How will our national parks respond to the challenges they face from global climate change?

Question

Will efforts like the "Climate Friendly Parks" program be enough to protect these natural treasures for future generations?

http://www.npca.org/magazine/2007/fall/a-climate-of-change.html

http://www.nps.gov/climatefriendlyparks/

Answer 1

Let's see:  Trees like CO2, bugs like trees, animals like bugs...it's a whole "Circle of Life" kind of thing.  I fail to see how more food is a "challenge"!

Answer 2

Unfortunately no.  It's great to see national parks setting an example by reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, but CO2 doesn't stay where it's emitted - it gets mixed throughout the atmosphere.  Point Reyes can reduce its emissions by 15%, but if the rest of the world continues to increase (or even just fails to drastically decrease) its emissions, it won't matter.  Unfortunately the national parks' futures aren't in their own hands, they're in ours.

Answer 3

they will burn or be destroyed by bugs

also, developers will encroach on national parkland

there was recently an article stating that national parks are woefully underfunded, and that criminals now do business in them because so few people can get their fat asses off the couch to go visit them

Answer 4

The National Parks already severely control visitors and exert a heavyhanded management of resources.  In Yosemite Valley they make you walk across fields up on boardwalks instead of being down at the level of the grass.  Much of Tuolumne Meadows is off limits completely.  They've been secretly netting and poisoning trout out of the park's lakes (in a program that may be repeated in 1000 Sierra lakes) in case that might benefit yellow-legged frogs, although that tactic has never once been proven to benefit them since frog populations are on the decline globally anyway, and locally there may be a serious issue with drift of agricultural pesticides.  Why address the actual problem or face off with big ag companies when you can quietly exterminate a defenseless scapegoat first?  Forget backpacking if you can't carry extra weight for a stove and cookware, since fires are illegal over 8000 to 9000 feet in many places (we wouldn't want all those useless old or handicapped people to enjoy the parks, unless they're rich enough to afford a guide and mules, to visit the few places where they're still allowed).  There are fewer and fewer reasons for me to take my kids to the parks, since they are prevented from interacting with nature in so many ways.  The parks have become a place that John Muir would not enjoy.  "Shut up and sit back down in your bus seat, John, and put that walking stick down or we'll give you a ticket!"

Apparently with this new climate program the parks are now using climate change as an excuse to implement controversial policies that they've threatened for decades:

"Instead of a snarl of too many private, polluting cars jostling for too few parking spots, you board an alternative energy shuttle system that takes you quickly, quietly, and cleanly anywhere you want to go in the park."

The actual plan for Rocky Mountain National Park confirms that transportation accounts for 78% of emissions they'd like to cut, so this program is all about taking away your ability to move freely in the parks.

Yeah, try taking the shuttle with camping gear, baby, stroller, diapers, crib, etc.  They've even proposed that you take public transit from the nearest metropolitan area a couple of hours away, so instead of one gas bill for your family of 4, you can pay for 8 one way tickets, effectively excluding low income visitors.  The proposal will clearly benefit the companies holding the concessionaire permits, since it will be impractical to carry food in, and you'll have to rent recreational gear as well or leave it at home.  If you're a photographer, the shuttles are unlikely to be running at 4am in June so you can catch the pre-dawn color on the landscape, and they certainly won't be running frequently enough to enable you to shoot two or three locations during the "golden hour" of light as the sun rises.  Ansel Adams would be unable to move his 80 to 100 pounds of gear around.  Ansel, you evil visitor with your smoke-belching car and your plant-crushing burro.  You want to take photos in 10 locations today?  Plan on spending 150 minutes of your day waiting at bus stops.  And enjoy those sweaty tourists smashed against you on the buses... are we enjoying nature yet?  You may as well go watch the wildlife riding a New York subway.

I've visited Zion National Park multiple times since they implemented their shuttles on a pointless 4 or 5 miles of road, and I see much less of the park as a result.  Last year Devil's Postpile was unwilling to accept my annual National Park Pass, charging me an inflated entry price that they said was to pay for the shuttles... even though they wouldn't run for another week or two and I had to burn my own gas to drive in!  So someone sells more buses, the parks get federal tax funds to rebuild facilities, and we pay more for parks that are more cumbersome to visit.

Since we're doing nothing to curb the growth in CO2 emissions globally, it seems completely disingenuous to prevent that a "carbon neutral parks" program is helpful.  That's like putting a shot glass under your kitchen tap to save two drops of water while your toilets and faucets leak, while you have all of your sprinklers running.  

