Great to have someone with such a high profile as Dr. Hansen point out what many of us in the grassroots ecosystem advocacy movement have been saying for decades, yet been mostly ignored or defamed for doing so: that "wildfire pretense logging" cannot be used as a Trojan horse to degrade and destroy our last, best ecosystems on public lands!
Thank you for your important and timely op-ed, Dr. Hansen. Our public forests are critical biodiversity and climate infrastructure and we cannot let industry and corporate influences subvert and twist the truth. Thinning forests will not save communities from burning down.
Thank you so much for your standing up for keeping burned forests intact as superior habitat for regrowing burned areas over clear cut harvesting areas that this legislation promotes. In my area, we are faced with a different situation: in many areas of the tallgrass prairie biome, eliminating fire and fragmenting the landscape has resulted in wide scale invasion of prairies by Juniperus virginiana, locally known as eastern red cedar. Not only does this acidify the soil and push out the local mix of forbs and grasses found in tallgrass prairies, it also creates near monoculture Juniperus stands that surround many towns, farms and some cities: a conflagration waiting to happen when the next drought gets accompanied by strong winds. There have been some tentative studies suggesting that mobile biochar burners that sequester carbon from the Juniperus stands could create a win-win situation of reducing fire danger and protecting tallgrass prairie from being eliminated; I thought you might be interested in this and would be interested in what you think.
Yes, biochar is one of the silver buckshots that can help draw down CO2 with other benefits. I bought one ton of biochar, which Sophie and I worked into the (rather impoverished PA clay soil) just outside the then-root zone of newly planted trees. It improved the soil quality and tree health, while providing long term carbon storage. The improved tree health provides additional carbon storage. Even if this is developed on a larger scale, it is only one of the silver buckshots needed.
.... additionally, 'we' need to keep this in mind, without being utter purists for 'current' local species. Those rare endemic species need more than a few university city arboretums to hide in.
Fast-growing trees are taking over the forests of the future and putting biodiversity, climate resilience under pressure
I'll add a couple of details about biochar, if that's alright. I can add footnotes and bibliography if anyone wants. Biochar is indeed one of the more promising “silver buckshots,” particularly because it stabilizes carbon that would otherwise re-enter the atmosphere and can improve degraded soils at the same time. Its agronomic benefits are strongest in highly weathered, acidic tropical soils — such as parts of the Amazon basin — where it can substantially improve nutrient retention and water-holding capacity. However, its climate potential is fundamentally constrained by sustainable biomass availability and land-use tradeoffs. Global estimates of scalable biochar deployment typically fall in the range of roughly 0.3–2 gigatons of CO₂ per year under optimistic assumptions. That is meaningful, but it remains an order of magnitude smaller than current annual fossil fuel emissions and also smaller than the potential increase in wildfire-driven emissions and other positive feedbacks under continued warming. Biochar is therefore best understood as a wedge, not a balancing mechanism.
Additionally, the climate benefit of biochar depends heavily on how it is produced and deployed. If feedstocks are transported long distances, if forests are harvested unsustainably, or if pyrolysis systems rely on fossil energy, the net benefit shrinks. In wildfire contexts specifically, logistical constraints, ecological tradeoffs, and the scale of remote burned areas limit how much biomass can realistically be converted to stable carbon. Biochar can improve soil recovery and modestly stabilize carbon after severe burns, but it does not fundamentally counteract the nonlinear increase in fire intensity and forest carbon loss expected under higher warming scenarios. Its value is real — but bounded.
Yes, this is very good, thank you. I agree with it all. The priority must be to get on a sensible energy/emissions track, but we will also need to work on the different ways to draw down GHG amounts. Nature is trying to help — it’s impressive how large the annual carbon drawdown is despite our failure to help.
GPT5.2 and I have done similar analysis of the most promising carbon capture technologies. They all have limitations. We estimated that if everyone takes it seriously, and several trillion dollars are invested, we can reasonably hope to pull 4-5 billion tons of CO2 per year out of the air. At the same time, if temperature increases to 3 degrees C above baseline, the natural feedback loops (methane emissions from wetlands, landfills, and permafrost, CO2 emissions from the soil, etc) will increase 4-5 billion tons per year above what they are today. So, whatever temperature we are at when we stop burning fuel and eating beef and dairy, we would have a fighting chance to hold the line at that temperature, or at least reduce warming significantly and buy ourselves time. I feel like it would be important for policy makers to be aware of this sort of evidence, and start planning for a 3-4 degree warmer planet, just in case. I can't publish, of course, because my degree isn't in climate science.
allowing logging without public oversight is undeniably a bad idea. Done wrong, it can exacerbate fire danger and compromise ecosystem integrity. But if Dr Hansen is going to weigh in on this, he needs to be scientifically responsible. Forest/fire ecologists don't all agree about necessary steps, and you appear to listen to opinions not shared by all of us. It is a complex issue and should not be approached with oversimplistic ideas any more that it should be approached without oversight. Dr Hansen, if you want bring your well-earned credibility to this issue, take the time to understand the issues.
Thanks, David Perry, but since you use the trick of pretending to a speak from a higher level of expertise, I address my response to the readers.
The laws of physics, and science in general, are based on observations of the real world. That's why I showed two photos taken within a stone's throw of each other at the same time, several years after the Rim fire. One in the area that was logged, where trees had been planted but were struggling to even survive, and one in the unlogged area where the forest was thriving as it naturally regenerated after the fire, as healthy forest do.
Our op-ed included proper caveats implying that careful "thinning" could be helpful in some situations, but such cases are the exception, not the rule. The Fix Our Forest Act would unleash rapacious destruction of the public's national forests, setting aside large areas for destructive activity without even a fig leaf of environmental review. Please pay attention to the position of your elected representative in this battle.
"the trick of pretending to speak from a higher level of expertise".
Well, I've studied forests for 60+ Years. I'm lead author of the textbook, Forest Ecosystems"(named notable book of the year in 2008). I believe it's fair to say I know something about how forest ecosystems work. What I don't do is claim expertise in other disciplines (e.g. climatology).
Old timers in the environmental movement out here will tell you I played a significant role in helping to protect the last of our oldgrowth. I did that through opeds, testimony to congress, and as a member of scientific panels that made recommendations to lawmakers and managers.
I appreciated your photos of the rim fire comparisons. And in fact have been a coauthor on papers discussing environmental risks of salvage logging.
Here is what concerns me and why I responded to your post. Forest landscapes throughout the country are highly altered. How they are altered varies among forest types, but in the west it has led to much greater fire risk. One group out here is arguing that fire is a natural feature in these systems and should be allowed to burn--ie. no attempts to reduce fuels. Frankly, this scares the hell out of me. My research in dry forests shows that the old growth pine forests, relatively resistant to large crown fires, is being replaced by high densities of fire prone trees species. That started with the extermination of Native Americans and continued with misguided early forest management. In the mesic forests, relatively fire resistant OG has been replaced by fire prone younger plantations.
You mention the laws of physics. Before my PhD in ecology, I got an MS in physics. With one exception, the laws of physics haven't helped me a lot in understanding complex adaptive ecosystems. The exception is nonequilibrium thermodynamics, which tells us about self-organizing systems. My fear is that we have created a situation in which fires will become self-reinforcing. Th warming climate is going to exacerbate that. It has the potential to drive our forests to collapse. That's not to say we shouldn't let some fires burn, but that we should carefully evaluate when and where. But here's a fact: no fire that burns in a highly altered landscape can be called natural. It is not a 'one-size fits all' situation and we have to be very careful about what we do or don't do.
You say: " My fear is that we have created a situation in which fires will become self-reinforcing. The warming climate is going to exacerbate that. It has the potential to drive our forests to collapse. "
Sean: Obviously so, for this is already the case globally. But that in no way undermines the arguments put by Jim and Dan Galpern* against the FOFA - the actual topic here - your point in fact emphasizes the importance of blocking bad laws that make the situation worse, and that are not based on quality analysis.
@David "That's not to say we shouldn't let some fires burn, ....... "
Sean: Would you point out where Jim and Dan* suggested or promoted such a thing in their article? Because the only action I saw being promoted was to block the FOFA law being passed in Congress.
Sean, I didn't see it in the article, but I have heard that argument more than once. If memory serves, Chad has argued that. Perhaps I'm wrong. Memory doesn't always serve.
Wow! You got a solid background David. Kudos to you. Am an alclimist ( my contrived climate quarterback word). I observe and listen to our burning planet, its peoples, and the scientists. When it comes to forest fires it doesn't take a Sheinstein to realize they are dessicated.. primo fire fuel🔥. How would you approach handling the forests' moisture and water supplies for fire fighters?
The best, and only option for increasing water supply to heavily stocked younger even-agd stands is to reduce leaf area---thinning. (Not in old growth which uses water more conservatively) Thinning t also allows more drying winds in stands. Seems like everything is about tradeoffs.
Am of the "the more leaves the better ( more photosynthesis and biogenic aerosols ) mindset. But, tradeoffs like you said are there. More moisture will be lost in evapotransportation. Also, am of "bring the mountain to Mohammed" mindset.. water reservoirs and canals networked in forests. Supplies evaporated water in low atmo. and fire fighting water supply.
@James says: "The laws of physics, and science in general, are based on observations of the real world. "
On the 40th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, it's worth remembering Richard Feynman’s philosophy of scientific integrity emphasizes that Statistical detection/non-detection ≠ physical absence nor presence; CI thresholds are conventions, not ontological truths.
Feynman’s point is not merely philosophical; it is a scientific warning: Agreement with data does not equal understanding.
He was not opposing institutions for sport. He was insisting on a principle that applies equally to science, policy, and communication: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
As such, the integrity of science requires reporting the full story — including what contradicts your preferred conclusion —and resisting the temptation to protect a tribe.
Which is what Jim and Dan Galpern* did: "Our op-ed included proper caveats implying that careful "thinning" could be helpful in some situations, but such cases are the exception, not the rule. "
absolutely not. Management needs guidance and oversight, but that guidance needs to be open minded and attentive to what ecological scientists --and Native Americans--are telling us. In my experience, opinions vary widely, even among environmental groups. I fear that feedback will be so diverse and contradictory that managers will be like deer in the headlights.
I've been on several panels, commissions, etc charged with evaluating forest management policies and making recommendations, which sometimes have actually been followed. Maybe we need such a panel now to evaluate the situation and help put some sideboards on the options. . . Perhaps a council of 'elders' would help. I don't know. It would have to be a group respected by all sides.
