The Pests Take Over

Overall temperatures in the Rockies — and around the world — are rising dramatically. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that global mean surface temperature increased by 0.6 degrees Celsius (about 1 degree Fahrenheit) over the 20th century. In the Western Hemisphere, the warming was greater than in any other century for the last 1,000 years, and the 1990s were the warmest decade of the entire millennium. The IPCC, which issued its most recent assessment report in 2001, now predicts that global mean temperatures will rise anywhere from 1.5 to 5.8 degrees Celsius (2.5 to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit) between 1990 and 2100 — a rate of warming very likely without precedent in the last 10,000 years.

The pine beetle under these warmer conditions can wipe out a forest in record time. And considering how much we have wiped out through overharvesting it's a double whammy. One degree matters.