Thanx SunkenCiv !
Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 02/09/2011 5:24:51 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY
The numbers are in.
In the United States, which contains 8 percent of the world's forests, there are more trees than there were 100 years ago. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), "Forest growth nationally has exceeded harvest since the 1940s.
By 1997, forest growth exceeded harvest by 42 percent and the volume of forest growth was 380 percent greater than it had been in 1920."
The greatest gains have been seen on the East Coast (with average volumes of wood per acre almost doubling since the '50s) which was the area most heavily logged by European settlers beginning in the 1600s, soon after their arrival.
This is great news for those who care about the environment because trees store CO2, produce oxygen — which is necessary for all life on Earth — remove toxins from the air, and create habitat for animals, insects and more basic forms of life.
Well-managed forest plantations like those overseen by the Forest Stewardship Council also furnish us with wood, a renewable material that can be used for building, furniture, paper products and more, and all of which are biodegradable at the end of their lifecycle.
The increase in trees is due to a number of factors, including conservation and preservation of national parks, responsible tree growing within plantations — which have been planting more trees than they harvest — and the movement of the majority of the population from rural areas to more densely populated areas, such as cities and suburbs.
Tree planting efforts begun in the 1950s are paying off and there is more public awareness about the importance of trees and forests.
(Excerpt) Read more at mnn.com ...
There must be more trees now, I can personally verify there are many acres of pine trees growing on land where I used to walk behind a mule in the cotton fields. There are many, many acres growing where other people used to farm. What used to be open farm country is now either housing developments or forests and the forests are growing much faster than the housing developments. Deer, black bear, coyotes, wild hogs etc. all roam where there used to be squirrels, cottontails and quail which are almost completely gone now. It only vaguely resembles what it used to look like.
We are on the very edge of losing our forests if we do not start to manage them aggressively. Many are becoming stagnant and susceptible to disease and invasive insects.
Get a window seat next time you fly somewhere in the Northeast. Unless you happen to be over a major city, almost all you will see is green canopy with the occasional town poking through. It really is mostly forest in these parts and we have the summertime mosquito bites to prove it.
Thanks Free ThinkerNY.
Thanx SunkenCiv !
“
More trees than there were 100 years ago? It’s true!
“
IIRC, Mr. Limbaugh documented that the size of America’s forest has
been on the rise for decades (a couple of centuries?).
Because we are no longer building fleets of ships made of wood.
Because we are no longer chunking wood into home stoves or the guts
of locamotives.
Because we aren’t building log cabins.
Because we aren’t busy building buggies or stage-coaches.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
AND
We are planting an incredible number of tree seedlings to be sure we
have enough materials for our computer printers.
Amazing how Western Capitalism benefits the environment!
In almost any burial scenario, the paper decays and the carbon goes back into the atmosphere.
A more effective way to store carbon, temporarily but fairly long term, is to build houses out of wood. As long as the houses are maintained so the wood doesn't rot or burn, the carbon stays locked up.
Just the sort of thing the Liberals don't want to see.
You'll never see that posted in the MSM.
Why do you want to lock up carbon?
You’re welcome, SunkenCiv.
That's because we no longer need to chop down trees to heat our homes or cook our food or grow feed for our horses.
Those damn energy companies mining coal and drilling for gas and oil have sure changed the environment --- for the better.
And that's not even mentioning saving the wales. John D. Rockefeller saved more wales than Greenpeace could ever dream of, and he never gets any credit for it. Thats an injustice. ;~))
Heh... the main reasons for the increase in tree growth is, we use hydrocarbons for heating (either directly or indirectly) much more than Americans did 100 years ago, and burn far less wood; and of course, the abandonment of draft animals by most farmers and the use of various chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, plus scientific plant breeding have combined to reduce the amount of land under cultivation per capita. The trees have grown back.
It’s noticeable in my old hometown just since my youth.
It’s also amusing to see the vintage photos of some of the streets (the photos that survive) — not only no big trees circa 1900, almost no trees at all. The trees that are now big and shading the neighborhoods — as well as those which have deteriorated and been taken down, or blown down in storms — can be seen in the photos as small saplings, planted a handful of years earlier.
Was this written by, or written to, fourth graders?
It is good to see, though, that we are conserving and preerving national parks!
Why don’t you go back to your mom’s bed. If you can’t handle someone making an impartial observation without needling them, you are too immature to be sleeping in your own room.
Same here in the Black Hills. A local photographer has painstakingly found the identical spots & camera angles that Custer's 1874 expedidition photographer used thoughout the Hills, then printed a book of side by side photos, just to show this.
It is amazing how many of the old trees (or their remains) are still standing; as well as how many times more tree cover exists now than back then. It was really sparse in 1874.
I did this in Colorado back in 1996-97. I would go to a library that had historical photographs, and go find the spot and take a picture. Almost invariably, the environment was a lot more green in 1996 than 100 years previously.
I got the idea from a dry more academic book from someone who had done that a few years previously by using old picture from the US Geological survey, which were some of the first photographs of the area. Since then, a well known Colorado photographer has done the same thing and made a book out of it as well.
That’s the whole point behind sequestering carbon.
The massive burning of fossil fuels is adding a lot of carbon to the atmosphere and the level of CO2 is going up remarkably fast. You can argue about what that means for the atmosphere and the climate, etc., but you can’t argue that it isn’t happening.
So a bunch of people are trying to figure out how to capture carbon in the exhaust of power plants and such and keep it out of the atmosphere, reducing the rate of increase of concentrations of CO2. This is called sequestering and usually involves pumping it underground beneath a supposedly impermeable rock layer.
My point was that wood materials that are kept from decaying or burning are just as effective a method of sequestering carbon as pumping it underground.
if the greens were honest, they would acknowledge that YOUNG trees use up more CO2 than old trees....so using old trees for materials or fuel perhaps is a good and wise idea?
And more deer in New Jersey now than in 1776. Back then, when they wandered too close to your yard they became supper and supplies. Now hunting is severely limited and the only serious predator left is the automobile.
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