An Ignorant Denver Post Editorial

The Denver Post published an amazingly ignorant editorial today that it called "With Friends Like These, The West Doesn't Need Enemies."

The bark beetle tree kill in Colorado has been historic in magnitude. With all this tinder lying around on federal land, you might think the government would be redoubling efforts to haul out dead trees, make the forests healthy and support fire management activities.

Unfortunately, that's not the reality reflected in President Bush's budget request for 2009.

His budget actually cuts funding by 11.2 percent for the region of the Forest Service that includes Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas.

To hear the Denver Post tell it, this is all President Bush's fault. It conveniently leaves out the fact that President Bush or his successor could direct the entire Federal budget toward getting rid of the dead trees and not a single tree would be removed.

Why? The Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, and their congressional toadies like Mark Udall, Ken Salazar, and John Salazar have laws in place which prevent the building of forest roads necessary to do the work.

If the Denver Post did a Lexus-Nexus search, it would discover that the victims who lost their homes in last summer's Lake Tahoe fire were blaming the Sierra Club for going to court to stop the construction of forest roads. The roads were needed for the thinning that would have saved their homes and at least one life. The problem wasn't a lack of Federal funding. It was a lack of common sense by the Mark Udall's of the congress.

Mark Udall not only doesn't want new roads to be built, he wants existing roads closed. In 2007 he proposed an amendment to do just that.

Yes, the west has friends that it can do without. Ken Salazar, Mark Udall, and John Salazar along with their eco terrorist sponsors in the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society are much higher on that list than President Bush or his successor, Republican or Democrat ever can be.

Wake up, Denver Post, and put some pressure on these turkeys. Your editorial was a cheap shot that gives the real culprits a free pass. It was pure ignorance.

Still Dragging His Feet - And Lying About It

We've called Mark Udall a liar before. He doesn't just tell little lies. He tells big lies on the Hitler theory that if you make the lie big enough and repeat it often enough, people will believe it.

Today, in the Rocky Mountain News, he was quoted as saying:

"I have been sounding the alarm on the beetle and wildfire risk problem for our forests since my first year in Congress," Udall said Wednesday evening.

Mark Udall has been a Sierra Club toady since his first year in congress. The Sierra Club's position on wild fire risk was to oppose thinning until the Hayman fire in Colorado.

By pure chance, the Hayman burn area included a small experimental area where thinning had occurred. The fire didn't burn hot enough to kill the trees in that area while the other, unthinned areas burned so hot that the soil was fused and even the roots were consumed.

That demonstrated that the Sierra Club had been wrong to oppose thinning, so they modified their position slightly. Instead of coming out against thinning, they went to court to oppose the road building that would have made thinning possible.

Mark Udall has aided the Sierra Club with their mindless roadless policy. Last year, he was the author of roadless legislation.

Even the bills he just introduced do not propose thinning. They propose studying thinning.

What is needed now is clear cut fire breaks and the forest roads that would permit the dead wood to be hauled out. Without fire breaks, the dead forest will burn until it runs into natural fire breaks, and it will burn hot. Mark Udall isn't ready to propose that, nor is he willing to propose a total relaxation of timbering restrictions in areas that will die anyway.

The sad thing is that Mark Udall and his partner in this crime against Colorado, John Salazar won't even fight hard to see this legislation pass. To do so would risk the funding flow from Sierra Club members in California who don't have to look at the dead trees or fear running for their lives in a fire.

Mark Udall's campaign motto should be "Burn Colorado, Burn."

And the big blue lie machine churns on.

Allard Secures $12 Million - Where is Udall?

The Rocky Mountain News is reporting that Wayne Allard got $12 million from the Federal Government for our dying Colorado forests.

The money would be in addition to the $12 million in federal emergency funding announced Wednesday by U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard , R-Colo.

Allard said he had secured the money, which includes $8 million for the Forest Service and $4 million to reduce beetle-killed trees on state and private lands.

It makes us wonder why Mark Udall couldn't have tried to get these funds last summer. He announced a small scale bill but hasn't pushed it in deference to his Sierra Club allies and contributors.

A Slap In The Face To Mark Udall

The Coloradoan managed to issue Mark Udall a slap in the face:

Sometimes, the best thing politicians can do is to step aside and let science lead to decisions.

And a report released Monday by the U.S. Forest Service that shows the infestation of pine bark beetles has extended to the Front Range and Wyoming is a good opportunity.

It is no secret that Mark Udall has always opposed both forest road building and more than token forest thinning. He is selling his vote to the Sierra Club for big dollars. So, now he wants to hold a "workshop" on the issue. Just more of the same politics.

Sadly, this report could become a lightning rod for extremists [ like Mark Udall and his allies] who say that no intervention is needed or for those who would advocate massive and intrusive thinning programs. More than likely, the best solution is in the middle somewhere.

Allowing the infestation to go unchecked would affect key economic factors in Colorado, including the skiing and recreation industries. Such a scenario would raise the risk of a catastrophic forest fire in Colorado followed by devastating floods. Water supplies also could be placed at risk.

If every timber company in the state and region (there are only a single handful) started cutting wood 24 hours a day, they couldn't make a dent in the number of fire breaks that need to be prepared to stop a catastrophic Colorado fire. Frankly, if every adult in the state went into the woods and did nothing but thinning for the next several summers, we still are likely to have a catastrophic fire.