David "Forest/fire ecologists don't all agree about necessary steps, and you appear to listen to opinions not shared by all of us."
If ecologists don't all agree, then it's plainly obvious whatever **Opinions** one has will NOT be shared by all of them. I have no reason to believe your "opinions" are better than anyone else's.
My point being, James Hansen has taken time out of a very busy intense schedule to raise this issue in the premier national newspaper for the good of all. The last thing he or this issue needs or deserves is to be criticized for not being "absolutely perfect" according to your or anyone else's yardsticks.
Jim is no man's fool. Cut him some slack here and do not undermine him or this cause. That's my "opinion". Take it or leave it. But if you have the time, please submit your own OPED to the Boston Globe or NYTs on this critical issue of Govt of the People being totally out of control--as usual ever since 1789.
Dr. Hansen's climate research is phenomenal. Unfortunately, this piece misses some points. I remember reading about how managed forest areas came through much better than unmanaged areas in the crazy fires we had a few years ago in Northern California. Long term studies confirm this:
The current laws make reasonable forest management difficult to implement. Maybe the Fix our Forests isn't perfect, but it enables management in critical areas for limiting the spread and damage of wildfires, which also lowers the carbon emissions. If the area he was in had been better managed BEFORE the wildfire, damage to the soils and ecosystem would not have been so severe.
The "Fix Our Forests Act" does not prescribe forest "management". Rather, it's intent is to eliminate dissent. It allows a number of destructive practices, but bans environmental legal challenges.
I am not comfortable with any law whose sole purpose seems to be to eliminate legal challenges — especially considering the disdain the current administration shows for any impediment to its power.
Here are the good things the Fix Our Forests Act does:
Simplifies and expedites the most critical forest management projects while maintaining strong environmental standards, for example by eliminating redundant agency consultations
Reduces delays to these critical actions due to litigation over insignificant impacts
Adds new ways for communities to provide input early and often in planning and implementation
Provides agencies with emergency tools to increase the pace & scale of forest management
Invests in innovative fire detection, suppressant technologies, modernizing construction standards
Creates an interagency Fireshed Center
Provides support for wildland firefighters
Hardens utility rights-of-way against wildfire
Creates a national strategy to increase the capacity of tree nurseries to address the nationwide shortage of tree seedlings
Establishes a program to explore biochar innovations and opportunities
I share your concern regarding the horrible attitude of the current administration towards environmental protection. The Fix Our Forests Act was moving through Congress before the current administration and was approved by many Democrats in the House. We need to get things done rather than keeping everything bottlenecked in courts while wildfires get worse and worse.
The notion that denser forests will consistently burn at high intensities, and that mechanical thinning will reliably reduce fire intensity is simply not consistent with a large body of scientific evidence, especially landscape-scale studies that avoid the common problem of cherry-picking at small spatial scales in many thinning studies. For example, in a study of several hundred wildfires across the Pacific Northwest (mesic and dry forests, both), U.S. Forest Service scientists (Lesmeister et al. 2021) found that denser forests had lower fire intensity, and more open forests (such as those resulting from thinning) had higher fire intensity with “hotter, drier, and windier microclimates, and those conditions decrease dramatically over relatively short distances into the interior of older forests with multi-layer canopies and high tree density…”
More fundamentally, the entire conversation about mechanical thinning as a wildfire management strategy is misplaced. Half a century of scientific studies establish that there is no need to remove trees prior to burning, even in the densest forests and even in forests that have not burned in over a century. The burning is simply done during fire season, generally at the earlier part, in milder fire weather. Even the US Forest Service now admits this, and further admits that mechanical thinning is several times more expensive per acre than fire alone. See:
People have been in the Australian wilderness for generations. But can people be considered part of the natural landscape or will they always have an impact?
* Can we trust scientific papers?
Peer review is seen as the assurance that scientific papers come with trust. But is the process rigorous?
--Joel Deaves: There's a lot of mob that are restoring landscapes with these methods, their own ways of treating the land with fire and with other things too.
Lesley Head: Yeah, certainly. Rhys Jones was very influential in my own work, including the paper he wrote about fire stick farming.
--In the same way as Australian ecology and paleoecology has really challenged northern hemisphere frameworks of vegetation succession and you know, whether fire is an external disturbance to the environment or something that's integral to the environment.
--Joel Deaves: the country needs to be spaced out and needs room to grow and grow proper. And it just needs that balance between all them right species that belong there. We need to recreate that environment for them trees again to flourish, not weeds and not erosion and not all this stuff.
Robyn Williams: You showed us actually, it was fascinating, how actually to have COOL FIRE, in other words you're burning clumps of grass at the right time in the right way and you get WHITE SMOKE coming up, not black smoke, when black smoke comes up you know you've got a problem and so that then has A FIRE GOING DOWN THE HILL rather than up the hill,
Joel Deaves: SCIENTISTS we try to work together and there is some projects in the future that we do want to work on because we're at the point now where the environment is in a state where we need that old knowledge from our culture, certain parts that's allowed to be shared, because there is sacred things that we cannot share.
Joel Deaves: When I do comprehend science, when I'm looking at it, it does come to the same kind of outcome or the same kind of thing. Whether it be a climate event that happened 15,000 years ago here, you know, we have stories about that. They have archaeological, geological evidence. We have oral evidence of the landscape changing, you know.
So science is a modern way to explain it. Our culture is our way and it's coming from the spirit of the country and the people.
However, this old way of doing things, which is going in and TREATING IT WITH FIRE, IT WORKS. It's worked for so long. Our people wouldn't be here if it didn't work because we had WILDFIRES. When the lightning strikes come, all the other places, THEY WERE TREATED.
Logging of mature and old-growth trees, and post-fire clearcutting, on public lands are not "critical actions". Such logging would be increased and expedited by the logging provisions in the Fix Our Forests Act, which would severely weaken environmental laws and restrict the courts from upholding the law against otherwise illegal logging projects.
One thing I didn't see when I browsed it was indigenous involvement and consent.
They are generally closer to the needs of the forest, whereas white settlers are generally more interested in their wants from the forest. Even your list looks more like "maintaining OUR resource" rather than treating it like a sovereign entity.
In Canada, such a bill would be DOA without indigenous support.
I'm not sure about indigenous support, but that would make sense to get. When I search on it, it seems to be mixed. "Opinions among California tribes and indigenous representatives regarding the "Fix Our Forests Act" (2025/2026) are mixed, balancing a desire for more active forest management with concerns over sovereignty and environmental protection. "
One other really interesting link on the history of how we got into this mess is here:
Rob: "Hardens utility rights-of-way against wildfire?" No. That's a Fail.
Forests in a rapidly warming drying world and Infrastructure do not Fit Rationally well together.
Therefore get rid of the Utility Rights completely and maybe half the fires will never start from fallen power lines in storms and lousy maintenance standards. Logic and evidence are amazing partners when forming judgments.
That is not the Standard that Selects for Political Office. Fix your Ideological Values, or Burn seems to be the basic Logic here.
Harden the LEGAL RIGHTS OF FORESTS TO SURVIVE in a warming drying world for generations ahead.
I remember that some of the privately managed areas had much less spreading during the Camp fire in California, which was devastating to unmanaged areas and towns. Not that private management practices have been ideal either, but we need to enable greater management in areas that are critical for limiting the spread of fires, which is what the Fix Our Forests Act targets. Here is a nice article on management in general:
What was the wind, temp, and humidity at the time of spread through the private lands relative to the weather conditions when it burned through public lands? Were the public lands also treated? And, what is “devastating” about wildfires burning in forests?
The claim that the Camp fire burned slower or less intensely through the more heavily logged private lands is flatly false. The private forests, where the heaviest pre-fire logging occurred, is where the Camp fire spread fastest, based on the fire progression data. See the map and accompanying information on the Camp fire, and similar results from other large fires, here:
Hi Chad. Regarding page 20 and the Camp Fire, it doesn't really show much about pre-burn thinning. It does indicate that post-burn thinning didn't help much. I would say for other image pairs such as image pair #6, the results would be mixed at best. I would rather see good practices incorporated in legislation rather than keeping everything jammed up in court proceedings, especially for thinning near roads and power lines. I agree that we preferably want to keep large trees and thin out smaller ones.
Rob: "The current laws make reasonable forest management difficult to implement. Maybe the Fix our Forests isn't perfect, ........"
The James Hansen and Dan Galpern's* news article made good sense and ended in a rational call to action. If the current Laws are no good, and the FoF is also not good enough, then go back to the blackboard and start over writing a good evidence and community supported law.
To do that requires integrity. Not much of that in the WH or Congress, is there. Of course this is the biggest problem you have in the US. Actually writing good Laws. The first step seems to be defining which Laws and why they are Bad. Actually even before that creating a functional political system should be the first thing to Fix.
Maybe you need a "Fix our F****** Governance Act." :-/
Thanks for shedding light on this and sharing your expertise. This is one of the reasons why we love this platform so much. Great information. Keep it up!
Thank you for speaking up in support of forests, Dr Hansen and your longstanding work to raise awareness of the climate emergency. Just wondering if you are aware of the work of eminent Russian physicist, Anastassia Makarieva, one of the authors of the Biotic Pump Theory. Her research provides additional support for the importance of protecting forests, particularly pristine forests that have their natural functions still intact, and those that connect to the ocean and draw moisture inland. She is on Substack https://substack.com/@anastassiamakarieva?r=15krko&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile
Dear All, Arriving at good climate laws (and laws that protect our forests) is a very interdisciplinary matter. As an attorney who spent 36 years enforcing our nations environmental laws at USEPA (retired 2024), I am cautious about approaching topics on which I am not an expert, but I also believe it is my obligation as a citizen to assess the information provided by those with relevant expertise.
Having spent the last several months studying the wording and potential impacts of the Fix Our Forests Act (FOFA), I believe Dr. Hansen has done this appropriately here. Given the very significant impact of the health of our forests on climate, I am grateful to Dr. Hansen for adding his voice and raising the profile of the important question of whether the Fix Our Forests Act will be helpful or harmful to preserving a livable climate for future generations and to reducing wildfire risks.
Despite some evidence that thinning and controlled burns may have time-limited benefits to the health of some forests in some circumstances, my review of the wording of FOFA and the papers I cite above, along with many others, have convinced me that FOFA, if it becomes law, creates a serious additional risk of harm to our climate, our wildfire risk reduction efforts, and the health of our forests.
