[Soothesayer9]

Oh give the tree huggers time...they will get around to banning oxygen.

[Christian Engineer Mass]

{Photoshop of Al Gore face into baghdad bob picture}

No, no. There is no good news about trees. Sky is falling, All is death and pain. Your family is going to die in 2012. It’s the republicans’ fault.

[goodwithagun]

Not if my husband has to keep cutting them down to heat our home because of all this global warming, lol.

[macquire]

More but different trees. The old hardwoods are gone, replaced by fast growing pine, aspen, etc.

[lonestar67]

And increased CO2 enhances plant growth and forest expansion.

Oh wait. Were not supposed to know that.

CO2 is a pollutant.

[Inyo-Mono]

There are a lot more pine trees on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada range in California than a 100 or even 150 years ago. This fact has been discovered by comparing old photos to the same scenes today.

[JoeFromSidney]

Just a minute here. Trees, like other plants, extract CO2 from the atmosphere and convert the carbon (and some hydrogen) into woody material, while releasing oxygen to the atmosphere. However, when the trees die, all that carbon is again oxidized. This is true whether the tree burns, or is eaten by termites, or consumed by fungi. From seed to maturity to death and decay, the net production of oxygen by trees is ZERO, and the net extraction of CO2 is likewise ZERO. The idea that plants produce oxygen comes from looking only at part of their life cycle.

If the greens were serious about reducing CO2, they'd advocate planting trees, turning them into paper, using the paper ONCE (no recycling), then burying the paper where the oxygen in the atmosphere couldn't get at it.

[adorno]

More trees than there were 100 years ago? It's true!

So then, by correlation, we should all conclude that, global warming was caused by, more trees.

The democrats should be asking for government funding to chop down all those extra trees that are harming the environment.

[DaxtonBrown]

Time for a big bonfire and marshmallow roast.

[The Great RJ]

In 2000, a Rapid City, SD photographer sought to give an exact contemporary view of the photos taken during Custer's 1874 expedition to the Black Hills. You are immediately impressed that the photos taken in 2000 showed extensive forests where the 1874 photos showed empty meadows and prairie. The reason is decades of reforestation and extinguishing forest fires. See sample photos from the book here

[4Speed]

TREE PING

[4Speed]

TREE PING

[immadashell]

And the animals are moving back in. We have more white tail deer than you can shake an SUV at, a bald eagle nest less than a mile away, a burgeoning coyote pack replacing the role previously played by wolves and an occasional wayward lovelorn male moose hitting on the local dairy cows. And this is western New York State which was 25% forest and 75% farmland 75 years ago but is 75% forest and 25% farmland today.

[Vince Ferrer]

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.

Automobiles have played a significant part in the reforestation of America. The railroads cut down significant numbers of trees in the establishment and maintenance of the railroads, for railroad ties, for fuel, and for the towns that sprung up along the rails. The era of the automobile replaced this large user of wood, and largely with petroleum.

[RipSawyer]

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.

[crz]

A hardwood forest is a climax forest-which means it will be forever a hardwood forest unless something happens.

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.

[SamAdams76]

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.

[VOA]

“
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!

[Ditto]

You can see this in old photos easily. Hillsides that were baran of trees 100 years ago and now lush and green.

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. ;~))

[ApplegateRanch]

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.

Was this written by, or written to, fourth graders?

It is good to see, though, that we are conserving and preerving national parks!