[Pops]

Andy Rooney the Doomer!

A lot of people think we should just use everything we have because things will work out. Their attitude is, we can always pump more oil, chop down more trees, mine more coal.

Gotta love it!

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')y grandfather once told me that we're ruining the earth by using up all the good things on it and sooner or later we're going to run out of them. He told me a lot of things I didn't believe and it turns out he was right about most of them.

[TheAntiDoomer]

Andy Rooney is out to lunch especially about wood, comment from the article:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')ne of the highlights of my Sunday evenings is your commentary. Most of the time, I feel you are right on target. You sometimes tweak people that need tweaking!

Last night, however, you made comments regarding trees that were off target and erroneous. You used rhetoric commonly repeated in the media and put out by various environmental groups.

Here in Oregon (the no. 1 timber producer in the US), we are growing far more timber than is being harvested from our non-reserved timberlands.

Private lands harvest 85% of their annual growth, lose 4% to mortality, and add 11% of that growth to our standing timber volume
Federal lands harvest only 6% of their annual growth, lose 32% to mortality, and add 62% of that annual growth to our standing timber volume

Over harvesting? HARDLY - especially when one considers that the federal government holds about 60% of Oregon?s timberland.

Regarding Oregon?s federal forestlands ? why does federal policy loose 32% of its annual growth to mortality? Why do we condone all that annual growth to be left to catastrophically feed insects and fuel fires? Why do we then, as a matter of federal policy, turn right around and outsource so many of our jobs, taxes, and mills to other countries? (We currently import over a third of our softwood needs to other countries ? mostly the northern, boreal, old-growth forests of Canada.)

Further, we can not keep adding 62% our annual growth to our forests. It is simply not biologically possible to keep increasing the standing timer volume without creating an over-crowded, terribly stressed forest ? one increasingly susceptible to drought, fire, disease, and insects.

The eastern 2/3?s of Oregon is largely federally-owned. With the shut-down of federal forests under Clinton, we find our forestry infrastructure has disappeared. Even if the federal forests did begin practicing sound, modern forestry, there are no mills left. Timber workers have either left or gone on to other endeavors.

Isn?t there an ethical problem here that we ought to be talking about? Aren?t we under-harvesting?



A bit of history of US forests.

Prior to 1492 (Columbus), the North and South American Indians had very large, sophisticated civilizations ? maybe 100 million people! Most were not hunter/gatherers. Many had extensive farming communities. Rather than domesticate wildlife as did people in the rest of the world (bison, elk, alligators, moose, etc. have nasty dispositions!), they modified the environment to better suit their needs; i.e., they frequently burned the landscape (and get rid of trees!) to improve and provide better habitat for the game they hunted. Their tool of choice was fire.

(A popular nighttime activity of the Dutch in New Amsterdam ? today?s New York City ? was to go up-river and watch the Indian burning in the forests; kind of like watching fireworks.)

However, their burning and farming practices ended when introduced European diseases wiped out upwards of 95% of the Indian peoples. Their lands quickly became the forests and so-called wilderness we find in American history texts and American lore and myth.

Later, the burgeoning Euro-American population removed some of that newly created forest to make way for farms, roads, and cities. When oil was discovered, machinery was invented, and farmland became far more productive (pesticides, fertilizers, improved crop varieties), some of that land was no longer needed for agriculture; it was abandoned and reverted back to forests.

For the past hundred years, our amount of forestland has been fairly constant. Further, modern forestry practices are making that forestland far more productive. No, we are NOT running out of trees!

[davep]

Actually, the comments were wrong. It was asserted that only the US and Canada were increasing forested areas amongst Western countries. This isn't true. France now has 25% forest cover, higher than 100 years ago, and that level is increasing.

But this is irrelevant for two reasons. One, we need to see things globally. If the US, Canada and Europe are using unsustainable third-world wood, that also needs to be accounted for in the overall equation. Two, once our industrial agriculture destroys enough topsoil and the oil starts running out, I'm sure people will haphazardly destroy woodland for both heating and agriculture.

This is why it is imperative to use high efficiency wood stoves with passive home design, and to look at intensive sustainable agriculture and forest gardening at a local level. These and other measures will largely mitigate any future forest destruction by both using lumber resources efficiently and rebuilding degraded topsoil.

[like_the_dinosaurs]

http://news.mongabay.com/2005/1115-forests.html

This report shoots down the idea that there are more forests today!

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', 'A')ctually, the comments were wrong. It was asserted that only the US and Canada were increasing forested areas amongst Western countries. This isn't true. France now has 25% forest cover, higher than 100 years ago, and that level is increasing.

But this is irrelevant for two reasons. One, we need to see things globally. If the US, Canada and Europe are using unsustainable third-world wood, that also needs to be accounted for in the overall equation. Two, once our industrial agriculture destroys enough topsoil and the oil starts running out, I'm sure people will haphazardly destroy woodland for both heating and agriculture.

This is why it is imperative to use high efficiency wood stoves with passive home design, and to look at intensive sustainable agriculture and forest gardening at a local level. These and other measures will largely mitigate any future forest destruction by both using lumber resources efficiently and rebuilding degraded topsoil.

[cynthia]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '
')The QUALITY of the forest ecosystem is also a far cry from what it once was, not only because it is second growth but because of acid rain, climate change (drought/fires), and invasive species/diseases.

[RedStateGreen]

I love how the first commenter calls him a right wing nut job and the second calls him a liberal.

[Pops]

I think it's interesting that here on one of the most visited PO sites, the fact that Old Uni-Brow said "you know we are going to run out of oil" to 13,000,000 viewers and 14% of US households as if it were common knowledge get's not one comment.

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/04/14/fr ... more-16715

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'I') read the first few sentences of the TheAntiDoomer's bullshit and had to stop and barf.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ere in Oregon (the no. 1 timber producer in the US), we are growing far more timber than is being harvested from our non-reserved timberlands.