Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted
8 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

Don't know where else to put this.  It's going to be awesome when the national parks are trashed and wilderness is destroyed.  Of course, they will probably just let it all burn down.  Fuck you Republicans.

Spoilered for long cat

  Hide contents

Wilderness ranger speaks out about February wave of firings, impacts to Wilderness

NOTE: In February, the Trump administration fired approximately 3,400 U.S. Forest Service employees and 1,000 National Park Service employees, including wilderness rangers and trail crew members across the country. Shortly after termination, some wilderness rangers reached out to Wilderness Watch to share their stories and concerns about impacts to Wilderness. The following essay was written by one such wilderness ranger. Wilderness Watch has authenticated the wilderness ranger's identity, but we are publishing this story anonymously to protect their identity and to help prevent potential repercussions. The image in this story is unrelated to where the wilderness ranger works.

At the time of publishing, it was just announced that probationary employees will be “reinstated” for 45 days with pay. The long-term situation remains unknown, with cuts possible again.

 

I knew I wanted to be a wilderness ranger the moment I met the lead wilderness ranger during my first temporary U.S. Forest Service position back in 2018. I took the long way to get there, working positions in botany, then trail crew, but finally found my way to my wilderness ranger “dream job.”

It’s never that simple of course, and my small Forest Service recreation department required me to wear a variety of hats and complete whatever jobs needed doing. I started the season opening developed recreation sites with hazard tree assessments. I participated in the early season chainsaw logout of non-wilderness trails. I used my equestrian background to assist our mule packer with hauling in gear and materials for our Forest Service trail crew and non-profits and volunteer crews. I joined our trail crew with crosscuts and axes to remove as many logs from our wilderness trails as possible.

When all the extra duties were accomplished, I loaded up my pack, picked up my shovel, and headed alone into the Wilderness. I was never completely alone, a few miles away in any direction were other rangers, just a radio call away. Our small but mighty wilderness crew was comprised of our permanent seasonal lead ranger, several temporary rangers like myself, and one or two Americorp interns.

Working in a very busy Wilderness, there is never a shortage of work. There are always people to educate, there is always trash to remove, there are always illegal fire rings to disassemble and rehabilitate, and there are always people camping on fragile alpine vegetation. In the dry heat of summer, lightning peppers the landscape, and fires threatening people must be found and fought. There is a constant battle to manage the rapidly filling wilderness pit toilets, and deal with the ever-increasing piles of human waste from those that haven’t mastered the art of the “cathole.” Sometimes, when education isn’t enough, citations must be issued—but know that a wilderness ranger never reaches for their “ticket book” lightly.

Despite the challenges, being out in the Wilderness educating people about their public lands and maintaining these beautiful spaces is the most rewarding job I have ever experienced. I would have continued to work as a temporary employee as long as they would let me do this work. In June 2024, after 9 temporary appointments, I began my first permanent seasonal position with the Forest Service. More than a thousand other long-term temporary employees, including many other wilderness rangers, were hired into permanent positions last year as well. It felt like the agency that has struggled with attrition and hiring for so long was finally building up the next generation of public land stewards to carry on the work of our predecessors.

I was eager to learn the vast work of my mentor, friend, and lead wilderness ranger, who was approaching a well-deserved retirement. He began to teach me the grant application process. This is necessary because the on-the-ground Forest Service recreation employees in my state receive almost no direct federal funding and rely on competitive state recreation grants to fund their work. Read that sentence again—and remember it.

Fast forward to September 2024. My coworkers and I come out of the woods to an announcement that the Forest Service will not be hiring any temporary employees for the 2025 field season. This devastating news hit hard. All around me, friends and coworkers who began to learn the jobs they cherished, and returned to year after year, were gone. Our wilderness ranger “crew” was now a crew of two.

Despite losing our temporaries, we kept our chins up, because we had the recently-hired new cohort of permanent seasonal employees. We knew the next summer with bare-bones staffing would be incredibly challenging, but we are no strangers to doing more with less. I finished my field season, helped finish our grant applications, and received a glowing performance review from my supervisor.

