Caged Isolated Hearts
Friday, June 13, 2014 16:46
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Last week I went to Manhattan, to meet up with some friends and look at art.
First we went to MOMA. Coming down the escalator I ran smack into the repulsively gory “Hide and Seek” [Cache-cache in the French] by Russian-born painter Pavel Tchelitchew. Since it depicts a tree, and Wit’s End is of course about trees, I felt obliged to take a picture of it, much as I disliked it. But there was proof I exist so why not? …dimly reflected and nearly lost in the sinews, veins, protuberances and myriad visages of children, shrieking in what looks like fear and dread.
After returning home I was gratified to discover I was not alone in my revulsion towards it, as one critic described it as “…the ludicrous “Hide-and-Seek” (1940-1942), a pseudo-surrealist horror show that once graced the cover of the EP ‘The 13 Frightened Souls’ (1992) by the death/thrash metal band Deceased. The Tchelitchew can be viewed only as a novelty today, but it is instructive to note that, according to the wall label, it was snapped up by MoMA the year it was completed, and that an unnamed critic described it in 1970 as ‘by far’ the Museum’s ‘most popular painting.’ This could suggest that the curators use the corridors’ wall space as an arena for institutional self-critique, a public demonstration of the vicissitudes of taste in the building of MoMA’s collection.”
Indeed MOMA in its infinite wisdom had removed it from view for a number of years, leaving it to languish in storage. A recorded lecture at the museum website describes how curators disdain it for a variety of reasons – but I guess they finally relented to the mobs who adore it.
It takes all kinds. One enthused “This painting is beautiful…Another reason I love this painting is that there is so much detail happening. Your eye can travel around the painting forever, catching all the hidden imagery and following the most slender twigs off the tree…Perhaps one of the most cliche reasons I love this painting is because the main subject is of a tree. I realize that there are many paintings and photographs of trees and people just love the idea of trees in art because they can symbolize so many things.”
The main purpose of our visit was to see the special exhibit, Metamorphoses, of drawings, etchings, paintings, and sculpture by Paul Gauguin…who apparently thought of himself, accurately, as a bit of a beast. Here is his lovely Pastorales tahitiennes.
We waited in the rain to see the Degenerate Art show at the Neuegalerie, where I was delighted to also find the lushly glowing Adele portrait by Klimt, which is on permanent display, an indescribably luxuriant. No reproduction can do it justice, but here is one anyway.
Despite all the detours, the original purpose of the trip was to go to the opening of Angelique’s show of sculpture, to admire her ingenious clay figures that I had only seen before in pictures. That earlier work consisted of women trapped in boxes, so I was intrigued to see that she has since moved on to couples, divided by plexiglass that reflects the anguish of their painful isolation.
In her artist’s statement, she quoted Tennessee Williams, a writer who exposed the essence of the human condition:
“Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see …each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition– all such distortions within our own egos– condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That’s how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other’s naked hearts.”
We did have some beautiful weather for a stroll down the High Line, the reclaimed elevated railway which is now a park.
And we went gallery hopping in Chelsea, where there were some amazing exhibits of ecopocalyptic themes. So before I get to the latest on trees dying from air pollution, here is a description of the works that will be featured later to illustrate this post.
At the Kleinsun Gallery, Chinese artist Jiang Pengyi explores the decay of urban landscapes by constructing and photographing miniature dioramas set incongruously inside abandoned spaces such as faded wallpapered rooms, or a cracked bathtub, or a dusty corner under a grimy window.
Most of the pictures are from the Yancey Richardson gallery, where several rooms were full of the work by the ingenious duo, Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick.
They have collaborated for more than twenty years in a variety of formats, including Dadaist performances, staged elaborate visual narratives which they photograph, paintings, drawings, and sculptures. Their art reflects global converging catastrophes, at the same time dark and humorous.
This project features the fictional Truppe Fledermaus (Bat Troupe), an antique traveling cabaret that warns of ecological collapse and extinction. The photographs in the installation are collectively titled “100 Views of a Drowning World”. These images from the art shows will accompany articles and research about trees and pollution to follow – but first it is time to review one of the expected and tragic aspects of their decline, which is that more and more people are being injured and killed as they fall. This is an expected and inevitable outcome, and despite the fact that I lived my entire life without ever hearing of such an incident until just a few years ago, such occurrences have become staples of news shows, particularly when there are storms…and even when there are not.
