An executive order issued before Christmas instructs the secretaries of agriculture and interior to consider harvesting 4.4 billion board feet of lumber on public lands. That represents a 31% increase in logging since 2017.
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| 2018 Camp Fire: the deadliest in CA history |
Forest ecologists say logging our way out of the climate crisis which is causing more and hotter fires does not make sense. Despite the science, the useful idiot occupying the Very White House has repeatedly blamed wildfires on poor forest management. His executive order also directed "raking" of federal forests in which brush and debris would be systematically removed, pointing to Finland as an example. Finland's president denied raking ever entered into his comments about Finland's forest policy.
James Reilly, a former petroleum geologist and astronut is the director of the US Geological Survey. In a series of 2018 emails he asked scientists to "gin up" emission figures for him so he could make a decent "sound bite". He cherry picked the data for figures that would make a "good story'. A California forest ecologist and co-founder of the John Muir Project called the revealed strategizing a "blatant political manipulation of science." The effect of logging on fires is highly variable, depending on weather conditions and methods used. The regime has actively sought removal of climate change considerations from many of its decisions including amending the nation's foundation environmental protection law, the National Evironmental Protection Act (NEPA).
In November 2018, Reilly asked again for carbon dioxide statistics generated by two devastating California wildfires, the Camp and Woolsey fires. An Interior Department spokeswoman emailed Reilly requesting the information so she could put out a statement by then Secretary Zinke. A few days later, a secretarial press release had the title, "New Analysis Shows 2018 California Wildfires Emitted as Much Carbon Dioxide as an Entire Year's Worth of Electricty". Parroting the regimes propaganda line, Zinke said there was too much dead timber in the forests fueling catastrophic fires. He advocated mechanical thinning and other techniques to "improve forest health and reduce the risk of wildfires". He failed to mention that the wildifire which obliterated Paradise, CA occurred in a forest that had recently been thinned. A scientist from Oregon State University said if the comparison of wildfire emissions had been made to national carbon emission they would have found it amounted to only 1.7% of fossil fuel emissions. Environmentalists say the regime overstated the carbon data as well as using it selectively to support an industry goal of more logging.