A far more effective program would be to ban all foreign visitors until developing nations comitt to black soot pollution reductions and CO2 emission growth limits.  Since Bush has destroyed our currency globally, a high perrcentage of the visitors now are speaking Japanese and German.  If we shut them out of our parks, many of them won't feel the need to burn all that jet fuel to come over, reducing CO2 emissions, soot, and easing the demand for oil.  Reservations at the Ahwanee Hotel may actually become possible to get, and if demand goes down enough, perhaps the price will ease off of the $400/night level (currently offered at a 60% discount from the year 2000 price in Euros) and staying in the parks might even become affordable to average Americans.  

With over 30% of the species on the planet at risk already and with entire forest ecosystems at risk in coming decades, life in the parks is screwed anyway.  Putting a conservation facade on the problem simply propagates the myth that developed countries and individual action can address the problem.  The National Park Service's new marketing program for their extreme agenda will reduce visitation of and interaction with the parks, and fewer people will care what happens to them.  Given that there are no resources allocated to agencies such as the Fish and Wildlife Service to actually study and manage declining wildlife such as the yellow-legged frog, perhaps isolating citizens from seeing or caring about our natural resources is the goal.  We wouldn't want another John Muir or Ansel Adams to grow up interacting with the natural environment.

I propose that we round up the artificially overabundant trash-feeding bears in Yosemite and drop them on China's several hundred new coal-fired power plants being built.  Resume hunting of cougars so they'll teach their cubs to fear humans again (am I the only one that thinks that advising that I should teach my kids that they're cat food isn't striking a healthy or natural balance?), and drop them on India's 100+ coal power plants being built.  That would have more of an impact than the National Park Service's stupid and dishonest marketing programs.

Answer 5

Okay, when Yellowstone errupts it won't matter either way. If Yellowstone does errupt in your lifetime (highly unlikely) then you'll have to swim across the ocean to Australlia where magma WON'T be, but there will be ash, and smoke making the place cold. Anyway, Global Warming will do whatever it does to the parks. No, people don't have a right to go to a national park and destroy it. I don't think that anybody will allow this to happen. That's our history.

Answer 6

I see nothing happening to our National parks-- anytime in the near or remote future-- Dr. Jello may have a point that additional restrictions could be placed on the parks along the lines of number of people that may visit at one time, or number or type of vehicles that can drive inside-- but no one is going to explore for fossil fuels inside them as far ahead as I can envision.

The real question IS--  what will be permitted on BLM public lands-- as only about 27% are completely open to oil exploration (with no restrictions) ------- however it takes 5-7 years to acquire a permit through more than 40 different government agencies!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...

http://www.wilderness.org/Library/Docume...  example of what happens when oil companies try to lease public lands

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2008/...   see my 27% number is actually HIGHER than the latest report which is 18% without restrictions-- so basically BLM land is IMPOSSIBLE to drill or explore-- except for a very small fraction.  SO------- every Democrat LIED about the 62 million acres available!

http://www.co.moffat.co.us/OilGas/pdf/Mo...  example of an oil lease--- notice the short time frame and renewal period of 2 years-- no one with any money would sign such a short term land lease!

http://oil-gas.state.co.us/General/typqu...  example of what an oil company will face from the "public" when they do lease------- notice the broad spectrum of interest groups who get perturbed and want to stop or slow access

Answer 7

"Climate friendly parks" has no meaning.  A park is land.  I grew up in the woods and was part of it and took care of it.  Leftist too often see man as the intruder and want to limit humans from going to parks.  It seems they see parks as sanctuaries from humans not sanctuaries for humans.   I could never fathom such self loathing.

The best thing to do for socialism is learn about it and understand it is one of the worst plagues that has ever beset mankind.  Some people actively support socialist candidates.  Some people are just useful fools that think they are saving the world.

Answer 8

It took a minute to quite laughing at your question, then I realized you actually were serious.

I'll just say this, they where here long before we were, and most likely will be long after we are gone.

The only real thing in danger from this scam is the working family.  They are the ones who will really suffer for this lie.

Answer 9

Our National Parks will resemble Disneyland more than they will of nature.  As people's fear with "global warming" increases, they will demand that the gvmt gain a greater control over the actions of other people.  Soon we will be traveling around a small section of our parks on a monorail, behind glass in a climate controlled environment for a three hour round circle trip.

This is a shame.  I'm out in our national forest almost every week kayaking the rivers, or hiking the Appalachian Trail with my son.  Few people experience nature first hand, and nature outside their city park is just unknown.

Now more of our natural beauty will be taken away from us "for the greater good" that is good for no one.

Answer 10

Glaciers have been melting for over 10,000 years and just because Glacier National Park was named after the Glaciers that still remained there doesn't mean they were never going to melt away. I really don't understand why people think they live on a planet with a static climate, because we don't. And besides a few more winters like the ones we had this year will easily revive those glaciers. Didn't it snow in Montana a couple of weeks ago? And it can snow in the Mountains in July and August too.

I was there in June 1983 and it snowed the morning we drove up to the upper ranges of the park. We had to put our winter coats on when we stopped at the look out points on the way up.