Advance apologizes for the mixed metaphors. But, the pine beetle is the canary in the mine shaft of the western lodgepole pine forests. It's proof positive of both the reality and the negative health, safety and economic consequences of global warming, threatening life and livelihood.
Millions of acres of Canada's lush green forests are turning red in spasms of death. A voracious beetle, whose population has exploded with the warming climate, is killing more trees than wildfires or logging. . . .
Scientists fear the beetle will cross the Rocky Mountains and sweep across the northern continent into areas where it used to be killed by severe cold but where winters now are comparatively mild. Officials in neighboring Alberta are setting fires and traps and felling thousands of trees in an attempt to keep the beetle at bay.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Of course, that was written in March, 2006. Since then, the author's predictions came true.
Basically, the pine beetles can only survive for just so long during harsh winters. Thus, they've been historically and biologically confined by ecological factors to areas of more moderate temperature. But, as northern winters shorten in length and lessen in severity, the beetles move in. And, being new to these areas of modified environment, they arrive in advance of their predators. The forest is theirs.
It's gotten so bad that the green "evergreen" forests of Colorado are becoming red, yellow and brown tinder boxes, ready to explode into flame and thereafter denuding the land. It's gotten so bad, that even those who make a living raping the land (logging and mining concerns with cheap insider's Halliburton-esque government contracts) are growing concerned.
Our Rocky Mountain forests are now on every travel writer's list of "see it before we kill it", along with Montana's glaciers and Florida's Everglades.
• Western pine forests: This is mostly the fault of the mountain pine beetle, ''a little critter that gets in and messes with the flow of the sap to the tree,'' says Henson, who lives in Colorado. These beetles, long established in Florida and parts of the South, have been running amok lately, in areas of the West that haven't had consecutive cold winters. And they're on the move over the Continental Divide from western Colorado, Henson says.
Already, Henson says he sees big stretches around Aspen and Glenwood, Colo., on U.S. 70 west of Denver, where the trees' pine needles are red. This isn't a normal change. The trees are dying, and they won't regrow for decades.
http://www.miamiherald.com/...
We're screwed. If we started doing what we should do today, it would be too late for the forests, the glaciers and the Everglades.