FOFA would create an expedited process that insulates "responsible officials," selected by political appointees, from meaningful public and scientific review. FOFA would authorize these officials to promote broad-scale thinning of our national forests under the label "Harardous Fuels" removal, creating a long-term carbon-storage deficit that undermines our climate goals. FOFA creates financial incentives for this activity through the so-called "Good Neighbor Authority," which provides reimbursement to state, local and tribal governments for contracting with timber harvest companies to carry out this activity. This of course has generated major logging industry support for FOFA! See American Loggers Council September submission to Congress at: https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118582/witnesses/HHRG-119-AG15-Wstate-DaneB-20250910-SD002.pdf#:~:text=The%20Fix%20Our%20Forests%20Act%20(FOFA)%20is,forest%20management%20objectives%20for%20the%20National%20Forests).
I'm grateful to all who take the time to carefully consider this important question and to contact their representatives so that Congress takes notice. Much appreciated!
2.3.1. Broad-Scale Thinning to Reduce Fire Severity Conflicts with Climate Goals
A reaction to the recent increase in the intensity and frequency of wildfires is to thin forests to reduce the quantity of combustible materials. However, the amount of carbon removed by thinning is much larger than the amount that might be saved from being burned in a fire, and far more area is harvested than would actually burn [42,46,47,48,49]. Most analyses of mid- to long-term thinning impacts on forest structure and carbon storage show there is a multi-decadal biomass carbon deficit following moderate to heavy thinning [50]. For example, thinning in a young ponderosa pine plantation showed that removal of 40% of the tree biomass would release about 60% of the carbon over the next 30 years [51]. Regional patchworks of intensive forest management have increased fire severity in adjacent forests [49]. Management actions can create more surface fuels. Broad-scale thinning (e.g., ecoregions, regions) to reduce fire risk or severity [52] results in more carbon emissions than fire, and creates a long-term carbon deficit that undermines climate goals.
As to the effectiveness and likelihood that thinning might have an impact on fire behavior, the area thinned at broad scales to reduce fuels has been found to have little relationship to area burned, which is mostly driven by wind, drought, and warming. A multi-year study of forest treatments such as thinning and prescribed fire across the western U.S. showed that about 1% of U.S. Forest Service treatments experience wildfire each year [53]. The potential effectiveness of treatments lasts only 10–20 years, diminishing annually [53]. Thus, the preemptive actions to reduce fire risk or severity across regions have been largely ineffective.
Effective risk reduction solutions need to be tailored to the specific conditions. In fire-prone dry forests, careful removal of fuel ladders such as saplings and leaving the large fire-resistant trees in the forest may be sufficient and would have lower carbon consequences than broad-scale thinning [54]. The goals of restoring ecosystem processes and/or reducing risk in fire-prone regions can be met by removing small trees and underburning to reduce surface fuels, not by removal of larger trees, which is sometimes done to offset the cost of the thinning. With continued warming and the need to adapt to wildfire, thinning may restore more frequent low-severity fire in some dry forests, but could jeopardize regeneration and trigger a regime change to non-forest ecosystems [53].
While moderate to high severity fire can kill trees, most of the carbon remains in the forest as dead wood that will take decades to centuries to decompose. Less than 10% of ecosystem carbon enters the atmosphere as carbon dioxide in PNW forest fires [21,46]. Recent field studies of combustion rates in California’s large megafires show that carbon emissions were very low at the landscape-level (0.6 to 1.8%) because larger trees with low combustion rates were the majority of biomass, and high severity fire patches were less than half of the burn area [55,56]. These findings are consistent with field studies on Oregon’s East Cascades wildfires and the large Biscuit Fire in southern Oregon [57,58].
To summarize, harvest-related emissions from thinning are much higher than potential reduction in fire emissions. In west coast states, overall harvest-related emissions were about 5 times fire emissions, and California’s fire emissions were a few percent of its fossil fuel emissions [59]. In the conterminous 48 states, harvest-related emissions are 7.5 times those from all natural causes [60]. It is understandable that the public wants action to reduce wildfire threats, but false solutions that make the problem worse and increase global warming are counterproductive.
Hello, Laurie, good to hear from you after so many years, and thanks for your insightful perceptions on this topic -- the Earth needs good lawyers.
To those not acquainted with Laurie, she was an EPA lawyer who could see through the fraud in ineffectual cap-and-trade and offsets.
When you have a two-party system, both parties taking money from special interests, one party saying that there is no problem, the other taking the opposite side, saying there is a problem and proposing a half-assed, ineffectual solution, you've got a problem that is hard to solve.
I remember a short lived TV series about a maverick on a motorcycle going town to town fixing messes and doing what is right- " Then Came Bronson".
Dr Hansen has been doing this everyday fighting the whims of the ignorant or proudful with the truth of the climate fiasco. He got me to ask myself as Earth 🔥, "Watt?! Me 2?!"
Somebody “fixed’ THAT one, by golly! When the harvests are trees like these— the equivalent of teenage humans— there’s really no chance of a ‘forest’ developing there. This is more like “hayfield technology”.. where the ‘fiber’ is logged, the “money species” replanted, and it goes into a 45 year rotation. There’s NO understory.. and very little ground cover. It will be sprayed with herbicide to eliminate the leafy growth. Plantation conifers are painful for me to behold.
I planted trees in winters in Oregon.. 1969 to 1981.. and it took me about 5 years before it sank in that the only thing we planted were Douglas-fir.. the “$-tree” of the industry. This was mostly on federal land.. BLM & Forest Service.. and some state forests. I never did plant on the timber company’s plantations.. but I saw how they were being managed. I want to imagine that at least Some of the trees that I planted will live to reach their full height.. and begin the next stage of their lives.. growing wider.. becoming “old growth” forest. ^..^
Thank you for calling out the FOFA – we need responsible and accountable scientists to educate the public and elected officials around this travesty that would increase and accelerate logging of our vital forest ecosystems. The FOFA would degenerate the forests, eliminate their vital greenhouse gas sequestration potential, and reduce biodiversity. “Thinning" is another excuse for logging that rides on fearmongering around wildfires. It opens up the forest canopy, allowing the forest floor to dry out, and wind to carry embers farther thereby often making fires faster, hotter, and larger.
We need to cut greenhouse gas emissions and protect the forests for biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services. The FOFA would do the opposite: add emissions from logging and land conversions, while eliminating sequestration potential and biodiversity support.
Dr. Hansen, the study you cited to support your position on active management, Lindenmayer et al., 2025 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320725001089), a review, appears to completely misinterpret some of the strongest recent evidence of the efficacy of active management. It claims the study, Davis et al., 2024 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037811272400197X), a meta-analysis: "reported no statistically significant differences in subsequent wildfire intensity among thinning plus prescribed fire, thinning plus pile burning, and prescribed fire alone. Davis et al. (2024) nevertheless concluded that thinning plus prescribed fire had the “largest” effect on wildfire intensity".
This is not consistent with what was published, which very clearly shows a strong statistically significant difference in thinning plus prescribed fire in wildfire severity in comparison to no active management as shown in Fig. 4 (https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S037811272400197X-gr4_lrg.jpg) ("Thin + rx burn" where the lines represent the confidence intervals). Your point that thinning does not always reduce wildfire intensity is probably still valid (as evidenced by Fig. 3 and Fig. 4) but the efficacy of active management on wildfire intensity compared no management appears to be robustly well-established in the literature regardless of whether there are circumstances where it may be less appropriate.
Also, I believe you conflate mechanical thinning with "deep forest logging" when they are not the same. Many groups opposed to FOFA seem to subscribe to this notion, but I've yet to unearth the reason for this conflation.
@Ben "active management on wildfire intensity compared no management appears to be robustly well-established in the literature "
Sean: I saw no place where Jim and Chad recommended such actions. Making it look like a classic straw-man -- you're arguing against something they never recommended.
@Ben I fear you are grossly overestimating the importance and utility of statistical significance and CI in these matters.
1-meta-analysis: "reported no statistically significant differences in subsequent wildfire intensity among
2-very clearly shows a strong statistically significant difference in thinning plus prescribed fire
3-represent the confidence intervals
4-(and given) Your point that thinning does not always reduce wildfire intensity is probably still valid
Sean: Great caution is required when applying "statistical significance" with CI "confidence intervals" as if it defines actual scientific observations and accumulated data. This is one of Jim's core arguments against the "unscientific" reliance on findings by the IPCC and Modeling. Like signals of institutional defensiveness are a red light flashing.
What’s presented as institutional science increasingly resembles consensus theatre rather than open inquiry. Policy-facing narrative construction conducted under the cover of methodology wrapped in statistics.
Richard Feynman repeatedly warned that science fails not only through bad faith, but through sincere overconfidence — especially when surface forms (models, graphs, authority) are allowed to substitute for deeper honesty about limits, assumptions, and boundary cases.
In short: method papers are for testing statistics; system-indicator papers are for assessing actual "real world" changes. Both are useful, but only the latter gives the coherent picture that aligns with physics, observed data, and multiple indicators.
Furthermore, in my view, FOFA is a microcosm of the larger dysfunctions and systemic breakdown. A system running in auto-mode, enforcing its own survival rules. The larger framing matters here:- There's money in Forests-lots of it. If "we" let it all burn "we" lose that wealth to "ourselves."
Who is "we"? What do they "control"? Congress maybe?
Systems don’t need beliefs — they need incentives. Once a system is mature:
-- publishers maximize enclosure
-- editors maximize prestige metrics
-- academics maximize career survival
-- moderators minimize risk and noise
-- institutions minimize liability
Fact is inside "The System" nobody really cares about the forests. Nobody really cares about future generations either. That's the "tell" of the Dark Triad operating within and through "institutional systems".
Jim and Chad actually care. There's the difference right there and the right signal to note. Something Feynman, Charney and Sagan continually highlighted - and Jim endeavors to maintain against all odds. Apologies for length, this really matters to me and collective futures.
Hansen's position appears to be confused when it comes to active management, so it's quite possible you're right:
>The pretense of the legislation is that deep forest logging will reduce fire intensity, risk to downwind communities, and climate-damaging carbon emissions. But such “thinning” does not always reduce wildfire intensity. Indeed, considerable evidence establishes that the open conditions created by such logging may lead to lower humidity, higher wind speed, higher temperature, abundant grass fuel, and increased fire intensity.
>Like signals of institutional defensiveness are a red light flashing.
