The California Wildfires: A podcast interview with Dr. Reese Halter, president and co-founder of Global Forest Science.
Dr. Reese Halter
"Weather can be wild and it is getting wilder. Global warming has been linked to myriad natural catastrophes, and race is on to change the way we interact with our planet. In the next decade, we will experience the greatest technological advancements ever witnessed, as we move beyond our reliance on fossil fuels and harvest the sun." - Dr. Reese Halter.
Welcome to a Big Picture edition of TPR - This is Peter Clayton reporting. Joining us today from Southern California is TV host, syndicated science writer, and author of Wild Weather - The Truth Behind Global Warming,Dr. Reese Halter. He is president and co-founder of Global Forest Science. Dr. Reese, was interviewed very briefly on Keith Olbermann's show, Countdown, this week, and I wanted to know more, so here he is!
Only months ago Dr. Halter publicly cited new research indicating Southern California has reached unprecedented levels of vulnerability to major forest fires given drought conditions that haven't been seen in the state for 130 years. With 16 million people in the Los Angeles basin surrounded by mountain forests and a million beetle-killed trees as kindling, residents of Los Angeles are facing imminent risk to their properties, families and themselves.
Dr. Halter has spent years researching in person the wildfire conditions in Southern California and elsewhere. He says that the region can expect less snow in winter in coming decades, increased length of fire season and more fires in the mountains. Fire storms are more likely in coming years as temperatures continue to rise, and with fire suppression policies that have been in place for the past 80 years, the stage is set for monster infernos.
From PRWeb
According to Dr. Halter, the latest research shows:
There are currently a million dead standing trees within the San Bernadino Mountains alone, all killed by bark beetles and a historic
drought.
A couple hundred thousand homes in Southern California are along the urban wildland interface, all at risk.
Well-intentioned public fire prevention campaigns such as "Smokey the Bear" have had the opposite effect. By interrupting the natural fire
cycle in California and the West, which cleans out dead trees
naturally, we have inadvertently created a powder keg that nowsurrounds the Los Angeles area.
If we are not going to let the fires burn naturally then we must take action now and thin the forests or run the risk of facing another inferno.
The worst drought in 130 years is a wake-up for all Californians: Now we have no choice but to plan to secure water for a drier future.
Tree rings from bristlecone pines living at 11,000 feet above sea level on the White Mountains in east-central California clearly shows the climate over the past four millennia. California has just experienced the third- or fourth-wettest century in the past 4,000 years.
Ninety percent of the fresh water in California – which has the eighth-mightiest economy in the world – comes from the slow springtime melt of the snow pack that accumulates each year along the majestic Sierra Nevada. Another 6 percent of the fresh water needed in our state comes from the Colorado River. That water is vitally important to the Coachella and Imperial Valleys and to Los Angeles and San Diego.
Global circulation models predict that as global temperatures rise, so, too, will the occurrence of more intense and frequent wild weather, including periods of prolonged drought.
Currently, there are about 18 million people in Southern California. By 2020, that figure is expected to rise to 23 million. California's state population by 2050 is projected to exceed 55 million people – supplemented by millions of tourists each year.
Over the past decade, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has created an important new reservoir at Diamond Valley Lake. However, it is not sufficient to sustain a burgeoning population and agriculture industry in Southern California with a warmer and drier climate in the ensuing decades.
Two dam-building projects also are currently in the works. One dam would be built above the existing Friant Dam, north of Fresno, and the other in the grasslands north of Sacramento. There also are plans for water-conservation-related improvements to the vital Sacramento Delta.
We'll need all these projects, and more.
Some climate models predict that global temperatures will rise between four and 10 degrees this century. Utilizing the most conservative estimates from the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, modelers estimate that Sierra Nevada's water reserves will drop by at least a third by 2060 and a half by 2090.
Moreover, the seasonal distribution of available water will shift from spring and summer to the winter months thereby significantly increasing the frequency of winter floods and lethal summer forest fires.
The total snowpack accumulation this past winter along the Sierras was 40 percent of normal recordings. But the eastern Sierras, where the Los Angeles basin draws about half its water supply, marked its second-lowest snowpack on record. Fortunately, the bumper 2006 snowpack will sustain Southern California but only with stringent water rationing this summer and fall.
What happens if the winter of 2008 is dry? Although initially the effects of a drought are not as fearsome as those of a hurricane or tornado, the long-term outcome of a drought is deadly – especially when droughts persist for years.
Over the past four thousand years, droughts have annihilated the Akkadians, Mayans, the Pre-Incan Moche and Tiwanaku, and the Anasazi of the American West's Four Corners region. Some of the droughts lasted centuries while others occurred at three-, six- and nine-year intervals.
Furthermore, droughts promote wildfires. Sixteen million people live in the Los Angeles basin, which is surrounded by forested mountains. The forests are tinder-dry, and there are a million beetle-killed trees from previous droughts available as kindling. We must be very careful in the forests this summer and fall.
Every California resident has a role to play with water conservation. All households and businesses that haven't should switch to ultra-low-flow toilets and shower heads. As the drought deepens, trees should be watered only at night, and lawns not at all. Use commercial carwashes because they recycle water.
Educating primary and secondary school children about water conservation helps ensure that the message is taken home to parents.
Clearly, more reservoirs to capture and store mountain water throughout the summer months must be undertaken and secured.
California's prosperous future is incumbent on a reliable source of water.
##
About Dr. Reese Halter
Dr. Reese is an award-winning conservation scientist, best-selling children's author, syndicated science writer, TV nature documentary host, and professor of Botany at Humboldt State University, California. Dr. Reese's love of Nature began as a child. A springtime tree-planting ritual with his father and brother became his passion. He knew from the time he was a child that he wanted to be a tree scientist and went on to attain three university degrees including a PhD from The University of Melbourne, Australia. It became clear at a young age to Dr. Reese that there was a tremendous lack of basic information on how trees and forests function. He believed that teams of multidisciplinary problem-solving scientists needed to work together to short-circuit ecological disasters, and identify and protect fragile ecosystems.
In the late 1980s, Dr. Reese founded Global Forest Science as a charitable international forest research foundation. He donated a substantial amount of his inheritance to the foundation. Today with an international team of over 140 scientists, Global Forest Science is a world leader in forest science research and conservation and has been called the Red Adair of the forest biology world. Global Forest Science has many victories, including the legislation from Ottawa to protect the threatened westslope cutthroat trout of British Columbia and Alberta, protection of the world's largest ant colony in Japan, using trees and forests in Manitoba and Wyoming as a barometer of rising global temperatures, opening an international insect quarantine facility at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, saving New Zealand's multi-billion-dollar forestry and agriculture industries from the Australian painted apple moth and understanding dieback of the tallest trees on Earth - California redwoods. Through Global Forest Science, Dr. Reese visits schools and encourages children worldwide to embrace conservation, science exploration, and learning.
Channels 
9.2 MB 
iTunes
