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The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

economist.com

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Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#131

Post by eigart »

ionwake wrote: post #116
schoen wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're still interested in this, Tom Davies (Geowizard) has done the straight-line crossing in a couple of different countries and posted videos, both of some of the planning and logistics and of actually doing it. Two of the most relevant are walking all across Wales in a straight line (which did involve trespass on some farms) and dribbling a soccer ball the entire length of the Hadrian's Wall path. He calls the…

Yep he inspired me I actually did a failed attempt at crossing Liechtenstein it was so poorly executed I made the video private

Fwiw, I think even just starting an attempt is impressive. And especially if you’re not local!

Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#132

Post by antisthenes »

shiroiuma wrote: post #95
antisthenes wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yet be completely indifferent to completely preventable human suffering. A lot of human suffering is self-inflicted. There's also the point that humans have a higher bar for being able to take care of themselves. A human can and should defend themselves. A tree or a dog cannot. (and before someone decides to ackshually correct me, we've been breeding dogs for docility for over 10,000 years) > I will never not find…

>and before someone decides to ackshually correct me, we've been breeding dogs for docility for over 10,000 years Some breeds were specifically bred for fighting, so I don't agree with this at all. Also, some breeds are bred for hunting, some for herding, etc.; these are not "docile" tasks. I think it's more accurate to say that dogs have been bred to be subservient to humans for 10k years. But even here, there's ple…

Just because dogs can be trained to do tasks that involve violence, doesn't mean they aren't super-docile and will try to avoid confrontation with their handler to the best of their ability.

Look up what docile means.

Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#133

Post by oooyay »

jwestbury wrote: post #106
oooyay wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Portland they recently started cutting trees down to widen the road for extended bus and bike lanes. That spawned a conversation that we've lost a third of our tree cover due to various things and the city hasn't kept up. That week I started burying cones from my Douglas Firs, which aren't nearly as big as the Mountain Ashes you planted, but are fairly large. With any luck I'll have five in my yard.

> I started burying cones from my Douglas Firs, which aren't nearly as big as the Mountain Ashes you planted Just want to note, this is definitively not true. Coastal Dougs routinely reach 100m in height, and there's some anecdotal evidence[0] of a Doug which would likely have been the tallest tree ever recorded, if we believe the measurements putting it at 142m in height (and 10m in circumference!). 0. https://en.wi…

I've learned two things today. First is the seedlings note above, second is this. I'm still learning a lot about these trees. There's many of them at a park by my house and I have four in my yard, but they're probably 40 years old. They're very large to me, but they look nothing like the pictures of those Ashes.

Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#134

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

pdpi wrote: post #27
crtified wrote: post #14

I wish the tree had not been felled. A very sad and poignant act. Also, as I pointed out in another conversation here, and in the name of reciprocal repetition will do so again here, it is quite easy to find reports of equally heartbroken locals, the world over, lamenting the deliberate felling of any number of special, beloved, prominent trees, in the name of the routine building of a new road or factory or housing…

At least felling trees to build things serves a purpose. Are those things worth the cost? Debatable, but at least there’s some attempt at justification. This one is particularly heartbreaking because you can’t even apply that cynical utilitarian logic to it. It seems like a completely wanton act of vandalism.

Here's another act of vandalism, narrated by John Green. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESyJop31cmY He manages to find some meaning in it, as is his wont.

Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#135

Post by pvaldes »

gambiting wrote: post #90
pvaldes wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The land in that area is rock with about an inch of soil on it Because people abusing of wildfires and a spiral of overgrazing = more wildfires required, that is apparently a behavior as infectious as it was yesterday. Lack of soil is not an unsolvable problem. Soil can be moved from A to B so we can trow technology at this (and a lot of big shrubs can deal with poor soil, leading the way to bigger trees). The prob…

>>Lack of soil is not an unsolvable problem. Soil can be moved from A to B so we can trow technology at this Ok, so no offence but that tells me pretty clearly that you've not been there, moorlands are MASSIVE, the idea that you could move soil there to plant forests is firmly within some very poorly written fiction. >>The problem is the lack of will No, it's not. Again, go to Blanchland and Haltwhistle, spend a few…

> moorlands are MASSIVE

This tree used just a tiny part of them.

