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The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

daveon.design

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Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#91

Post by wolvesechoes »

pyrale wrote: post #79
kristjank wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do receive a lot money through the funds, cheaper loans and investments, but it has to be compared to the money their counterparts earn by exploiting the much cheaper workforce, resources and energy prices in the global east. The minimum wages discussed in the article are at a 1:3 ratio. It's trivial to funnel some money back if you've managed to gain 3 foreign workers for the price of 1 domestic. There is a wor…

The ridiculous part is making this comparison on a per-country basis. Whole regions and their populations have been ruined by industries closing overnight to move abroad. Yet, by simplistic accounting, they should be considered winners?

Society, maybe not. People that own capital, definitely yes, and they shape EU policy.

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#92

Post by nanomonkey »

tokai wrote: post #36
kristjank wrote: post #23

The paragraph about wood pellet exports really makes me mad. I have always harbored some disdain for "green" policies in well-developed countries, because they always seem to simply move the "filth" into another, poorer country and make it their problem. If the wood were burned locally (and without the additional expenditure of pellet-making), I could see a sustainability argument in there and support it. The place I…

Wood burning is never sustainable, 'green', nor healthy. It boggles the mind that it is not normal to outlaw it.

Sorry, but this statement is just wrong. Look into gasification and biochar and you'll realize that controlled combustion can produce power (motive force or electricity), heat, and be carbon negative. Also while producing less greenhouse gases then letting the wood decompose naturally (compost produces methane and CO2).

Burying biochar (carbon and minerals left over after gasification of woody biomass) is one of the only means of reversing mining of carbon (coal and petrochemicals). The carbon that you introduce into the soil as biochar has a carbon lattice that is fairly inert and can remain in the soil for thousands of years. It also improves the soils friability, moisture retention and ability to harbor micro-organisms.

Lastly the plant matter that you're burning has absorbed it's carbon from the air, and is one of the only ways to "draw down" CO2 from the atmosphere. You're working within the carbon cycle, removing fuel that will either compost or result in wild fires and be released into the atmosphere anyways...instead of using petrochemicals to produce heat and power.

Many of these gasification systems run fine on dead standing wood (fallen branches), corn stover, biogasse and nut shells. So you aren't even utilizing woody biomass that would be used for lumber construction, just the agricultural waste products.

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#93

Post by Rinzler89 »

racional wrote: post #87
cameldrv wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti nuclear power movement in Europe was also pretty strongly influenced by Soviet info ops. The Soviets badly wanted to sell natural gas to Europe, because it was one of the only products that the Soviet Union was competitive on in the Western export market. Nuclear was, in the 70s, looking like potentially a complete replacement for gas, as it almost became in France. Slowing down or stopping nuclear in Europe…

The anti nuclear power movement in Europe was also pretty strongly influenced by Soviet info ops. Citation needed, especially for the "pretty strongly" part.

>Citation needed, especially for the "pretty strongly" part.

Are you the kind of person who also needs citations that the KGB (and modern FSB) try to influence western elections too?

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#95

Post by racional »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #93
racional wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti nuclear power movement in Europe was also pretty strongly influenced by Soviet info ops. Citation needed, especially for the "pretty strongly" part.

>Citation needed, especially for the "pretty strongly" part. Are you the kind of person who also needs citations that the KGB (and modern FSB) try to influence western elections too?

Are you the kind of person who doesn't understand the difference between "tries to influence" and the obviously much stronger "pretty strongly influenced" claim the above commenter was making?

Or who thinks: "Okay, so we've been hearing a lot about the FSB and attempted election meddling. So if someone on the internet makes a spurious claim about an amazingly successful operation the KGB supposedly pulled off back in the 80s -- heck, why not just believe that also? Even though apparently nothing has been ever been written about it; and in fact what they're saying runs counter to direct observation of events at the time."

You certainly sound like that kind of person.

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#96

Post by didntcheck »

arlort wrote: post #78
indoordin0saur wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really was an own-goal how the green movement in Europe has been shutting down nuclear power plants.

The green movement has two roots, one is the worry about global warming the other (and much older) is about pollution/ecology and in some circles new age/hippy pseudo religion The latter has always been opposed to nuclear and the former converged into it because until relatively recently they were the only ones listening I'm not saying it was smart (it wasn't) but it's how we got here

There's also the third branch of anti-capitalism-first, who only care about ecology insofar as they can use it as an excuse to get on their soapbox. I'm really not trying to be sardonic, but there certainly is a tribe of green activists who demonstrably have no actual interest in the environment, just in insisting that the only solution to any problem is economic revolution - sometimes to the extent of actively sneering at and opposing practical, immediate measures to improve the situation (and green politics is not the only movement where they do this)

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#97

Post by stefanfisk »

actionfromafar wrote: post #51
jFriedensreich wrote: post #45

The foresting practices were among the first things i noticed flying to Tallinn. Instead of carefully picking trees to harvest selectively from a wider forest area as i am used to in most of Germany, there seems to be whole football fields of forest just cut down completely and then regrown as a whole in a plantation like fashion similar to how crops are grown. I am not an expert by any means but i thought this pract…

80% (or more!?) of Swedish "forests" are really just monoculture tree plantations, too.

And it's practically illegal to grow your forest any other way even as a private land owner

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#98

Post by weweweoo »

tokai wrote: post #36
kristjank wrote: post #23

The paragraph about wood pellet exports really makes me mad. I have always harbored some disdain for "green" policies in well-developed countries, because they always seem to simply move the "filth" into another, poorer country and make it their problem. If the wood were burned locally (and without the additional expenditure of pellet-making), I could see a sustainability argument in there and support it. The place I…

Wood burning is never sustainable, 'green', nor healthy. It boggles the mind that it is not normal to outlaw it.

It is all of that, if done rurally and in small enough scale. I wouldn't mind outlawing wood as a source of heating in urban areas, but banning someone who literally lives in middle of a huge forest from utilizing wood would make zero sense.

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#99

Post by weweweoo »

f6v wrote: post #82
kristjank wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not understand how it's not sustainable if it has sustained itself as a part of normal wildlife management for centuries without any destructive interventions besides cutting and replanting old trees in a fairly remote region.

> I do not understand how it's not sustainable It was “sustainable” only due to small population.

Most things in life are not sustainable with current population levels.

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#100

Post by ruszki »

michpoch wrote: post #80
ruszki wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter that somebody benefits more if everybody benefits? Btw 1 foreign worker rarely equals to 1 local. Even just the quality of their work isn’t equal usually and averagely, and language, culture, distance, etc differences are on top of that. Interestingly, who moved to Western countries usually works better than those who stayed, even with the same background. Source: my Eastern European ass, who still…

> Btw 1 foreign worker rarely equals to 1 local. Even just the quality of their work isn’t equal usually and averagely, and language, culture, distance, etc differences are on top of that. Full agreement here. 1 exploited foreign worker will have much more output than 1 local unionized, low working hours worker.

Do you have any source that an environment where quality is secondary to quantity produce more value than where quality is more important? Because, GDP on paper tells us exactly that they don’t.

For example I have a friend who worked next to the production line the exact same job for Mercedes both in Hungary and Germany. In Hungary, the quantity was way more important than quality. In Germany, the opposite. So where that same exact person produced more value?

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