[lit-ideas] Old Growth Forest
- From: Andy <mimi.erva@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2011 07:22:47 -0800 (PST)
________________________________
From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, November 7, 2011 12:04 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: education
I've paid my manual labor dues with over four years of servitude at the big
Weyerhaeuser integrated (Kraft paper, finished lumber, plywood, etc.) complex
outside Springfield, Oregon. This mill closed in 1989, because it was built for
old-growth timber—gigantic logs—and not for those attenuated sticks one sees
nowadays.
Andy: Until I began reading about it, I too didn't appreciate the value of old
growth forests. Something like 80 or 90% of old growth timber worldwide is
gone. I don't remember if that includes the Amazon, which is also disappearing
at astronomical rates, something like an acre a minute or even a second (yes,
that horrible). That has huge climate change consequences. Trees are carbon
sinks, along with oceans. In Canada (and into the U.S.) the arboreal
forests are being decimated by beetles that are now able to overwinter due to
the warmer winters from the heating planet. Millions of acres of trees are
dead or dying, which goes into a feedback loop to increase ever more carbon
dioxide into the air. The oceans are full of CO2 now too, aren't functioning
as carbon sinks the way they were. Much wood is pirated from old growth timber
in the Pacific Rim to make hardwood floors for the Western houses. In the U.S.
alone we produce enough
office paper that just winds up as garbage the equivalent of cutting down the
entire Colorado national forest (I don't remember the exact name of the park)
four times a year. These ecological losses may never be replaced, certainly
not in human years.
In terms of global heating, planet temperatures have gone up a degree since
1950. Doesn't sound like much, but planetary temperatures function in a narrow
range, the way temperature does in the body. If you have a temperature
increase of one degree means you're sick. Since 1850 it's risen 1.5 degrees.
We need to stay below 350 ppb CO2 and we're now 398 ppb CO2 in the atmosphere.
The climate situation is truly dire. I know you're not a climate denier, but
where climate deniers' heads are, I can't imagine.
Andy
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