What does "institutional defensiveness" look like to you? Is that relevant in this specific discussion (i.e. are you seeing this defensiveness with respect to FOFA/active management/etc.), or are you making a general point about institutions like science and government?
>Jim and Chad actually care. There's the difference right there and the right signal to note.
It's an important signal, but not the only one to note. It doesn't indicate a grasp on reasoning, or grasp of evidence, or ability and commitment to guarding against one's own biases. In other words, just because they care doesn't mean they are right.
@Ben "What does "institutional defensiveness" look like to you? "
The negative responses / poor arguments from yourself and David Perry in this space. Which combine with those corp/finance sectors behind developing the reasoning for the FOFA in the first place using selective reasoning (cherry-picking available research papers that align) which Jim and Chad are arguing against. And quite rightly so.
The institutions and the mindsets involved from the corp/finance sectors, to Congress, to ego/reputational 'defensiveness' shown here are aligned and opposite to "the care" and genuine concern of James and Chad long term; upon which all their scientific reasoning, data and evidence, knowledge and know-how underlies their ability and commitment. Without "noting" the first principle, the rest cannot follow.
It's the very same problem Dr Hansen faces with the supporters of the IPCC and their 15 year old data and models that is used to deceptively override/spin the reality of current observational evidence the warming has accelerated and will continue to do so. The institutional 'elites' are more interested in maintaining institutional personal reputation sales pitches for political social memes 1.5C/2C limits, Net Zero emissions, renewable energy DAC/CDR being the solution they espoused via the IPCC system than real fundamental science and logic--as per Feynman, Sagen and Charney.
Remember the world including the USA have passed hundreds of new Laws regarding all this coming out of Paris, the IPCC and the COP systems-the FOFA is the same problematic non-solution in "sheep's clothing."
The "institutional defensiveness" requires painting Hansen falsely as an "exceptional outlier" outside the claimed superiority of the "consensus view" while ignoring his actual scientific evidence. I see the a similar dynamic being presented here publicly. Dubious arguments that do not rise to the occasion except to throw confusion into discussions.
Side stepping the point of this article which was is the FOFA a good or a bad Law in and of itself. No one here is discussing that, nor presenting any "evidence" or solid "reasoning" one way or another.
Your intent is clear @Ben "Hansen's position appears to be confused when it comes to active management, " - to undermine Hansen's credibility overall. That is all it is, a reputational attack. By default exposing yourself as a supporter of the FOFA Law and it's intent to expand resource/wealth extraction from US Public Forests as fast as possible. All current systems are designed for or been reformed to maximize resource extraction, consumption and then wealth creation for a few. People just fall in line, unfortunately.
Readers might well conclude you do not really care about the forests at all; nor improving actions to ensure retention for coming generations. Which is OK, everyone gets to make their own choices.
How sure are you that you're not simply reacting to ANY criticism, valid or not, good faith or not, as an attack on your own views and the leaders you follow e.g. James and Chad? David Perry's comments seem eminently reasonable, and they appear less supportive of FOFA than my own. So how do you know you yourself are not being reflexively defensive here? What self-reflection systems do you have in place to check yourself?
I'd like to point out that I never painted Hansen as an "exceptional outlier" nor did I ignore his scientific evidence; in fact, I delved into the weeds of that scientific evidence. From that, I raised a criticism: a meta-analysis that was mishandled in a review that they used to support their position. You have not addressed the substance of that criticism so far, general appeals to the limitations of science and statistics notwithstanding. You can call that argument "dubious", "negative", "poor" but you've yet to make a case for why. With respect to Hansen, I think I raised a decent point that he is confusing or conflating concepts. Why not engage with the substance of that point? Do you really think appealing to Hansen's authority and credibility and care is a better way to go?
You assume too much by assuming that since I am (currently) in support of FOFA that I am also a supporter of what you purport is its intent to expand resource/wealth extraction. Simply, I reject the premise that that is the intent of the bill. I do not support expansion of resource/wealth extraction in the US Public Forests. I support the conservation and protection of forests, natural habitats, and the human communities near them. I believe you do too. I have simply come to a different conclusion on FOFA than you have.
What we're actually seeing is emergent behavior everywhere from a system under duress. So whether it's Neoliberals, Maga hats, or IPCC elite climate scientists labeling James Hansen's scientific work as “extreme,” “outlier,” or a “boundary case” is a containment strategy, not a refutation.
And yes — this pattern repeats across domains: climate, forests, wildfires, aerosols, risk communication, geoengineering, economics, political parties, geopolitical dramas, media. And it is not only about Jim either.
@Ben "How sure are you that you're not simply reacting to ANY criticism, valid or not, good faith or not,.." I'm very sure. Certain in fact.
@Ben "What self-reflection systems do you have in place to check yourself?" Many effective ones.
@Ben " -I never painted Hansen as an "exceptional outlier" My use of the term was clear.
@Ben "I think I raised a decent point that he is confusing or conflating concepts. Why not engage with the substance of that point?" Not quite. You said "Hansen's position appears to be confused when it comes to active management" and provided no argument nor evidence to support that allegation. The "weeds" disappeared from sight. Furthermore this is not the place to argue detailed minutia found in multiple research papers ad nauseam.
@Ben "Do you really think appealing to Hansen's authority and credibility (history/values/expertise) and care is a better way to go?" Yes. Hansen brings a defined scientific and reasoning skill gravitas to the conversation no else here possesses. I'm mentioning "care" because it more correctly frames the article, the FOFA, and comments in the proper Framing. (G. Lakoff)
@Ben "You assume too much by assuming ..." I'm evaluating the specifics presented above with a broader realism combined. There's a pattern here. If it looks like a duck ... idea, but I accept you're not thinking like this yourself. I didn't intend to make my comments a personal criticism.
@Ben "I reject the premise that that is the intent of the bill. " You can say that, it's OK. Then there is the logical outcomes of what happens in the real world once that Bill is made law. By their fruits thou shalt know them is the rule here.
I'm recommending it's good to pause and really think about what Hansen and Chad are presenting, and why would they do that? As the Pied Piper story taught us as children follow where this Bill naturally leads. Systems operate as systems do, to serve the system.
Because this is not the creation of a Civil Rights Act or the Clean Air/Water/EPA Acts, but the opposite. The FOFA will serve the interests of capital not Forests future, not environmental sustainability, and not future generations. That's the correct framing to view these matters, not distracting arguments over the meaning of details found in every in science paper ever published.
To understand these ideas it's critical to view the matter with the proper framing. (G Lakoff) Especially the removal of protective environmental regulations that mirror the lifting of the Endangerment Finding of the EPA.
And remember, Peer-Review never means the contents and findings are true and correct. While Statistics describe a rough map only, never reality. Good chat.
Well that's concerning, because if you are certain, then you are more likely to miss signs that you are mistaken. Human biases lead us to see what we expect to see. Constant vigilance is needed, so certainty ends up being a pitfall.
>Yes. Hansen brings a defined scientific and reasoning skill gravitas to the conversation no else here possesses.
No one else here possesses? No one? I'm sorry but this sounds like idolatry. Hansen is a human with a human brain and human biases like all of us. Appealing to the authority of one particular expert is never a valid logical argument and scarcely a compelling rhetorical argument, particularly in this day and age when trust in institutions is low. You appear to hold Hansen in high regard and it's probably warranted, but I'm approaching this discussion with a neutral opinion of him because I have little to no priors of him.
>I'm recommending it's good to pause and really think about what Hansen and Chad are presenting, and why would they do that?
They do it because they care about our national forests and believe they have good reason to be concerned our national forests are under threat from FOFA. That is not a useful heuristic for whether their beliefs are right or whether or not I should I take their remonstrations at face value.
Let's look at this from the reverse perspective. Why are so many environmental organizations, career foresters, and scientists in favor of FOFA? Why would they support this bill? Is every single one in the pocket of or hopelessly duped by capital? Is every single one indifferent to the fate of our national forests? David Perry seems to be a career forestry academic. What of him?
>The FOFA will serve the interests of capital not Forests future, not environmental sustainability, and not future generations.
You assert your opinion passionately, but I respectfully disagree.
Thanks for mentioning Dr Sagan! He was the first to get the reality of our burning blue dot in my head and then came Dr Hansen. Privileged to be apart of his climate share.
I've been involved in the struggle to protect forests for decades. It will not end, ever, while a tree is left standing. The model is to compromise into oblivion. Reasonable people will reason away the world.
Great to have someone with such a high profile as Dr. Hansen point out what many of us in the grassroots ecosystem advocacy movement have been saying for decades, yet been mostly ignored or defamed for doing so: that "wildfire pretense logging" cannot be used as a Trojan horse to degrade and destroy our last, best ecosystems on public lands!
Thank you for your important and timely op-ed, Dr. Hansen. Our public forests are critical biodiversity and climate infrastructure and we cannot let industry and corporate influences subvert and twist the truth. Thinning forests will not save communities from burning down.
Thank you so much for your standing up for keeping burned forests intact as superior habitat for regrowing burned areas over clear cut harvesting areas that this legislation promotes. In my area, we are faced with a different situation: in many areas of the tallgrass prairie biome, eliminating fire and fragmenting the landscape has resulted in wide scale invasion of prairies by Juniperus virginiana, locally known as eastern red cedar. Not only does this acidify the soil and push out the local mix of forbs and grasses found in tallgrass prairies, it also creates near monoculture Juniperus stands that surround many towns, farms and some cities: a conflagration waiting to happen when the next drought gets accompanied by strong winds. There have been some tentative studies suggesting that mobile biochar burners that sequester carbon from the Juniperus stands could create a win-win situation of reducing fire danger and protecting tallgrass prairie from being eliminated; I thought you might be interested in this and would be interested in what you think.
Yes, biochar is one of the silver buckshots that can help draw down CO2 with other benefits. I bought one ton of biochar, which Sophie and I worked into the (rather impoverished PA clay soil) just outside the then-root zone of newly planted trees. It improved the soil quality and tree health, while providing long term carbon storage. The improved tree health provides additional carbon storage. Even if this is developed on a larger scale, it is only one of the silver buckshots needed.
.... additionally, 'we' need to keep this in mind, without being utter purists for 'current' local species. Those rare endemic species need more than a few university city arboretums to hide in.
