4 ms·

Won't we just end up worsening deforestation?

alkonaut 7y ago
Funny, where timber is produced (e.g. Scandinavia) we are always complaining that the forests are taking over. People can basically be subsidized to keep animals to "keep the landscape open" when forests would otherwise take over old farm land. We have 7000 trees per person. We plant more than we cut down. Just buy our timber. "Deforestation" is a problem in various parts of the world because of ecosystems, erosion, desert spread. It's not an issue everywhere. From a CO2 perspective, cutting down a tree and making a house of is excellent. The CO2 is bound in the timber and a new tree can be planted in its place.
wil421 7y ago
You can farm trees pretty easily and it’s done in my state with Pine. If you just clear cut the forest and don’t plant it back then yea is going to be terrible. Similar to the Palm Oil issues I hear about in the news.
anonuser123456 7y ago
CLT can be made with fast growing smaller trees. You don't need (or even want) old growth timber. So most of this timber will be farmed.
rstuart4133 7y ago
> Won't we just end up worsening deforestation? Probably the reverse. Structural timer beams used to be made out of a single length of timber, which of course could only come from a old, large tree. Now houses in Australia now use wooden I-Beams made out of this laminated wood. It's made from young trees (read: plantation timber), which are small and thinner than the I-Breams themselves, but that means the I-Breams made out of them can be any length. In fact their rise seem to be driven by the change from using old-growth timber to plantation timber. I was surprised when I first saw it, because the manufactured timer I'm used to such as chipboard and fibreboard are really at the bottom of the barrel. They are heavy, rapidly destroyed by moisture, and weak. These glued laminates seem to be reverse of that - stronger by weight than the original wood (largely because you can shape them, eg into a I shape), and of course that makes lighter than solid beam of wood, and they are just as waterproof. As a consequence anything much ticker than a wall stud is made out of the stuff now - large long beams of a single piece of timer seem to be a thing of the past.

Funny, where timber is produced (e.g. Scandinavia) we are always complaining that the forests are taking over. People can basically be subsidized to keep animals to "keep the landscape open" when forests would otherwise take over old farm land. We have 7000 trees per person. We plant more than we cut down. Just buy our timber. "Deforestation" is a problem in various parts of the world because of ecosystems, erosion, desert spread. It's not an issue everywhere. From a CO2 perspective, cutting down a tree and making a house of is excellent. The CO2 is bound in the timber and a new tree can be planted in its place.

wil421 7y ago

You can farm trees pretty easily and it’s done in my state with Pine. If you just clear cut the forest and don’t plant it back then yea is going to be terrible. Similar to the Palm Oil issues I hear about in the news.

anonuser123456 7y ago

CLT can be made with fast growing smaller trees. You don't need (or even want) old growth timber. So most of this timber will be farmed.

rstuart4133 7y ago

> Won't we just end up worsening deforestation? Probably the reverse. Structural timer beams used to be made out of a single length of timber, which of course could only come from a old, large tree. Now houses in Australia now use wooden I-Beams made out of this laminated wood. It's made from young trees (read: plantation timber), which are small and thinner than the I-Breams themselves, but that means the I-Breams made out of them can be any length. In fact their rise seem to be driven by the change from using old-growth timber to plantation timber. I was surprised when I first saw it, because the manufactured timer I'm used to such as chipboard and fibreboard are really at the bottom of the barrel. They are heavy, rapidly destroyed by moisture, and weak. These glued laminates seem to be reverse of that - stronger by weight than the original wood (largely because you can shape them, eg into a I shape), and of course that makes lighter than solid beam of wood, and they are just as waterproof. As a consequence anything much ticker than a wall stud is made out of the stuff now - large long beams of a single piece of timer seem to be a thing of the past.