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Re:A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wi... by Spooky23 on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:22PM (#20032855)
Were we in 1819, then I would agree.

Unfortunately, we're in 2019, and it's already happened. You're stuck with homogenous forests.

Re:A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wi... by magduf on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @04:31PM (#20034083)
This is incorrect. There are still old-growth forests, such as the Amazon, but they're still being clear-cut.

It's very, very simple: stop doing that.

No, we can't easily get back the old-growth forests in the US, as that ship has sailed, but there's more to the planet than the US, and we can stop causing even more damage. But we don't want to.

Re:A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wi... by non-prophet on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @12:12AM (#20036794)
There are also old-growth forests in the United States. Many in the Upper Midwest, are in areas not on maps in 1800s due to cartographic errors. Another, Cathedral Pines in Wisconsin was not logged at the request of the timber company manager's wife, so she could continue her prayer group in the forest. List of old-growth forests in the US that need continued protection not only from timber harvests but from disease, fire, and pests:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_old-growth_forests

Re:A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wi... by xeromal on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @09:51PM (#20036185)
Brazil isn't going to stop so do we invade a sovereign nation to get them to stop in order to benefit the world?
Re:A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wi... by darkpuma on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @12:25AM (#20036850)
If you ranked all wars humanity has fought from most justified to least, I expect your proposed war would be rather near the top.
Re:A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wi... by xeromal on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @01:24AM (#20037052)
Oh, I definitely agree. I just don't think anyone else is on board with me. There should be UN forces that help steward our earth from dipshit despots.
Re:A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wi... by RosanaAnaDana on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:34PM (#20033510)
There is also the consideration that this whole process is being studied and modeled on a moving platform.

The environments that we assumed to be in place when we look back and describe these 'ancestral' states are rapidly changing. The timing and duration of rain events, winter snow levels (elevation, depth, duration), high heat events, Santa Ana winds; all of these things are quite rapidly changing their patterns of predictability.

Forests are dynamical systems with non-linearity in many of the ways they interact with and respond to the environment. How forests have responded to climate change, to anthropogenic interactions, hunting and extinction of large herbivores (and predators), create feedbacks that further impact how forests (or really, vegetation at large), respond to the environment.

I think my point here is that there is questionable utility in trying to run the clock in reverse. Its more important to understand where we're at and how things respond now than it is to contrast them with some ancestral state that is impossible to return to.

There's no un-baking the cake. The 'climate' (read: entire earth biosphere), has changed/ is changing.

Re:A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wi... by HeWhoLurksLate on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @04:10PM (#20033872)
I agree.

The 'climate', and the species that can live in it, also change and continue to change- the wooly mammoth couldn't survive many places right now, to be honest.

I feel like a lot of people miss the idea that the planet itself shifts over time- Hawaii hasn't been there forever, and most of the land on the earth has shifted a lot from where it first was in Pangaea.

Humans stopping climate change feels a lot like getting in front of a moving train- it is absolutely futile- it also makes sense to try to shift the rails themselves around, but I don't even know how feasible that is, either.