Fast-growing trees are taking over the forests of the future and putting biodiversity, climate resilience under pressure
https://phys.org/news/2026-01-fast-trees-forests-future-biodiversity.html#google_vignette
... and thank you for your current and past work ()()()()()()()()
I'll add a couple of details about biochar, if that's alright. I can add footnotes and bibliography if anyone wants. Biochar is indeed one of the more promising “silver buckshots,” particularly because it stabilizes carbon that would otherwise re-enter the atmosphere and can improve degraded soils at the same time. Its agronomic benefits are strongest in highly weathered, acidic tropical soils — such as parts of the Amazon basin — where it can substantially improve nutrient retention and water-holding capacity. However, its climate potential is fundamentally constrained by sustainable biomass availability and land-use tradeoffs. Global estimates of scalable biochar deployment typically fall in the range of roughly 0.3–2 gigatons of CO₂ per year under optimistic assumptions. That is meaningful, but it remains an order of magnitude smaller than current annual fossil fuel emissions and also smaller than the potential increase in wildfire-driven emissions and other positive feedbacks under continued warming. Biochar is therefore best understood as a wedge, not a balancing mechanism.
Additionally, the climate benefit of biochar depends heavily on how it is produced and deployed. If feedstocks are transported long distances, if forests are harvested unsustainably, or if pyrolysis systems rely on fossil energy, the net benefit shrinks. In wildfire contexts specifically, logistical constraints, ecological tradeoffs, and the scale of remote burned areas limit how much biomass can realistically be converted to stable carbon. Biochar can improve soil recovery and modestly stabilize carbon after severe burns, but it does not fundamentally counteract the nonlinear increase in fire intensity and forest carbon loss expected under higher warming scenarios. Its value is real — but bounded.
Yes, this is very good, thank you. I agree with it all. The priority must be to get on a sensible energy/emissions track, but we will also need to work on the different ways to draw down GHG amounts. Nature is trying to help — it’s impressive how large the annual carbon drawdown is despite our failure to help.
GPT5.2 and I have done similar analysis of the most promising carbon capture technologies. They all have limitations. We estimated that if everyone takes it seriously, and several trillion dollars are invested, we can reasonably hope to pull 4-5 billion tons of CO2 per year out of the air. At the same time, if temperature increases to 3 degrees C above baseline, the natural feedback loops (methane emissions from wetlands, landfills, and permafrost, CO2 emissions from the soil, etc) will increase 4-5 billion tons per year above what they are today. So, whatever temperature we are at when we stop burning fuel and eating beef and dairy, we would have a fighting chance to hold the line at that temperature, or at least reduce warming significantly and buy ourselves time. I feel like it would be important for policy makers to be aware of this sort of evidence, and start planning for a 3-4 degree warmer planet, just in case. I can't publish, of course, because my degree isn't in climate science.
Dr. Hansen's position is soundly supported by hundreds of US climate scientists and ecologists. See, e.g.:
https://johnmuirproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Biden-MOG-scientist-letter-27Feb24-final.pdf
https://johnmuirproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ScientistLetterOpposingLoggingProvisionsInBBB_BIF4Nov21.pdf
https://johnmuirproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/200TopClimateScientistCongressProtectForestsForClimateChange13May20.pdf
allowing logging without public oversight is undeniably a bad idea. Done wrong, it can exacerbate fire danger and compromise ecosystem integrity. But if Dr Hansen is going to weigh in on this, he needs to be scientifically responsible. Forest/fire ecologists don't all agree about necessary steps, and you appear to listen to opinions not shared by all of us. It is a complex issue and should not be approached with oversimplistic ideas any more that it should be approached without oversight. Dr Hansen, if you want bring your well-earned credibility to this issue, take the time to understand the issues.
David Perry
Professor (emeritus)
Oregon State University
Thanks, David Perry, but since you use the trick of pretending to a speak from a higher level of expertise, I address my response to the readers.
The laws of physics, and science in general, are based on observations of the real world. That's why I showed two photos taken within a stone's throw of each other at the same time, several years after the Rim fire. One in the area that was logged, where trees had been planted but were struggling to even survive, and one in the unlogged area where the forest was thriving as it naturally regenerated after the fire, as healthy forest do.
Our op-ed included proper caveats implying that careful "thinning" could be helpful in some situations, but such cases are the exception, not the rule. The Fix Our Forest Act would unleash rapacious destruction of the public's national forests, setting aside large areas for destructive activity without even a fig leaf of environmental review. Please pay attention to the position of your elected representative in this battle.
"the trick of pretending to speak from a higher level of expertise".
Well, I've studied forests for 60+ Years. I'm lead author of the textbook, Forest Ecosystems"(named notable book of the year in 2008). I believe it's fair to say I know something about how forest ecosystems work. What I don't do is claim expertise in other disciplines (e.g. climatology).
Old timers in the environmental movement out here will tell you I played a significant role in helping to protect the last of our oldgrowth. I did that through opeds, testimony to congress, and as a member of scientific panels that made recommendations to lawmakers and managers.
I appreciated your photos of the rim fire comparisons. And in fact have been a coauthor on papers discussing environmental risks of salvage logging.
Here is what concerns me and why I responded to your post. Forest landscapes throughout the country are highly altered. How they are altered varies among forest types, but in the west it has led to much greater fire risk. One group out here is arguing that fire is a natural feature in these systems and should be allowed to burn--ie. no attempts to reduce fuels. Frankly, this scares the hell out of me. My research in dry forests shows that the old growth pine forests, relatively resistant to large crown fires, is being replaced by high densities of fire prone trees species. That started with the extermination of Native Americans and continued with misguided early forest management. In the mesic forests, relatively fire resistant OG has been replaced by fire prone younger plantations.
You mention the laws of physics. Before my PhD in ecology, I got an MS in physics. With one exception, the laws of physics haven't helped me a lot in understanding complex adaptive ecosystems. The exception is nonequilibrium thermodynamics, which tells us about self-organizing systems. My fear is that we have created a situation in which fires will become self-reinforcing. Th warming climate is going to exacerbate that. It has the potential to drive our forests to collapse. That's not to say we shouldn't let some fires burn, but that we should carefully evaluate when and where. But here's a fact: no fire that burns in a highly altered landscape can be called natural. It is not a 'one-size fits all' situation and we have to be very careful about what we do or don't do.
@David: Kudos for your life achievements.
You say: " My fear is that we have created a situation in which fires will become self-reinforcing. The warming climate is going to exacerbate that. It has the potential to drive our forests to collapse. "
Sean: Obviously so, for this is already the case globally. But that in no way undermines the arguments put by Jim and Dan Galpern* against the FOFA - the actual topic here - your point in fact emphasizes the importance of blocking bad laws that make the situation worse, and that are not based on quality analysis.
@David "That's not to say we shouldn't let some fires burn, ....... "
Sean: Would you point out where Jim and Dan* suggested or promoted such a thing in their article? Because the only action I saw being promoted was to block the FOFA law being passed in Congress.
* edit
Sean, I didn't see it in the article, but I have heard that argument more than once. If memory serves, Chad has argued that. Perhaps I'm wrong. Memory doesn't always serve.
Wow! You got a solid background David. Kudos to you. Am an alclimist ( my contrived climate quarterback word). I observe and listen to our burning planet, its peoples, and the scientists. When it comes to forest fires it doesn't take a Sheinstein to realize they are dessicated.. primo fire fuel🔥. How would you approach handling the forests' moisture and water supplies for fire fighters?
Thanks Jeff
The best, and only option for increasing water supply to heavily stocked younger even-agd stands is to reduce leaf area---thinning. (Not in old growth which uses water more conservatively) Thinning t also allows more drying winds in stands. Seems like everything is about tradeoffs.
For firefighters. I don't know
Am of the "the more leaves the better ( more photosynthesis and biogenic aerosols ) mindset. But, tradeoffs like you said are there. More moisture will be lost in evapotransportation. Also, am of "bring the mountain to Mohammed" mindset.. water reservoirs and canals networked in forests. Supplies evaporated water in low atmo. and fire fighting water supply.
@James says: "The laws of physics, and science in general, are based on observations of the real world. "
On the 40th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, it's worth remembering Richard Feynman’s philosophy of scientific integrity emphasizes that Statistical detection/non-detection ≠ physical absence nor presence; CI thresholds are conventions, not ontological truths.
Feynman’s point is not merely philosophical; it is a scientific warning: Agreement with data does not equal understanding.
He was not opposing institutions for sport. He was insisting on a principle that applies equally to science, policy, and communication: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
As such, the integrity of science requires reporting the full story — including what contradicts your preferred conclusion —and resisting the temptation to protect a tribe.
Which is what Jim and Dan Galpern* did: "Our op-ed included proper caveats implying that careful "thinning" could be helpful in some situations, but such cases are the exception, not the rule. "
edit*
o.k., I accept that. And yet you are happy to hand over portions of our national forests to logging with zero environmental review?
absolutely not. Management needs guidance and oversight, but that guidance needs to be open minded and attentive to what ecological scientists --and Native Americans--are telling us. In my experience, opinions vary widely, even among environmental groups. I fear that feedback will be so diverse and contradictory that managers will be like deer in the headlights.
I've been on several panels, commissions, etc charged with evaluating forest management policies and making recommendations, which sometimes have actually been followed. Maybe we need such a panel now to evaluate the situation and help put some sideboards on the options. . . Perhaps a council of 'elders' would help. I don't know. It would have to be a group respected by all sides.
Dr. Hansen's position is soundly supported by hundreds of US climate scientists and ecologists. See, e.g.:
https://johnmuirproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Biden-MOG-scientist-letter-27Feb24-final.pdf
https://johnmuirproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ScientistLetterOpposingLoggingProvisionsInBBB_BIF4Nov21.pdf
https://johnmuirproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/200TopClimateScientistCongressProtectForestsForClimateChange13May20.pdf
David "Forest/fire ecologists don't all agree about necessary steps, and you appear to listen to opinions not shared by all of us."
If ecologists don't all agree, then it's plainly obvious whatever **Opinions** one has will NOT be shared by all of them. I have no reason to believe your "opinions" are better than anyone else's.
My point being, James Hansen has taken time out of a very busy intense schedule to raise this issue in the premier national newspaper for the good of all. The last thing he or this issue needs or deserves is to be criticized for not being "absolutely perfect" according to your or anyone else's yardsticks.
Jim is no man's fool. Cut him some slack here and do not undermine him or this cause. That's my "opinion". Take it or leave it. But if you have the time, please submit your own OPED to the Boston Globe or NYTs on this critical issue of Govt of the People being totally out of control--as usual ever since 1789.
