to a point.  Perhaps the earth will shed us humans like dead skin.  Who really knows...
So...I'm planting western red cedar, big leaf maple, and vine because I don't know.  Everyone thinks I'm crazy, but maples and cedars have been shown to have a mycorrhizal soil relationship in research done by Susan Simmard in B.C Canada.  Perhaps my cedars are doing great because we also have a large percentage of both big leaf and vine maples.  I will also mix in a few Douglas fir and western hemlock.  What I get from the seed trees remains to be seen.
https://mothertreeproject.org/
I will be long gone by the time my forest gets cut again.  I have no idea if I'm going the right direction or not.  I'm surrounded by Weyerhauser douglas fir reprod monocrop.  They also fertilized by helicopter last year.  This looks like a disaster waiting to happen- to me.
My 2 cents...fwiw

[moodnacreek]

In the first half of my life summer droughts where expected  and so was ice skating in winter or even late fall.  Frost doesn't come now until November. Late blight is a problem now and termites and ppb are everywhere not to mention ticks. Things have really changed.

[Claybraker]

Around here the issue is sea level rise. 10" observed since 1935 might not sound like much to folks that live in nose bleed altitudes of 15-20' ASL. Salt water encroachment doesn't care if you believe in it or not. This could be the last pine crop, next might be oysters.

[grabber green]

Just yesterday I was standing in a coal strip mine pit thats around 3000ft elevation , looking at 4 petrafied trees in the highwall ,still standing vertical where they grew ,incased in sandstone that has sea shell fossils , with the root ball of the trees below the coal seam  that contains a few fish fossils .                                              This is on land that is owned by a large company that sold the state a conservation easment so they wouldn't have to pay land taxes ,while they pump the gas and oil from underground ,while they clear cut the timber . This is all behind signs that the state hung up that say " all  natural features protected".    We have bigger things to worry about than natural climate change.

[snobdds]

I think climate change has been lumped as one term for; weather, pollution, and climate cycles.   Does the climate change, absolutely it's been the one constant for millions of years.  Is our current change due to cyclical weather patterns or pollution?  

I'm reading a book right now from a forester in California.  He studied the trees in California and determined the last warming cycle in the 1600's burned most of the forest on the west coast.  However, that fire lead to the reforestation we see today.  He made the case that warming periods are mother natures way of clearing out the dead and sick and starting anew. 

In Wyoming, we are the head waters for 3 major rivers; the Platte, the Colorado, the snake...and to a large degree the Missouri.  We have no snow yet this year.  I have never been able to get into my cabin past early November...I will be going up next weekend as their is no snow to go snowboarding yet.  The down river towns that relay upon this snowpack to fill the reservoirs is going to be very sparse this year. 

Cyclical weather patterns have been the biggest factor in migration.  I bet we start to see more people move out of the SW and to the east coast as there is not going to be enough water to sustain a large population. 

The west needs moisture and bad. 

[SwampDonkey]

In my area, the last two 30 year climate data cycles has not changed our growing zones for New Brunswick. That's the key, it just doesn't happen that quick. There is nothing new with adverse weather events. We only remember things outside of what we perceive as normal. But also the bulk of data is from the neighborhood. Vast areas are not accounted for because no one is there or they are simply trying to exist. Chasing temperature swings on thermometers or rain drops in a vessel doesn't put food on the table. There was a period in the 1800's the Canadian prairies were bone dry, no water to float a canoe for the fur trade. Roman docks built on water front in southern England or western France, high and dry now. That's not millions of years ago.

And you can not tame mother nature for your own will, sooner or later it bites back. Flooding of low land or not enough water to divert anymore for food and consumption. If you want to grow stuff in a desert or make cities there, fill in slews of prairie wetland, dike everything up, sooner or later the carrying capacity is met and trying to force more out of it accelerated it's decline.

