Global Deforestation Demoed In Google Earth 207
eldavojohn writes "On Google's official blog, they claim a 'new technology prototype that enables online, global-scale observation and measurement of changes in the earth's forests.' Ars has more details on what Google unveiled at Copenhagen. If you have Google Earth installed, you can find a demonstration here. Many organizations and government agencies are on board with this initiative to put deforestation before the eyes of the public. If only satellite data of North America existed before the logging industry swept in!" It's interesting to contemplate the implications for intelligence gathering of Google's automated tools to compare satellite photos.
Trees (Score:5, Insightful)
Interestingly, before the white man appeared in North America, there were an average of 8 trees per acre and now there are an average of 220 trees per acre in the US alone.
Just saying...
Re:You might not be as right as you think (Score:4, Insightful)
Genetically modified, fast-growing hardwood cash-crops do not equal "forest".
The things the evil logging industry (your words) wants to call "forests" do not allow for insignificant elements like wildlife, forest floor or wetlands. They are no more "forests" than cornfields are prairies.
Re:Oregon (Score:5, Insightful)
"The only difference is we have 15% unemployment and we can't cut and replant trees to actually make a living"
what does that mean?
Also, forest fires don't burn down forests.
"Every time we cut one tree down, we plant 3 to 10 more of them."
Cite needed.
"They only talk about it out west where we have plenty of trees to go around."
there is a reason for that, it's called 'shifting baseline'. Basically it mean that people who grow up where there aren't trees have no reference to go by to realize there should be trees.
In Oregon people cans ee the fantastic forests, and when they start to diminish they say something.
Careful citing logging industry stats, they ahve a tendency to be massively incorrect.
For example, According to the Labor dept.there are only about 8000 worker in the logging industry, but they would have you believe there are 100K +.
Re:Trees (Score:4, Insightful)
[Citation needed]
Stop using trees for paper - use hemp! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You might not be as right as you think (Score:3, Insightful)
wait wait wait. If the paper industry needs wood, why not let them plant and reap that crop. same for the lumber industry, this way over time more and more virgin forest is left alone until one point the only crop they are harvesting is their own.
in reference to GM Woods, your right it's not a forest, it's a crop. and if you follow that crop ( which is some of the hardest data to get due to eco - terrorist burning down planted fields ), you'll find the creation of some interesting trees ( I am waiting for the 8' diameter tree with a height of 20 feet gown in 10 years to be published )
and just another note: we are seeing more responsible harvesting of forest over the last 40 years, it is progress, given it's not what I would be hoping for, but at least it's the right direction. I expect that in the next 100 years we will see more virgin type forest's and GM tree crops .
Re:You might not be as right as you think (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You might not be as right as you think (Score:4, Insightful)
Err, GM trees? I can grok the existence of GM food crops, but somehow I'm not seeing trees as being that easily modified on a commercial scale (mostly because it takes so damned long to grow them and test the results by comparison).
Now selective 'breeding' and grafting, okay - but to be honest, both would barely qualify for the moniker "genetically modified" - Hell, Dachshunds would be better suited to the term "GM" than a selectively-bred Douglas Firs would).
If you have evidence of actual GM trees being sown and grown commercially, I'd be interested to find out where.
They are better than "Forests" for global warming (Score:4, Insightful)
Lots of fast-growing trees suck up more CO2 than ancient forests.
But they are the forest industry, so they must be evil.
Re:Stop using trees for paper - use hemp! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:You might not be as right as you think (Score:3, Insightful)
The crux (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the crux of the matter, *employment*. This is hardly ever addressed when it comes to draconian "no you must stop this" laws and proposals as regards the vast rural areas of the world.
This is what I see all the time: Wealthy urbanites in the industrialized areas are all for "conservation" in areas they don't live, but they have pitiful to non existent whacko theories on what exactly the human beings who live in those other areas are supposed to do for a living. Can't cut down jungle hardwoods for lumber=evil, stop. Can't cut down the big trees to make row crop farms=evil. Can't cut down and replace trees with other species that have a globally useful economic function=evil. Can't raise stock animals because they emit methane greenhouse gas. Can't do row crops en masse because it requires spraying and artificial; irrigation, uses too much water. And so on, a HUGE list that wealthy urbanites have on the "you shouldn't do this" side.. Can't do anything at all on your property because one month out of the year there is a mud puddle that supports the breeding of the endangered three eyed flying newt-owl. all sorts of laws like that too, even if it means you are now instantly unemployed with not much in the way of immediate alternatives..yet the bills still come in every month, plus property taxes.
So, that's nice and all for all the well meaning urbanites, but a couple billion people around the planet are supposed to then live on "eco tourism"? For real, I see that thrown out by some of those folks as some sort of credible option. Nuts... Funny,speaking of nuts, I am not seeing any huge move for urbanites to exist entirely on a diet of imported wild harvested tropical exotic hardwoods nuts and berries either, which is the only other crop you can get from wild forest. But then, whoops, you are stealing the food that the animals need to eat too....so that's out...
That's about what is left if you can't harvest the trees and use them in manufactured articles and for construction lumber, or make some cropland. And forget mining anything, all of that is just instantly evil no matter what...
You just can't have it both ways, if these people want to just wall off huge forest areas of the planet and let them go wild forever, completely naturally, with no human use, they must first come up with viable, realistic and constructive alternatives for useful modern employment in areas that are currently at the bottom of the economic foodchain. Or offer a couple billion people a direct cash perpetual welfare subsidy to do nothing and just live there. Anything else is unfair, unrealistic, and practically speaking, unworkable.
Basically, I am for sustainable use, including managed forests, and I am *way* in favor of getting rid of the backward "environmental" laws that forbid use and harvest of all the fifty buzillion acres of dead forest land they let burn up for no reason every year in the western USA, said dead forest expanding rapidly from such things as the pine beetle. That's a huge waste, and contributes mightily to air pollution when it burns up from uncontrolled wildfires every year, with zero economic or practical benefit for anyone really. We could be using that wasted wood for vast biochar manufacturing facilities and for replacements for coal in some electricity plants for example, providing much needed jobs in rural areas, going to more sustainable energy sources, and also improving soil tilth with the biochar in established row crop lands. But no....can't do that, wouldn't be environmental, have to let it just burn up "naturally", while the runoff silts over all the creeks and wipes out the fish and stuff...
How about this proposal to solve all the environmental problems at one whack..it would work, too.. let all the big cities burn up "naturally", I mean fires break out there all the time, so just stop putting them out, which would greatly help to reduce the planet's population (those folks all want that as well, "too many people!"), most of humanity lives in big ci
On the flip side from suburbs (Score:3, Insightful)
Extremely large swaths of land have been turned back to forests because they are no longer needed to grow crops to feed us and our livestock.
Urbanization is only about three percent of the US area, while farmland is a lot more, yet continually shrinking.
There are multiple factors, http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/biology/a_forest.html [nationalatlas.gov]
"The forest cover in the U.S. has actually increased in the last 100 years - mostly due to farm abandonment in the East and fire suppression in the West."