David,
Dr Hansen EARNED his credibility with EXTREME diligence, care, and respect of the unbiased broad sited scientific method.
Where is your op-ed to REALLY save the forests? Where is your Senate testimony?
Connect the pale blue dots.
Dr. Hansen's climate research is phenomenal. Unfortunately, this piece misses some points. I remember reading about how managed forest areas came through much better than unmanaged areas in the crazy fires we had a few years ago in Northern California. Long term studies confirm this:
https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/12/12/twenty-year-study-confirms-california-forests-are-healthier-when-burned-or-thinned/
The current laws make reasonable forest management difficult to implement. Maybe the Fix our Forests isn't perfect, but it enables management in critical areas for limiting the spread and damage of wildfires, which also lowers the carbon emissions. If the area he was in had been better managed BEFORE the wildfire, damage to the soils and ecosystem would not have been so severe.
I read your linked article.
It does not say what you say it says.
The "Fix Our Forests Act" does not prescribe forest "management". Rather, it's intent is to eliminate dissent. It allows a number of destructive practices, but bans environmental legal challenges.
I am not comfortable with any law whose sole purpose seems to be to eliminate legal challenges — especially considering the disdain the current administration shows for any impediment to its power.
Here are the good things the Fix Our Forests Act does:
Simplifies and expedites the most critical forest management projects while maintaining strong environmental standards, for example by eliminating redundant agency consultations
Reduces delays to these critical actions due to litigation over insignificant impacts
Adds new ways for communities to provide input early and often in planning and implementation
Provides agencies with emergency tools to increase the pace & scale of forest management
Invests in innovative fire detection, suppressant technologies, modernizing construction standards
Creates an interagency Fireshed Center
Provides support for wildland firefighters
Hardens utility rights-of-way against wildfire
Creates a national strategy to increase the capacity of tree nurseries to address the nationwide shortage of tree seedlings
Establishes a program to explore biochar innovations and opportunities
I share your concern regarding the horrible attitude of the current administration towards environmental protection. The Fix Our Forests Act was moving through Congress before the current administration and was approved by many Democrats in the House. We need to get things done rather than keeping everything bottlenecked in courts while wildfires get worse and worse.
The notion that denser forests will consistently burn at high intensities, and that mechanical thinning will reliably reduce fire intensity is simply not consistent with a large body of scientific evidence, especially landscape-scale studies that avoid the common problem of cherry-picking at small spatial scales in many thinning studies. For example, in a study of several hundred wildfires across the Pacific Northwest (mesic and dry forests, both), U.S. Forest Service scientists (Lesmeister et al. 2021) found that denser forests had lower fire intensity, and more open forests (such as those resulting from thinning) had higher fire intensity with “hotter, drier, and windier microclimates, and those conditions decrease dramatically over relatively short distances into the interior of older forests with multi-layer canopies and high tree density…”
More fundamentally, the entire conversation about mechanical thinning as a wildfire management strategy is misplaced. Half a century of scientific studies establish that there is no need to remove trees prior to burning, even in the densest forests and even in forests that have not burned in over a century. The burning is simply done during fire season, generally at the earlier part, in milder fire weather. Even the US Forest Service now admits this, and further admits that mechanical thinning is several times more expensive per acre than fire alone. See:
https://johnmuirproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/JMP-fact-sheet-Fire-Alone-29Nov24-1.pdf
@Chad: "More fundamentally, the entire conversation about mechanical thinning as a wildfire management strategy is misplaced. "
1) The rainforests are burning 2019
This fire season has seen something that had been unthinkable — wilderness rainforests burning in savage forest fires.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-10/mt-nardi-fire-community-defenders/11766036
2) ABC The Science Show 2025 - Robyn Williams
* Do people have a place in wilderness?
People have been in the Australian wilderness for generations. But can people be considered part of the natural landscape or will they always have an impact?
* Can we trust scientific papers?
Peer review is seen as the assurance that scientific papers come with trust. But is the process rigorous?
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/scienceshow/black-white-and-green/105307804
--Joel Deaves: There's a lot of mob that are restoring landscapes with these methods, their own ways of treating the land with fire and with other things too.
Lesley Head: Yeah, certainly. Rhys Jones was very influential in my own work, including the paper he wrote about fire stick farming.
--In the same way as Australian ecology and paleoecology has really challenged northern hemisphere frameworks of vegetation succession and you know, whether fire is an external disturbance to the environment or something that's integral to the environment.
--Joel Deaves: the country needs to be spaced out and needs room to grow and grow proper. And it just needs that balance between all them right species that belong there. We need to recreate that environment for them trees again to flourish, not weeds and not erosion and not all this stuff.
Robyn Williams: You showed us actually, it was fascinating, how actually to have COOL FIRE, in other words you're burning clumps of grass at the right time in the right way and you get WHITE SMOKE coming up, not black smoke, when black smoke comes up you know you've got a problem and so that then has A FIRE GOING DOWN THE HILL rather than up the hill,
Joel Deaves: SCIENTISTS we try to work together and there is some projects in the future that we do want to work on because we're at the point now where the environment is in a state where we need that old knowledge from our culture, certain parts that's allowed to be shared, because there is sacred things that we cannot share.
Joel Deaves: When I do comprehend science, when I'm looking at it, it does come to the same kind of outcome or the same kind of thing. Whether it be a climate event that happened 15,000 years ago here, you know, we have stories about that. They have archaeological, geological evidence. We have oral evidence of the landscape changing, you know.
So science is a modern way to explain it. Our culture is our way and it's coming from the spirit of the country and the people.
However, this old way of doing things, which is going in and TREATING IT WITH FIRE, IT WORKS. It's worked for so long. Our people wouldn't be here if it didn't work because we had WILDFIRES. When the lightning strikes come, all the other places, THEY WERE TREATED.
+80,000? https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/19/dig-finds-evidence-of-aboriginal-habitation-up-to-80000-years-ago
Merging Science & Indigenous Wisdom Fuels New Discoveries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nOFnOYfj8k
Logging of mature and old-growth trees, and post-fire clearcutting, on public lands are not "critical actions". Such logging would be increased and expedited by the logging provisions in the Fix Our Forests Act, which would severely weaken environmental laws and restrict the courts from upholding the law against otherwise illegal logging projects.
Thanks for the list.
One thing I didn't see when I browsed it was indigenous involvement and consent.
They are generally closer to the needs of the forest, whereas white settlers are generally more interested in their wants from the forest. Even your list looks more like "maintaining OUR resource" rather than treating it like a sovereign entity.
In Canada, such a bill would be DOA without indigenous support.
I'm not sure about indigenous support, but that would make sense to get. When I search on it, it seems to be mixed. "Opinions among California tribes and indigenous representatives regarding the "Fix Our Forests Act" (2025/2026) are mixed, balancing a desire for more active forest management with concerns over sovereignty and environmental protection. "
One other really interesting link on the history of how we got into this mess is here:
https://baynature.org/magazine/fall2022/logjam-fighting-fire-with-mills-bay-nature/#:~:text=The%20largest%20single%20fire%20in,than%2050%20acres%20of%20land.
Rob: "Hardens utility rights-of-way against wildfire?" No. That's a Fail.
Forests in a rapidly warming drying world and Infrastructure do not Fit Rationally well together.
Therefore get rid of the Utility Rights completely and maybe half the fires will never start from fallen power lines in storms and lousy maintenance standards. Logic and evidence are amazing partners when forming judgments.
That is not the Standard that Selects for Political Office. Fix your Ideological Values, or Burn seems to be the basic Logic here.
Harden the LEGAL RIGHTS OF FORESTS TO SURVIVE in a warming drying world for generations ahead.
What do you mean by managed forests “came through better” than unmanaged areas?
I remember that some of the privately managed areas had much less spreading during the Camp fire in California, which was devastating to unmanaged areas and towns. Not that private management practices have been ideal either, but we need to enable greater management in areas that are critical for limiting the spread of fires, which is what the Fix Our Forests Act targets. Here is a nice article on management in general:
https://thebreakthrough.org/journal/no-20-spring-2024/californias-massive-park-fire-would-be-less-severe-if-we-proactively-reduced-fuels
What was the wind, temp, and humidity at the time of spread through the private lands relative to the weather conditions when it burned through public lands? Were the public lands also treated? And, what is “devastating” about wildfires burning in forests?
Dr. Hansen's position is soundly supported by hundreds of US climate scientists and ecologists. See, e.g.:
https://johnmuirproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Biden-MOG-scientist-letter-27Feb24-final.pdf
https://johnmuirproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ScientistLetterOpposingLoggingProvisionsInBBB_BIF4Nov21.pdf
https://johnmuirproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/200TopClimateScientistCongressProtectForestsForClimateChange13May20.pdf
The claim that the Camp fire burned slower or less intensely through the more heavily logged private lands is flatly false. The private forests, where the heaviest pre-fire logging occurred, is where the Camp fire spread fastest, based on the fire progression data. See the map and accompanying information on the Camp fire, and similar results from other large fires, here:
https://johnmuirproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/CPP-DN-2-Objection-2-12Dec24.pdf
Hi Chad. Regarding page 20 and the Camp Fire, it doesn't really show much about pre-burn thinning. It does indicate that post-burn thinning didn't help much. I would say for other image pairs such as image pair #6, the results would be mixed at best. I would rather see good practices incorporated in legislation rather than keeping everything jammed up in court proceedings, especially for thinning near roads and power lines. I agree that we preferably want to keep large trees and thin out smaller ones.
Rob: "The current laws make reasonable forest management difficult to implement. Maybe the Fix our Forests isn't perfect, ........"
The James Hansen and Dan Galpern's* news article made good sense and ended in a rational call to action. If the current Laws are no good, and the FoF is also not good enough, then go back to the blackboard and start over writing a good evidence and community supported law.
To do that requires integrity. Not much of that in the WH or Congress, is there. Of course this is the biggest problem you have in the US. Actually writing good Laws. The first step seems to be defining which Laws and why they are Bad. Actually even before that creating a functional political system should be the first thing to Fix.
Maybe you need a "Fix our F****** Governance Act." :-/
a few ideas to get you started https://globalgovernanceforum.org/
https://globalgovernanceforum.org/governing-planet-why-we-need-an-earth-system-council-now/
edit*
Thanks for shedding light on this and sharing your expertise. This is one of the reasons why we love this platform so much. Great information. Keep it up!