[mike_belben]

i wont make it political per se, but please no one forget that those who do want to get their way, will manipulate any data they can.  i hope none of you have forgetten the university of east anglia being caught cooking the climate data info as the trusted guardians of the planet.  they have an idealogical ulterior motive.

 i trust the hearsay and memories we exchange here among normal people without an ulterior motive, more than anyone in a position of authority.  when you have a motive, you seek a position of authority to carry it out from.

in trying to troubleshoot a disease, ive incidentally learned how proctor and gamble, marketers of the first seed oil to food product, propped up the american heart association to recommend their product- crisco.  and how the 100 years of data now shows a complete correlation with increasing disease/obesity as we left animal fats and butter for the "healthier vegetable oils" en masse.  

so slightly off topic but a great reminder that trusting experts with intentions can be deadly.  i know which side to believe when i see how many very fat kids are in my childrens school today vs how few there were in 1985 or 90

[HemlockKing]

I'm pretty much where mikes at with this in above comment, I know it's happening, I also know governments and corps will use climate change to syphin more wealth from the working people, because that's what they do with everything, always about $$.

That being said I choose to move on my grandfathers land out in the boonies because it's rich in soil, trees, water, wildlife, lots of rolling hills and good drainage, elevation of 40meters at the lowest points, up to 80m, so with all that said I do believe I won't need to worry about ocean taking over my land after I pass it on to kids, and it certainly wouldn't be hard to live off of if we had a collapse of society or extreme events. I come from fisherman family so they all live within 1km of the coast, the towns too. 

[ehp]

guys take a compass and head for the north pole and let me know how far off you miss it , your going to miss it by a lot larger number than most will ever think . 

[Stephen1]

I have watched for a long time...climate change....I built some raised gardens in the last 3 years. It has been a while since I had a garden. I never used to have time. I will keep doing it now as I will make time. I like the idea of a green house. I like the idea of growing more of my own food so I do not have to rely on moving food from the south or any where else in the world to my table. I am not sure it will help the enviroment, but it will definitly help my pocket book.

[SwampDonkey]

guys take a compass and head for the north pole and let me know how far off you miss it , your going to miss it by a lot larger number than most will ever think .

True north is always different from magnetic north. True north is when you use declination and declination changes over time. That declination written on a map 40 years ago, ain't the same as today or 40 years in the future. ;) Used to use 22W a few years ago, now it's less than 19W in this area. Be off 4 degees on decl. and try to compass a line projected by your GPS. Your GPS accounts for decl. You will veer off the line.

[mudfarmer]

Have done a bunch of reading about beavers the past few years, they address a lot of the points in this thread and should not be overlooked. North America used to be lousy with them until we near wiped them out.

They slow runoff, reduce sedimentation, increase grazing, create habitat for an amazing number of other creatures and  very importantly drive water into the ground.

Out west their have been some successful and some not reintroduction and relocation projects, even some cattle ranchers started getting on board after seeing the changes.

Full disclosure, as a young man I trapped some for the fur trade and ripped out some dams for other reasons. That is the prevailing attitude towards beavers here, "they are a nuisance, get rid of them". My tune has completely changed and now try to sing the praises of the beaver to anyone that will listen. You won't catch me disturbing them now and more likely to find me helping them out. Bought more land last year just full of em!!

As wood cutters and geoengineers they are our kindred spirits so everyone maybe try to consider giving your pals the beavers a little slack. Especially if you are concerned about drought, fish, and floods.

A good book to get your tail wet would be Eager by Ben Goldfarb. This one has a lot of info about the work that beavers are doing to try to help us fix the west after we over grazed, eroded and otherwise messed a bunch of stuff up. 

[mike_belben]

those are pretty good points. in the northeast parcels are so small and built on every possible nook that a beaver can be the permanent flooding of your basement or take the majority of your sub 1 acre parcel.  

the more land one has the easier it is to coexist with them.  certainly they are pretty wise about where they work.  you never see a beaver felling up on the hill

[SwampDonkey]

I've got beavers on both ends of the place. One family wants to flood the road, the ones on the back are welcome to it, they are confined to about a 2 ha area of low land bordered by productive forest. It was cedar ground, but it's beaver ground now. Otters, that's all you need to keep things in check. ;D

[Stephen1]

I have 'Bob the Beaver' swim by us at the lake all the time. They live in the river and the delta swamp into my small lake, they have 2 dams above us and another family controls the drainage. We have lots of 'cottagers' that are always crying about the beaver, they are eating my trees, saplings, water is to high, my waterfront is flooding, they always want someone to go bust the dam to drain our lake a few inches. 
Last summer/fall Cathy and I, we would wake up at the cabin, have coffee and chat, then I would see 'Bob' swimming home. I always commented, there goes Bob after a hard nights work heading home.  It wasn't till I was doen by the waterfront at the far end of the property that I discovered Bob had been eating all my saplings  :D  . I found about 20 fresh beaver chewed saplings. Bob would hear us wake up and leaving his work project and head for home. No big deal as I find Mother Nature does a good job of growing new trees. I  love living in Nature. 