January 2025 was barely over when we received news that every probationary employee was being placed on a list. A probationary period is at least a one year—and up to three years—in which a new permanent employee must display through their performance that they are a good fit for their position. I was a little worried, but I had a fantastic performance review.

Then came February 14, 2025.

I begin getting texts from friends and old coworkers across the region.

“People are being terminated from their positions!”

I get the call myself in the afternoon—I am also being terminated from my position. We all receive an identical letter stating: “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest. For this reason, the Agency informs you that the Agency is removing you from your position.”

Just like that, the career I have been tirelessly working toward is ripped away.

Your public land stewards, the protectors of your Wilderness, were fired. Not due lack of funding, not due to lack of work, not due to poor performance, but due to a complete lack of understanding, and an act of cruelty against federal employees.

The dust has had time to settle, and we can now assess the damage. All probationary Forest Service employees in “non-fire” positions were fired. There are almost no wilderness rangers left in my state and many of my neighboring states. Beyond Wilderness, there are almost no field-going recreation employees left. The temporaries are gone, the permanent seasonals are gone. Without staff, many ranger districts will struggle to even utilize volunteers or host Americorp interns.

Our Congressionally-designated Wilderness areas, and public lands as a whole, are now in greater danger than they have ever been. Visitation continues to increase, and the presence of wilderness rangers is more important than ever.

Without wilderness rangers, pit toilets will overflow, trash will pile up, more fragile alpine vegetation will be trampled by tents, feet, and fire rings, tripping over human and pet waste will become even more common, and already crowded areas likely will have no one to enforce wilderness permit requirements. I fear these precious, fragile places will have their wilderness character destroyed.

If you value public lands, and wild spaces, it is time to stand up for Wilderness.

 

if i lived in the mountains or forests of Colorado or California or Orgeon...or Tennessee or Texas or Montana or Kentucky or West Virginia or SO ON...i would genuinely be terrified. 

 

Posted
On 3/13/2025 at 3:16 PM, hookem2010 said:

Did anyone else watch Dark Matter? What I'd give to jump into that box with the fam and find myself in the alternate reality McPoyle's character ended up in. 

I honestly wonder if such an alternate reality would even exist, or if we (humankind) were always destined to end this way within a couple centuries of the industrial revolution? The shitty part is I don't think we were. Conscious decisions by a few powerful individuals fucked us all.

We’re probably at the great filter stage of Fermi’s Paradox. We’ll join countless other civilizations in the universe that destroyed itself 

Posted
11 hours ago, Sawbonz said:

What is the footprint of production of the gas? Should that not be factored in?

The size of the footprint for the power generation facility, and where it is located, is germaine to some sources, and somewhat insignificant to others. It tends to be an intangible consideration rather than an economic one.

To the extent that the gas is produced as a portion of the invested capital, yes it should be included in the investment economics. Draw a circle around the the areas requiring capital investment and run the economics base on what goes into and out of the circle. 

Rarely is a gas fired power plant built in the middle of a production field by the same company. Even then, for most public companies, they are different parts of the company, two different businesses, investment criteria, and profit centers. There may be company synergies, but each investment must stand alone.

Windmills/generators have to be built where the wind blows, and where there is room. Gas fired power plants are generally located close to pipelines and transmission lines, and the smaller footprint, allows for locations proximate to population centers, minimizing the need for infrastructure, and capital investment, outside the plant fence. 

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Debated on posting this here:

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-2025-Unclassified-Report.pdf

Annual Intelligence Threat Assessment:

For the first time in more than a decade, this annual report ditches any reference to climate change and the risk of humanitarian and environmental crises leaving nations more vulnerable to instability, competition, and conflict.

Rather, in presenting the report to Congress, Trump’s new spymaster (Gabbard) said environmental awareness is a given, so the report instead focuses on direct threats.

  • Rage+1 2
Posted
8 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

Rather, in presenting the report to Congress, Trump’s new spymaster (Gabbard) said environmental awareness is a given, so the report instead focuses on direct threats.