It’s important to remember that trees are meant to live very long lives. Those considered old often aren’t old at all – it’s just that humans have clear cut most places on earth, so trees that are at their peak maturity are rare indeed. We can hardly imagine anymore the immensity that was normal before we started poisoning the air, rain and soil. One of the few remaining intact hardwood forests is the Joyce Kilmer Park in North Carolina. I wanted to stop there while on the way home from Florida, but after I read that the Forest Service dynamited a number of the huge dying trees so as not to leave their hulks standing to offend the tourists, I just couldn’t go. Here is my favorite copper beech up in the village last year, June 19, 2013. Behind it is a house that dates from the early 18th century, so my guess is, the tree does too. That puts it in mid-life.
The gaps are growing, the crown becomes more sparse every year. I took this photo last week:
Wiki has a list of the world’s oldest trees, which shows many that can range into thousands of years. The very oldest is a bristlecone pine considered to top 5,000, while the oldest clonal colony, of quaking aspen, in estimated as over 80,000 years. It’s really worth looking at the list, which is phenomenally impressive. There is a website that accumulates statistics and photos of large specimens that managed to escape being logged, called Monumental Trees. Perusing it will give you an idea of the size trees should be able to attain, but now almost never do.
The sycamore above is in America (obviously!) and the one pictured below is in France.
The number of casualties and damaged property from falling trees and branches continues to mount relentlessly. Some of the deceased are given features in the news – others get a paltry line item. Following is a random assemblage of often lethal events, starting with the St. Jude storm in the UK last October. This was a terrific wind event – nevertheless, some of the photos of fallen trees reveal the rot inside. I believe that virtually all trees have begun to rot. The BBC reported:
A man and a woman have been found dead at a house in Hounslow, west London, following a suspected gas explosion caused by a falling tree;
| Note the crackled bark on this tree, like a jigsaw puzzle. NOT normal. |
Network Rail says the damage has been “worse than expected”, with more than 100 trees on the lines, but some train services have resumed; A teenager died after a tree fell on the mobile home where she was sleeping in Kent, and a man in his 50s was killed when a tree landed on a car in Watford;
East Sussex County Council tweets that it has dealt with 60 fallen trees overnight; A man has died after a tree fell on a car in Lower High Street in Watford, Hertfordshire, East of England Ambulance Service says.
There is a phenomenal amount of lichen smothering this branch – lichen that thrives in high levels of reactive nitrogen for which London is famous.
In many other incidents, there was no wind whatsoever to blame. Last December 30, in Victoria, Australia, it was reported a little girl died in a park – and despite the very obvious rotted condition of the tree plainly visible in the video, everyone who commented professed to be mystified as to why it split.
Police said the child, aged four, was fatally injured just after 5.20pm in Rosalind Park. The girl’s mother, 31, was seriously injured with a fractured leg, head injury and possible spinal injury and was taken to The Alfred hospital in a stable condition…The tree that struck the girl and her mother was inspected by senior City of Greater Bendigo arborists on September 19 and showed no outward signs of concern. It was removed from the park overnight. “We did however make the decision to remove the tree – the balance of the tree was potentially compromised,’’ Mr Liacos said.
In South Carolina, on February 19, neither the reporter nor the arborist interviewed remark on the painfully unhealthy condition of this stand of pine trees where a branch fell and killed a man.
Needless to say they don’t question why the branches are smothered in lichen, either.
The Dorchester County Coroner’s office says a 43-year-old man was killed on Wednesday after a tree limb fell and struck him on the head.
Coroner Chris Nisbet says Jason Couch was doing yard work at his home on Pristine Court in the Legends Oaks neighborhood when a tree limb fell out of a tree and struck Couch.
Nisbet says an autopsy Thursday morning showed the cause of death to be brain injury due to blunt force trauma to the head.
Officials say Couch was by himself when the incident happened, and was found by his wife when she arrived back home with their two children at 4:30 p.m.
“It’s not really odd, they do it a lot. They basically get heavy and some of them do snap,’’ said Chuck Lester, owner of the Big Head Chuck’s Tree Service.
Lester’s company will be cutting down the tree where a branch fell onto 43-year-old Jason Couch killing him in his backyard.
Lester said, “I guess you don’t hear about many people getting injured from it.’’
Why no, you didn’t USED to hear about many people getting injured from falling trees and branches, because it was incredibly rare – but NOW it is a common feature on the nightly news.
Again in Australia, on February 21, another little girl died at her school. The headline reads:
Pitt Town: Schoolgirl, 8, dies as huge gum tree branch falls on students, teacher
A large branch from a 50-year-old gum tree fell and landed on top of three students and a teacher on Friday afternoon at the small school in semi-rural north-western Sydney.