Newspapers like the Coloradoan have to start telling the public the truth about the magnitude of the problem. Negative comments about "massive and intrusive thinning programs" aren't helpful because they 1) couldn't be mounted or paid for even if they were contemplated and 2) provide cover for those extremists who want to prevent any thinning.

Carbon Sequestration-An Expensive Boondoggle

Mark Udall has introduced a very expensive bill directing the Secretary of Energy to conduct research on the long term "burial" of carbon dioxide. The cost of the bill, $420 million a year over four years suggests that even after the research is done, using the technology would be both expensive and dangerous. Insurance companies want no part of this project, so the cost of the bill is under stated.

If the amount being considered for this research were reasonable, which it is not, this might be an appropriate use of federal funds and research facilities like Los Alamos.

We can't help but note that nature already provides a natural mechanism for long term sequestration of carbon. It is called "trees." Of course, they only store carbon while they are alive. Of late, there hasn't been a lot of interest from either Mark Udall or the environmental community in keeping our forests either alive or healthy.

One wonders how many nuclear power plants could be sited and started for the same $1.7 billion that Udall wants to spend on this boondoggle. The last we heard, nuclear power plants put out no CO2. Does Udall consider nuclear power a solution? Not at all.

Not long ago, Udall was hyping his bill to thin forests around Colorado mountain towns. The piker could only allocate $22 million a year for that project. It is becoming more and more clear that Mark Udall's priorities are driven by Washington based lobbies and not the needs of Colorado.

Thinking the Implications All the Way Through

The environmentalist left, personified by the Sierra Club and it's poster boy, Mark Udall, has adopted a strategy of allowing forest fires to burn, not only burn, but burn hot.

He and they don't want there to be forest roads which might be used to thin forests to prevent severe burn overs that put a crust on the soil. Crusted soil, like that in the Hayman burn area make it difficult to reforest the area. Estimates are that it will take 700 years before that area is fully restored.

Yes, Udall has sponsored a bill to thin near mountain communities. That is a half measure intended to protect him from criticism should there be the large scale property loss that would accompany a fire near one of those communities. He was careful to assure the environmentalist left that the thinning would be very limited.

Now, his allies at Colorado Confidential are reporting that forest fires release large amounts of mercury into the atmosphere:

"The mercury in the forest is not harming anything,. But when a fire releases it from the vegetation and the soils, it comes down again, precipitated in rain or snow, where it may end up in a body of water. There it gets converted in methyl mercury. That's what we're concerned about. The more fires we have, the more mercury will end up in the waterways," [ NCAR scientist Hans Friedli ] says."

This is one more argument for forest thinning. It demonstrates once again that the Sierra Club, Mark Udall, and the rest of the environmentalist left can't seem to think the policies they want to impose on the rest of us all of the way, or even part of the way through.

Udall Throws $22 Million at his Problem

Mark Udall may have come to realize that his bear hug with the environmentalists can be blamed for the destruction of millions of acres of forests by fire and beetle.

Now, he has sponsored a bill to get the Congress to appropriate $22 million so that the forest service can "help communities cope with wildfire threats, create wildfire response plans and provide grants for beetle-killed trees to be used for energy production. "

The entire Colorado delegation is behind the bill, and that is good news. The bad news is that Udall's bedfellows in the environmentalist left oppose it.

Sloan Shoemaker, director of the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop, said it’s good to see the congressional delegation working together to address bark beetle concerns. But “the bill’s a mixed bag” because he fears it will streamline the public involvement process under the National Environmental Policy Act.

“It feels like they’re monkeying with bedrock environmental legislation in order to sort of apply the wrong solution to the problem,” he said.

The environmentalist left wants the right to go into court in Colorado to slow the thinning process. They think thinning is the "wrong solution," and that the only right solution is to let the forests burn.

A Wayne Allard spokesman thought the bill would pass if a national environmentalist group didn't oppose it. So much for that.

While we applaud this bill, we wonder if Mark Udall's purpose is to use it to insulate him from his own record of environmental extremism. $22 million doesn't go far, given the magnitude of the problem. Consider that it costs $600 an acre to reseed a burned forest. What must it cost per acre to remove the undergrowth and excess trees? Common sense suggests several thousand dollars per acre. If we assumed that it cost only two thousand dollars per acre, $22 million would thin only 11 thousand acres, or 17 square miles (an area a little bigger than 4 miles by 4 miles).

Unfortunately, Udall's inclusion of bio fuels grants in the bill suggests that he is unserious about solving the problem. Allowing the forest service to keep forest roads open to the public might do more good than this bill, and yet Udall opposes that.

The Costs of Roadless Wilderness

The Colorado Index is suggesting that Boulder Liberal Mark Udall is creating the potential for ever larger forest fires by closing the roads. The author observes that closing the roads makes it difficult or impossible to thin forests and notes that the Lake Tahoe residents who were burned out are complaining about the Sierra Club's interference in the thinning process.

Closing the roads also might cause the deaths of fire fighters and a huge infestation of beetles with the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of acres of forest.

The essays are here, here, here, and here.