Fuck these lying sacks of shit. The whole point is to undermine the argument that "Of course climate change is real - our own govt repeatedly acknowledges that it represents one of the biggest threats to our national security."  With it out of the report, the GQP echo chamber will quickly move to "WTH are you talking about - it's not any any threat assessments!" mode.

 

Posted
9 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

Whelp. Say goodbye to one of our wildlife preserves. Scientists estimate 18 million tons of lithium can be extracted from under the Salton Sea. Street value $540 billion.

https://www.chemanalyst.com/NewsAndDeals/NewsDetails/massive-18-million-tons-of-lithium-deposit-found-under-california-salton-sea-35561

That’s been known for quite a while. I think the issue has been about how to extract it. But it was always going to happen. 

  • Like 1
Posted
On 2/17/2025 at 2:00 PM, David Dennison said:

I wonder how many of the five million plus people in the Houston metro know about the South Texas Project.

Wow. I realized how old the coverage of that fiasco is. They don't, as you point out, even know it exists at all.

Posted
On 2/17/2025 at 2:00 PM, David Dennison said:

I wonder how many of the five million plus people in the Houston metro know about the South Texas Project.

2 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

Wow. I realized how old the coverage of that fiasco is. They don't, as you point out, even know it exists at all.

The South Texas Nuclear Plant is ~ 75 miles from Downtown Houston.

The Comanche Peak Nuclear Plant is ~ 40 miles from Downtown Fort Worth and ~ 66 miles from Downtown Dallas (DFW @ 8+ million people).

The STNP and CPPP are both ~ 140 miles from Austin.

Posted
On 3/30/2025 at 5:31 PM, Willfully Horn said:

Whelp. Say goodbye to one of our wildlife preserves. Scientists estimate 18 million tons of lithium can be extracted from under the Salton Sea. Street value $540 billion.

https://www.chemanalyst.com/NewsAndDeals/NewsDetails/massive-18-million-tons-of-lithium-deposit-found-under-california-salton-sea-35561

i think this is the first time the former has been used to describe the latter.

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

I guess I'm just being histrionic. Doug Burgum says there is "plenty of time" to solve a "potential temperature crisis" after we beat China in the AI arms race and prevent Iran from getting a nuke. These rich guys are so nice to be looking out for us all the time and telling us what really matters. 

  • Like 1
  • Rage+1 1
Posted

Blatten won’t be the last alpine village that meets this fate.

Quote

A huge chunk of a glacier in the Swiss Alps broke off on Wednesday, causing a deluge of ice, mud and rock that buried most of a mountain village that had been evacuated due to the risk of a rockslide, authorities said.

One person is currently missing, officials said.

 

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/glacier-crumbles-above-evacuated-swiss-village-prompting-huge-rock-slide-2025-05-28/

 

Blatten is first mentioned in the written record in 1433.

 

  • Rage+1 1
Posted
11 hours ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

was fascinated by that story late last week. glad they were able to get (almost) everyone out in time

Yes. Trusting scientists saved the lives of a couple of hundred people.

  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

image.thumb.png.aa73eadf2ccf59f37821675b7c55bc70.png
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/climate/climate-heat-intensity.html

Quote

 

Summer started barely a week ago, and already the United States has been smothered in a record-breaking “heat dome.” Alaska saw its first-ever heat advisory this month. And all of this comes on the heels of 2024, the hottest calendar year in recorded history.

The world is getting hotter, faster. A report published last week found that human-caused global warming is now increasing by 0.27 degrees Celsius per decade. That rate was recorded at 0.2 degrees in the 1970s, and has been growing since.

This doesn’t surprise scientists who have been crunching the numbers. For years, measurements have followed predictions that the rate of warming in the atmosphere would speed up. But now, patterns that have been evident in charts and graphs are starting to become a bigger part of people’s daily lives.

“Each additional fractional degree of warming brings about a relatively larger increase in atmospheric extremes, like extreme downpours and severe droughts and wildfires,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California.

While this aligns with scientific predictions of how climate change can intensify such events, the increase in severity may feel sudden to people who experience them.

