According to an article in Forbes magazine, California's forests are now net CO2 emitters.
This is California’s big secret: it’s not climate change that’s burning up the forests, killing people, and destroying hundreds of homes; it’s decades of environmental mismanagement that has created a tinderbox of unharvested timber, dead trees, and thick underbrush.And, when all that crap catches fire, as it so regularly does, it creates massive amounts of CO2. So, not only is California's regulatory regime causing massive property damage and loss of life, along with rolling electrical blackouts, it's also advancing carbon emission. This is an example of well-meaning regulation gone horribly wrong. It should be a cautionary tale for the rest of us.
Its getting to be too late for more than California. All over the west the National Forests are full of dead and down trees mostly killed by Beetles sooner or later there are going to firestorms all over the west. I have lived in Montana all of my life except for my time in the Army and I have NEVER seen so many dead pine trees. You can look out over the forest from a high spot in the mountains and you see enormous areas of red dead trees just waiting for a lightning strike to set it off
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