New York Times, Nov. 17, 2008–Montana campground.
Clint Kyhl, a Forest Service employee working out of Laramie, Wyoming directs an “incident management team” that focuses on managing fire threat in dead forests. Dead forests? Yes. Because more and more, up and down the Rockies, that’s what we’ve got: dead forests.
I don’t need a newspaper to show me this; I can see it when I look at the foothills of the Hyalite Mountains just south of Bozeman, and when I go skiing in the Bridgers to the north.
Posted in Environment, News flash!
This was not on the week’s posting agenda, but there's no help for it: Go check out Thomas Hager’s new blog, ThinHouse.
from Tom's Blog, Oct. 23, 2008
It records his family’s ongoing attempt to cut their energy consumption by about 80%. That’s eighty percent. Gulp. At this point he and his wife have decided it can’t be done in their current house, seven or so miles from town. They’re going to have to move.
Posted in Environment
Got an e-mail recently from a very interesting fellow who’s just written a book about the chemistry and ecology of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, and if you haven’t had your fix of ecological chills recently, keep reading. The e-mail arrived in the midst of the Sock Wars, so I scrutinized it with more than ordinary vigilance, as if it might blow up in my face (revealing another face under a large hat, laughing madly), or as if the virus it harbored might bloom suddenly into sock-tossing flowers.
Having eventually decided (using a fool-proof method of one part deduction and eight parts pure guess-work) that the e-mail was legit, I followed the link provided and found myself reading a long and compelling passage about the unintended and dangerous consequences of nitrogen fixation, the basis for nitrogen fertilizers.
The fixation process, which takes nitrogen from the atmosphere (where it makes up 70% of the air we breathe) and incorporates it into compounds, has doubled the amount of nitrogen in and on the earth. When it’s applied to land as fertilizer, some of it is released as gas – and while some of that gas is the same harmless, inert N2 that we breathe all the time, some is now bonded with oxygen, forming the green-house gas nitrous oxide.
Posted in Environment, Lawns & Grass
To those of you tuning in here in hopes of seeing chairs flying across the room, bottles cracked over pates, and air blue with words banned from the airwaves, go soak your heads. And tune in tomorrow. But be aware that neither James nor I (I believe I can speak for him in this regard) would descend to a barroom brawl. We have our dignity, such as it is. Oh, and if you came in late, you can check out the new page in the sidebar over there on the right, the one giving a blow by blow history of the whole Dueling Bloggers Sock War.
Several days ago, Benjamin Vogt over at The Deep Middle posted — well, a rant, actually, even though it’s mostly an article excerpt — against a huge, secret deal that would make it easier for the largest landowner in the U.S. and in Montana to develop its scattered Montana lands for residential use.
Today, Obama has taken a stand against that deal, saying that it will make forest access more difficult for hunters, hikers, and other sports-minded folk. (Clearly, he’s getting to know his Montana audience.)
So, does that mean there’s hope? Let’s hope so–
Posted in Environment
Given that my "Heavy Metals in Wood Ash" post appears to have gone over like a lead balloon (yuk, yuk), I thought I’d try a shorter version and see if that flies.
To start at the end: a fair amount of research has been done, all of it concluding that it is safe to use wood ashes in gardens in moderation. The ashes contain only trace amounts of heavy metals, and the metals do not move into whatever is grown in them. And yet, on-line question and answer gardening sites often do not mentioned this research or its conclusions.
That makes me mad. I expect people handing out advice to know their stuff. Silly me.
More at The Manic Gardener Podcast
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