Earth Home To 3 Trillion Trees, Half As Many As When Human Civilization Arose 269
sciencehabit writes: Earth today supports more than 3 trillion trees—eight times as many as we thought a decade ago. But that number is rapidly shrinking, according to a global tree survey released today (abstract). We are losing 15 billion trees a year to toilet paper, timber, farmland expansion, and other human needs. So even though the total count is large, the decline is "a cause for concern," says Tom Spies, a forest ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Corvallis, Oregon, who was not involved with the work.
Three Seashells (Score:5, Funny)
We are losing 15 billion trees a year to toilet paper
Looks like it's time to institute the Three Seashells [youtube.com].
Re:Three Seashells (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Three Seashells (Score:5, Informative)
would translate into a smaller footprint required to produce.
This brings up an important point that detracts from the article. Toilet paper and timber today are overwhelmingly produced from farmed trees. Timber is, generally speaking, sequestering the wood. Discounting the costs of processing and shipping, toilet paper is actually renewable. After all, after you harvest a field to make into TP, you simply plant more trees.
Remove them, and you might run into the problem seen by African Rhinos - where complete bans on their horns actually increases their vulnerability to poachers, because you've removed much of the economics of having them, thus reducing money available to protect them and even breed more of them.
Lions aren't easy to farm either, but at least the Chinese are doing it.
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An interesting point but hopefully the answer isn't to put it all "under the plow" for the sake of poachers.
Hell no. But there are already ranchers in Africa that are raising Rhinos and humanely cutting the horn regularly, storing the currently illegal to sell product. Allow them to profit from it and the practice would relatively explode, even if still confined to said ranches. Meanwhile, they make enough money from their operations to hire sufficient security that poachers would find getting the limited amounts of horn from Rhinos on the ranch which have their horns regularly trimmed too little return for th
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hemp grows practically everywhere. That's one reason the paper lobby came out with "Reefer Madness" as part of the propaganda campaign to turn public attention to the wonders of tree fibre (which is actually inferior in nearly every respect: it takes a LONG time to cultivate as opposed hemp, which grows relatively quickly, has medicinal as well and many and varied industrial uses like rope, paper and cloth, it's also useful as food).
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My guess is that a lot of them would rather see the species extinct than reduced to domestic cattle.
Then they're asshats. Seriously. Right now there's not enough Rhinos period for healthy genetic diversity.
Anyways, the ranchers mentioned don't keep their animals tightly confined, and horn harvest is about once a year, not monthly.
Besides, if you can fulfill enough of the demand with legal product, the economic motive to poach is decreased, meaning less pressure on the herds, leaving population growth and land takeover as the biggest threats. Get Africans up to even 2nd world standards and their birth r
Re:Three Seashells (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure about the seashells, however I wonder if there might not be benefit in using say bamboo instead of traditional trees for paper products such as bumwad. It grows substantially faster and by my reckoning would translate into a smaller footprint required to produce.
No, it's not even relevant. As much as hippies like to pretend there's something you can do in your home to help the environment, this is not a US problem. Forest coverage in the US has grown substantially since the 50s, as crop yields increase there is simply less farmland, and more forest.
Almost all paper used in the US comes from tree farms, which are just a different kind of cropland, raised and harvested on a longer cycle than corn, but still a normal-ish cash crop.
At this point, increased paper use in the US likely increases forest coverage, as more land is used for tree farms to meet demand.
Most forest loss is simply not about paper use, but about clearing land for people to live and (mostly) farm, and we've seen that the pendulum eventually swings the other way, with high-tech farming taking so much less land.
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If those companies had any brains they'd be making paper from hemp which is far cheaper to grow than trees and has a much higher yield per acre year.
Then both the hippies and people such as yourself would be happy!
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How much natural old growth forest is left in the US*?
How much of that is getting cut down to make toilet paper or even timber for that matter?
How much of that natural old growth isn't currently protected as part of a national forrest?
I've seen woods that were cut down to make paper in northern Michigan. They already were exactly the same monocultures you are talking about. The land being cleared was land that had been cleared many times before! Maybe that land held an old growth forrest 100 or more years
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Well, if by "trees" we mean large swaths of Douglas Fir or Poplar monoculture, sure. If we mean a mature and diverse climax forest, no.
And so what? Why should any non-hippie care. It's not a theme park for your amusement.
