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Whatever happened to that rainforest thing?
emnmnme
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Registered User regular
Growing up in the 90s, I remember a lot more being said about preserving the rainforest, at least here in America. Then, awareness for teens and tweens about slashing and burning seemed to be higher than it is now thanks to Captain Planet and Fern Gully, a few 'adopt an acre' newspaper ads and a load of TV commercials, and Sean Connery's Medicine Man. Ugh, I think every one of my high school science teachers showed Medicine Man in class at least once.
Nowadays, though, you hear about global warming and emissions and read about recycling drives and going green, but not a peep about the rainforest burning. Has the rainforest problem been solved or is it because we just got bored hearing about how a football field-sized chunk of ancient trees is destroyed every five seconds? This makes me wonder if we're going to be buzzing about global warming in a decade or if it will fade away, too.
Nowadays, though, you hear about global warming and emissions and read about recycling drives and going green, but not a peep about the rainforest burning. Has the rainforest problem been solved or is it because we just got bored hearing about how a football field-sized chunk of ancient trees is destroyed every five seconds? This makes me wonder if we're going to be buzzing about global warming in a decade or if it will fade away, too.
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But think of the biodiversity!
Or botflies. We could do with less of those.
Yeah, but rainforests are more important in terms of biodiversity and crazy ass shit that evolves in there which might lead to positive scientific or engineering discoveries. Plus unsustainable means of growing food are bad because you can't sustain them. I'm looking forward to hydroponics making it all moot.
Unfortunately Mercury is the most delicious of the transition metals.
Meanwhile we did this to America itself and hardly anyone gave a rat's ass:
...how is it anyone's fault that the 1990's era activism didn't occur a century before all of the participants were born?
I mean, I dare you to make less sense.
I think the point is that we did that and we're all just fine.
But it does completely ignore new trees, right now America has more trees than it did ~1900.
Our foresting industry has gotten smart, they replant what they cut in sort of a rotational cutting system to maximize their profits.
Right, and sustainable old growth foresting acts to improve the area that is being logged while also providing stunningly beautiful pieces of wood.
I must be missing your point.
And I'd rather have more water to drink than dangerous, creaking polar ice caps.
My point was that we had lost almost all of the truly unspoiled forests in America already, but instead of putting our own house in order we went after S. American forests because they're so exotic.
And there is nothing at all about tree farms that provides anything like an old growth or just plain untouched forest. I don't care how many trees Weyerhaeuser plants on their farms, that's not a forest.
How do you 'put our house in order' when the actions we need to slow or prevent had already happened and the perpetrators of those actions had all died and been buried before any of us were born?
Yes. And?
...nuclear proliferation has always been a major concern and the President just last week (or was it 2 weeks ago?) proposed the elimination of all nuclear weapons.
The problems are not over, and other countries that have the forests are the ones who have work to do. Madagascar's farmers for example (this months' Time Magazine,) are not breaking their habit of tearing down the rainforests to create their own rice farms.
They figure (ZOMG there are trees here so I bet delicious rice would grow here!) So they tear down some forest and grow rice there for a while, but the trees there are ageless, and the soil does not have the nutrients one would think they would. Food grows only for a short time, but the land eventually turns to lifeless clay, and the farmers move on to the next area. They don't have the money, training or interest to take care of the soil.
Except that the average person has no idea that ocean algae exists. That wouldn't quell the public outcry. It's been replaced by pictures of cute polar bears.
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Yeah, that makes sense.
and he promised adorable kittens and rabbits for every child.
I like the guy, but that ain't happening anytime soon.
Anywho, since this type of thing seems to go in decades can we expect all versions of the phrase "go green" to be done within the next few years?
And who wants to beat the shit out of some old people?
We've been constantly reducing our stockpiles for decades. Going from the new level to just having triple digits seems rather likely.
Not likely given the economic benefit to being sustainable.
if you google that phrase I bet more than 3 sites come up. just saying
I was agreeing with you in saying it was stupid the old growth is gone. Because the chart shows old growth when there's new growth that replaces a lot of that. If not, oh well, logging is logging and most of the shit we buy today is synthetic wood from wal-mart.
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I'm guessing original forest growth before the dawn of man.
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Virgin Trees?
Yes, but those forests may not be fully matured ecosystems. Like was said before, forests that logging companies plant and then harvest don't really count toward that total. They count toward the "trees" total but they don't harbor the same sort of ecosystem as old forests.
Ahh I get it.
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Not like it's all logging forests, though. There's great big chunks of land that were cleared for farming or for the wood and now it's just wilderness again.