[barbender]

We are overpopulated with them in my area. No fur market and lots of their favorite tree, aspen, to munch on so they are just filling the habitat. Unfortunately in flat country their dams cover huge areas and kill a lot of timber. One of my friends does a lot of nuisance  beaver work, he stays pretty busy in the summer.

[Southside]

I have two creeks that run through or along the farm and one of them has been really messed up for about 30 years when a hurricane knocked down a bunch of timber and caused the creek to oxbow, re-route, and basically turn some nice low ground into a mud puddle, dank black water, mosquito farm, mess.  Anyway, last year a beaver or two moved into that area and built a nice series of dams, returning the creek to its original banks, cutting off all the break out flows, and flooded a little shelf.  I was quite happy to see them, yes they did cut some timber, but that amount of work would have cost me a lot more than the value of what they felled.  Sadly they left, but the shelf they flooded created the absolute best grazing I have after the water receded.    

[Tarm]

To answer terry f's question;
I'm replacing white spruce and balsam fir with white pine.
Adding white oak to my red oak plantings.
Trying some bald cypress in logged black ash swamps.
Keeping the basal area in my red pine plantations on the low side to improve drought tolerance.

I'm in NE WI right on the edge of zone 4/5.

[SwampDonkey]

Up here there have been some videos created aimed to eradicate balsam fir. Well, I'm not in that camp. I don't see the decline they portray. First off their portrayal is always in dense thickets or understory stunted stuff. Then they will pick a couple dead stubs with the red needles still on and make it their show case for their message. My woodlot is managed, it is being thinned all the time. I have 1000's a chalk white healthy fir roughly 30-40 years old. I'm removing the junk now, in a  second thinning since the first thinning 10-15 years ago. The mentality in the last 30-40 years has been to do nothing unless government rewards me. Then cry about the state of things. I have thinned a lot of junk fir on mill ground and crown. How anyone thinks a fir with rotten heart wood today magically makes white lumber in 30 years is beyond imagination. :

[kiko]

I blows my blows my mind that some people will deny the existence of climate change.   Just yesterday it was 40 degrees or so when I woke up then by noon the CLIMATE HAD CHANGED to about 75 degrees .   Folks it is real and sometimes we just have to be prepared to wear a light jacket in the am and then remember not to let that jacket stay in the work truck for months.

[WDH]

It is a chilly 56 degrees in Atlanta right now.  

[Tacotodd]

It's 59 at this moment in my town of Bauxite AR.

Climate change IS REAL, but it's cyclical because of the way that the universe works.

[mudfarmer]

Not going to get into climate vs weather but always love a good beaver story or two  ;D

On trying to plant trees with climate change in mind, a neighbor asked the same question. As usual I don't think it is that simple. So you plant a bunch of southern species in Maine because you think it is going to be warmer overall in 10, 20, 100 years. We also have increasing disease and pest pressure (mostly non native invasives). So you plant a bunch of oak but they get gypsy mothed, or you plant a bunch of white pine and they get weeviled to junk, or you plant XYZ and wooooops there is now a fungus that came from mars and wipes out the whole species across the continent. I think maybe all you can do is diversify like Tarm and hope for the best.

Nobody thought the chestnut would be gone, the ash borered, the beech blistered, the elm all dutched up. We can hedge our bets against known variables but it is the unknown ones that will bite us in the cambium.

[mudfarmer]

Barbender there is a fellow here like your friend, he works for USDA I believe but also contracts out. All nuisance beaver work and seems to do quite well..

The state, county, towns and railroad cos hire this guy to get rid of beavers that flood roads and plug culverts. EVERY single year he gets paid to go to the same spots and get rid of beavers then unplug the culvert. Over and over again the man collects his Sisyphus checks for rolling the beavers uphill. There are some 'exclusion' methods and devices that can be used to keep the beavers from plugging the culverts but someone would rather pay tax payer dollars every year to trap the beaver and clean the culvert.