Thank you for speaking up in support of forests, Dr Hansen and your longstanding work to raise awareness of the climate emergency. Just wondering if you are aware of the work of eminent Russian physicist, Anastassia Makarieva, one of the authors of the Biotic Pump Theory. Her research provides additional support for the importance of protecting forests, particularly pristine forests that have their natural functions still intact, and those that connect to the ocean and draw moisture inland. She is on Substack https://substack.com/@anastassiamakarieva?r=15krko&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile
Dear All, Arriving at good climate laws (and laws that protect our forests) is a very interdisciplinary matter. As an attorney who spent 36 years enforcing our nations environmental laws at USEPA (retired 2024), I am cautious about approaching topics on which I am not an expert, but I also believe it is my obligation as a citizen to assess the information provided by those with relevant expertise.
Having spent the last several months studying the wording and potential impacts of the Fix Our Forests Act (FOFA), I believe Dr. Hansen has done this appropriately here. Given the very significant impact of the health of our forests on climate, I am grateful to Dr. Hansen for adding his voice and raising the profile of the important question of whether the Fix Our Forests Act will be helpful or harmful to preserving a livable climate for future generations and to reducing wildfire risks.
I encourage those studying this controversy to consider the paper by several forest ecologists, including Beverly Law of Oregon State University (published 2022) ( https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/5/721 ) (see excerpt below) as well as the "Working from the Home Outward: Lessons from California for Federal Wildfire Policy" paper on how to address wildfire risk at the urban wildland interface (https://environmentnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Home-Outward-report-2021-1.pdf).
Despite some evidence that thinning and controlled burns may have time-limited benefits to the health of some forests in some circumstances, my review of the wording of FOFA and the papers I cite above, along with many others, have convinced me that FOFA, if it becomes law, creates a serious additional risk of harm to our climate, our wildfire risk reduction efforts, and the health of our forests.
FOFA would create an expedited process that insulates "responsible officials," selected by political appointees, from meaningful public and scientific review. FOFA would authorize these officials to promote broad-scale thinning of our national forests under the label "Harardous Fuels" removal, creating a long-term carbon-storage deficit that undermines our climate goals. FOFA creates financial incentives for this activity through the so-called "Good Neighbor Authority," which provides reimbursement to state, local and tribal governments for contracting with timber harvest companies to carry out this activity. This of course has generated major logging industry support for FOFA! See American Loggers Council September submission to Congress at: https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118582/witnesses/HHRG-119-AG15-Wstate-DaneB-20250910-SD002.pdf#:~:text=The%20Fix%20Our%20Forests%20Act%20(FOFA)%20is,forest%20management%20objectives%20for%20the%20National%20Forests).
I'm grateful to all who take the time to carefully consider this important question and to contact their representatives so that Congress takes notice. Much appreciated!
Beverly Law et al excerpt from the Strategic Reserves paper at https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/5/721
2.3.1. Broad-Scale Thinning to Reduce Fire Severity Conflicts with Climate Goals
A reaction to the recent increase in the intensity and frequency of wildfires is to thin forests to reduce the quantity of combustible materials. However, the amount of carbon removed by thinning is much larger than the amount that might be saved from being burned in a fire, and far more area is harvested than would actually burn [42,46,47,48,49]. Most analyses of mid- to long-term thinning impacts on forest structure and carbon storage show there is a multi-decadal biomass carbon deficit following moderate to heavy thinning [50]. For example, thinning in a young ponderosa pine plantation showed that removal of 40% of the tree biomass would release about 60% of the carbon over the next 30 years [51]. Regional patchworks of intensive forest management have increased fire severity in adjacent forests [49]. Management actions can create more surface fuels. Broad-scale thinning (e.g., ecoregions, regions) to reduce fire risk or severity [52] results in more carbon emissions than fire, and creates a long-term carbon deficit that undermines climate goals.
As to the effectiveness and likelihood that thinning might have an impact on fire behavior, the area thinned at broad scales to reduce fuels has been found to have little relationship to area burned, which is mostly driven by wind, drought, and warming. A multi-year study of forest treatments such as thinning and prescribed fire across the western U.S. showed that about 1% of U.S. Forest Service treatments experience wildfire each year [53]. The potential effectiveness of treatments lasts only 10–20 years, diminishing annually [53]. Thus, the preemptive actions to reduce fire risk or severity across regions have been largely ineffective.
Effective risk reduction solutions need to be tailored to the specific conditions. In fire-prone dry forests, careful removal of fuel ladders such as saplings and leaving the large fire-resistant trees in the forest may be sufficient and would have lower carbon consequences than broad-scale thinning [54]. The goals of restoring ecosystem processes and/or reducing risk in fire-prone regions can be met by removing small trees and underburning to reduce surface fuels, not by removal of larger trees, which is sometimes done to offset the cost of the thinning. With continued warming and the need to adapt to wildfire, thinning may restore more frequent low-severity fire in some dry forests, but could jeopardize regeneration and trigger a regime change to non-forest ecosystems [53].
While moderate to high severity fire can kill trees, most of the carbon remains in the forest as dead wood that will take decades to centuries to decompose. Less than 10% of ecosystem carbon enters the atmosphere as carbon dioxide in PNW forest fires [21,46]. Recent field studies of combustion rates in California’s large megafires show that carbon emissions were very low at the landscape-level (0.6 to 1.8%) because larger trees with low combustion rates were the majority of biomass, and high severity fire patches were less than half of the burn area [55,56]. These findings are consistent with field studies on Oregon’s East Cascades wildfires and the large Biscuit Fire in southern Oregon [57,58].
To summarize, harvest-related emissions from thinning are much higher than potential reduction in fire emissions. In west coast states, overall harvest-related emissions were about 5 times fire emissions, and California’s fire emissions were a few percent of its fossil fuel emissions [59]. In the conterminous 48 states, harvest-related emissions are 7.5 times those from all natural causes [60]. It is understandable that the public wants action to reduce wildfire threats, but false solutions that make the problem worse and increase global warming are counterproductive.
Hello, Laurie, good to hear from you after so many years, and thanks for your insightful perceptions on this topic -- the Earth needs good lawyers.
To those not acquainted with Laurie, she was an EPA lawyer who could see through the fraud in ineffectual cap-and-trade and offsets.
When you have a two-party system, both parties taking money from special interests, one party saying that there is no problem, the other taking the opposite side, saying there is a problem and proposing a half-assed, ineffectual solution, you've got a problem that is hard to solve.
But it can be solved -- more on that later.
Well articulated my fellow heated citizen! We need more people like you.
Then came Hansen...
I remember a short lived TV series about a maverick on a motorcycle going town to town fixing messes and doing what is right- " Then Came Bronson".
Dr Hansen has been doing this everyday fighting the whims of the ignorant or proudful with the truth of the climate fiasco. He got me to ask myself as Earth 🔥, "Watt?! Me 2?!"
Somebody “fixed’ THAT one, by golly! When the harvests are trees like these— the equivalent of teenage humans— there’s really no chance of a ‘forest’ developing there. This is more like “hayfield technology”.. where the ‘fiber’ is logged, the “money species” replanted, and it goes into a 45 year rotation. There’s NO understory.. and very little ground cover. It will be sprayed with herbicide to eliminate the leafy growth. Plantation conifers are painful for me to behold.
I planted trees in winters in Oregon.. 1969 to 1981.. and it took me about 5 years before it sank in that the only thing we planted were Douglas-fir.. the “$-tree” of the industry. This was mostly on federal land.. BLM & Forest Service.. and some state forests. I never did plant on the timber company’s plantations.. but I saw how they were being managed. I want to imagine that at least Some of the trees that I planted will live to reach their full height.. and begin the next stage of their lives.. growing wider.. becoming “old growth” forest. ^..^
Thank you for calling out the FOFA – we need responsible and accountable scientists to educate the public and elected officials around this travesty that would increase and accelerate logging of our vital forest ecosystems. The FOFA would degenerate the forests, eliminate their vital greenhouse gas sequestration potential, and reduce biodiversity. “Thinning" is another excuse for logging that rides on fearmongering around wildfires. It opens up the forest canopy, allowing the forest floor to dry out, and wind to carry embers farther thereby often making fires faster, hotter, and larger.
We need to cut greenhouse gas emissions and protect the forests for biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services. The FOFA would do the opposite: add emissions from logging and land conversions, while eliminating sequestration potential and biodiversity support.
Dr. Hansen, the study you cited to support your position on active management, Lindenmayer et al., 2025 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320725001089), a review, appears to completely misinterpret some of the strongest recent evidence of the efficacy of active management. It claims the study, Davis et al., 2024 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037811272400197X), a meta-analysis: "reported no statistically significant differences in subsequent wildfire intensity among thinning plus prescribed fire, thinning plus pile burning, and prescribed fire alone. Davis et al. (2024) nevertheless concluded that thinning plus prescribed fire had the “largest” effect on wildfire intensity".
This is not consistent with what was published, which very clearly shows a strong statistically significant difference in thinning plus prescribed fire in wildfire severity in comparison to no active management as shown in Fig. 4 (https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S037811272400197X-gr4_lrg.jpg) ("Thin + rx burn" where the lines represent the confidence intervals). Your point that thinning does not always reduce wildfire intensity is probably still valid (as evidenced by Fig. 3 and Fig. 4) but the efficacy of active management on wildfire intensity compared no management appears to be robustly well-established in the literature regardless of whether there are circumstances where it may be less appropriate.
Also, I believe you conflate mechanical thinning with "deep forest logging" when they are not the same. Many groups opposed to FOFA seem to subscribe to this notion, but I've yet to unearth the reason for this conflation.
@Ben "active management on wildfire intensity compared no management appears to be robustly well-established in the literature "
Sean: I saw no place where Jim and Chad recommended such actions. Making it look like a classic straw-man -- you're arguing against something they never recommended.
@Ben I fear you are grossly overestimating the importance and utility of statistical significance and CI in these matters.
1-meta-analysis: "reported no statistically significant differences in subsequent wildfire intensity among
2-very clearly shows a strong statistically significant difference in thinning plus prescribed fire
3-represent the confidence intervals
4-(and given) Your point that thinning does not always reduce wildfire intensity is probably still valid
Sean: Great caution is required when applying "statistical significance" with CI "confidence intervals" as if it defines actual scientific observations and accumulated data. This is one of Jim's core arguments against the "unscientific" reliance on findings by the IPCC and Modeling. Like signals of institutional defensiveness are a red light flashing.