“Back when we had lesser levels of warming, that relationship was a little bit less dramatic,” Dr. Swain said. “There is growing evidence that the most extreme extremes probably will increase faster and to a greater extent than we used to think was the case,” he added.

Take rainfall, for example. Generally, extreme rainfall is intensifying at a rate of 7 percent with each degree Celsius of atmospheric warming. But recent studies indicate that so-called record-shattering events are increasing at double that rate, Dr. Swain said.

“There is no weather that’s happening outside of climate,” said Kate Marvel, a climate scientist and author of the book “Human Nature.”

“This is stuff that’s manifesting in the real world,” she said, citing catastrophes like Hurricane Helene and Vermont’s historic floods in 2023.

According to Dr. Swain, scientists have yet to come to a universal understanding of these events, in part because the infrequent nature of outliers makes them difficult to study.

And as warming has intensified, so have the impacts on vulnerable regions of the planet like the Arctic and Antarctic, making previously rare or hidden consequences more apparent. Scientists are fine-tuning their models to understand the behavior of the vast ice sheets in such places to match the rapid changes they’re observing.

In March, a NASA analysis found that sea levels had risen faster than expected in 2024, in part because of a combination of melting glaciers and heat penetrating deeper into oceans, causing them to expand thermodynamically. Sea surface temperatures are rising faster than previously predicted, too, according to a study published in April by researchers at the National Center for Earth Observation in Britain.

Cecilia Bitz, a professor of climate science at the University of Washington, said that modeling the Earth is complex, and that there are an innumerable amount of small factors that could be taken into account. But even with these uncertainties, scientists have ways of building their models to identify trends that are largely accurate. “Nothing is defying our big picture about the physics of the climate system,” Dr. Bitz said.

Overall atmospheric warming has consistently followed modeling predictions for decades. But recently, the fundamental imbalance responsible for this heat has been tilting — catching even scientists off guard.

Global warming is a symptom of Earth’s energy imbalance, which is a measure of the difference between the total amount of heat reaching Earth from the sun, and the amount radiating back into space.

In May, a paper analyzing data from a NASA satellite found that this imbalance had grown faster than expected, more than doubling in the past two decades and becoming nearly twice as large as it was previously predicted to be.

Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, said climate scientists were still working to understand these findings. There are various theories, such as fewer emissions of aerosols, a type of air pollution that is harmful to human health and that increases the reflectivity of clouds, which bounce the sun’s heat back into space.

Historically, aerosol emissions have masked the warming effect of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. Over the past half-century or so, as nations reduced certain kinds of air pollution, aerosol emissions fell significantly. According to Dr. Hausfather, this change is the primary reason atmospheric warming has accelerated in recent decades.

But the most worrying possibility behind Earth’s energy imbalance, he said, is how the general nature of clouds may be changing in response to climbing temperatures. It’s a feedback loop that could potentially exacerbate warming and is “one of the single biggest uncertainties in predicting future climate,” he said.

As the world continues to emit planet-warming greenhouse gasses, and temperatures climb past what the human world was built to handle, Dr. Marvel said, more people will experience climate change in damaging and frightening ways.

“It’s always worse than expected when it happens to you,” Dr. Marvel said. “It is one thing to see something in a climate model, and it’s a totally different thing to actually experience it in your own life.”

 

 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted

Well, Kerrville is about to get wiped out by this flood.  And a lot of people won't be able to rebuild with FEMA now functionally out of business.  So any of y'all looking for some cheap Hill Country real estate and willing to take advantage of some human misery . . . this may be your shot real close to home.

  • Hook 'Em 3
Posted
6 minutes ago, Ghost of LL said:

Well, Kerrville is about to get wiped out by this flood.  And a lot of people won't be able to rebuild with FEMA now functionally out of business.  So any of y'all looking for some cheap Hill Country real estate and willing to take advantage of some human misery . . . this may be your shot real close to home.

image.gif.5da4e36a2f95d857050faabcf8432cf9.gif

image.thumb.png.a40b5fdbbd04e31839aa968676ecca69.png

  • Fuck Around and Find Out 3


×
×
  • Create New...