[SwampDonkey]

Some of us have more tree diversity on our ground than we mention. I have a lot of fir, but I have a lot of spruce(s), pine, cherry(s), maple(s), birch(s), ironwood, cedar, aspen(s) and ash(s) by the 1000's as well. A typical tolerant hardwood ridge up here is predominantly sugar maple. A heck of a lot less diverse than my ground. All the (s)'s, means more than one species.

[mike_belben]

I blows my blows my mind that some people will deny the existence of climate change.   Just yesterday it was 40 degrees or so when I woke up then by noon the CLIMATE HAD CHANGED to about 75 degrees .   Folks it is real and sometimes we just have to be prepared to wear a light jacket in the am and then remember not to let that jacket stay in the work truck for months.

You ever been to the desert?  I was out at 29 palms for two different training deployments, Christmas to march.  It goes from frozen canteens to T shirts and back every single day!

[kiko]

Not going to get into climate vs weather but always love a good beaver story or two  ;D

Since this thread can remain out of restricted topics as long as it does not get political; I thought I would try sarcasm.  Looks like this thread could be pushed into restricted topics without climate change discussion.

[Southside]

As a guy who needs to know what the weather is almost daily during the growing season I spend a lot of time looking at multiple forecasts.  Couple years ago I noticed that it was almost always raining at the local airport according to NOAA.  Even when I would drive by the sensor in full, bright, sun, my phone showed that it was raining.  This went on for a year or better, became a local joke.  I contacted NOAA once and they told me they knew about it and there was nothing they could do as the instrument belonged to the FAA.  Do you think that data was disregarded since they know it was not valid or it is baked into the pie?  How many other times and places does this happen?  Yea, I don't trust the data.  


Funny how some "science" is disregarded to prove other "science" when there is a lot of money to be made.  Take for example sample size, lets call it time.  The Al Gore climate change science is looking at what 150 years out of 7 billion and makes these predictions. Take it to the extreme and tell me it makes sense.  Have a scientist, who hasn't been around for say a few billion years,  sit on the beach in Maine for 12 hours on a spring day when the snow is melting, right at ebb tide as the water starts to come back in.  In 10 hours the conclusion becomes that the climate is warming, filling the ocean which is rising, and in a month the entire planet will be under water.  That's about what the climate change credibility looks like. 

[grabber green]

The sahara desert used to be a lush jungle,Antartica use to be a rainforest, volcanos are spewing large amounts of toxic gas every day . More crude oil than humans use in one day is naturaly flowing out in the ocean every day. But I'm killing polar bear by plowing my garden with my 8n ford tractor and driving to town in my 65 f100? ........  Do we live in clown world? ...........        Yes we do.

[Hilltop366]

I'm unsure on the percentage of climate change that is man made verses natural but I won't dismiss that everything everybody does has a effect on everyone and everything else.

We have had British Columbia forest fire smoke here in Nova Scotia, so that is from 3000 miles away, Tennessee to Churchill Manitoba is almost half at 1642 miles.

(terry f had to wait almost 10 years but this thread has finally taken off)   

[Roxie]

I've owned my home for 35 years and have been an avid gardener all my life. My front faces due north, the rear due south.  Plantings in the front were full shade regardless of season or time of day due to the house itself, until I noticed that the sun does now shine there except for about 3 feet from the foundation.  

Did the earthquake in Japan knock us about?  It was shortly after that event that I pulled into my driveway at noon and was dumbstruck to see full sun on my front plants. 

[SwampDonkey]

The old farm house that sat here was in 3 quakes. The first one you don't see in the record, was back between to two big wars. The house settled in that first one 2" lower toward the west. I witnessed two of them quakes in the 1980's, those are on record. Had some damage to a some surface walls, as far I know the damage was not reported. That is also the case for a lot of events, unless it effects many, it's unseen. The capital city here is smack dab centre on a fault line. The epicenter of the two quakes I saw is at Jocks Lake, 100 miles from here. That divides two major river systems.

[Hilltop366]

It was shortly after that event that I pulled into my driveway at noon and was dumbstruck to see full sun on my front plants

A practical joke no doubt, someone turned your house while you were out.

[HemlockKing]

I'm unsure on the percentage of climate change that is man made verses natural but I won't dismiss that everything everybody does has a effect on everyone and everything else.