Eight year-old Bridget Wright, a horse lover and high-achieving year 4 student, was pinned beneath a limb of the towering tree and died after being rushed to Westmead Hospital.
Hawkesbury Local Area Command Inspector Bill Slatford said weather played no part in the tragic accident.
In California, on March 10, a young woman was hit while driving in her car.
VACAVILLE — A falling tree hit and killed a woman driving Sunday afternoon on westbound Interstate 80 near Cherry Glen Road.
The California Highway Patrol responded to the incident about 1:55 p.m. just west of the overpass, where a woman was found dead in a car about 1/4 mile past a fallen tree.
CHP officer Todd Fetterly said branches from a diseased tree fell on top of a Toyota Camry in the slow lane and crushed the driver, a woman in her early 20s.
A day later, on March 11, two men are killed in separate events in North Carolina.
A 55-year-old Chapel Hill man died Wednesday evening when a tree fell on him as heavy rain, strong winds and thunderstorms moved through the Triangle, police said.
According to investigators, William Randolph Morris was standing on the back deck of his home on Roper Lane at about 6:45 p.m. when the tree fell, killing him instantly.
The street is in Chapel Hill city limits but located in Durham County.
Damaging straight-line winds with gusts up to 60 mph were reported in the Triangle, resulting in multiple downed trees and power lines, WRAL Chief Meteorologist Greg Fishel said.
No other information about Morris’ death was released.
Another falling tree killed a person in Winston-Salem. Police said Justin Cardwell died when a pine tree fell on his car as storms rushed through the Piedmont.
A tree also fell onto the back of a home on New Bern Avenue in Raleigh, but no injuries were reported.
Back in California, on March 30, a driver was killed on a windless day, causing other accidents to occur. In the video, a huge chunk of the tree trunk, blackened by rot, is shown as the rescuers stare at it stupidly, wondering why it fell.
Citrus Heights CA – A driver, whose identity has not been released, was killed when a large oak tree fell on the vehicle he was driving. Police said a passenger was also injured and was taken to a hospital.
The driver of a minivan was also injured and taken the hospital after the minivan hit a utility pole and overturned, according to officers.
Police said a total of three vehicles were involved in the crash with the fallen tree. Greg Antonucci lives next to the crash site. He said there wasn’t any wind at the time of the incident. He ran outside when he heard a loud crash.
“When I saw him, we couldn’t do nothing (for him). So we called 911,’’ Antonucci said.
Officers were not sure how old the tree was. A section of the fallen tree was saved by investigators so it could be analyzed by an arborist.
In North Carolina, on April 16, there is a brief mention of a man killed by a fallen tree.
UNION COUNTY, NC (WBTV) -
A man was reportedly killed when a tree fell on him in Weddington on Wednesday morning.
According to sources, the tree fell on the man along Elstead Circle in Weddington before 11:30 a.m. Wednesday morning.
From WBTV’s Sky 3, you can see crime scene tape around a section of land with a white sheet on the ground near a fallen tree.
There are other large trees nearby that have been cut down and trimmed of their branches. There is also several pieces of large machinery in the area.
Again in South Carolina, on April 21, an elderly man was crushed in his house. According to a neighbor, who described it as yet another “freak accident” (in other words, there was no wind) it took rescuers three hours to stabilize the ceiling and floor, and he died of his injuries later.
HANAHAN, SC (WCSC) – A 72-year-old man is dead after a tree fell on a home in Hanahan early Monday morning, according to the Berkeley County Coroner’s Office.
According to an incident report, Hanahan and North Charleston Fire Departments were called out to assist crews on Leone Court, near Otranto Boulevard just after midnight after a giant tree fell on a home.
Neighbors are in shock after the tree fell onto the home killing 72-year-old William Carl Klein.
Berkeley County Coroner Bill Salisbury says Klein was in his upstairs den sitting in a chair when the tree fell, destroying the upstairs floor and pinning him down between the tree and the dining room floor downstairs.
While pinned in a chair he was comforted by a 17-year-old who put her life in danger to help.
“Last thing I heard her say to him was, oh you were in the Navy for three years? She was trying to keep him calm,” said Kim Davidson, mother of the teenager.
Davidson says her daughter bravely ran into her neighbor’s home after the tree fell thru the roof trapping Klein inside.
The top of a palm tree snapped on May 17 in East Los Angeles.
Family members said 49-year-old Tony Calderon was near Dozier Street and Record Avenue about 8:30 a.m. waiting for a ride to his uncle’s funeral when the massive crown fell on him, trapping him underneath.
