2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit News 12/9/09: 2000s Hottest Decade On Record

Lots of activity in Copenhagen happened during the past two days.  As expected, results in the form of agreements or pacts haven’t come yet – that will happen next week.  So here are some more climate-related news items to digest while negotiators do their job.  I’ll add them throughout the day as they come out.

The 2000′s will be the hottest decade on record.  Read that again: the 2000′s will be the hottest decade on record.  Both the World Meteorological Organization and NOAA have come out with separate but agreeing analyses on this topic.  Expect NASA to say the same thing when they release their update in the next week.  We’ll have to wait until a little while into 2010 to get additional confirmation, but climate change is occurring today, period, end of story.  What’s left to debate and decide?  How fast and how much we act in the next 5 years.  After that, it becomes how do we react, because a great deal of change will have been locked into the climate system.

Global Warming Links and Stories

The link first: ClimateLurker pulls information together and presents it in tabular form.  If nothing else, check out the temperature table.

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The first story comes from yesterday’s Denver Post entitled “With friends like this, the West doesn’t need enemies”.  The meat?  Brace yourselves: “Bush’s budget calls for cuts to the Forest Service that would further endanger areas prone to catastrophic forest fires.”  I’ve written about part of the problem before.  I’ve also written about some potential solutions to the problems the region is facing, proposed by Gov. Bill Ritter.  The skinny: 1.5 million acres of lodgepole pine have been turned into matchsticks.  That’s a huge potential issue given some bad conditions, which we saw in the beginning of this decade.

Now onto the newest part of the story: Bush’s budget would cut funding by 11.2% for CO, WY, SD, NE and KS.  The hazardous fuels reduction program funding would decrease by 4% and the state fire assistance program would be cut by 23%.  Imagine if somebody proposed cutting any portion of the defense budget by 23%.  The horror!  Let me state right now that I think more folks in this regions are concerned by the potential of a catastrophic conflagration in an upcoming summer than an attack by a terrorist (Confined only to brown and/or Muslim people, btw.  Crazy white people shooting up schools and churches seem to be okay).

Sen. Salazar told USDA Undersecretary Mark Rey and Forest Service chief Gail Kimbell he thought the budget priorities were sending the “wrong message.”  The Op-Ed ends with the following: “These are troubled times for the forests of our region.  They need additional care, not a steward who ignores its problems.”  Which is interesting when you consider they endorsed Bush for President in 2004.  You see, when Republican policies fail, they fail spectacularly.

I certainly hope this problems gets more attention.  It’s not going away, in fact it’s getting worse.  Bush won’t do anything but cut public services in support of privatizing everything.  What will Sen. Salazar do?  Stern messages in an oversight hearing are nice.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t solve the problem.

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I’ll share a second global-warming related story a little later today.

Ritter’s Forest Health Council

I’ve written a little bit about the pine beetle kill problem facing Colorado and the region. Rep. Mark Udall’s (D,CO-02) bills (H.R. 5216 & H.R. 5218) haven’t been acted upon yet in the House. As has been demonstrated before, Gov. Bill Ritter has an honest interest in what happens in his state. With respect to the beetle problem, Ritter created a Forest Health Council last week.

From his press release:

“Many people have been working on this issue for years,” Gov. Ritter added. “The time has come for a unified, coordinated and aggressive action plan that enlists all stakeholders as collaborative partners in this fight. The time has come for state government to lead that effort. The Colorado Forest Health Advisory Council will bring together local, state, federal and private interests to identify and implement short-term actions and long-term forest health strategies.”

Catastrophic beetle kill in Colorado

An article in the Denver Post a couple weeks back continued the story about the damage that pine beetles continue to do to our lodgepole forests. 500,000 acres were affected last year, bringing the total number up to 1.5 million acres. In my travels through Colorado’s Rocky Mountains last year, I noticed entire mountainsides have now been devastated by this phenomenon. Experts anticipated that our forests would soon look similar to Yellowstone Park after the 1988 fire season. That kind of damage is going to take hundreds of years to recover from.

Some more recent news on this subject: Two bills were introduced by Rep. Mark Udall (D, CO-02) to do something about the situation.

H.R. 5216 would amend the newly-enacted energy legislation to allow more trees to be removed from National Forests to qualify for incentives to use “renewable biomass” to generate energy.

H.R. 5218 focuses on additional steps to help Colorado communities act to reduct potential damage from wildfires. This includes setting up responsible personnel and procedures, grants for responsible development and grants for establishing fire-hazard assessment maps.

I’m not sure how I feel about the first bill. Something needs to be done with the dead trees – catastrophic fires is not the best solution. But is using them for renewable biomass the thing to do? I’m not sure and will look into it some more. The second bill seems like a good idea. I’m curious how it’s all going to be funded, as well. There are a lot of competing interests for a shrinking pie. I don’t want to see the region devastated by fires when the situation could have more easily been mitigated beforehand.