11/10/11

Two ten year-olds teach Rapid City yet another lesson at M Hill

Girls go to college to get more knowledge; boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider. How much more stupider can Rapid City be? Especially after a May, 2010 grass fire in Robbinsdale.

C'mon, Mike: get out there and burn!

One more time from an April post at interested party:

Yep, pure heptane.

Turpentine distilled from the California pines such as Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa) and Gray Pine (Pinus sabiniana) yield a form of turpentine that is almost pure heptane. When producing chemical wood pulp from pines or other coniferous trees with the Kraft process, turpentine is collected as a byproduct. Often it is burned at the mill for energy production. The average yield of crude turpentine is 5–10 kg/t pulp. In 1946, Soichiro Honda used turpentine as a fuel for the first Honda motorcycles as gasoline was almost totally unavailable following World War II.
The spontaneous ignition of the beetle-killed ponderosa pine in a hundred-yard radius would be measured in megatons. Now consider that there are 70 million acres of collapsed pine forest in the United States.

So, here's the part that nobody wants to talk about publicly:

For parts of the West this is as much a reduction in the threat of weaponized wildfire than an economic development opportunity. Harvesting timber is diesel fuel intensive. Just paying for pine removal after the collapse of the housing market has exacerbated the potential for catastrophic conflagrations.

Keystone, Hot Springs, Custer, Pringle, Hill City, Rochford, Nemo, Silver City, Deadwood, Lead, Newcastle, even Rapid City, Piedmont, Sturgis and Spearfish are at extreme risk from the tactical use of wildfire.

Just six strategically-placed improvised fuel air explosives (FAEs) deployed during red-flag conditions have the potential to create a firestorm that would be virtually unstoppable. Repeated discussions with the Forest Service, law enforcement, fire department officials, even the Rapid City Journal, elicit smirks and suspicion from their representatives.

Here is today's US burn index from NOAA at risk to a Republican government shutdown.



Rapid City, Helena, Flagstaff: CLEAR THE FUCKING PONDEROSA PINE AND RESTORE ASPEN HABITAT!!!!

9 comments:

freegan said...

I think chop and drop then bury and create swales that will absorb the small amount of water that falls, create micro climates to grow in and keep soil from eroding further (which is what burning would do). When you burn you are releasing nutrients into the air, when you chop and drop and bury the soil gets most of the nutrients. It also catches the carbon. Then you plant not just aspen but diversify, plant for our needs. The more diversified the crop,and supporting plants, the healthier the environment. This could be a way to make an area more self-reliant as well.

caheidelberger said...

Holy cow! Do we give Kristi what she wants, lift the NEPA rules, and tell the loggers to knock themselves out in a final orgy of tree-cutting?

larry kurtz said...

It's important to remember that much of the West doesn't look like it did before European settlement. Fire has been a feature of her systems for countless eons.

Burning introduces carbon micro-particles to aquifer recharges, kills beetle larvae and encourages fungi like boletes to fruit. Aspen rhizomes are already growing in those soils and will compete vigorously if the urban deer are kept away.

The towns I mentioned should suspend dog leash laws on rotating days to keep deer out of the urban/wildland interface. Basin has no urban deer 'problem,' bro.

Identify the oldest of the ponderosa pine, protect them from the earth haters, develop a formula, remove the youngest and convert them to biodiesel. The statutes already exist to implement aspen restoration, only the will of the electorate stops that.

It's why the Forest Service should come out of the Department of Agriculture and take refuge in the BIA where it is safe from the earth haters like Harry Christianson and Larry Mann.

larry kurtz said...

Btw: I want it happen by executive order so it can't be tampered with.

President Obama can organize a community to ensure that all the ground under Forest Service management, including the National Grasslands, are occupied and protected by the tribes signatory to the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty where applicable.

My plan is only for the Custer National Forest and Black Hills National Forest as it's all my puny brain can handle.

Thunder Basin National Grassland is managed by remote control from Colorado and is at risk to wholesale rape by oil, gas, and coal. I don't know her tribal history and defer to those who do.

Nebraska needs to address its ponderosa pine problem in historic Indian treaty ground, too, so does Montana.

Where tribes don't have historic claims, a forest manager can look more like the Bureau of Reclamation.

Anonymous said...

Our Troops do NOT Protect Our Freedom and We Should Stop Thanking Them for Doing So. Let's make one thing crystal clear, no member of the US military contributes in any way whatsoever to protecting the freedoms of the American people. As a matter of fact, they are more likely to turn their weapons on you than they are to defend your Constitutional rights.The only people on this planet Earth who can affect your freedom are members of Congress, local legislators and the members of enforcement institutions who will blindly follow the rulers who sign their paychecks. And, while your beloved troops are murdering people around the globe, yes, I said murdering, your Congress and local legislators are eliminating your freedoms, en masse, without any intervention by our so-called protectors in the armed forces.The US military, not once but twice, committed the single largest mass murders in history by dropping nuclear weapons on civilian populations, including of course, on women and children.

larry kurtz said...

anon, I'm going to let your comment stand but disagree with most of it.

Our troops are doing what they're ordered to do and do it with professionalism and honor. It is our leaders that need to stand to reconcile military actions contrived under false pretenses.

This is just one day when veterans are honored; thank a service member today for her or his sacrifice.

Anonymous said...

http://youtu.be/aqIHKWd9rSc

Duffer said...

Larry . . . of course you're correct that uniformed-service members are following orders; but anon is dead-on in his/her comments about personal freedoms in this country, and specifically who/what are responsible for their erosion.

Two tours with the US Army in 'Nam talking here . . . and I say the wars going on now are no damned different, and they have nothing to do with personal freedoms that are advertised daily by our government - and everything to do with advancing the interest of corporations around the globe.

It's all a bad joke.

Duffer said...

. . and of course, our governments symbiosis with its military industrial complex. Now they've militariized our local LE agencies.
It's all over but the shoutin.

Jack-boots will be kickin down our doors with impunity; and those
"troopers protecting our freedoms" will be backin 'em up.