Witnesses said Calderon was crushed, but alive and screaming for help. Bystanders were unable to lift the tree chunk off him, which fire officials said weighed up to 2,000 pounds. Firefighters used a crane to hoist it.
Calderon, a father to a 7-year-old child, was pronounced dead.
Family members said the owner of the property in which the palm tree stood had been asked numerous times over the years to cut it down.
“There’s been an issue with a few people around here saying that they need to cut it down,” said the victim’s brother, George Gonzalez. “It’s been going on for 15 years already and it wasn’t taken care of.”
Lisa Smith, a certified arborist, tree-risk assessor and palm tree expert, said the piece of tree that fell on Calderon came from a Canary Island Date Palm.
“This palm didn’t have any outward signs,” she said. “It had a lot of live fronds. That’s how palms can fool you.”
Smith recommends palm trees be inspected once per year by a certified arborist.
Did you catch that? Trees will fool you. If you are a certified arborist, that is. The people on the street knew for 15 years the tree was in decline so, since she says that particular palm had no outward signs, what would be the point of having her inspect it every year?
On May 24, a small article announced another death in South Carolina.
The Abbeville County Coroner’s Office has been called to an address in Calhoun Falls to investigate a death, according to Coroner Ronnie Ashley.
Ashley said a deputy coroner was called to 1340 highway 81 South just after 6 p.m. Saturday.
Ashley said reports from first responders indicated a tree had fallen on the man.
No other details were immediately available.
In an online news video it was reported that one woman died and twelve people were injured on May 28 in Texas in severe weather. Winds were 60 mph – but the tree that fell on her had no roots.
On May 30, it took rescuers an hour to extricate a man pinned in his car after an oak tree crushed it and trapped him inside. No mention of a storm in Duluth, GA at the time, and in the agonizing aerial video of the rescue, there is no wind or rain. Once again it was described as a “freak” event, that it “spontaneously” fell – and bad luck that the roots “dislodged” just as he was driving underneath.
“This is a driver who is driving into town, unsuspecting. This large tree comes down,’’ said Capt. Tommy Rutledge, spokesman for the Gwinnett Co. Fire Department. “It’s one of those freak situations that happens.’’
It must have been a horrific wait for the victim, who was in surgery at the time of this report, while the rescue crew propped up the weight of the tree with pallets and inflatable balloons.
The bark of the oak displays a common symptom of decay, which is that it is splitting and breaking. Here, a forgotten shoe:
On June 8, a valuable Toyota was destroyed by a falling tree while the driver miraculously escaped with only minor harm.
One headline reads “100-foot rotting tree takes out Asian beauty”. I might tend to look at the tree as being the Asian beauty, but car lovers around the world mourned the loss.
Toyota only built a handful of the delightful 2000GT, so it’s a sad day when one gets crushed by a massive tree. The extremely rare, million-dollar coupe was being driven down a road in Toyoama prefecture, Japan, when a 100-foot tall tree collapsed on top of it. According to the report, which contains footage of the aftermath, the tree was rotten inside but as a protected species could not be chopped down. Thankfully the driver suffered just minor injuries, which is pretty incredible considering the flattened state of his once-stunning ride.
An online news report is rather interesting even though it is in Japanese, because it shows the base of the tree, which was barely a shell, and yet like many of these trees it had leaves. I get a feeling there are many trees that are rotting and hollow inside, but since they still have some leaves, no matter how few, they are assumed to be fine.
In Arkansas on June 5, two men were killed by trees in separate incidents.
The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management says one man died when a tree fell on a van, while another man was killed in nearby Jonesboro when a tree fell onto his home. Their names haven’t been released.
The same day it was reported that a tree fell on a car killing one woman and injuring three others.
Shortly after noon on Thursday, storms in Lawrence County caused one death and created widespread damage across the entire county. Fire Departments were busy all afternoon with trees across power lines, trees on houses and damage caused by high winds. Unofficial stats from the National Weather Service placed the winds in excess of 80 Mph.
At least two accidents with injuries were reported during the storm to the Lawrence County Dispatch, Ravenden Police and Fire work an accident with three injuries along with a fatality in Black Rock where a tree fell on a vehicle occupied by it’s driver, killing her.
It was a rough storm, but photos published indicate that trees that came down were rotted.
Thousands were left without power in a recurring theme of trees collapsing onto power lines. So many fell in Sandy – millions – even though it was no longer a hurricane when it made landfall, that people were out of power for weeks.
