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Old Military Planes Could Drop 900,000 Tree-Bombs a Day
- Aaron138 16y agoThis would kill a human if it hit them. Can't see it ever being used in a non war situation.
- jonhendry 16y agoThe original story is from 1999. It doesn't seem to have worked out.
- tsalfie 16y agoYeah, seems like a slow-news-day sort of article.
- pshapiro 16y agoThis is such a great idea. Let's just hope no one on the ground gets hurt!!
- pshapiro 16y agoWow... why so many downvotes? Not that I care about karma.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- arst 16y agoWhy did you change the title from "could drop" to "to drop"?
- ph0rque 16y agoThe original article had 'to drop' when I posted... I changed nothing except to erase the treehugger tag stuff. If any moderators read this, please change the title to 'could drop'.
- icegreentea 16y agoA trained up tree planter can do between 1500 and 3000 trees a day, day in day out depending on the terrain. My friend did this for her summer and filled me with stories that I was too drunk to remember properly. Here's an reddit iama on the topic. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d8a0t/iama_former_tree_planter_i_have_planted_nearly/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d8a0t/iama_former_tree...
- Estragon 16y agoYes, but you can't extract money from the military-industrial complex that way.
- brianbreslin 16y agoI would like to see pictures or schematics of these tree bombs. it says they are metal cones, but that the metal is designed to rot away. i'd think we could make a corn based plastic that has fertilizer in it or something now, which would disintegrate and not leave traces of metal everywhere. right? I think if this had a better name like "Aerial Seeding" rather than tree-bombing, it would stand a better chance of getting off the ground (pun intended). Someone should call up lockheed and see what happened to this 11 year old plan.
- mseebach 16y agoHmm, I wasn't under the impression that there was large areas of land in need of tree-planting. I though most de-forestation was to free the land for agriculture (in which case you'd probably need to mix the trees with land mines if they are to have any chance of actually growing)..
- mediaman 16y agoThe other cause of deforestation is for paper and lumber. It uses a lot of trees. Visit Washington or Oregon sometime and drive through the mountains; the earth looks scarred.
- shin_lao 16y agoI'm not sure this is correct, I think for the industry to work they have to replant trees.
- mediaman 16y agoThey don't own the land, the federal government does, and leases it out to them to log. They don't have an incentive to replant. Having said that, they do replant, but generally replace old-growth forest with faster-growing, weaker monoculture pines that take less time to mature, so they can be harvested again.
- dmm 16y agoA bunch of trees is not necessarily a forest.
- mseebach 16y agoWell, "tree-bombing" won't help much with that.
- cynicismrising 16y agoDiscovery tried this approach in their Project Earth show, http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/project-earth/lab-books/reforestation/reforestation-guide1.html http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/project-earth/lab-books/reforest... Their attempt was not successful. If I recall correctly the main problem was that it takes more force to embed the new plant in the soil than the plant can survive.
- electromagnetic 16y agoDepending on the seed. They didn't use plant seeds that were particularly impact resilient. Nuts are extremely impact resilient, using them in these pods could not only provide re-forestation, but also provide an economic source. However, IMO the best thing we could be doing is taking areas of desertified land and fighting it. Place moisture traps connected to irrigation pipes and grow grass, just plain old grass to bind nutrients. Spread the grass and in desert areas you'll be catching dew every morning in the traps and the grass will itself. Once you've spread the grass, spread shrubs. The Caragana arborescens is a miracle plant for these purposes. It traps moisture, it acts as a windbreak (stopping desertification), it provides a food source (peas), it's fast growing, it's a dense-spreader. Another benefit is that it can support honey bees, which again provide food but also could increase fertility of any future farm plantations.
- gridspy 16y agoThis geo-engineering reminds me of this article on Darwin's terraforming of some volcanic islands. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11137903 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11137903 It is a really good idea. I wonder how well it would work.
- webuiarchitect 16y agoWhat??