There is a litigious corner that equates environmentalism with the absence of humans (colonial myth of wilderness) and for that group building green is incompatible with environmentalism. A small litigious group has outsized influence, as projects only go forward where they aren't opposed.
US environmental law was literally created to be a big veto machine that stopped things from being built, because the things being build +55 years ago were not environmentally considerate. We no longer start river fires regularly, but some set their preferences at that time and haven't adjusted.
Is it profit or subsidy and transfer? Hard to beat wind or solar for cost of goods until you externalize cleanup and environmental impacts. That big up front expense and variable price hurts project finance for renewables. The economic system was designed to support fossil fuels, a strategic end.
And the central and northern cascades are mostly empty of projects, despite being heavy timber and ready for big stand replacement events. We lost a lot of Doug fir and true fir to extreme temps and are losing red cedar to rainfall extremes (long dry-spells). Big fires are coming, and more smoke.
The project map is good for seeing where work is, but the WA map doesn't make it easy to see how big these projects are or what kind 😐 A roadside project on San Juan Island at $625 an acre counts, but looks different than central or eastside timber. foresthealthtracker.dnr.wa.gov/Results/Proj...
Anywhere the land was tended with fire and subsequently fire suppressed (including the coast and islands) one could try again to beat back the Doug fir. But we don't have the same historic objectives (we're worried about wildfire rather than food supply and ease of travel). Each needs its own work.
Nurse log. The dead entity that by parting out of its great store of value facilitates seedlings, newly established, destined to replace its former standing. Importantly, the nurse log has no say in the manner or suddenness of its demise or the ways in which its former glory is parted out.
There is no special merit to the argument ex nihilo. Just because the masses attract for gravity doesn't make it so in electrostatics, similarity in the form of the argument is irrelevant. Here: individual property vs. state sovereignty. It isn't even close to the same area of law or consequence.
🧪⚒️ In a recent paper in Nature Communications, Dr. Társilo Girona and Dr. Kyriaki Drymoni claim that their machine learning algorithm can predict upcoming large earthquakes. We tested the method, and found that it does not work. Read more on our blog.
We examine a new earthquake paper in Nature Communications.
As many forests fail to recover from wildfires, replanting efforts face huge odds -- and obstacles. Note @mhurteau.bsky.social is a subject matter expert in this AP article 🔥
The U.S. is struggling to replant forests destroyed by increasingly destructive wildfires, with some areas unlikely to recover.