I don't want to to replace the valuable moorlands by Acer pseudoplatanus or plant trees in an archeological site, but a few thousands years ago there was more tree cover here. Having space for just one tree is in itself a problem that should be fixed. We could put 100 trees in the same location, multiply the number of suitable places to nest by 100 and the ecosystem of moorlands would still have lots of space to exist, plus the bonus of boosting the local biodiversity

That would be cheap and perfectly doable

Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#136

Post by oooyay »

shiroiuma wrote: post #91
KennyBlanken wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a "tree fail" to remove some trees if it means a substantial conversion of passenger car to bus and bike use which reduces CO2 consumption. If the bike lane causes one person to give up their car and commute by bike, that's worth hundreds of trees per year . The same is true for solar. There are a lot of cases where cutting down a few trees for a solar array means a substantial increase in CO2 offset, more t…

Instead of chopping down trees to build a bike lane, they should simply take lanes away from the road and make those into protected bike lanes. This has multiple benefits: 1) leave the trees alone, and keep the street looking nice, 2) not waste more space on vehicles, 3) make biking safer, 4) discourage people from using cars by making it more inconvenient for them. The other thing they can do is to restrict parking:…

> Instead of chopping down trees to build a bike lane, they should simply take lanes away from the road and make those into protected bike lanes.

Most of the roads this happened on are 2 lane roads in Eastside Portland. They're expanding the road for "bus lanes" which are hybrid turn lanes and lanes for buses to travel in as well as protected bike lines that are usually joined with a sidewalk and bust stop. Point being, there's no lane to take away.

Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#137

Post by 11235813213455 »

smolder wrote: post #31
11235813213455 wrote: post #8

Let's fall a hundred of SUVs to balance the prejudice

Besides this being ridiculous, I can't make sense of what "balance the prejudice" means. I'm not seeing evidence of prejudice against trees here, nor do I know what that would mean. Someone prejudged that the tree was up to no good and murdered it? This is almost definitely vandalism, and likely has nothing to do with the conflict between modernity and nature, or with SUVs. The crime wasn't committed by Chevy or Ford…

environmental prejudice, tree is doing good things for the ecosystem, cars absolutely nothing positive, you see?

Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#138

Post by gambiting »

pvaldes wrote: post #135
gambiting wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Lack of soil is not an unsolvable problem. Soil can be moved from A to B so we can trow technology at this Ok, so no offence but that tells me pretty clearly that you've not been there, moorlands are MASSIVE, the idea that you could move soil there to plant forests is firmly within some very poorly written fiction. >>The problem is the lack of will No, it's not. Again, go to Blanchland and Haltwhistle, spend a few…

> moorlands are MASSIVE This tree used just a tiny part of them. I don't want to to replace the valuable moorlands by Acer pseudoplatanus or plant trees in an archeological site, but a few thousands years ago there was more tree cover here. Having space for just one tree is in itself a problem that should be fixed. We could put 100 trees in the same location, multiply the number of suitable places to nest by 100 and…

You have to excuse me, but you lost me - I literally don't understand what point you're trying to make.

Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#139

Post by ionwake »

eigart wrote: post #131
ionwake wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep he inspired me I actually did a failed attempt at crossing Liechtenstein it was so poorly executed I made the video private

Fwiw, I think even just starting an attempt is impressive. And especially if you’re not local!

I really appreciate your comment. It was during a particularly hard time in my life so I saw my cousin and then just thought right I’ve got a few days left and the only thing I had in my head was well I don’t know much but I do know I will feel accomplishment if I cross Liechtenstein in a straight line. I found perhaps the only way to do it. Funnily enough I realised I had screwed up when found out first hand what exactly the Alps were and that they were not intact “thumb sized” as they appeared on google maps. As I stood at the bus stop with a mountain towering above me well I gave it my best shot but sheer cliffs behind bushes put an early end to my “straight” yet vertical line.

It was a good laugh tho the locals took me out for drinks.

Re: The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts

#140

Post by pvaldes »

gambiting wrote: post #138
pvaldes wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> moorlands are MASSIVE This tree used just a tiny part of them. I don't want to to replace the valuable moorlands by Acer pseudoplatanus or plant trees in an archeological site, but a few thousands years ago there was more tree cover here. Having space for just one tree is in itself a problem that should be fixed. We could put 100 trees in the same location, multiply the number of suitable places to nest by 100 and…

You have to excuse me, but you lost me - I literally don't understand what point you're trying to make.

Lack of soil is not a cause, is a consequence

This type of tree seeds itself very generously, if we don't see regeneration is because the return of the forest is blocked forever by grazers (aka cattle).

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