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Brian, you know why they don't allow burned forests to be harvested, don't you? Because if it were allowed, a dishonest entrepreneur or shady lumber company could claim absolutely any forest -- be it private or public land -- with nothing but a match, as in: "Oops. It burned. Too bad. Guess we oughtta harvest it now. Heh heh."

Do you doubt that there's any shortage of the kind of people who would do this thing? If you say yes, I'll have to say that you're either innocently naive, or that you're being disingenuous.

I'm sure that William Wade Keye knows why we don't allow the harvesting of burned forests, and he knows that it doesn't have squat to do with the evil environmentalists, but that doesn't really matter in his little make-believe world. All that matters to him is how well his completely feigned outrage plays with the laissez faire Republicans and the Sagebrush Rebellion types.

The truth is the Sierra Club and the EDF and all the other off shoots of those organizations are all guilty of burning our forests down. Your statement just shows how your tortured little paranoid mind has to work overtime to come up with a reason why you cannot admit the truth about how sick the environmental movement has become. When the loggers were in the forest they were able to put out fires that started, now there is no one in the forest and with the thick brush and high density of small trees these unnatural enfernos have been created. Have you been enjoying watching all our forest burn ? Have you been getting wet in the crotch seeing the destruction? The Santa Cruz area eco-saviors had a whole area that was off limits because they were trying to "protect a habitat" now there is no habitat - it's all gone.

'Brian, you know why they don't allow burned forests to be harvested, don't you? Because if it were allowed, a dishonest entrepreneur or shady lumber company could claim absolutely any forest -- be it private or public land -- with nothing but a match, as in: "Oops. It burned. Too bad. Guess we oughtta harvest it now. Heh heh."'

Exactly why people who know nothing about forestry should stay out of it. Salvage harvesting after a fire is extremely dangerous (ever heard of a snag) and does not pay that well. Plus catastrophic, extremely hot fires do not leave much in the way of salvageable timber anyway. God forbid we could actually let them harvest green, profitable timber and in turn have a favor done for society and the taxpayer by having fewer fires? Here's to the privatization of our national forests!

I've always imagined that guys like you (chronically miserable, compressed & negative AM talk radio & right-wing blog habitués and liberal blog trolls) were exactly the kind of people who would do something like burn a whole forest down just to make your chosen enemies look bad, and then complain when your plan to harvest the timber crapped out because someone else had already out-thought you. (Not that out-thinking you is all that hard to do.)

I'm sure that the poor shlubs who would actually do the work of harvesting burned trees wouldn't make any money, but you know that someone stands to make a big bundle, or they wouldn't be squawking about not being allowed to do it.

Thank you to Brian Cox for posting that thought provoking article. Some of the responses to the post are a bit troubling. The thought that forest fires were ever started by those who want to harvest the trees is a ludicrous assertion with no evidence of this happening. Most forest fires are started by lightning, the rest by accident or intention. It is much more difficult to harvest a burnt tree than a live one, so why anyone would think this is the intent of the opposition to harvest after a fire is beyond most rational thinkers.

All over the country, forest fire ruins are continuing to rot in place, stunting the reforestation process which otherwise would be well underway with time tested reforestation and management processes. Refusing to harvest dead trees only does harm to the environment, the forest and the wildlife. If you wish to see animals die for lack of food, unnecessary mudslides and tree-killing fungus and diseases, then keep supporting the policy of leaving a burnt forest in place. Perhaps you should reconsider this policy, which may have been started with good intent, but instead is doing much more harm than good. Consider a visit to any heavily forested area that burned ten years ago to see the lack of progress and problems it now presents. But please, conspiracy theories about greedy lumber companies starting fires so that they can harvest burnt trees only makes you lack all credibility.

"Conspiracy theories" always seem a little strong. More accurately, they are "opportunity theories".

For example, does it matter if Bush and Cheney intended in advance that $4 gas and economic disaster would be the result of their Iraq policy and Iran saber-rattling?

Regardless of whether they intended that result, they treat it as an opportunity, to now try give away our national reserves to their cronies by opening up offshore drilling. But all rational thinkers know that $4 gasoline is not even remotely the result of failing to drill offshore, but is in large part the result of Bush and Cheney's disastrous foreign policy. And rational thinkers know that opening up offshore drilling will not bring down the price of gasoline at the pump. Instead, it will only deliver our public resources into private hands for a windfall, while ensuring we do not have those resources available if at some future time we actually do need them.

With forestry, its the same. Whether the loggers started the fires or not (and sorry Ojai50, there are plenty of cases where firefighters - aka out of work loggers - have been found to have started these fires to get the work) isn't the issue. They use the fires to call for another opportunity to clear cut our forests, which destroys environment far more than forest fire. When they clear cut and then replant their uniform tree farms, they set up the next cycle of out of control fire, which they then use as an opportunity to call for even more clearcutting.

Meanwhile, rational thinkers know that clearcutting all our forests so they won't burn is not the answer, and giving away our public lands for clearcutting is not the solution to susceptibility to forest fires.

