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Tag: forests

  • Study: Thinning Forests for Bioenergy Can Worsen Climate

    A new study out of the Geos Insti­tute in Ash­land, Ore­gon con­cludes that selec­tive­ly log­ging or “thin­ning” forests for bioen­er­gy can increase the amount of car­bon diox­ide in the atmos­phere and exac­er­bate cli­mate change. The study, “Thin­ning Com­bined With Bio­mass Ener­gy Pro­duc­tion May Increase, Rather Than Reduce, Green­house Gas Emis­sions,” by D.A. Del­laSala and M. Koop­man, chal­lenges…

  • If You Build It, They Will Cut

    Gen­er­at­ing bio­mass ener­gy doesn’t result in more log­ging, accord­ing to the bio­mass indus­try, whose spokesper­sons claim facil­i­ties only make use of “waste” wood already com­ing from exist­ing log­ging operations. Ron Kotr­ba, Senior Edi­tor for Pel­let Mill Mag­a­zine, wrote in the May/June 2015 issue that bio­mass is the “most unlike­ly of the for­est prod­ucts to dri­ve…

  • Mining the Soil for Biomass Energy

    Min­ing the Soil for Bio­mass Ener­gy — Thurs­day, April 16 at 1 pm PT / 4 ET Jon Rhodes, water­shed hydrol­o­gist, has more than thir­ty years of pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence eval­u­at­ing the impacts of log­ging and road build­ing on for­est ecosys­tems and water­sheds. Jon runs Plan­e­to Azul Hydrol­o­gy, which pro­vides afford­able water­shed exper­tise for a wide vari­ety of con­ser­va­tion…

  • Public Weighs in on Plumas County, CA Biomass Proposal

    - by Debra Moore, April 5, 2015, Plumas Coun­ty News The Sier­ra Insti­tute is poised to receive $2.6 mil­lion from the Cal­i­for­nia Ener­gy Com­mis­sion, but first the pub­lic will have a chance to com­ment on the bio­mass boil­er that would be built near the county’s health and human ser­vices build­ing in Quincy. The com­mis­sion announced March 10…

  • Study: The Dark Side of Forest Carbon Sequestration

    Sci­ence has taught us that humans and trees have a sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship: humans and oth­er liv­ing crea­tures exhale car­bon diox­ide, which trees absorb to pro­duce oxy­gen, which we then breathe. It’s a per­fect cir­cle that main­tains life on Earth as we know it. But a recent study out of Rhode Island’s Miska­ton­ic Uni­ver­si­ty has iden­ti­fied…

  • Save America’s Forests and Wild Lands from Anti-Environmental Congress

    The log­ging, graz­ing, min­ing and oth­er extrac­tive indus­tries are mount­ing an intense attack on our nation’s pub­lic lands.  The Decem­ber 2014 lame duck ses­sion of Con­gress saw an ugly brew of anti-con­ser­va­tion ini­tia­tives remov­ing legal con­ser­va­tion pro­tec­tion from mil­lions of acres of pub­lic lands. But this was just the tip of the oncom­ing extrac­tive indus­tries iceberg.…

  • Soil is Not Renewable

    - by Friends of the Wild Swan and Swan View Coalition Soils are the foun­da­tion of ter­res­tri­al life. For­est pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is direct­ly tied to soil con­di­tions. Soil takes thou­sands of years to devel­op and is not “renewable“on a human time scale. Soil is an ecosys­tem in itself that must be healthy in order to pro­vide…

  • Hardwood Trees Chipped for Nova Scotia Biomass

    - by Roger Tay­lor, Feb­ru­ary 26, 2015, Her­ald Business Hard­wood trees are being allowed to go up in smoke, and with them a num­ber of rur­al man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs that are hard to replace. It is easy to reach that con­clu­sion after read­ing sto­ries about sev­er­al com­pa­nies in rur­al Nova Sco­tia that have been mak­ing prod­ucts from…

  • What a 20-year Biomass Battle Tells Us About Environmental Justice Policy

    - by Brentin Mock, Feb­ru­ary 24, 2015, Grist It’s well-estab­lished that the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency has been quite flac­cid when it comes to enforc­ing civ­il rights issues. The online news out­let E&E recent­ly took the time to remind us how bad it is last week, report­ing from Flint, Mich., where envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice com­plaints about a bio­mass ener­gy plant built…

  • Media Helps Biomass Industry Spread Wildfire Hysteria

    -  by Melis­sa San­tos, Jan­u­ary 4, 2015, The News Tribune Ann Stan­ton cred­its a state pro­gram with sav­ing her home from the worst wild­fire in Washington’s history. Despite her prop­er­ty being in the path of the Carl­ton Com­plex fire, which scorched about 256,000 acres in Okanogan and Chelan coun­ties last sum­mer, Stanton’s home and the trees…