That's according to the Canadian Forest Service. Hat tip to the Washington Post, for an excellent story about the spread of the Mountain Pine Beetle, a tiny little critter that for eons has been controlled by cold winters...but no longer.
"It's pretty gut-wrenching," said Allan Carroll, a research scientist at the Pacific Forestry Centre in Victoria, whose studies tracked a lock step between warmer winters and the spread of the beetle. "People say climate change is something for our kids to worry about. No. It's now."
The Canadian Forest Service estimates that 80% of the pines of British Columbia will be dead within seven years, and fears that the beetle will spread eastward and southward.
Sorry to be so depressing! Believe me, I get no kick from this news. Charles Keeling, the Scripps scientist who more than any other individual discovered global warming, joked in his autobiography that "Perhaps convincing proof will be acknowledged to have arrived when a substantial number of US Congressman are discovered to have secretly purchased real estate in northern Canada."
Along those lines, my wife and I had vague hopes of summering in B.C. in our dotage. Now even that half-fantasy doesn't look so good now.
