: When is a forest NOT a forest?

[Guest guest]

Redefining what a forest is because of greed – Oops, sorry, because of Bio-Fuels.http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2010/04/when-is-forest-not-forest.html

[Guest guest]

, " justmeint " <justmeint wrote:

>

> Redefining what a forest is because of greed - Oops, sorry, because of

Bio-Fuels.

>

> http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2010/04/when-is-forest-not-forest.html

>

 

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When is a forest not a forest? When it's 5 to 10 year old " new growth " woods,

harvesting of which amounts to little more than MOWING BRUSH and chipping it,

trucking it to mills to be burned and using LOTS of fossil fuel to DO it, that's

when - at least as it's being done here in northern Maine.

 

Excerpt from the article:

 

" Not long ago, biofuels were billed as a green dream come true, a way to burn

less fossil fuel and shrink our carbon footprint. But today, mounting evidence

indicates that producing biofuels ... may be doing considerably more harm to the

planet than good, actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions and driving up

.... prices worldwide. "

 

Wow, um, DUH.

 

Here in Maine, a result of " stimulus " money spending, biofuel in the form of

chipped trees is taking a rapid toll on (vastly immature) forest land. This

" biomass " - the chipping and burning of (some) waste wood, but more especially

trees that are not of (paper) pulp or lumber quality - or even sufficient

size/age (by decades) for any conservative purpose, but convenient and

(sometimes) profitable for the harvesters to cut - while they're in there

harvesting viable logs and pulpwood, has increased dramatically - to the extent

that they're going back cutting areas that should be left alone, utterly, for

another 20-30 years! The (healthy) restriction of minimum size trees to cut, as

well as restriction of cutting along roads and rivers, leaving no buffer (or

" beauty strip " ) AT ALL, has been utterly ignored by this " permission " of the

overzealous (appearance of) 'motions' to reduce oil imports.

 

Biomass used in pulp mills has often provided energy savings for the mills where

this energy source saves heating costs for both the paper-making process and in

generating electricity to operate the mills. Biomass burned to create

electricity (in stand-alone electrical generating plants) has often fallen below

market value over the years, due to the cost of (fossil fuels needed for)

harvesting and trucking the chipped wood to the electrical generating plants -

some of these plants have even lain closed over the years, because after their

construction (with subsidy moneys), oil prices fell enough to suspend the

biomass harvesting and result in the closing of the plants. The operators

actually paid off the construction loans early in order to not have to bother

operating the plants.

 

Yet the " matching funds " (though stimulus SPENDING) provided by this move to

(create more IMAGE OF efforts to) reduce dependency on imported petroleum have

made it (artificially) feasible to crank up the harvests of chip-wood once

again, to DOUBLE the money (paid at the mills) and IGNORE the conservation

standards set after the 60s and 70s epidemic of clear-cutting, has lead to

stripping woodlands that have already been cut 2 - 3 times since the 60s.

 

Furthermore, the young trees that are being cut are as small as 3 " diameter, so

this is NEW GROWTH - that which (could be, if it survived) facilitating our

FUTURE forest re-growth.

 

SO, by burning MORE fossil fuel, and cutting trees whose losses result in the

failure to remove carbon from the atmosphere, and cost more money to the

taxpayers, because this is borrowed money which will cost more to repay over

time (with interest added), is actually leading to the ongoing corporate RAPE of

our forests and is costing the taxpayers more and more financial strain -

instead of recovery - and (given the flood of belief-conversion into this,

" humans are causing ALL of the global warming " - programming of " permitted "

thought), we are actually INCREASING the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide

which is claimed to be causing the warming (while we're still in the late

stage-of-warming-up ... from the last ice age ... and the accelerating solar

activity that is creating its affects throughout our solar system - not just

here on Earth).

 

Wow, I sure am glad we have all this " hope " that we can just " believe in "

because someone says a bunch of mesmerizing words with prompter-reading,

megaphone-mouth, zeal-and-a-nice-smile (instead of a bushy smirk).

 

Glad it's not (yet another) corporate ass(et)-grabbing move by the

ever-powerful, ever-expanding global corporatocracy of planet Earth initiated by

the elected puppet-of-the-decade.

 

Glad we have some (true, democratically-elected) CHOICE about all of this, in

our Constitutional Republic of the USA.

 

I'm so relieved. Thank goodness.