This tree looks black where it broke, and many of the branches are stubby and bare of leaves.
Six people have been killed in violent storms which battered cities in western Germany overnight.
In the worst incident, three died when a tree fell on a garden shed in Duesseldorf where they had sought shelter, emergency services said.
Cyclists were also killed by falling trees in Cologne and Krefeld.
[how windy could it have been if people were out bicycling?]
A storm on June 11 in North Carolina left property damaged. Readers were encouraged to upload photos.
Some showed the same astonishing, rampant growth of lichen.
Others indicated the ubiquitous interior rot.
This tree fell with no roots to speak of.
On June 12, no injuries were reported while trees were knocked over in yet another storm in Arkansas. From a local station:
Strong winds caused substantial damage throughout Cross County, according to Cross County Office of Emergency Management Coordinator Rusty McClain.
According to McClain, several people are without power in Cherry Valley and Hickory Ridge after high winds blew through the area. Heavy rain also drench the area.
McClain said trees are on top of homes, cars and power lines in Hickory Ridge. The storm also blew the roof off a home….In Paragould, strong winds blew over trees across the city. One tree fell on a car. Numerous limbs are down across Paragould.
This reader photo clearly shows the rotted interior of a dying tree, which even so still has leaves fanning out in what remains of the crown in the background.
I suppose I could spend all day, every day dredging up stories of deaths and injuries from falling trees, but let’s move on to WHY the trees are exacting such brutal (and well-deserved) revenge on the human race and its possessions.
Every time I see the advice to plant trees because they clean the air a wave of fresh rage engulfs me – because never, ever is it accompanied by the slightest pause to wonder what damage that pollution does to the trees that absorb it. The most recent example of this is even more infuriating that usual, because it unveils the truly sickening, unholy alliance between The Nature Conservancy, the “biggest environmental non-governmental organization in the world” – according to an exposé in The New Yorker - and the world’s biggest, most polluting corporations. What can you expect from a group that chooses as its leader a former partner from Goldman Sachs, Mark Tercek…and counts Cargill – by some measures the largest privately owned company in the world with the possible, debatable exception of Koch Industries – among its sponsors and partners?
Allow me to tell you what has made me even more berserk than usual. I had heard of the “New Conservation” when I read reviews of a book called The Rambunctious Garden, which takes the position that Nature is so debauched already that we need a new way to approach goals of conservation, which move away from preservation of long-since-defiled purity and monetize “value” and “services” such that corporations can be persuaded to preserve…something or other. I more or less ignored all this frantic floundering because it is irrelevant, since the Sixth Mass Extinction has already begun, is irreversible, and will ultimately include the “us” that such proponents are proclaiming to preserve.
http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/fighting-pollution-smog-choked-houston-unlikely-weapon-trees-20140609
NC – new conservationism – haven’t paid too much attention to it once I saw that ridiculous rambunctious garden book, because with the puffins dying its all irrelevant and moot anyway
nitrogen – http://www.publicnewsservice.org/2014-06-10/water/new-report-nitrogen-pollution-killer-threat-to-seagrass/a39820-1
It’s absolutely heartbreaking and gives the lie to the notion that nature is resilient. In fact it is terribly fragile like any complex system.
The fireflies are gone which is incredibly sad, and so are all the merry little crested nuthatches that used to crowd around the bird feeder.
http://www.michaelsoule.com/frontpage_files/76/76_frontpage_file1.pdf
http://www.nature.org/science-in-action/our-scientists/conservation-science-at-the-nature-conservancy-peter-kareiva-phd.xml
add who funds them 2nd biggest private co after the kochs – cargill
also buddies with nrdc http://www.nrdc.org/media/2013/130307.asp
Cargill, Inc. is based in Wayzata, MN and is the second largest private corporation in the United States, after Koch Industries. The companies diversified operations include grain, cotton, sugar, petroleum and financial trading; processed food; futures brokering; health and pharmaceutical products; animal feed and agrochemicals. Industrial products include biofuels, oils and lubricants, starches and salt. Cargill is one of the top U.S. grain producers. Its Excel unit is one of the top U.S. meatpackers. Brand names include Diamond Crystal salt, Gerkens cocoa, Honeysuckle White poultry, Sterling Silver meats and Nutrena dog and cat food.