If, by "renewable", we mean "we grow as many board feet as we harvest", again, no. Not even close,
Yes, 90%+ of all wood used in the US comes from tree farms now, and basically all paper (it's just cheaper for paper).
is nowhere near actually replacing what was lost.
Sure, that's not the job of the paper company anyhow. Most forest land lost over the centuries, and with farms now being very small compared to "peak farmland", forests are coming back (the natural process isn't quick, but more every decade since the 50s).
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A lot of the paper pulp is coming from tropical palm plantations; they are much quicker to yield than temperate forests. Paper pulp demand is still causing deforestation in tropical areas, just not so much in the US.
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The most common replanted tree clone, Weyerhouser Supertrees, take 30 years to mature. You're also an idiot to plant monocultures of any tree, even Bamboo, which takes a few short months to mature. The reason is evolution and disease. Your chance of having those trees reach maturity is very low.
Oregon's done a lot since the "plant three for every one you take" rule came into effect; we now have forest fires instead of clear cuts. I am assuming the ecoterrorists like Tre Arrow actually prefer fires.
fires not just for ecoterrorists (Score:2)
Oregon's done a lot since the "plant three for every one you take" rule came into effect; we now have forest fires instead of clear cuts. I am assuming the ecoterrorists like Tre Arrow actually prefer fires.
As we're figuring out, the occasional fire is actually good for the environment. I'd still rather harvest a lot of the trees up here rather than suffer through the fires. Even if the result is simply burning them in a clean power plant(compared to uncontrolled forest fire combustion), that's a lot of green energy right there.
That being said, farmers are idiots a lot of the time because there's lots and lots of monocultures out there. They seem to do mostly fine.
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The forest fire bit is tricky. The problem we have is that lots of little naturally occurring lighting triggered fires are probably good. At least some of the larger older trees could survive them and therefore remained to provide habitat for displaced animals to return to and to reseed the forest. The fire at the same time burned away most of the dead and smaller brush.
Then we started building all over the place and for a good 75 years or so largely kept the forests from burning as they should. The fuel
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Now when a fire gets started it burns decades of pent up fuel, it burns hotter and higher, it spreads over larger areas and kills EVERYTHING.
Alaska and Yellowstone both show that even that doesn't last very long in the scale of things. When most of yellowstone burned, some scientists were predicting that they figured that the soil itself must have been so scorched that nothing would grow in it for decades. A couple decades later you had trees shooting up like weeds.
I'm not saying to abandon all firefighting efforts, but instead they should let 'as much burn as practical'. Yes, that means that they should probably update building codes and enc
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" Now when a fire gets started it burns decades of pent up fuel, it burns hotter and higher, it spreads over larger areas and kills EVERYTHING"
Here in Arizona, as in many other forested places, the Forest Service burns strategic areas of built-up fuel in the offseason, to limit catastrophic fires. But whenever they do this, there's a local controversy as small towns wake up to valleys full of smoke for day after day, complaining that they were "promised that this week's winds would be blowing the smoke in a
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Or better yet, just institute the Oregon Protocol as international law: plant three trees for every one you cut down.
Re:Three Seashells (Score:4, Funny)
I considered not linking, but I did it as a public service announcement to everyone under the age of 30 (who have no idea this movie exists).
The More You Know, right? And Knowing Is Half The Battle!
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The More You Know, right? And Knowing Is Half The Battle!
Yo Joe! :)
Re:Three Seashells (Score:4, Funny)
I considered not linking, but I did it as a public service announcement to everyone under the age of 30 (who have no idea this movie exists).
Hey, I'm 28 (well, almost 29) and I know about the movie, you insensitive clod! And let me tell you, I would much rather choose running around naked covered in green jello singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiener" than having the only restaurant be a vegetarian Taco Bell.
Toilet paper and timber? (Score:5, Informative)
Last I checked, trees earmarked for that purpose were specifically grown for that purpose, and aren't wild trees (thus when they're harvested, they don't count as a lost tree anymore than eating a potato counts as a lost potato.)
Namely, these kinds of farm raised trees:
https://photos.travelblog.org/... [travelblog.org]
Those kind of trees are even preferred over wild trees because their growth pattern is much better suited to their end purpose.
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Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
We appear to have checked off all three boxes with this article.
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Well, that's not to say that there aren't fewer trees than there are now. I honestly don't know, but I suspect it is true that there are fewer now.