We have had British Columbia forest fire smoke here in Nova Scotia, so that is from 3000 miles away, Tennessee to Churchill Manitoba is almost half at 1642 miles.

(terry f had to wait almost 10 years but this thread has finally taken off)  

The jet stream sucks a lot of stuff up here as well, the acid rain in the 80s. I remember that smoke this past summer and I could see a haze in the air just from 100 foot

[moodnacreek]

It is a chilly 56 degrees in Atlanta right now.  

Just like New York.

[Hilltop366]

The jet stream sucks a lot of stuff up here as well, the acid rain in the 80s. I remember that smoke this past summer and I could see a haze in the air just from 100 foot

Back in the early 1990's my brother and I had set up some towers with construction staging, cables and anchors in a field on the coast here for the University of Colorado, I was speaking to the professor that was in charge and was asking what they were doing, he explained that they were working with the US military to try and prove or disprove that we were getting most of our pollution from the US (think steel mills, auto industry....). They were mounting sensors on the towers and the military were to release plumes of some kind of gas from a airplane in various locations and see if they could detect it here.

A few months later we went and removed the staging and I spoke to the professor and said "so you figured out that we get your pollution a day or two after you make it over there " he replied "yup, thats pretty much it".

You can time it with the weather, we would watch a Detroit or Boston cable TV weather and see what is coming hear in a day or two depending on the air stream.

[Claybraker]

I blows my blows my mind that some people will deny the existence of climate change.   Just yesterday it was 40 degrees or so when I woke up then by noon the CLIMATE HAD CHANGED to about 75 degrees .   Folks it is real and sometimes we just have to be prepared to wear a light jacket in the am and then remember not to let that jacket stay in the work truck for months.

I have already adapted, started wearing long pants, okay pajama bottoms and !gasp! socks with real shoes instead of shorts and sandals. This too shall pass.

[mike_belben]

Yesterday a buddy of mine called me a bit riled up about all the general crazy going on in american life today and he mentioned that hes 56 and always loved looking up at planes all his life.  

Said as a kid the contrails dissipated and now they linger for a very long time.  "Theyre spraying something man" is his sort of conclusion.  He is prone to go pretty far down rabbit holes. I pick and choose mine.  Just wondering what you guys think of contrails

[Tarm]

Up here there have been some videos created aimed to eradicate balsam fir. Well, I'm not in that camp. I don't see the decline they portray. First off their portrayal is always in dense thickets or understory stunted stuff. Then they will pick a couple dead stubs with the red needles still on and make it their show case for their message. My woodlot is managed, it is being thinned all the time. I have 1000's a chalk white healthy fir roughly 30-40 years old. I'm removing the junk now, in a  second thinning since the first thinning 10-15 years ago. The mentality in the last 30-40 years has been to do nothing unless government rewards me. Then cry about the state of things. I have thinned a lot of junk fir on mill ground and crown. How anyone thinks a fir with rotten heart wood today magically makes white lumber in 30 years is beyond imagination. :

I'm happy you have quality balsam fir Swamp. Balsam fir is at its southern range in Wisconsin. It has a history of non-management. The loggers I've had didn't even bother to sort out the saw bolts when they harvest balsam fir, they just throw it all into the pulp pile. I can't blame them when one stick in ten makes a saw bolt. Softwood pulp markets are declining locally so I've decided to favor a potential sawtimber species, white pine, over a pulp only species, balsam fir.

[Southside]

I see the same thing, and lately I have seen a lot of contrails. However, jet engine technology has changed, folks awareness has changed, the sheer number of flights has increased so I tend to lean on the idea that if something was going on then those doing so would not be so obvious about it. Just flying at night would eliminate most of the observation if there was an evil event happening. 

[btulloh]

Google "chemtrails".  Big conspiracy theory that's been around quite a while. Nothing to worry about if you wear a tinfoil hat. : 

Art Bell, rest his soul, used to have chemtrail people on his radio show pretty often. He was really good at interviewing people with all sorts of interesting "facts" and conspiracies. Hollow earth, chupacabras, Mel's hole, and so forth. Perfect material for listeners during the 1:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. timeslot.  Entertainment but not information, unless someone was predisposed to believing a lot of unusual "theories ".

