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US Forest Service proposes protections for old-growth trees, without logging ban

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Re: US Forest Service proposes protections for old-growth trees, without logging ban

#51

Post by webstrand »

Loughla wrote: post #44
beaeglebeachedd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very common scam. Introduce revenue source, say "it's going to the schools/teachers." Do that for a bit, defund the prior source of cash so the teachers are at what they were before. When it's time to run the next scan rinse and repeat. Seen it done with about every new tax introduced. Teachers still get paid shit and other taxes either barely move or go up.

I'm not trying to be shitty, but what other examples do you have? I don't know about that.

Another example would be various gas taxes were supposed to be for the maintenance of roads but now a fair portion of the revenue is diverted for other purposes. It depends on the state.

Re: US Forest Service proposes protections for old-growth trees, without logging ban

#52

Post by mminer237 »

Loughla wrote: post #44
beaeglebeachedd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very common scam. Introduce revenue source, say "it's going to the schools/teachers." Do that for a bit, defund the prior source of cash so the teachers are at what they were before. When it's time to run the next scan rinse and repeat. Seen it done with about every new tax introduced. Teachers still get paid shit and other taxes either barely move or go up.

I'm not trying to be shitty, but what other examples do you have? I don't know about that.

The lottery is the big thing.

Re: US Forest Service proposes protections for old-growth trees, without logging ban

#53

Post by blululu »

Loughla wrote: post #44
beaeglebeachedd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very common scam. Introduce revenue source, say "it's going to the schools/teachers." Do that for a bit, defund the prior source of cash so the teachers are at what they were before. When it's time to run the next scan rinse and repeat. Seen it done with about every new tax introduced. Teachers still get paid shit and other taxes either barely move or go up.

I'm not trying to be shitty, but what other examples do you have? I don't know about that.

The lottery is another example where tickets allegedly fund education. The reality is that most of a state’s budget is set holistically and paid for out of the general fund. From an accounting standpoint you can’t really target a specific program for additional funding under these circumstances.

Re: US Forest Service proposes protections for old-growth trees, without logging ban

#54

Post by parineum »

seadan83 wrote: post #14
Firerouge wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trees per acre seems like a seriously misleading statistic. A freshly planted tree farm is going to have the highest trees per acre, but be the most useless forest. I would expect a few old growth trees in an acre would be a substantially better forest, visually, environmentally, and ecologically, than having three times as many young trees.

I think you and parent comment might actually agree. The 3x trees is an indication of too much, too many small trees, too much fuel. Places that burn and recover lose their "excess" trees. The trees get more space and are healthy top to bottom. OTOH, tree farm trees are bred to have few branches and are planted very close together. Tree farms grow tree trunks, not trees. There is a line of thought, which honestly I t…

> They do argue that the tree farm is actually better because it is growing. I'm extremely skeptical of that claim.

One could measure the tonnage of tree farm wood extracted per day against the estimated tonnage of the trees in a non-farm environment pretty easily I would think.

Frankly, the claim, to me, seems incredibly intuitive and your skepticism sounds like stubborn environmentalist thought.

Re: US Forest Service proposes protections for old-growth trees, without logging ban

#55

Post by Arainach »

poorman wrote: post #40
tallowen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we now know about a lot more externalities of this kind of logging than we did generations ago. For example, much of the hydrological basis that provide drinking water to the Seattle metro area was aggressively logged 100 years ago which impacts the hydrology of the basin in a negative way for the purpose collecting drinking water. I think extra knowledge in the space of the environment often leads to indecis…

I'll admit I'm not up to speed on the affect of the aggressive logging of Seattle on the hydrological cycle. From the little time I've spent there, I managed to gleam one small fact, that by the 1950's the Seattle city sewage system was dumping up to 50 million gallons of sewage into the Puget sound (per day). I'm only a software engineer and have no understanding of hydrological cycles, but I suspect the evaporation…

You'd be mostly wrong. The Sound is salt water and not a source of drinking water. Other bodies of drinkable water flow into the sound, not out of.

Pollutants don't evaporate with water. They're left behind. Acid rain was from pollutants in the air mixing with water droplets.

Re: US Forest Service proposes protections for old-growth trees, without logging ban

#56

Post by mburns »

blululu wrote: post #53
Loughla wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to be shitty, but what other examples do you have? I don't know about that.