Where I think that mostly comes from is people clearing land for farming in tropical regions (so the Blame America crowd need not apply here.)
IMO the best cure for this? GMO foods. The whole purpose of GMO food in most cases is purely to increase crop yield. Most anti-GMO people are against it because they view it as a quick way to save a buck, but that's the adv
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"Most anti-GMO people are against it because they view it as a quick way to save a buck"
Have you ever read a Michael Chriton novel at all? I'd have to say most people against GMO are really against using the wild for laboratory accidents.
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Using the wild? Explain.
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You understand that a novel is what is known as fiction. This includes many 'facts' the author chooses to inject into the fantasy. So, using a fiction novelist's work as a bolster isn't really a good idea.
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Saving a buck usually translates into consuming fewer resources
What? No it doesn't. Lowering the price of a resource generally increases consumption.
Methinks he meant it takes fewer resources to produce.
Re:Toilet paper and timber? (Score:5, Funny)
If you would like to have more trees build a chain link fence... Mine appears to grow plenty of trees.
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That's probably true in the US, at least from what I've heard, but is it true everywhere? China? India? South America?
Re:Toilet paper and timber? (Score:5, Informative)
That's probably true in the US, at least from what I've heard, but is it true everywhere? China? India? South America?
Not sure about India and South America, but China is planting trees for paper production. They don't have a choice. They literally don't have enough natural forests left to support their paper production these days. China has become the world's largest producer of paper. They have been importing timber and pulp from all over the world for a while now but even that isn't sustainable forever. Their low prices have been kept that way by government subsidies for now.
There is a pretty good article [pulitzercenter.org] on China's paper business on Pulitzer Center.
Re:Toilet paper and timber? (Score:5, Interesting)
It amazes me that people think they are saving a tree when they don't use paper. I highly doubt they have even seen what kind of trees paper is made from. When I explain this, people usually tell me, "That makes sense." Of course it does!
This reminds me of the Mike Rowe's TED talk about how a lot of people talk about things they think they know. Until a person actually tries sheep farming, they really don't know a thing. I ask my dad (grew up on a farm) about the subject Mike Rowe covered in his talk, and sure enough, he knew about it.
Also of note, the abstract mentions that the number of trees has been too low in previous estimates. I wonder how this new estimate will change climate/CO2 modeling:
"This map reveals that the global number of trees is approximately 3.04 trillion, an order of magnitude higher than the previous estimate."
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There was an insightful /. post years ago which pointed out that recycling paper may actually be bad. When you throw away paper in a landfill, you are sequestering carbon. The tree pulled CO2 out of the atmosphere, we turned it into paper, and threw it away in a landfill. Core samples into old landfills have turned up newspaper fragments a century old
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Instead of recycling or incinerating waste paper, let's retort it into charcoal, which can then be added to farm soil to enrich it while sequestering the carbon for as long as if it wee in a landfill.
Re: Toilet paper and timber? (Score:3)
Straight thin trees are similar to harvest mechanically. Monocultured trees mature more predictably and concurrently, and so simplify harvesting. Replanted cuts have been the norm for decades, primarily by the paper industry, but in very limited circumstances for lumber operations.
I'm not surprised that trees are more plentiful now than in the past, not that many will find every possible reason why that is actually bad. Pathetic.
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With paper, the tree is crushed. Why would you need a large straight tree for that? Economics re-enforces this. You're not going to pay extra for a large tree just to crush it
What? Have you even been to an active paper company forest?
This reminds me of the Mike Rowe's TED talk about how a lot of people talk about things they think they know.
Yeah.
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With paper, the tree is crushed. Why would you need a large straight tree for that? Economics re-enforces this. You're not going to pay extra for a large tree just to crush it
What? Have you even been to an active paper company forest?
Yup! My cousins used to cut trees for the paper mills.
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If you need a roof or wall, you have to start with a large straight tree.
Only if you want a wooden house and want to pay a premium for specialty products [specialtybeams.com]. Otherwise, you buy SCL [apawood.org].
Or you use concrete and steel, aluminum and stryrofoam and vinyl.
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Not every tree farm is located where there used to be old growth forest.
Every tree in North Dakota, for example, was either planted by a human or descended from a tree planted by a human.
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Re: Toilet paper and timber? (Score:2)
Yes trees are a renewable resource.
You can plant more from seedlings, or preserve some old growth mother trees in the case of northern white pine, seeding naturally, and you will replenish the forest.