What’s presented as institutional science increasingly resembles consensus theatre rather than open inquiry. Policy-facing narrative construction conducted under the cover of methodology wrapped in statistics.
Richard Feynman repeatedly warned that science fails not only through bad faith, but through sincere overconfidence — especially when surface forms (models, graphs, authority) are allowed to substitute for deeper honesty about limits, assumptions, and boundary cases.
In short: method papers are for testing statistics; system-indicator papers are for assessing actual "real world" changes. Both are useful, but only the latter gives the coherent picture that aligns with physics, observed data, and multiple indicators.
Furthermore, in my view, FOFA is a microcosm of the larger dysfunctions and systemic breakdown. A system running in auto-mode, enforcing its own survival rules. The larger framing matters here:- There's money in Forests-lots of it. If "we" let it all burn "we" lose that wealth to "ourselves."
Who is "we"? What do they "control"? Congress maybe?
Systems don’t need beliefs — they need incentives. Once a system is mature:
-- publishers maximize enclosure
-- editors maximize prestige metrics
-- academics maximize career survival
-- moderators minimize risk and noise
-- institutions minimize liability
Fact is inside "The System" nobody really cares about the forests. Nobody really cares about future generations either. That's the "tell" of the Dark Triad operating within and through "institutional systems".
Jim and Chad actually care. There's the difference right there and the right signal to note. Something Feynman, Charney and Sagan continually highlighted - and Jim endeavors to maintain against all odds. Apologies for length, this really matters to me and collective futures.
Hansen's position appears to be confused when it comes to active management, so it's quite possible you're right:
>The pretense of the legislation is that deep forest logging will reduce fire intensity, risk to downwind communities, and climate-damaging carbon emissions. But such “thinning” does not always reduce wildfire intensity. Indeed, considerable evidence establishes that the open conditions created by such logging may lead to lower humidity, higher wind speed, higher temperature, abundant grass fuel, and increased fire intensity.
>Like signals of institutional defensiveness are a red light flashing.
What does "institutional defensiveness" look like to you? Is that relevant in this specific discussion (i.e. are you seeing this defensiveness with respect to FOFA/active management/etc.), or are you making a general point about institutions like science and government?
>Jim and Chad actually care. There's the difference right there and the right signal to note.
It's an important signal, but not the only one to note. It doesn't indicate a grasp on reasoning, or grasp of evidence, or ability and commitment to guarding against one's own biases. In other words, just because they care doesn't mean they are right.
@Ben "What does "institutional defensiveness" look like to you? "
The negative responses / poor arguments from yourself and David Perry in this space. Which combine with those corp/finance sectors behind developing the reasoning for the FOFA in the first place using selective reasoning (cherry-picking available research papers that align) which Jim and Chad are arguing against. And quite rightly so.
The institutions and the mindsets involved from the corp/finance sectors, to Congress, to ego/reputational 'defensiveness' shown here are aligned and opposite to "the care" and genuine concern of James and Chad long term; upon which all their scientific reasoning, data and evidence, knowledge and know-how underlies their ability and commitment. Without "noting" the first principle, the rest cannot follow.
It's the very same problem Dr Hansen faces with the supporters of the IPCC and their 15 year old data and models that is used to deceptively override/spin the reality of current observational evidence the warming has accelerated and will continue to do so. The institutional 'elites' are more interested in maintaining institutional personal reputation sales pitches for political social memes 1.5C/2C limits, Net Zero emissions, renewable energy DAC/CDR being the solution they espoused via the IPCC system than real fundamental science and logic--as per Feynman, Sagen and Charney.
Remember the world including the USA have passed hundreds of new Laws regarding all this coming out of Paris, the IPCC and the COP systems-the FOFA is the same problematic non-solution in "sheep's clothing."
The "institutional defensiveness" requires painting Hansen falsely as an "exceptional outlier" outside the claimed superiority of the "consensus view" while ignoring his actual scientific evidence. I see the a similar dynamic being presented here publicly. Dubious arguments that do not rise to the occasion except to throw confusion into discussions.
Side stepping the point of this article which was is the FOFA a good or a bad Law in and of itself. No one here is discussing that, nor presenting any "evidence" or solid "reasoning" one way or another.
Your intent is clear @Ben "Hansen's position appears to be confused when it comes to active management, " - to undermine Hansen's credibility overall. That is all it is, a reputational attack. By default exposing yourself as a supporter of the FOFA Law and it's intent to expand resource/wealth extraction from US Public Forests as fast as possible. All current systems are designed for or been reformed to maximize resource extraction, consumption and then wealth creation for a few. People just fall in line, unfortunately.
Readers might well conclude you do not really care about the forests at all; nor improving actions to ensure retention for coming generations. Which is OK, everyone gets to make their own choices.
How sure are you that you're not simply reacting to ANY criticism, valid or not, good faith or not, as an attack on your own views and the leaders you follow e.g. James and Chad? David Perry's comments seem eminently reasonable, and they appear less supportive of FOFA than my own. So how do you know you yourself are not being reflexively defensive here? What self-reflection systems do you have in place to check yourself?
I'd like to point out that I never painted Hansen as an "exceptional outlier" nor did I ignore his scientific evidence; in fact, I delved into the weeds of that scientific evidence. From that, I raised a criticism: a meta-analysis that was mishandled in a review that they used to support their position. You have not addressed the substance of that criticism so far, general appeals to the limitations of science and statistics notwithstanding. You can call that argument "dubious", "negative", "poor" but you've yet to make a case for why. With respect to Hansen, I think I raised a decent point that he is confusing or conflating concepts. Why not engage with the substance of that point? Do you really think appealing to Hansen's authority and credibility and care is a better way to go?
You assume too much by assuming that since I am (currently) in support of FOFA that I am also a supporter of what you purport is its intent to expand resource/wealth extraction. Simply, I reject the premise that that is the intent of the bill. I do not support expansion of resource/wealth extraction in the US Public Forests. I support the conservation and protection of forests, natural habitats, and the human communities near them. I believe you do too. I have simply come to a different conclusion on FOFA than you have.
What we're actually seeing is emergent behavior everywhere from a system under duress. So whether it's Neoliberals, Maga hats, or IPCC elite climate scientists labeling James Hansen's scientific work as “extreme,” “outlier,” or a “boundary case” is a containment strategy, not a refutation.
And yes — this pattern repeats across domains: climate, forests, wildfires, aerosols, risk communication, geoengineering, economics, political parties, geopolitical dramas, media. And it is not only about Jim either.
@Ben "How sure are you that you're not simply reacting to ANY criticism, valid or not, good faith or not,.." I'm very sure. Certain in fact.
@Ben "What self-reflection systems do you have in place to check yourself?" Many effective ones.
@Ben " -I never painted Hansen as an "exceptional outlier" My use of the term was clear.
@Ben "I think I raised a decent point that he is confusing or conflating concepts. Why not engage with the substance of that point?" Not quite. You said "Hansen's position appears to be confused when it comes to active management" and provided no argument nor evidence to support that allegation. The "weeds" disappeared from sight. Furthermore this is not the place to argue detailed minutia found in multiple research papers ad nauseam.
@Ben "Do you really think appealing to Hansen's authority and credibility (history/values/expertise) and care is a better way to go?" Yes. Hansen brings a defined scientific and reasoning skill gravitas to the conversation no else here possesses. I'm mentioning "care" because it more correctly frames the article, the FOFA, and comments in the proper Framing. (G. Lakoff)
@Ben "You assume too much by assuming ..." I'm evaluating the specifics presented above with a broader realism combined. There's a pattern here. If it looks like a duck ... idea, but I accept you're not thinking like this yourself. I didn't intend to make my comments a personal criticism.
@Ben "I reject the premise that that is the intent of the bill. " You can say that, it's OK. Then there is the logical outcomes of what happens in the real world once that Bill is made law. By their fruits thou shalt know them is the rule here.
I'm recommending it's good to pause and really think about what Hansen and Chad are presenting, and why would they do that? As the Pied Piper story taught us as children follow where this Bill naturally leads. Systems operate as systems do, to serve the system.
Because this is not the creation of a Civil Rights Act or the Clean Air/Water/EPA Acts, but the opposite. The FOFA will serve the interests of capital not Forests future, not environmental sustainability, and not future generations. That's the correct framing to view these matters, not distracting arguments over the meaning of details found in every in science paper ever published.
To understand these ideas it's critical to view the matter with the proper framing. (G Lakoff) Especially the removal of protective environmental regulations that mirror the lifting of the Endangerment Finding of the EPA.
And remember, Peer-Review never means the contents and findings are true and correct. While Statistics describe a rough map only, never reality. Good chat.
> I'm very sure. Certain in fact.
Well that's concerning, because if you are certain, then you are more likely to miss signs that you are mistaken. Human biases lead us to see what we expect to see. Constant vigilance is needed, so certainty ends up being a pitfall.
>Yes. Hansen brings a defined scientific and reasoning skill gravitas to the conversation no else here possesses.
No one else here possesses? No one? I'm sorry but this sounds like idolatry. Hansen is a human with a human brain and human biases like all of us. Appealing to the authority of one particular expert is never a valid logical argument and scarcely a compelling rhetorical argument, particularly in this day and age when trust in institutions is low. You appear to hold Hansen in high regard and it's probably warranted, but I'm approaching this discussion with a neutral opinion of him because I have little to no priors of him.
>I'm recommending it's good to pause and really think about what Hansen and Chad are presenting, and why would they do that?
They do it because they care about our national forests and believe they have good reason to be concerned our national forests are under threat from FOFA. That is not a useful heuristic for whether their beliefs are right or whether or not I should I take their remonstrations at face value.
Let's look at this from the reverse perspective. Why are so many environmental organizations, career foresters, and scientists in favor of FOFA? Why would they support this bill? Is every single one in the pocket of or hopelessly duped by capital? Is every single one indifferent to the fate of our national forests? David Perry seems to be a career forestry academic. What of him?
>The FOFA will serve the interests of capital not Forests future, not environmental sustainability, and not future generations.
You assert your opinion passionately, but I respectfully disagree.
Thanks for mentioning Dr Sagan! He was the first to get the reality of our burning blue dot in my head and then came Dr Hansen. Privileged to be apart of his climate share.
Where's the "Fix Our President Act?
This is the reason I started photographing forests 6 years ago, to support rewilding and reforestation projects.
I've been involved in the struggle to protect forests for decades. It will not end, ever, while a tree is left standing. The model is to compromise into oblivion. Reasonable people will reason away the world.