The real root of the problem is our collective addiction to economic growth. Everything else is a by-product of this addiction.

Our politics focuses on disagreements about the distribution of wealth, but rarely focuses attention on the morality of economic growth as the over-arching objective.

Ed Deak is quite correct: there is always a transfer of costs. I'm guessing that the demise of the salmon and the explosion of the pine beetle are costs not accounted for on the spreadsheets of any corporation, union pension plan or government.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go check my mutual funds.

Great summary of the problem Brian. Not sure that the question serves us well though, only because it is so broad and there is so little time to make meaningful impact in the cycles of the fish. 2013 is only three sockeye cycles.

Is there a narrower question that might generate more impact? For example, are the forestry practices that are being used for harvesting the dead pine contributing to the shift or not? By taking all this biomass off the land, are we contributing to desertification and further warming, or is there a need to clear the land for other species to thrive?

Do we know for sure that taking all this beetle kill off the land is the best thing we could do for the future of the Interior Plateau and its river systems? The precautionary principle would say, to me, you leave the timber on the land until you know what effect removing it will have. Fire is of course a huge threat, and so the forest can be managed for that, but large fires in the Interior might help prepare the ground for a new species to colonize the land, but at the same time it will release a lot of the carbon locked in the forest back into the atmosphere.

I don't know the answers, but these are the questions I have.

1. Pine beetle - the solution for it is massive forest fires, although if I was living in, say, Merritt, I'd be all for the current practice of putting out the damn things.

2. Tribal councils opposing overfishing? What a concept! I guess "traditional use" salmon won't be sold in parking lots this year, huh?

Great Story...

I think my generation -college student age- is going to see some insane ecological changes... im just glad ive experienced 40 below winters and walked on glaciers...
hopefully there will be a collective awakening soon... an end to the platitudes of corporations, government and yuppies would be nice... we ARE destroying life on earth as we know it... we COULD do a lot about it, but it would just mean major sacrifices for everyone.. and probably violence as well....
one can only hope

inkioko

don't worry, the weather will change as it has millions of times before. We don't have any affect on the weather. The earth has existed hundreds of millions of years. Look at the glaciers coming and going. Don't get sucked into thinking mankind is evil and is destroying the planet. It's simply not true.

Uh, Geez, IAMC, thanks for the reassurance that everything will be just fine. I'll sleep quite comfortably now, knowing that you, especially you, have told us that everything is fine and all is well.

Hey, everybody, we can continue to log the shit out of our country and burn up oil! Everything will be just fine! IAMC said so! And the rising cancer rates, obesity and diabetes? As you all were! Everything will be just fine! IAMC said so.

Don't any of you all worry your little heads off about a few fish. Everything will be ok, cause IAMC said so!

And don't listen to those silly scientists, cause IAMC's got it all figured out! Relax, breath easy, it just mother nature doing her work! Why? IAMC said so!

Your a real genius, dude. Thanks a bunch. We don't need environmental controls on anything really, its all mother nature, as you say. Hey, I've got some fish I caught from the pristine great lakes of Canada. Why don't you come over for supper sometime and I'll fire up the barbie and we can make like old friends?

Yeh, I AM Clueless, just ignore the fact that the fish has two heads - doesn't affect its flavour at all.

I feel better already.

There none so blind as they who will not see.

Perhaps Stephen Jay Gould had it right after all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium
And perhaps what WE are doing IS the punctuated part of "punctuated equilibrium".

I haven't seen any nonsense in this thread from the usual pro-war, pro-business/money, tree-killing envirohaters.

Do you think they're secretly happy? Now they can level the land and build the Barren Acres Golf Course.

Brain, why would I eat Great Lakes fish with you, when we could enjoy BC farm raised Salmon?
It's the ying and the yang thing. I think nature balances itself. Only catastrophic events like volcano's or meteors have the great effect that many attribute to mankind's short existence on this planet. We simply are not that important in the scheme of things.
Life expectancy is at an all time high in the industrialised world. And cancer has not killed everyone, only a few.
I guess I am a believer in mankind.

I have to agree with IAMC about one thing - we are not very important on a geological scale, let alone a cosmic scale. Just a temporary surface infection, we will probably be taken care of by Earth's natural cleansing systems - hopefully, before we drown in our own waste products.

Perhaps next time, Mother Nature might try intelligent life.

I Wonder how the Bowron looks from space now that its surrounded by all that dead forest?

Good thing for reforestation.

Well I guess its not "Dead Forest"...the forest floor is quite alive but the mature tree layer is quite dead.

Iamc:

http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/health/cancer/
In the next generation, the Canadian Cancer Society says almost one in two Canadians will be diagnosed with cancer. One in two.

Right! Only a "few"...............

http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/health/cancer/

IMAC:

Yes... farmed salmon, raised in pens and fed blood and guts, soybeans and antibiotics, they are so physically fit and tasty. If you marinate them long enough, you can almost get the cardboard taste out. Come my way, and I'll cook you one up special!

And in case your interested in stats at all, one in three now die of cancer in North America. Those in the know are saying 1 in 2 within 20 years.

Sunday, June 4 at the Squamish Adventure Centre Sunday from 4:30 pm
-6:30 pm.

Important meeting on the future of water resources in BC and
specifically the Ashlu River and implications of BILL 30 and the loss of
your right to vote.

Everyone concerned about local democracy and the future of the province
is invited to an Ashlu River meeting,

Learn why the Ashlu represents a pivotal point in the history of British
Columbia.