What does renewable actually mean to you?
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Thanks yeah I came here to post this. Not only are trees farm-grown for paper/wood products, but importantly there are more trees now in North America than in 1850 thanks to more efficent planting and better resource planning.
It's very likely that due to deforestation for agricultural purposes, there are fewer trees. But paper products are a 100% renewable resource and the wood products industry is actually on top of keeping things replanted etc for a long term crop/resource point of view. So the we
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Thanks, I was going to say it if no one else did. :)
In the summary, the phrase " toilet paper, timber, farmland expansion, and other human needs" conflates all of these things. On balance, the paper producers could be actually increasing the number of trees, but be totally offset by clear cutting, etc.
Also, was anyone else actually impressed that we still had half the trees? I kinda am...
Our previous numbers were completely wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
But these new numbers are completely right, and actionable. I am inspired with confidence.
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The world is big, and hard to measure. So big that you can't measure a lot of things perfectly, you have to estimate them based on some kind of sample. For example to arrive at the three trillion number they obviously didn't go out and count every last tree on Earth. They took observations of samples and based on the best understanding they have extrapolated.
And even though that process is obviously not infallible, it is rational. Ignoring a problem because some of the numbers related to it might get r
Carnegie Airborne Observatory (Score:4, Interesting)
I met a grad student attending Stanford who was part of the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (https://cao.carnegiescience.edu/). She said they flew it over the Central and South America, and her job was counting trees and studying their migrations (if that's the right word). She thought it was a boring subject that few people found interesting, but I was fascinated.
It didn't hurt that she happened to be beautiful.
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Rule One: ANYTHING said by a beautiful woman is fascinating....
Regeneration (Score:5, Interesting)
They think that about 5 billion new trees are planted or sprout annually, yielding a net loss of 10 billion
They don't say where that number came from, most likely pulled from someplace where the Sun doesn't shine. When a section of forest is cleared either by cutting or burning the ground is soon covered in tree sprouts. Take a look at regeneration in Yellowstone National Park [durangoherald.com] after the fires burned about 1/3 of it in the late 80's.
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FTFA:
They think that about 5 billion new trees are planted or sprout annually, yielding a net loss of 10 billion
They don't say where that number came from, most likely pulled from someplace where the Sun doesn't shine. When a section of forest is cleared either by cutting or burning the ground is soon covered in tree sprouts. Take a look at regeneration in Yellowstone National Park [durangoherald.com] after the fires burned about 1/3 of it in the late 80's.
You have to take into consideration land cleared for building or agriculture where trees won't be allowed to regrow. If those types of land use are happening at a higher rate than other uses where trees are replanted or allowed to come back naturally, then you will have a net loss. Even in those areas where they are allowed to regrow naturally, there will be attrition as the trees grown and compete with one another for space, light, and resources.
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You have to take into consideration land cleared for building or agriculture where trees won't be allowed to regrow. If those types of land use are happening at a higher rate than other uses where trees are replanted or allowed to come back naturally, then you will have a net loss.
This is true, as far as farmland expansion, but doesn't explain why toilet paper & timber are counted as a net loss.
Even in those areas where they are allowed to regrow naturally, there will be attrition as the trees grown and compete with one another for space, light, and resources.
I don't see how this follows. The old trees also competed for space, light & resources.
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You have to take into consideration land cleared for building or agriculture where trees won't be allowed to regrow. If those types of land use are happening at a higher rate than other uses where trees are replanted or allowed to come back naturally, then you will have a net loss.
This is true, as far as farmland expansion, but doesn't explain why toilet paper & timber are counted as a net loss.
While Europe and North America paper industry does a lot of forest management, that's not true in developing areas of the world.
Even in those areas where they are allowed to regrow naturally, there will be attrition as the trees grown and compete with one another for space, light, and resources.
I don't see how this follows. The old trees also competed for space, light & resources.
You mentioned "covered in tree sprouts". Cut down a tree and you will get dozens, sometimes hundreds, of competing saplings in its place. But those eventually will be whittled down to only one or maybe a few surviving trees in the long term. It wouldn't be accurate to count those samplings on a 1:1 basis for replacing lost, fully grown trees. I'm not saying that's what yo
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I'm not the poster you were originally replying to. Not that this changes anything of substance, but just so we're clear.
