Beetles & drought have imperiled Montana's forests so much that they no longer clean the air o

[riversedge]

Link to tweet

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/gone-in-a-generation/forest-climate-change.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.71326a12aedf#forest
Really a devastating video








‘They’ve done their damage’

Beetles and drought have imperiled Montana’s forests so much that they no longer clean the air of carbon dioxide. Instead, they are sending millions of tons back into the atmosphere.

Michael Golden has hunted elk on this mountain in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley his entire life. It’s a tradition he shared with his father. But his son is growing up in a starkly different environment.

Montana has warmed 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950, considerably more than the United States as a whole. That added heat is contributing to raging forest fires and bark beetle outbreaks, a combination that has devastated the state’s forests.

What Golden and his son have witnessed is part of a broader trend. The forests have seen so much damage that Montana’s trees, which had provided the crucial function of pulling carbon dioxide from the air, are sending the greenhouse gas back into the atmosphere.

And forests that once provided a counterbalance to climate change are at the moment contributing to it, as carbon-rich trees suddenly burn, or die and slowly decompose. ....................................

[procon]

1. California has the same problem and it's spreading.nt

[GemDigger]

2. This sounds like a call to "cut down the trees". nt

[2naSalit]

4. It does.

I don't think I like that part at all.

[shanny]

5. dead trees

the devastation will blow your mind and it's everywhere

https://www.nps.gov/romo/learn/nature/mtn_pine_beetle_background.htm

[GemDigger]

6. They don't want dead trees. Dead trees is not worth many pennies.

I live in beetle land. We are in the middle of a legal battle of people wanting to kill/cut healthy trees right over there (I point SE out of that window) and there is beetle kill right over there (SSE) and right directly S is a clear cut that never regrew from 30-35 years ago.

If it were scientists instead of business lumberjacks talking about the cuts I would be more open to the ideas. It is a problem that needs fixing but letting the corporate lumberjacks in is not in the best interest of the forests.

[dalton99a]

3. Kick