Comment by reader Tano Kram: I know this area, this slope, and the range above it. It has all been clearcut at different points. To act like this is a slide-prone are is ludicrous. THe entire state wherever there is glacial till, is a slide-prone area, but what keeps it together is trees. The roundtop mountain top above this area has been clearcut bald. Areas directly to the west and above where this land gave way were clearcut within the last 20 years. The area along the river, which slid before was bare before 2003? Why is that? Because it was probably clearcut after years of selective cutting by loggers who used to not clearcut because they knew it destroyed the viability of the area.
Logging criminals are out of control in the USA, and for Nat Geo to not call it as it is, is a sure sign that they were bought out by moneyed interests and not what they used to be, a source of truth.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140324-mudslides-natural-disasters-geology-science/
--------
The comment is about a bullshit National Geographic article on the Washington mudslide that
doesn't mention the heavy, repeated, industrial logging in the area!!
I live in timber country and tried for ten years to stop this kind of logging in my area--clear-cutting, stripping large areas of the trees whose root systems hold the soil on the mountain. And the first thing I thought of, when this horror hit in Washington, was the notorious industrial clear-cutting in Washington. You can see it in satellite photos--the patchwork of clear-cuts around Oso and their river.
National Geographic describes Oso as "a former fishing village." I have little doubt that it's a "former" fishing village because the horrible industrial timber corporations logged right down to the streamside, depriving fish of overhang shade and clear water.
It takes hundreds of years to restore conditions of good, tall, thick forest canopy, and good fish and wildlife habitat, after these forests are devastated by the massive greed of the corporate timber barons. It takes hundreds and in some cases thousands of years for such forests to grow in the first place. What's growing there now, after clear-cutting of large areas, are baby trees--which don't do well without big tree forest cover, and also create crap lumber, good only for paper pulp or maybe fence posts, and are cut down again, as soon as they are viable as crap lumber--AND invasive plant species or pioneer plant species (as the Earth tries to cover itself with whatever is at hand and grows quickly). The forest never will be the same--and many of its animal/fish species are gone forever.
It's just disgusting what we have allowed corporations to do--not just in Washington but also in northern California and Oregon, and other western states, and what the bastards are doing in Canada as well.
Killing the Earth! When they are not killing the people!
Yeah, some of the people become loggers for these corporate bastards. I've seen that, too. And they even become apologists for the corporate bastards--let themselves be propagandized and manipulated, and then used up and thrown away. I've seen their unions busted, their pay cut, the prevalence of injury and even death, the use of imported scab labor, and the utter devastation of logging and fishing communities, as these corporate masters rape the area and move on, leaving behind mountains that fall down on villages, ruined fisheries and all the rest, and economic depression. But I don't blame the poor. I wish they were more conscious and more organized, but I know they don't have a lot of choices. The real culprits are our corporate rulers and their lapdog, bought and paid for politicians.
National Geographic of also disgusting at times, as they are on this matter--echoing the lapdog nature of corporate media. We need investigative journalists to suss out who the bastards were who destroyed these forests around Oso, and the whole sorry tale of how they were not regulated. If it's like California, they've got regulations on paper that are not enforced. The regs look good but they are shit. Same with the federal regs. NOTHING stops the rich from doing what they damn please. I've seen it. I've been in court on it. That is the truth.
I gave up my environmental activism because I found out about Diebold and ES&S (our rigged elections). We have got to fix that first, if we ever want to have good government again. 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting! Jeez! How can we be so stupid! And now ES&S, which bought out Diebold, has a monopoly on it. One, private, far rightwing-connected corporation is 'counting' all our votes with 'TRADE SECRET' code--code that we, the public, are forbidden to review--and virtually no audit controls. Think about it.
= new reply since forum marked as read