Here's something though: I am given to understand that the privately owned forests actually owned by the forestry companies rarely suffer large forest fires. Apparently there is something different about the way forestry companies treat public forests, to which they periodicially get access essentially for free (i.e. private windfall from a public asset) than the way they treat forests they actually have to pay for.

If this is true, maybe there is something interesting to glean for purposes of this conversation.

Refusing to harvest dead trees only does harm to the environment, the forest and the wildlife.

Are you aware that before the brief flicker of time, geologically speaking, that humans have existed on Earth, this is how it always was, and this is how our great forests came to be? No one harvested after the fires that took place year after year after year, millennia after millennia, eon after eon, and the forests and the animals and the environment thrived just fine without our wise words, our money-making schemes, and any of our other types of interference, well-intended or not. Were we all to disappear overnight, the Earth would do fine without us.

Whether we harvest the burned trees or not, the forests will recover, the animals will return, and life will continue as it always has.

But please, conspiracy theories about greedy lumber companies starting fires so that they can harvest burnt trees only makes you lack all credibility.

And no one has ever killed another person in an attempt to collect on the dead person's like insurance. People have never tried to torch their failing businesses in order to escape debt and collect on their fire insurance. In the Central Valley of California, farmers have never tried to destroy breeding populations of rare animals before they were discovered by researchers. Developers have never tried to cover up the existence of Native American remains on property they were trying to develop. The Bush Administration has never tried to squash scientific evidence it didn't like. Businesses that have exposed the public and/or their employees to deadly chemicals have never tried to hide the damning evidence. Now that the dangers of lead are well known, you'll never find it in everyday items like lipstick and candy. There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. George Bush actually won the 2000 election.

You bet.

This debate never ends. Environmentalist are to blame to some extent for some of the mismanagement of our forests but, they are to be credited for the all the good that they have acomplished for our forest lands as well, ie: Saving "Old Growth Forests. However, the most damage to our forest comes from not envirornmentalists, nor I dare say, loggers but, The United State Department of Forestry and
California's Department of Forestry.

For decades an all out assault on forest fires, whether started by man or by nature was the imperative in the philosophy of forest management. Too, the letting of public domain, territory, at below market rates without adequate oversight, and without accountabillity has wrought the devastating fires we now experience.

I'm not against logging, nor am I against the harvesting of chared trees, so long as the forest are replanted. I don't plan to ever live in a cave so for me to bemoan smart foresting practices would be hypocritical and simply silly.

To blame environmentalist is the right wing thing to do. It's simple, it feels good and it avoids the inconvient truth/discomfort in facing the facts concerning this issue. The fact is, we all are to blame to some extent but, I will not point any finger your way, if you point to me, well, I do have a chain saw.

Canard alert!

Forests are burning because liberals and environmentalists stopped honest, hard-working loggers from logging.

Please, by this logic, all primordial forests would have burned away in "unnatural enfernos(sic)" before man came to this continent. But they didn't. Why are there so many dead trees that add to these large fires? Hmmmmmmm.

You won't like the answer Brian.

Climate change.

Insects like the bark beetle are are not killed off by cold winters. Their populations explode. They kill more and more trees that then become dead dry brush just waiting to explode. Further, global warming intensifies fire danger as it gets hotter and stays hotter longer each summer. When the climate changes, the animals and plants that used to live there die and are replaced with different ecosystems. In this case, high desert. In our lifetimes we will see the forests of the San Gabriel Mountain Range turned into high desert.

The environmentalists or I should say the environmental frauds are causing our forests to burn. It's not global warming, forests that are managed properly will not burn up. The space between logged areas prevents and minimizes destructive fires from taking place. This is why private forest areas do not have big destructive fires. What the Sierra club and the sucker judges that have gone along with them have done is to destroy a renewable resource, destroyed economies that rely on wood products, and burned and destroyed habitat and the forest. The people of our state and our country deserve better. Suing the Sierra club may be the answer.

"Suing the Sierra club may be the answer."

Go for it, Brian. Why don't you make a sign that says "Sue the Sierra Club" and hang it on your pop-up at the Farmer's Market?

I had one last week didn't you see it! I actually got some positive responses to it. I had a lady that was telling me about how they are hassling the home owners down by the beach because of a sand issue. And many other people were wondering why they don't open thier eyes to the destruction and killing they cause.

Make it a bigger sign, Brian. Maybe you can get a banner made at Kinko's.

"Sue the Sierra Club!"

That's rich.

But what's the point, Brian? Didn't you see the latest activist Supreme Court decision, reversing the Exxon punitive damages over that defender of the environment's drunken oil dump in Alaska?

Apparently the learned justices determined that the founding fathers, in their wisdom, originally intended that the eighth amendment - prohibiting "cruel and unusual punishment" - must mean that punitive damages cannot exceed one week's worth of profits. One penny more is unconstitutional! Its cruel! And unusual!

