5 ms·

Scotland chops down 16M trees to develop wind farms

25 points by rgrieselhuber 3y ago

_aavaa_ 3y ago
> many of the felled trees will have been “replanted on site” or replaced elsewhere, and the vast majority were part of a commercial crop that would have been chopped down anyway “at the end of their rotation”.
- jsiepkes 3y ago
  Unless I see some hard facts to back that claim up I'm inclined to put as much faith in this as the average "carbon offset" scheme. Sounds like "spreadsheet wishful thinking" to me.
  - kramerger 3y ago
    Why is this type of scepticism always one sided? Shouldn't you also question the other guys claims?
    - jsiepkes 3y ago
      Both claims (the number of chopped down trees and the compensation) are made by the same person. "Yes I admit I broke something, but I compensated for it somewhere else"...
singhrac 3y ago
I mean, this is classic whataboutism. That’s 16M trees over 23 years, whereas Scottish forestry plants ~20M per year [0]. If you look at Kerr’s Twitter, he’s part of the oil and gas lobby. The bigger issue is that they aren’t constructing power lines to get cheap wind power to the south of the UK. [0]: https://forestry.gov.scot/publications/1318-trees-planted-in-scotland-estimate-2021/viewdocument/1318 https://forestry.gov.scot/publications/1318-trees-planted-in...
- rcarr 3y ago
  The lobbying by traditional energy industry is ridiculous now, the Times were running a scaremongering article yesterday about how China could cause standstill on UK roads by selling us electric cars with remotely activated dead switches that they could supposedly activate at any time. It then went on to say that China dominated the lithium market and Britain was too far behind so we should be looking to hydrogen cars instead. Presumably the oil companies would produce this hydrogen and slot it into the existing petrol station infrastructure. To me it's a blatant attempt to keep people hooked on their products, thus maintaining power over everyone and extracting profits, basically maintaining business as usual. They can't do that if people own solar panels and generate their own energy or if renewable energy becomes so cheap to produce that it only costs pennies. I can't wait until we hit the tipping point and these selfish, greedy companies get put in their place. The ridiculous article: https://archive.li/3uPLo https://archive.li/3uPLo
Jsebast24 3y ago
In the 1990's the environmentalist's most prominent message was "save the trees". That message quietly dissappeared without explanation. Now you know why: you have to destroy a lot of trees to plant wind farms and solar panels.
- thefurdrake 3y ago
  > That message quietly dissappeared without explanation. No, it didn't. New data emerged, and priorities shifted. There's nothing sinister or weird about it. Trees only manage to temporarily store carbon, so there's a finite amount of CO2 mass trees can contribute to neutralize per year, and go figure it's not enough. I believe the idea is that a single wind turbine can offset the loss in CO2 consumption cause by that same turbine taking up tree space, right? > you have to destroy a lot of trees to plant wind farms and solar panels. You have to destroy a lot of trees to put in country-spanning oil pipelines and run strip mines, and similar things are true for just about any other industrial-scale form of power production, so it doesn't make sense that minor tree death would become a conspiracy amongst environmentalists only when it's such an open problem for everything else, to me. ... Also, California learned how bad it is to never kill trees ever, so that may have contributed.

25 points by rgrieselhuber 3y ago

> many of the felled trees will have been “replanted on site” or replaced elsewhere, and the vast majority were part of a commercial crop that would have been chopped down anyway “at the end of their rotation”.

jsiepkes 3y ago
Unless I see some hard facts to back that claim up I'm inclined to put as much faith in this as the average "carbon offset" scheme. Sounds like "spreadsheet wishful thinking" to me.
- kramerger 3y ago
  Why is this type of scepticism always one sided? Shouldn't you also question the other guys claims?
  - jsiepkes 3y ago
    Both claims (the number of chopped down trees and the compensation) are made by the same person. "Yes I admit I broke something, but I compensated for it somewhere else"...

singhrac 3y ago

I mean, this is classic whataboutism. That’s 16M trees over 23 years, whereas Scottish forestry plants ~20M per year [0]. If you look at Kerr’s Twitter, he’s part of the oil and gas lobby. The bigger issue is that they aren’t constructing power lines to get cheap wind power to the south of the UK. [0]: https://forestry.gov.scot/publications/1318-trees-planted-in-scotland-estimate-2021/viewdocument/1318 https://forestry.gov.scot/publications/1318-trees-planted-in...

rcarr 3y ago
The lobbying by traditional energy industry is ridiculous now, the Times were running a scaremongering article yesterday about how China could cause standstill on UK roads by selling us electric cars with remotely activated dead switches that they could supposedly activate at any time. It then went on to say that China dominated the lithium market and Britain was too far behind so we should be looking to hydrogen cars instead. Presumably the oil companies would produce this hydrogen and slot it into the existing petrol station infrastructure. To me it's a blatant attempt to keep people hooked on their products, thus maintaining power over everyone and extracting profits, basically maintaining business as usual. They can't do that if people own solar panels and generate their own energy or if renewable energy becomes so cheap to produce that it only costs pennies. I can't wait until we hit the tipping point and these selfish, greedy companies get put in their place. The ridiculous article: https://archive.li/3uPLo https://archive.li/3uPLo

Jsebast24 3y ago

In the 1990's the environmentalist's most prominent message was "save the trees". That message quietly dissappeared without explanation. Now you know why: you have to destroy a lot of trees to plant wind farms and solar panels.

thefurdrake 3y ago
> That message quietly dissappeared without explanation. No, it didn't. New data emerged, and priorities shifted. There's nothing sinister or weird about it. Trees only manage to temporarily store carbon, so there's a finite amount of CO2 mass trees can contribute to neutralize per year, and go figure it's not enough. I believe the idea is that a single wind turbine can offset the loss in CO2 consumption cause by that same turbine taking up tree space, right? > you have to destroy a lot of trees to plant wind farms and solar panels. You have to destroy a lot of trees to put in country-spanning oil pipelines and run strip mines, and similar things are true for just about any other industrial-scale form of power production, so it doesn't make sense that minor tree death would become a conspiracy amongst environmentalists only when it's such an open problem for everything else, to me. ... Also, California learned how bad it is to never kill trees ever, so that may have contributed.