Pine Beetles Put Another Nail In The AGW Coffin

12 Responses to Pine Beetles Put Another Nail In The AGW Coffin

1. omnologos says:

   January 16, 2011 at 2:41 pm

   Global warming, having been responsible for the explosion of pine beetle populations, is now responsible for their crashing. Another form of droughtflood.

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   • Mike Davis says:

     January 16, 2011 at 2:50 pm

     Now they need to be placed on the Endangered Species List!

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     • DEEBEE says:

       January 16, 2011 at 7:09 pm

       Can just see a new greenie poster, tiny snow flakes lost at sea with a poor beetle riding it.

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2. suyts says:

   January 16, 2011 at 3:27 pm

   Global Warming is killing the Pine Beetle, too?

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3. omnologos says:

   January 16, 2011 at 3:30 pm

   By the way…I was on the topic first 🙂

   http://climateprogress.org/2008/10/24/nbc-news-ignores-climate-change-blows-the-bark-beetle-story/

   http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2008/10/25/a-hundred-years-of-bark-beetles-feasts/

   Please send a cheque and I won’t write a series of Deep Climate blogs accusing you of plagiarism!!!

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4. Lance says:

   January 16, 2011 at 6:45 pm

   I grew up in Quesnel many years ago(late 50’s 60′), and I recall(and sorry I cannot provide proof), but somewhere near Quesnel was the first discovered Pine Kill area. The forestry dept wanted to go in and cut a huge swath around it to contain it.

   I have it on memory that the environmentalist stopped that cut……the rest remains history, since that kill spread everywhere.

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   • BioBob says:

     January 16, 2011 at 9:55 pm

     sorry lance, any remediation like a minor forest harvest wouldn’t have any effect in the ultimate pop explosion. the populations cycle naturally and there isn’t much to be done except watch. it is true the intensity was changed by the forestry managment practices eg putting out fires, clearcutting, but these outbreaks are natural.

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     • wayne wasiliew says:

       January 17, 2011 at 6:23 pm

       Disagree Biobob, we dropped the ball in managing the beetle populations when the Campbell government came into power in 2000 and cut funding for forest health. Harvesting around patches of beetle infestations back before the beetles pops exploded was an effective method of controlling outbreaks.

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5. BioBob says:

   January 16, 2011 at 8:07 pm

   LOL @ Steven you get an ‘F’ in insect picture insertion.

   Those are Japanese beetles – Popillia japonica – in that picture – introduced from east asia and not even remotely related to the native mountain pine beetle —

   here is the pic you want:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dendroctonus_ponderosae.jpg

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   • stevengoddard says:

     January 16, 2011 at 8:10 pm

     Yes, but they are having fun. Something AGW pests don’t understand.

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     • BioBob says:

       January 16, 2011 at 8:14 pm

       pffft — if the pine beetles weren’t also having alot of fun, they wouldn’t have these well known and previously observed boom and bust population explosions – which almost all dominant temperate climate forest feeding insects display.

       They all love to have fun and make lots and lots of fun loving babies.

       mayflies:
       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBL69W7G3gc

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6. Al Gored says:

   January 16, 2011 at 9:22 pm

   I had professional experience with the pine beetle epidemic in SE British Columbia and adjacent Alberta in the 1970s and have written tooooo many blog posts on this supposed AGW poster child.

   The bottom line here is that no matter how warm winters were – it is the warmth in early winter that is actually the key – these epidemics could NEVER have happened if there were not vast areas of prime pine beetle habitat available. Their habitat is the cambium layer of mature pines, and the huge areas of mature even-aged lodgepole pine (their primary host in Canada) which made these beetle epidemics possible was the product of Smokey the Bear fire suppression.

   Now that the beetles have used up most of their habitat, this is predictably over.

   It was fun to read all the hysterical stories about this, however, and the media left the impression that this beetle was going to spread all across Canada – even though its host species only range as far east as western Alberta.

   At the height of this epeidemic there were so many beetles that they were attacking young pines and even the odd spruce but they are not viable hosts – something the hysterical media never explained.

   My background is in biology/ecology/resource management (now retired) and it was the Big AGW Lies about the polar bears and mt pine beetles that first made me realize that there was something rotten here, and once I started looking the stench just kept getting worse.

   Thanks for your blog, Steven!

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