Cargill, Incorporated, is an American privately held, multinational corporation based in Minnetonka, Minnesota, a Minneapolis suburb. Founded in 1865, it is now the largest privately held corporation in the United States in terms of revenue
GROWING ENERGY
How Biofuels Can Help End
America’s Oil Dependence
http://www.nrdc.org/air/energy/biofuels/biofuels.pdf
David Glassner, Cargill Dow
Richard Tolman, National Corn Growers Association
Luca Zullo, Cargill
http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/Article/3318321/Asset-Management-Hedge-Funds-and-Alternatives/Conservation-Finance-Aims-to-Profit-from-Environmental-Stewardship.html?utm_source=social%20&utm_medium=social%20&utm_campaign=Envt&utm_term=&utm_content=article&WT.mc_id=Envt-article&LS=Envt#.U5owg41dV68
http://ekoamp.com/ says they are partners with TNC – add pix EKO
http://siansullivan.net/publications/capitalism-and-biodiversity-conservation/ecosystem-services/the-environmentality-of-earth-incorporated/
http://siansullivan.net/2013/10/09/revisiting-isolation-came-dance-piece-1993/
http://siansullivan.net/2013/11/21/on-the-eve-of-the-edinburgh-forums-on-natural-capital-and-natural-commons-notes-on-disavowal-biocultural-diversity-the-nature-of-natural-capital-and-plutonomy/
“Trees with the biggest leaves and the widest canopies capture the most pollutants, especially nitrogen oxide, a common byproduct of combustion that can irritate lungs and contributes to the formation of ground-level ozone…Scientists used a complex model from the U.S. Forest Service that considers everything from wind patterns to the size of tree leaves and the overall canopy to estimate the air-quality improvements that might come from 1,000 acres of forest.”
note the broad leaved varieties dying off
The English too are obsessed with the idea that foreign invaders are the reason so many species of trees are dying in epidemic proportions, which is absurd, since there has been robust international shipping of planting materials for centuries, and it’s only recently that massive attacks are occurring.
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2012/10/hysteresis-and-vile-conspiracy-to-blame.html
George Mollison, 1981
“There is still another factor. It would be bad enough if it were just our cutting that is killing forests. But since the 1920′s, and with increasing frequency, we have been loosing species from forest to a whole succession of pathogens. It started with things like chestnut blight. Chestnuts were 80% of the forests that they occupied. So a single species dropping out may represent enormous biomass, enormous biological reserve, and a very important tree. Richard St. Barbe Baker pointed out that the trees that are going are those with the greatest leaf area per unit. First chestnuts, with maybe sixty acres of leaf area per tree. Then the elms, running at about forty. Now the beeches are going, and the oaks, the eucalypts in Australia and Tasmania. Even the needle leaf trees in Japan are failing. The Japanese coniferous forests are going at a fantastic rate. So are the Canadian shield forests and the Russian forests.Now we come to a thing called the phasmid conspiracy…Really, is it these diseases? What are the diseases? Phasmids are responsible for the death of eucalypts. There is the cinnamon fungus. In elms, it’s the Dutch elm disease. In the poplars, it’s the rust. And in the firs, it’s also rust. Do you think that any of these diseases are killing the forest? What I think we are looking at is a carcass. The forest is a dying system on which the decomposers are beginning to feed. If you know forests very well, you know that you can go out this morning and strike a tree with an axe. That’s it. Or touch it with the edge of a bulldozer, or bump it with your car. Then, if you sit patiently by that tree, within three days you will see that maybe twenty insects and other decomposers and “pests” have visited the injury. The tree is already doomed. What attracts them is the smell from the dying tree. We have noticed that in Australia. Just injure trees to see what happens. The phasmids come. The phasmid detects the smell of this. The tree has become its food tree, and it comes to feed. So insects are not the cause of the death of forests. The cause of the death of forests is multiple insult. We point to some bug and say: “That bug did it.” It is much better if you can blame somebody else. You all know that. So we blame the bug. It is a conspiracy, really, to blame the bugs. But the real reason the trees are failing is that there have been profound changes in the amount of light penetrating the forest, in pollutants, and in acid rain fallout. People, not bugs, are killing the forests.
Surely we don’t have to go through the hundreds of research projects that tell ust that air pollution is toxic to trees? http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk1/1989/8906/890606.PDF
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/southern-californias-forests-are-under-attack-by-tree-killing-beetles/
go to prof page also africa and
Now you can add a legion of seemingly unstoppable beetles to the list of threats facing the region’s forests.
They’ve already invaded hundreds of tree species, and they are showing no signs of slowing down.
“We have lost numerous trees,” said Jim Folsom, director of the Huntington Botanical Gardens outside of Pasadena, Calif.
“On the property, in these 200 acres, we have over 700 species of large tree, woody tree. Of those, fully one-third, over 200 different kinds, different species of tree have proven to be invaded or impacted by this borer,” Folsom said.