Just contrails up there, no different than ever.  They vary in density and dispersal rate depending on water vapor content and other conditions of the the atmosphere at 36 - 40 thousand feet.

[Southside]

There was also the other guy that was on the radio about the same time as Art. The one who used multiple voices to act as both the host and guests, he would get actual callers to call in thinking they were talking to a nut job when all along they were talking to the host. He was quite funny and talented. 

[btulloh]

Sounds like Phil Hendri. That was his schtick. He was good at at it. He was at KFI in LA when I lived there. His show was on from 7-10 out there. Must have been syndicated. I used to listen for a few minutes sporadically when I was in the car. His act had me fooled until I heard it a few times. He had some pretty goofy "guests".

[Southside]

Yup - that's him. I remember one time he came right out and told the caller a couple of times that he was doing all the voices and it was a gag show and the caller was so wound up they would just not believe him.  

[SwampDonkey]

Balsam fir is at its southern range in Wisconsin. Softwood pulp markets are declining locally so I've decided to favor a potential saw timber species, white pine, over a pulp only species, balsam fir.

I can't blame you Tarm, in that circumstance. South of me the fir is small and short lived and tends to be more wet ground down there. I wouldn't waste time on poor sites or poor performance. Your time and $$ is best spent on your best ground and tree performance. I have some wet ground here that is in 4 wet runs across the width of the lot. I don't do much in those except encourage all the cedar I can find. Up here there is a fir saw log market for nice fir. It does not pay like hardwood logs, but nice to see nice white fir lumber sliced off them logs.  Don't manage for the market, manage for the land and species best suited to it. Down the road markets change. The saw mills have pushed spruce here, but them mills have closed every market swing, fewer and fewer. Biggest killer is small log size. If you can saw 2 x 12"'s all day, big money compared to 2x4"s. I doubt anyone will start up a veneer mill here, and the one ash mill near here just takes trickles of volume, so they won't make you rich. White pine doesn't fetch much extra money, as the Irvings dominate that market. The same perfect log over in Maine is probably 3 or 400 more $$ than here, Irving buyers to. They want to keep NB poor. Oh, no, you're not allowed to haul over there.  It's like Twin Rivers wouldn't let us haul veneer spruce to Maine for more $$, their mill.  If you hauled to their Plaster Rock mill, guess where that veneer went. ;) If you ask for more money, they just tell ya they don't need it, we can get cheaper off crown. Have a nice day. :D

[SwampDonkey]

The AM band here has lots of that stuff coming out of New York. By daylight, those AM stations are static air. :D

As James Randi would say, the wooo wooo of wooo'dom. :D :D

Youtube is full of video of airplanes 'dumping' stuff up there. :D You don't know the source, nor do you know who or what is being videoed. You can video just about anything and make up a good story and people will fall for it. Look at 'War of the Worlds', but contrary to popular folklore, it was not the masses in panic, just the folks vulnerable to the notion of such nonsense. Very few people were panicked by it at all.

[Roxie]

Today's Guardian has an article about cloud seeding being successful for the Chinese making it rain prior to big events in order to lower air pollution from moderate to good. 

They've invested heavily in that technology and you can't help but envision how much we could use that out west for agriculture, wildfires and humanity. 

[mike_belben]

i heard barge makes it rain whenever he goes to town. 

[snobdds]

Today's Guardian has an article about cloud seeding being successful for the Chinese making it rain prior to big events in order to lower air pollution from moderate to good.

They've invested heavily in that technology and you can't help but envision how much we could use that out west for agriculture, wildfires and humanity.

The ski resorts in California, Utah and Colorado do that.  Ironically they take all the moisture out of the sky before it lands on the bread basket of the US.  Wyoming has it outlawed, but there are people that want that changed.

The industry with the deeper pockets win that battle.

[mike_belben]

The industry with the deeper pockets win that battle.

ill say so. 

[Ed_K]

 We've had a few new volcano's the last few yrs, a few more and it will be snowing in Fl. 12 mo a yr   ;D 8) .

 Contrails are nothing more than toilets being flushed after a mile high adventure  ;D .

[Cedarman]

In October of 2001 we took an 11 day canoe trip down the Green River in Utah.  No outside communication what so ever.  Each day we would look up and look for the contrails. Then say" Yup, all is well, they are still flying".