The lottery is another example where tickets allegedly fund education. The reality is that most of a state’s budget is set holistically and paid for out of the general fund. From an accounting standpoint you can’t really target a specific program for additional funding under these circumstances.

>The reality is that most of a state’s budget is set holistically and paid for out of the general fund.

Isn't this just conflating states that do that with other states that don't?

Oregon keeps the general fund and the lottery fund separate, 53% of the lottery fund goes to education (the rest to other voter-approved programs).

Re: US Forest Service proposes protections for old-growth trees, without logging ban

#58

Post by pineaux »

parineum wrote: post #54
seadan83 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you and parent comment might actually agree. The 3x trees is an indication of too much, too many small trees, too much fuel. Places that burn and recover lose their "excess" trees. The trees get more space and are healthy top to bottom. OTOH, tree farm trees are bred to have few branches and are planted very close together. Tree farms grow tree trunks, not trees. There is a line of thought, which honestly I t…

> They do argue that the tree farm is actually better because it is growing. I'm extremely skeptical of that claim. One could measure the tonnage of tree farm wood extracted per day against the estimated tonnage of the trees in a non-farm environment pretty easily I would think. Frankly, the claim, to me, seems incredibly intuitive and your skepticism sounds like stubborn environmentalist thought.

I don't agree with this claim. It is only intuitive on the surface. But growth in trees does not slow down as they get older. It actually accelerates. This article corroborates that: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12914

Sickness and bad conditions usually slow growth down.

In tree farms almost all the trees are in bad condition. The low biodiversity creates a low quality environment. They catch fire very easily. It's low quality wood that ends up in a landfill (and then in the air via rotting) within a few decades.

Eventually a tree will get sick and die. The most ideal situation would be to harvest the tree when it's dead. I would think there could be a businessmodel that maps dead trees and extracts them from forrests for high quality old growth wood.

This is not about "stubborn environmentalism". Although I do agree with you that some environmentalist ideas are a bit short sighted (like dismissing all nuclear options without weighing the properly), it is generally based in science and research. The anti-environmentalist side are usually mostly based in money and corporate interests...

Re: US Forest Service proposes protections for old-growth trees, without logging ban

#59

Post by Retric »

mburns wrote: post #56
blululu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lottery is another example where tickets allegedly fund education. The reality is that most of a state’s budget is set holistically and paid for out of the general fund. From an accounting standpoint you can’t really target a specific program for additional funding under these circumstances.

>The reality is that most of a state’s budget is set holistically and paid for out of the general fund. Isn't this just conflating states that do that with other states that don't? Oregon keeps the general fund and the lottery fund separate, 53% of the lottery fund goes to education (the rest to other voter-approved programs).

No because you can cut funding by slowing the annual increase from the general fund. Be that for inflation or just population growth.

Year 0: general fund hands 100m to schools.

Year 1: General fund hands 101m / year and lotteries add 10m to that yay! 111m for school, or except ‘inflation’ was 2% so it’s more like 109m.

Year 2: General fund hands 102m / year and lottery adds 10.2m, ‘inflation’ was 2%. So adjusting for inflation Schools get ~108 million and general fund only spends ~98m.

Repeat as needed until general fund is handing the equivalent of 90m with the slack taken up by the lottery.

Re: US Forest Service proposes protections for old-growth trees, without logging ban

#60

Post by pineaux »

akira2501 wrote: post #29
Firerouge wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trees per acre seems like a seriously misleading statistic. A freshly planted tree farm is going to have the highest trees per acre, but be the most useless forest. I would expect a few old growth trees in an acre would be a substantially better forest, visually, environmentally, and ecologically, than having three times as many young trees.

> substantially better forest Why is it better environmentally and ecologically?

Environmentally because more diverse forrests tend to be more robust, depending on their climate (taiga is not very diverse). Tree growth doesn't slow down as trees get older. Their growth accelerates because: they have more foliage to gather sunlight and exchange gasses, everytime they add a growth ring it is a bigger ring than the last one, they grow taller or wider to get more sunlight and gas exchange. There is an optimal size/m² of course. Tree farms have ROIs and efficiency problems, they cannot take advantage of these qualities of forrests. They need straight timber and a payday at some point.

Ecologically because old growth forrests have a much more diverse system with big fungal networks, ecological nooks and crannies, etc. A system takes time to build.

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