Posted on 12/06/2016 10:00:44 AM PST by JimSEA
“That is strange. Our computer model does not match reality. Must have been something that happened.”
“Could your computer model be wrong?”
“No no. Oh, I bet people did it. They burned the forest down!”
“Why? would they do that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Make up some reasons. Yeah ‘movement’ because humans can walk faster on grass lands than in a forest. Plus there is more game in grasslands. Easier to hunt!”
“You have never been out doors, have you? Or ever hunted anything.”
“...What do you mean?”
Blame the hunters?
It was my ancestors, the gatherers who burned the brush away so they could farm the land.
You Cain and Able, always causing trouble.
of course. What was I thinking?
No, PURPOSEFUL use of fire! And it likely succeeded!
The theory isn’t that there was one massive confligration, but many fires over various areas, that affected grasslands as well as forests.
Whitey has been screwing up the environment since the ice age?
My ancestors were supposedly in Europe 23,000 years ago, so I am feeling a little bit of inherited guilt for these fires. Not.
I was unaware that it takes 20,000 years for a forest to grow back.
Here’s another thought on this....the time it would take to de-forest or re-forest some of these areas would look a bit different if you took into account the Biblical record of how long the earth has been inhabited.
Yes, the Indians set lots of fires. They were smart enough to understand that the animals they hunted for game, did not eat trees. They ate grass and young vegetation. So burn forests to create meadows so your prey has something to eat.
Is that why there’s no trees on the Great Plains anymore? That’s how the Indians hunted buffalo, after all.
Yes because it takes 20 k years for a forest to grow.
What do these people do for a living......
Why would they light fires when they knew nothing about the cycle of a forest.... and fires scare animals away or kill them...
Clearing the land for pastures.... unreal
How about they burned the wood so they didn’t freeze to death...
Good illustration. In Asia, the tundra is either still there if you are far enough north or has become the greatest grassland in the world. Extensive Siberian forests though still dominates much of the land. Different environments dominate different niches for reasons humans haven’t reall effected until you get into China where deserts have replaced grasslands for reasons of climate. The other little parts have enough farming to feed billions without really dominating nature except in the river valleys. Even in tropical Southeast Asia, the river valleys have been modified to produce primarily rice. The American Midwest is thoroughly changes to accommodate agriculture but is we were to disappear, grasslands and woods would reappear.
I’m not saying we cannot do a great deal of damage (the Amazon) and unwisely use our environment (areas of desertification in Africa and elsewhere) but even there we can mitigate it.
I’ll say that fires can irreparable damage portions of the ecosystems is repeated and if they happen too often. The Amazon is experiencing some of this. The resulting floods can almost sterilize the soil and the lack of creepy critters can eliminate the environment for other animals.
We are capable of thinking these things out and providing alternatives for the starving poor who combine with business exploitation without an eye to the future to devastate large tracks of land. Interesting that today, it is most often socialist and communist corruption that leads us to this destruction. See: Brazil, China and the chaos ruled areas of Africa with their loving genocidal regimes.
This of course neglects the facts that most forest were chopped down to build ships for hunters of years, and that during the Dark Ages non-believers or those judged guilty of heresy were herded into those forests which were then burned alive.
Or is my model comes into contact with inconvenient facts, just ignore the facts. Case in point: when the New World was discovered forests were plundered for ships wood. Now several hundred years later, the US is more heavily forested than when the Pilgrims set feet on some rock.
Too much inconvenience make Jack and Jill stressed out and sleepy, so they leave to pet a dog and drink warm milk ...
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