You mentioned "covered in tree sprouts". Cut down a tree and you will get dozens, sometimes hundreds, of competing saplings in its place. But those eventually will be whittled down to only one or maybe a few surviving trees in the long term. It wouldn't be accurate to count those samplings on a 1:1 basis for replacing lost, fully grown trees.
Fair enough. But my naive assumption would be that absent land use changes (such as converting the land to farmland) logged forest would eventually, through naturally processes, regrow into a similar forest. Forest management practices would merely either (1) accelerate this process, and/or (2) favor the growth of more economically profitable trees for future harvesting.
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It depends on the type of forest, the quality of the underlying soil and the weather in that location. Rainforest dirt tends to be of a very very poor quality and the trees and other plants live of the detritus dropped by other plants and animals. Also those areas tend to have higher levels of rainfall, in particular monsoon weather.
So if you clear old growth rainforest you end up with a poor quality soil, that often has what little nutrient in it washed away by rains. This mud is then baked hard and it
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In the northeast USA, most new housing is built either on formerly commercial land or farmland. No trees.
And your implying that the majority of the rest of the world does the same thing?
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That's fine when you have an area that is set aside to be a forest. Even if it burns down, no problem, just wait a couple decades and it'll grow back, so all the lost trees are replaced. But this was at Yellowstone National Park, a place that's specifically off-limits to human development (aside from a handful of NPS-owned buildings for tourists and such).
The problem is with places which aren't protected this way: humans decide to take land that used to be a forest, and then turn it into a subdivision or
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more humans lived in more dense environments (cities)
What if I don't want to live in a city?
Or did someone die and make you King? :)
A better solution might be to stop encouraging people to have so many kids. We pay people to have kids. Between increased welfare checks, more food stamps, and higher child tax credits, we subsidize people having kids who can't afford them.
Reverse the process. Give everyone $3,000 a year, but subtract $500 for each kid you have. You want 6 kids? Sure, go for it, but you're paying for them.
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Reverse the process. Give everyone $3,000 a year, but subtract $500 for each kid you have. You want 6 kids? Sure, go for it, but you're paying for them.
You wouldn't start "paying for them" under this system until you had seven, and then only if you forced payment on the negative balance. Most handouts don't work that way.
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You wouldn't start "paying for them" under this system until you had seven,
Actually, you start paying with the first; $500 a pop.
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Actually, you start paying with the first; $500 a pop.
No, you wouldn't. You'd get a check for $2500 instead of $3000. There is a difference. It wasn't your money to start with, so you aren't losing it when it isn't handed to you.
But I understand the confusion. Many people also buy the line that the government is "losing money" when there is a tax cut, when the truth is that people are getting to keep more of their money, not that they're being allowed to keep more of the government's money.
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If only $3k made any kind of meaningful impact to the cost of a child your plan might work. But when you are looking at 10k in medical costs if you have a caesarian section, $500 to $1k for your pram & baby seat and losing 1 income stream for a period I don't think your 3k makes fuck all of a difference.
Lets not even talk about the cost of reproductive assistance such as IVF.
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If that is the case, then you wouldn't mind removing all the existing benefits for kids, since they don't make a difference? Right now you get a 500 or 1,000 dollar child tax credit. That isn't much, so we can remove it, right?
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The reason you're able to live outside the city right now is because fuel prices are insanely cheap, and the cost of transportation is subsidized. If road users were forced to pay for both the entire cost of road construction and upkeep, as well as the pollution problems caused by their fuel usage, transport costs would be much, much higher. Raise gas prices to $10-15/gallon and see how many people continue to live out in the sticks. On top of that, enact strict anti-pollution laws which make it very dif
Bad article. (Score:5, Insightful)
This /. article totally fails to cover the reality that the number of trees has gone up (entire planet covered) and down (almost no trees in ice ages) over the course of the Earth's life. That's how life is.
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Yeah! they didn't even mention that 400 million years ago trees didn't even exist yet.
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But how can FUD be effectively delivered when you constantly cloud the issue with "facts"?
Re:Bad article. (Score:4, Informative)
Why are Bidets not as popular in America? (Score:3)
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Well, let's see - right from the article you linked:
They are not necessarily meant to replace the use of toilet paper. Often they are used after some paper to achieve full cleanliness without immediately having to take a shower.
Also:
The expense of remodeling a typical North American bathroom to accommodate a traditional bidet fixture is large, in the thousands of dollars
However, it does go on to say that recent advances in combination toilet/bidets are causing more widespread adoption in North America.