All of us in the region are at the forefront of a fight attack on our
water and waterpower resources and local democracy across BC. As you may
know the Squamish Lillooet Regional District opposes the transnational
company, Ledcor, for a private hydro project on the Ashlu. The decision
was reached in a long public process which many of you attended
concluding in January 2005.

The local government is opposed to the lack of overall planning because
of the impacts of large numbers of these projects with new power lines
and hidden costs to the public.

In response to the SLRD's concerns the provincial government recently
passed legislation, Bill 30, Section 56, that totally eliminates public
zoning authority of local governments when it comes to these hydro
projects - or any other style of private power project on crown land,
whether a coal driven thermal steam generator or a windmill..

This heavy handed approach to the Ashlu by the provincial government has
been condemned across BC by municipalities throughout the province and
in the Legislative Assembly.

It is important to understand that this law was passed in a direct
response to the Ashlu public process.

It is up to us, the citizens of the region to defend the public process,
the Ashlu and fight this anti-democratic action of the provincial lawmakers.
.

PLEASE COME OUT - SUNDAY, JUNE 4TH, 4:30 TO 6:30
THE SQUAMISH ADVENTURE CENTRE
Ashlu.info

Strange, yesterday’s article in Nature: the earth had 4 times the current level of CO2, the Artic Ocean mean temperature 72 degrees F. The Earth moved from a hothouse to an icehouse quickly 55 million years ago and Life survived this and countless other changes. Maybe nature’s intention for man is to initiate another such change. Man is part of the natural system so how can we be detrimental to nature? Change and Mans part in it is natural.

Kyoto may be bad science. Now that I have all your attention check out this website friendsofscience.org and before flaming me read it, think about it. The money spent on Kyoto may be a huge waste and chould be better spent in other areas cleaning up our enviroment. There has been no increase in sea level. Except for the southern finger of Antartica it is getting colder, snow and ice cover is getting thicker. Also for Greenland except for the southern tip it is also getting colder, snow and ice is accumulating. In the second world war a group of aircraft flying to England made a forced landing on the Greenland icecap. Fifty years later these aircraft where discovered under 250 feet of ice and snow. One of these aircraft was recovered. If everything is melting where did the ice and snow come from. Do not become lemmings, question.

dirtmeister:

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/uvwxyz/vondaniken_erich.html

Clueless:

I worked in a fish farm and farmed fish plant for a year and a bit... and i will never eat farmed salmon. It is so fuckin gross... the mutations i saw were nasty... so you can have at 'er, eat that hormone ridden fish. its too bad you are such a lackey... It must be nice, though, to feel the weight of a dumbed down culture behind you. unfortunatly your'e wrong.

Inkioko I've been on fish farms so I can tell by your post you haven't

Willy:

http://www.iceagenow.com/Ocean_Warming.htm

Ocean warming is essential for any ice to form at the poles. How else does some 300 feet of ocean water end up in glaciers?

Willy:

Depending on WHERE those aircraft crashed, mainly at what altitudes, has a lot to do with it. A previous commentor asked you to look at it, but apparently you missed it. The Greenland glaciers are melting, but only at lower altitudes. If the planes crashed at low altitudes, I'd give it the credit it deserves, but otherwise... I suspect they crashed at high altitudes and hence, you have buried aircraft under ice and snow.

What needs to be said before all kinds of sites of various conjectures of what happened or didn't happen 55 million years ago, is simple. There is such a boundary located worldwide that is known as the K2 boundary, a layer of sediment ash that is anywheres from 2.5 cm's to 4 cm's thick. This boundary is believed to be the fallout of the Chixiclub asteriod impact (estimated at 57 million years ago). There have been other impacts that have been greater, but date back much farther. The K2 boundary is approx. 47 - 60 meters below todays undisturbed sediments, holding to the 1 yard equals a million years rule, which I myself have to question as legitimate, but anyways, this is where the date comes from.

Ash fallout of this magnitude would have killed most green life on the planet in a hurry, creating a combination of spiking CO2 gases and ash to offset or reduce the global warming effect. As well, the impact could have been large enough to alter Earths orbit with the help of previous impacts, to the one we have today and at the same time trigger an ice age. The Chixiclub could also explain the rapid cooling effect that the earth went through during this period, if, in fact, the artic ocean was 72 degrees at the time, which I also doubt. (or at the very least, doubt that it could be proven)

Ultimately, dinosaurs existed and were of the size that vegetation was more than abundant. The models of Earths climates needed to produce such vegetation is still lacking, but guesses are that it was hot and humid at the time... tropical. What we don't know definitively is what kind of atmoshpere we had then, other than to go by what kind of environments are needed to promote such growth and so from there, we have what is called an educated or commonsensical guess.

Sorry, Willy, but the gussied-up credentials of the "experts" that make up the "friends of science" carry little weight when you think about where their faculties' funding is likely coming from. Or in the case of some of those "former professors" who have retired, how many of them are now advisors to various corporations linked to petrodollars?? Some of the titles of their areas of expertise sound like bafflegab.

If you're looking for something scientific and readable, I suggest you grab a copy of The Weathermakers[I] by Tim Flannery. Flannery walked away from a 30 year career as an oil company exec. to become president and CEO of WWF Canada.

What, by the way, determines "good science" from "bad science" in your view?

ok willy.. i worked for a png farm in tuff city. also lions gate plant and seaprime doing atlantic before it closed so **** off

that was in 1999/2000