What Andrew Said

We are only getting the first inklings of the massive changes that global warming is bringing our way. Today, for example, Salon's indispensable Andrew Leonard turns to the weird interplay between the U.S. mortgage crisis, rising Canadian currency values, and the horrendous mountain pine beetle infestations in British Columbia brought on by a long string of warmer than average winters:

The devastation wrought is almost unthinkable -- entire forests are turning deadly red in British Columbia, where one estimate says that 80 percent of the "merchantable pine" could be destroyed by 2013.
As a stop-gap measure, trees already infested by the beetle are being harvested to salvage their lumber before rot and decay set in. So at the same time that the collapse of the U.S. housing market has sent lumber demand submarining, supply is booming.

Good time to build a deck, Leonard concludes. Act now why supplies last, this offer may not be repeated--because the lodgepole pine forest may not be there anymore.