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more widespread adoption in North America.
Assuming people can figure out what they are for [youtube.com].
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Help the poor- Plant a tree (Score:5, Interesting)
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What are the profits on this?
Not as good as opium poppies, coca and hemp (for clothes and rope. Yeah, that's the ticket!)
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Excess fruit is easily made into nutritious delicious brandy.
Main culprit is agriculture (Score:2)
Now the opposite is true in other parts of the world - South America, and Indonesia. But it shows that the true culprit is farmland; and as farming techniques become more productive that less is needed
This is why we need industrial hemp for victory (Score:5, Interesting)
See the original 1942 propaganda film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
There is no reason to focus on wood for the paper supply - except the economics of state-imposed rules driving customers to buy solvents. It would be far better and less impactful to use hemp instead of trees for paper, TP and the rest of it. The consequences are huge!
Yeah but we have like 3 trillion more than mars (Score:5, Funny)
WTF (Score:2)
How is it possible to be off by almost an order of magnitude when counting trees? It's not as if the fucking things fly around, is it?
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There are like two dozen new ones in my fence line every week when I mow.
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Empires! (Score:2)
Earth Home To 3 Trillion Trees, Half As Many As When Human Civilization Arose
Yeah, I built too many villagers. Sorry!
Sanity check of that number? (Score:2)
Three teratrees on Earth...
That would mean that trees average about 25 feet (8m) apart over the entire land area of the planet.
I think their definition of "tree" might include things a bit smaller than my definition of "tree"....
So... (Score:2)
...given that it is now believed that the estimate of the number of trees was off by a factor of 8 a decade ago (and we were sure and sure we were sure we were right back then), what makes us think any of these numbers are correct?
Faster (Score:2)
Younger trees store far more carbon as they grow rapidly than ancient old growth forests.
That can have a significant effect.
Where has all the carbon gone? (Score:2)
Of the "missing" half of emitted carbon, a bit less than half of that is the net carbon flux dissolved into the oceans. We know that by a really clever bit of mass-balance accounting. We can determine to total CO2 emissions from accurate quantific
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You have far more seedlings growing in the same space as a single mature tree, and the last time I checked most trees don't grow as fast as the giant sequoias.
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Can you please refrain from bringing up facts? We're trying to have a discussion about global warming here. Thanks.
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The flora are coming! The flora are coming! Every fauna for themself!
(It's not like poison ivy and stinging nettle haven't been out to get us for years)
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Wildfires in Alaska 'cost' us tens of millions even in a low-fire year.
Trick is, it's like Yellowstone. You get 2-3 years of opportunistic plants (fireweed), then the forests start regrowing.
If I don't mow my yard regularly the trees around my house would spread TO my house within 2 years. As is I'm trying to push them back a bit.
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But we can still cry [youtube.com] over them.
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Washable rags. Now you can store your shit on cloth until you're ready to wash it away!
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Every day, another 'how horrible human beings are' story. Look, humans are the pinnacle of this planet's long slog towards producing intelligence and of course we're going to modify our environment if we can. Any organism that has the ability to alter its environment does it to make it more habitable. Is this a bad thing? I say no. Do you want us to live in trees? Not reproduce? Keep to a nice, uncomfortable stone age existence? Yup, we cut trees. Yup, there are fewer of them. Big fucking deal. Trees are a renewable resource, and they can replenish themselves quickly. Frankly I think most of the people writing these stories have absolutely nothing useful to do with their time. The planet is changing. Deal with it. Or not, I don't care. Just shut the fuck up.
^ Shame you posted AC, that deserves to have a name put to it...
While you were harsh in your post, your feelings are fair. The "humans are evil" articles are getting old.
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"eight times as many as we thought a decade ago"
Yes of course however, they still need to blame humans for something by making up the bull crap stat that there are now half as many as there were before humans arrived. What a load.
So the solution is... to kill all the humans?
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So the solution is... to kill all the humans?
We won't have to do it. If the Ents ever find out that we've been cutting down the Entwives to use for paper to wipe our asses, they'll take care of killing all the humans for us.
Re: (Score:2)
Why? Timber is a great option for heating your house. It is cheap, renewable and if you live on acreage it is often free. I haven't had to buy timber in the 10 years I have lived here. I have gotten away completely with dropped timber and wood from trees that fell or had to be removed for safety.