Expect further WI DNR scrubbing of climate change information

I had noted recently on this blog another episode of the scrubbing of climate change science, data, information and links to outside sources by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources from its climate change websites:

The ideologues intent on scrubbing science off these pages and sowing doubt and confusion about the consensus view of experts worldwide about climate change have edited, deleted and otherwise compressed to whitewash long-standing concepts and facts off a climate change page about the Great Lakes - - the same way, I will add, that Walker edited and watered-down the Wisconsin Idea, which has for decades had been the University system's historic mission statement.

And I also noted in a followup posting that there was one remaining DNR web page that continued to supply climate change information, and I said I'd keep checking to see if that page underwent its own sanitizing, or disappearance.

To date, nothing - - but here is why I think it's just a matter of when, not if.

* The page - - the contents of which I copied into my posting in full just in case the censors got to it quickly - - states "global climate change" as a fact and implies its human causes by underscoring that there is a lot we can do to confront and mitigate it:

Global climate change poses serious threats to public health, to the economies of the United States and Wisconsin and to the natural environment. We now have a clearer understanding of the role waste and materials management plays in global climate change and, most importantly, the opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the waste and materials management sphere.

* The page cites US Environmental Protection Agency information - - and Walker's DNR has been at odds with the EPA over clean air and water obligations for years - - and says the EPA's work reinforces affirmative steps people can take to ease climate change, such as the reduction of forest cutting because trees naturally capture carbon dioxide, a climate change contributing greenhouse gas:

If trees are left standing rather than being cut down, those trees remove and "sequester," or withhold, carbon dioxide from the air, thereby reducing the amount of carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere. In other words, reducing paper use and recycling used paper not only saves much of the energy required to harvest, transport, digest and convert wood to paper, it also helps preserves the carbon sequestration capacity of the forest.

Besides energy requirements, the EPA calculator also considers landfill gas emissions and "carbon sequestration" by trees. If trees are left standing rather than being cut down, those trees remove and "sequester," or withhold, carbon dioxide from the air, thereby reducing the amount of carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere. In other words, reducing paper use and recycling used paper not only saves much of the energy required to harvest, transport, digest and convert wood to paper, it also helps preserves the carbon sequestration capacity of the forest.

"Reducing paper use" and "leaving trees "standing rather than being cut down" fly in the face of Scott Walker's "chamber of commerce mentality" DNR, and undercut measures Walker has signed which were passed by Wisconsin's GOP-controlled Legislature to give forest owners generous tax breaks and also to expand intensive timber cutting in publicly-owned state forests:

Wisconsin officials are earmarking nearly 40,000 more acres of state forestland for intensive logging — a move pushed by the Legislature to provide a fresh source of timber to the forest products industry...

In 2015, lawmakers working on the state budget directed the DNR to increase acreage eligible for the most intensive timber cutting to 75% of northern state forests. That’s up from the current level of 66%.

* I had also posted information a few weeks ago about Walker and DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp adding another private sector executive to the ranks of senior management - - a forestry operations owner and trade association leader to replace a career DNR employee as state forester atop the Forestry Division.:

I'd posted items earlier today about feedlot and manure producers winning big in the WI Department of Natural Resources 'realignment' announced Wednesday morning, as well Team Walker thumbing its collective polluting nose at federal clean water monitors , so let me post a third significant item from what DNR managers told staffers at an agency-wide meeting.

In a nutshell, there is another Wisconsin industry winner other than feedlot operators and big ag in the reorganization - - forestry - - from which Walker just inserted a key insider into a top-level DNR position - - which I recently noted based on a DNR news release:

Fred Souba Jr. has been appointed Chief State Forester by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. The 40 year forest industry veteran will also serve as administrator for the DNR Division of Forestry...

Currently the owner and Senior Consultant of ProVision Forestry LLC... Souba has been the chair of the Wisconsin Council on Forestry (exit DNR) for seven years.

So I figure it's just a matter of time before the new state forestry manager at the DNR aligns that web page and its language about tree-cutting and climate change with the Legislature and Team Walker & Stepp's climate change denial mentality - - and thus also with the incoming Trump administration's belief that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese to advantage their exports.

Stay tuned...