The polyphagous shot hole borer is a tiny, grain-sized beetle first discovered in the area two years ago.
It drills a hole into the heart of the tree and deposits a fungus that it carries in its mouth. That blocks water and nutrients and in many cases kills the tree.
“We have no known treatment,” Folsom said. “We have no capacity to fend it off.”
University of California, Riverside, plant pathologist Akif Eskalen first discovered the pests in avocado trees.
They have since spread to 280 different species in Southern California, and he fears they could be unstoppable.
“The main problem is this is an invasive, exotic beetle, which means we don’t have any established, natural enemies that could keep this population down in Southern California,” said Eskalen.
Eskalen and his colleagues tracked the bug to southeast Asia but are still unsure how it got to the U.S.
While the infestation is a concern at Huntington Gardens, it has the potential to create a nationwide crisis as the beetles spread into residential neighborhoods, tinder-dry forestland and, most worrisome, agricultural plants.
“If we cannot stop it, it can go as far as the beetle and fungus can survive,” Eskalen said.
But the U. California page it directs you to (http://ucanr.edu/sites/socaloakpests/Polyphagous_Shot_Hole_Borer/) says:
The PSHB seems to have originated in South East Asia or Africa. At first, researchers identified it as the Tea Shot Hole Borer (Euwallaecea fornicatus), which it very closely resembles, but DNA evidence points to it being a new, as yet unnamed species in the same genus. The symbiotic fungus may also be a new unnamed species, in the genus Fusarium, which is commonly associated with ambrosia beetles.
…It attacks a wide range of native, ornamental, and horticultural trees, and has caused severe damage in avocado groves in Israel…
How absurd, we’ve had centuries of global trade, a huge acceleration in the last 30 years and suddenly, within two years, an obscure beetle threatens the entire COUNTRY?
http://soas2013.rutgers.edu/ – southeast has gotten cooler!! video and pix of southeast trees
http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow/russia-and-canada-heat-up-faster-than-the-arctic-slide-show/
As if more evidence were needed that ozone pollution underlies the death of trees, and not heat from climate change (YET), along comes this detailed study of regional change, check out the map slideshow that indicates on of the worst areas for dying trees – the Appalachian mountain range – is also one of the least changed in temperature but historically one of the worst areas for pollution from Midwest coal plants…hmm…
add pix “warming”
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/jul11/plants0711.htm
http://news.yahoo.com/coffee-fungus-raising-prices-high-end-blends-115646443.html
Drought not the worst
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/science/140512/nasa-forest-fires-world-map
add fire map and quote “Steven Running, an ecosystems and conservation professor at the University of Montana, says: “Forests currently absorb about a quarter of fossil fuel carbon emissions. In other words, atmospheric carbon dioxide would be rising faster if forests weren’t helping us out. We better hope they keep doing so.””
Corinne LeQuéré – about a quarter
University of East Anglia and Tyndall Center, university of Exeter Transformational Climate Science presentation in May
8 minutes in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qli2Hp4otNg&feature=youtu.be
LeQuéré who is one of the IPCC authors wonders if ocean acidification can be as bad as terrestrial effects of ozone, which she characterizes as reducing productivity by a quarter. She’s referring to annual plant growth being reduced by 25%. That is huge. It means 25% less of a yield of crops. And in the EPA’s last (failed) assessment to make stricter standards based on “secondary” impacts (that’s forests and other environmental considerations, as opposed to human health) a major part of their rationale is the “cumulative” effects of this growth reduction on longer-lived species like trees.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/climate-change-rainforest-absorption-of-co2-becoming-erratic-9086304.html
http://time.com/122283/china-pollution-london-beijing-nitrogen-dioxide-no2/
British tabloids may lash out at Chinese smog all they want, but when it comes to one important pollution indicator, the U.K. capital actually outpollutes even Beijing.
A European Union–wide shift to diesel, in order to curb CO2 emissions, has sent London’s nitrogen dioxide levels through the roof, Bloomberg reports. Not only are they the worst in Europe, reaching twice the E.U. limit, they also surpass the Chinese capital’s by a whopping 50%.
“Successive governments knew more than 10 years ago that diesel was producing all these harmful pollutants, but they myopically plowed on with their CO2 agenda,” Simon Birkett, founder of the nonprofit Clean Air in London, told Bloomberg. “It’s a public-health catastrophe.”
In 2000, the E.U. drew up rules allowing diesel cars to discharge more than three times the amount of nitrogen dioxide than those using gasoline.