It was an incredible feat of true originalist interpretation for the scholars on the Court to come up with that one. Lacking any written evidence of the framers' intent regarding the Eighth Amendment's purpose of shielding Exxon from having to pay money to people it recklessly injured, I understand Scalia held a seance and claimed to be channelling Alexander Hamilton. (Rumor has it at first he was channelling King George, until Roberts bumped him on the shoulder and whispered in his ear.)

Just before that, they determined that it was not "cruel and unusual punishment" to execute mentally retarded children. Apparently Scalia, Roberts and Thomas found evidence in the Bible of mentally retarded children being put to death. After deep prayer and a session of speaking in tongues, they determined that the founders could not possibly have considered something depicted in the Bible as "cruel or unusual."

They have repeatedly rejected challenges to mandatory minimum sentencing where low level, nonviolent drug "offenders" get hit with 20 years in prison for possession and have everything they own confiscated. Scalia reasons that the Founders did not have laws against drugs, therefore they could not possibly have considered any kind of punishment related to them as "cruel or unusual." The Eighth Amendment obviously doesn't even apply.

Previewing an upcoming case (he likes to do that), Scalia opined in a recent speech that the Eighth Amendment doesn't apply to "enhanced interrogation techniques," either. As he puts it, nobody in their right mind would think torture is "punishment." (He really did say that.)

That Scalia, he's brilliant, let me tell you.

But anyway, what's the point of suing, when the Court is stacked with activist judges who just substitute their wishes for what the Constitution and laws provide?

Hey, do you think they might find an exception to the limit on punitive damages for your suit against the Sierra Club?

I'm willing to lay odds that Justice Scalia would find that the original intention of the framers of the Constitution was that the eighth amendment prohibits punitive damages against Exxon, but requires them against the Sierra Club. What do you think?

What do you think?

Aye, there's the rub.

What do you think?

I think that we’ve had more than one President (the same ones who are responsible for the three Justices Anonymous refers to) that personify the Stephen Colbert quote below with regard to the current Anti-Christ-in-the-White-House:

“He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday."

And that, my friends IMO is the crux of most of our problems...

Let's see if I can add fuel to the fire. Bush is the anti-Christ. By that logic he is pouring water on the fire because Christ came "to set fire on the earth."

Environmentally minded forest services are also the anti-Christ because they prevent the fires that Jesus wants to start.

I can tell in one word who the real anti-Christ is: patriarchy. The word means "father principle." Nature, or the "mother principle" knows very well how to manage forests and fires but men (most of whom are patriarchal fathers) sit in offices thinking up smart ideas so they can get the smart bucks and the dumb does but don't have a clue about forests or fires. They can't see the forest for the trees nor the trees for the forest.

We live in culture of idiots; the closer to the top they climb and the more degrees and publishing credits they accumulate, the more trouble they cause. The problem, I say, is patriarchy. Get the pricks out of their offices and into gardening in a real forest and maybe the earth will have a chance. It won't happen because Nature doesn't deal with money as its God. Patriarchs trust in God because to them He is money. Don't think so? Check out the one dollar bill with its In God We Trust. Pats make the money just like they do God.

Rage on, John Donne. It's good for business.

It feels so good to rant and rave: like a good old fashioned forest fire.

What's the point? Nothing. Everything comes from nothing; that's the point.

I'm just bored. I need to get a life. What's wrong with me? I need some free therapy from you all. I suffer from patriarchy.

Fire is one of the four elements. Water puts out fire. Water is a womam element; fire is manly (I mean look at firefighters. What hunks and heroes). Womam lights men's fires and she can put them out just as fast.

Then there's earth and air. Earth is womam and air(heads) are men. The dumb blonde airhead jokes are male projections. Like the definition of an airhead. The blonde MAN who when the problem of global warming is raised, thinks of his tan lines.

I'm just warming up to a real burner but my time on the library computer is cooling down to six minutes remaining. Oh, I just got another 10 minutes, and almost lost this post. Imagine lost to posterity: the solution to the fire problem.

What is wrong with me wasting my time like this? I've got to get home and water the garden. Plants are where it's at, no matter what pet psychics say.

Would you rather be cremated in a forest fire or buried alive? Me, I'd go for the fire. Like Willie Nelson, I need that ring of fire, that womam of fire to light my fire. Well, I can dream, can't I?

They offered me another 10 minutes but this time I said no. The plants are thirsty. They are more important than having my patriarchal ego stroked. Where is that womam of fire? Chasing the firemen?

Den Den, Why don't you find a real therapist, pay real money and really get better. I bet if you had to pay for therapy you wouldn't have so much time on your hands for your rants.. you might try being employed to pay for therapy. The universe helps those that help themselves.

Jesus Christ Dennis! Are smoking arundo again?

I'm going to close comments on this post now. My objectve was to educate persons who are not familiar with how the sierra club is causing our forests to be lost forever. Once these devastating fires take place the are not replaced by forests but are instead replaced by a brush landscape, depending on the severity of the fire.
Also it is interesting to note that The Sierra club, is, by creating these fires, responsible for more carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere than all the cars in LA for the next 10 years. When you consider the rotting trees it's probably more.