Clyde Burnett, Peak to Peak.  Weather people explain that it rains and floods because there is too much water in the atmosphere. I remind you that this also means increased heat trapping. This is due to CO2 acting as the control knob on thermal trapping by water vapor and it is increasing because we have failed to control the CO2 greenhouse gas emissions.

So, the earth will get warmer. This will very likely make the Front Range drier and encourage wildfires in the near future, or with variable weather, possibly heavy rain will cause flooding. We must adapt! We can wait for these disasters to occur or we can organize now. This means we need to create defensible space and properly manage the forest.

I suggest that our community adapt now rather than wait for the disaster. The general defensive work won’t happen overnight, it needs community-wide planning to encourage or help homeowners act.

And we must convince the USFS to change their policy from dependence on timber bidding to on-the-ground thinning. Consider the choice of our 20-year-old LKF demonstration plot or the USFS clearcut of our plot. The clearcut is unsightly and does not encourage aspens. It is progressing toward the production of doghair lodgepoles. Also, a fire will move through the tall grass before firefighters can prevent movement of fire into adjacent residential or virgin forest.

(Originally published in the January 19, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)