“We’re stuck now with these diesel cars,” says Matthew Pencharz, the environment and energy adviser to the mayor of London. “About half our cars are diesel, whereas 10 or 15 years ago it was lower than 10%.”
Nitrogen dioxide irritates the lungs, increasing susceptibility to respiratory infections. In China, efforts are mostly focused on other pollutants, such as PM10, levels of which almost triple those in London.
so, puffins? wtf? where is that story?
https://www.conservationgateway.org/ConservationPractices/Marine/HabitatProtectionandRestoration/Pages/Southern-New-England-and-New-York-Seagrass-Research-Initiative.aspx
The coastal waters of Southern New England and New York have lost extensive areas of eelgrass habitat (Zostera marina L.), a type of seagrass. The cause of this decline is multifaceted and based within a series of multiple stressors. These include the effects associated with increasing and chronic excess nutrient (primarily nitrogen) loads in combination with other environmental stressors such as thermal stress, changes in landscape, and climate change. The famous wasting disease event of the late 1930s resulted in a widespread loss of eelgrass in this region. Brown tides caused by blooms of the alga Aureococcus anophagefferens in the Long Island area first appeared in 1985 and have also periodically resulted in significant losses of eelgrass. Despite the recent absence of disease and brown tides in some areas, efforts to restore seagrass habitats have had limited to no success. As a result, seagrass habitat generally remains in decline throughout the region. The loss of seagrass may be linked to major declines in both finfish and shellfish populations, cascading to declines in economic and recreational fisheries.
http://www.publicnewsservice.org/2014-06-10/water/new-report-nitrogen-pollution-killer-threat-to-seagrass/a39820-1
Marine scientist Chris Clapp, with the Nature Conservancy’s Long Island chapter, says the federally-funded study found nitrogen pollution from sewage and fertilizer is killing off seagrass, which provides critical habitat for fin fish and shellfish. He says the underwater seagrass population off Long Island is down by as much as 90 percent since the 1930s, and calls that decline a critical indicator of the overall health of the region’s water quality. “It’s the canary in the coal mine for our estuaries,” says Clapp. “When you begin to lose that seagrass community and that habitat, it’s really a signal something is wrong.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130703140517.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fearth_climate+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Earth+%26+Climate+News%29
Declines in ecosystem productivity fueled by nitrogen-induced species loss
Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve in central Minnesota
The study analyzed 30 years of field data from the Nitrogen Enrichment Experiment in order to determine the temporal effect of nitrogen enrichment on the productivity, plant diversity, and species composition of naturally assembled grasslands at the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve in central Minnesota. The results showed that while nitrogen enrichment initially increased plant productivity, eventually this effect declined, especially in the plots that received the most fertilizer. These returns diminished over time because fertilizing also drove declines in plant diversity…According to the authors, previous studies have underestimated the impact of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning…we found that the most common species were lost under fertilization, creating a substantial decrease in productivity over time.”
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/06/breathing-easier-over-electricity/
add map
That is actually quite depressing. Background levels of ozone now are 40ppb and above – places like Houston are routinely out of compliance with current standards, 75 ppb. So a reduction best case of 3.6 is negligible, especially since levels are going to go up with warming as pointed out in the article. “LAMBERT: The way I view it at this point is it is an achievable step in the right direction.” The key word there is “achievable”. In other words, making a significant reduction in ozone isn’t. Achievable.
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2014/04/texas_ozone_fracking.php
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has consistently said that fracking has no significant impact on air quality, not in the Barnett Shale. Not in the Eagle Ford Shale. Not anywhere.
It was news, then, when a TCEQ-funded study, performed by the Alamo Area Council of Governments, a San Antonio-area regional planning agency, suggested a link between oil and gas drilling and a recent surge in the region’s ozone levels.
Was TCEQ finally admitting that the fumes being belched out by gas wells and compressor stations might be having a negative effect on air quality? Far from it. So miffed was the agency that it froze funding for the Alamo COG.
Farcical
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-06-11/why-some-states-may-actually-get-to-increase-carbon-emissions-under-new-epa-rules
The state standards don’t mandate absolute cuts in CO2. Rather, they require states to lower the ratio between the amount of emissions they produce and the amount of power they generate. The EPA has given states a great deal of flexibility to decide how to lower this ratio. The rules don’t explicitly say a state has to cut its emissions to lower the ratio. If, say, a state increases the amount of power it generates, its emissions can rise as well without disrupting the ratio.
Source: http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2014/06/caged-isolated-hearts.html
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