Global warming's impacts on state forests: Burn baby burn!

State Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark looks out at Washington's unhealthy forests from a pilot's seat, flying his plane from Olympia to his family's ranch in the remote reaches of Okanogan County.

"It is just mind-numbing the damage you see on west facing and south facing slopes . . . an overburden of dead and dying trees," Goldmark said yesterday, referring mainly to predation by pine bark beetles.

Goldmark had just shared his up-close perspective on global warming, and its consequences for trees in the Evergreen State, at a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hearing here.