8 ms·

These gifs are pretty much useless in showing the real destruction because they're only looking back 30 years and showing the changes of little plots of land he

These gifs are pretty much useless in showing the real destruction because they're only looking back 30 years and showing the changes of little plots of land here and there. If you compare North America today with what it was before Europeans landed. You'd see a truly horrifying picture. Something like 70% of the forests of North America are gone. Just load up google maps in satellite mode and look at the USA. Farms and settlements are literally everywhere. Brazil too has lost a massive chunk. Entire forests along the ocean are gone. So has europe. And in Australia Koalas are becoming endangered because of the loss of their habitat. In Asia, rain forests are being cut down for palm oil plantations. And don't even get me started on the "Great African Land Grab" in which rich countries bought prime fertile African land for pennies per hectare. This continues to this day: 6 percent of [the US lost it's] forest cover in just five years time, a total of 120,000 square kilometers (46,332 square miles) ( http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0427-hance_forestloss.html#PuEszYs3LDm28uWC.99 http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0427-hance_forestloss.html#PuE... ) Let's not forget the enormous swaths of plastic swimming around in all the major oceans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch The fact that more than half of all the streams in the USA are too polluted to support normal life: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2300022/More-HALF-U-S-rivers-polluted-support-life-shocking-report-reveals-scale-water-contamination.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2300022/More-HALF-U-... And don't get me started on particles from the pollution in China crossing the Pacific Ocean and entering the US Eastern Coast. As well as residents living near highways have a 27% increase in Asthema. And the list goes on and on.

Zimahl 13y ago
I can't speak to the forest practices of S. America or other continents but regarding US and Canadian forest practices that article is complete FUD. First, it equates 'forest loss' to legitimate forest management - grow, cut, replant. Second, there is more forests now than there were in 1930 (I'll find the source in the morning). Now that's a slightly dubious stat since post-railroad logging there was only natural regrowth but we manage our forests very, very well these days. The last place for environmental concern in the US and Canada should be to the forests. It's in everyone's interest to have healthy forests - from the logger to the landowner to the mill worker to the multinational.
- johnchristopher 13y ago
  From disparate information I gathered it seems second growth forest don't come with the same ecology (animals, fungus, etc.) so the argument could be made that regrown managed forest don't equate primary forests. I am not sure I am proponent of this argument but it seems to make sense.
  - specialist 13y ago
    Yup. Tree farms are not habitat. I have no problem with timber companies managing their tree farms, so long as they protect water ways (offsets), slopes (no clear cuts causing mud slides), etc. I also think we need new management practices (eg permit more smallers fires to reduce likelihood of huge fires). My problem is when timber companies must extract every board foot from every acre, threatening critical habitat, from public forests. To add insult to injury, we (the public) build the roads, and sell the timber at a loss. I wouldn't mind so much if the mythical "free market" was working, so that timber, mining, fishing, and ranching companies actually paid fair market price for the resources they're stealing.
    - Zimahl 13y ago
      Tree farms are not habitat. How is a 40 year old forest not habitat? My problem is when timber companies must extract every board foot from every acre, threatening critical habitat, from public forests. To add insult to injury, we (the public) build the roads, and sell the timber at a loss. Lies, lies, and more lies. Have you even been to a cut down forest within the last 20 years? Streams have required easements, there are requirements for leaving a number of trees per acre and any logging roads are paid for by the landowner. The roads are a cost of the harvesting. ...actually paid fair market price for the resources they're stealing. You act like it's a quick turn around. We are talking decades after replanting, there are very few industries that have to follow this. And then, after waiting all that time, you need to hope that the market isn't in the state that it's currently in. Domestic timber is in the dumpster right now due to foreign logs and a lack of new housing.
      - 13y ago
SiVal 13y ago
No, at the risk of "getting you started", I'm not "horrified" at the loss of 70% of the North American forest over the past 500+ years, if that is, in fact, the correct statistic. Try running the film in reverse, regrowing the lost forest at the cost of 95+% of the people. Would that be an absolute delight, the undoing of the horror, the horror? Clearly it would be to some people, but not to me. I'm hardly arguing in favor of eliminating the remaining 30% of the forest and adding another billion or so North Americans. Being okay with some change doesn't mean I prefer the maximum amount of change. It's just that as I drive from coast to coast, as I have done more than once, I'm not overwhelmed with the horror of the landscape. I am willing to work to clean up the mess we humans so often make and to take steps to avoid ruining things we can't fix. I don't want to live on a pile of garbage, and it does take constant effort to avoid letting garbage of various sorts (trash dumps, dirty water, smoggy air) get out of control. Sometimes we fail, and we need to do something about it. I'm especially worried about damage that is not obvious---the oceans come to mind. But no, I'm not horrified at the thought of North America having 70% fewer trees than we had 500 years ago, if that's the real number. I want to take proper safeguards with respect to the environment, human health, human living standards, crime, political and economic freedoms, education, and numerous other important issues, but sometimes I think that some people get uncomfortably "religious" about the environment in particular. I'm not one of them.
- johnchristopher 13y ago
  > [...] but sometimes I think that some people get uncomfortably "religious" about the environment in particular. I'm not one of them. [...] Could it be, maybe, that your statements reflect the thought of some people that might be denying ecological disasters ? What's religious about being horrified at the loss of 70% of the North American Forest ? If that is indeed the correct number (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_the_United_Sta... : a 25% loss for the US with a stabilized 20th century but this here http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/deforest/deforest.html http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lect... hints that primary forest area aren't counted the same way http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/deforest/defores9.JPG http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lect...)... What's wrong with being religious, anyway ? > It's just that as I drive from coast to coast, as I have done more than once, I'm not overwhelmed with the horror of the landscape. May it be because you can't compare to the same ride 500 years ago and so the impact doesn't sink in ?
LatvjuAvs 13y ago
We need more concentration camps where huge amount of population live in close proximity and essentially they just deplete resources by doing nothing in value. Earth will cope, always, with whatever state we will bring her to. Humans, not so.
asmithmd1 13y ago
The forest cover in New England is almost 80% - about what it was when the Pilgrims landed. Since hitting a low below 40% in 1830 it is now the most forested region in the US as well as one of the most densely populated. http://www.wildlandsandwoodlands.org http://www.wildlandsandwoodlands.org How did this happen? People stopped trying to eke out a living farming the thin rocky soil during the short growing season and went to work at the mills and factories.
- kokey 13y ago
  It also helps that we can transport food over longer distances, have working markets to facilitate this, and crop yields having tripled since the 60s, and if it wasn't for biofuels the US would have been reducing the amount of land for agriculture instead of increasing it.
  - talmand 13y ago
    It also helps that we actively do our best to prevent and put out forest fires.
- smackfu 13y ago
  Yep, it's quite common in New England to find stone walls in the middle of a forest, that used to be on the edge of a field. Further, it's kind of amazing to think that the woods down the street had someone pull all the rocks out at some point... makes you reconsider what you consider "natural".
  - asmithmd1 13y ago
    And makes you reconsider what hard work is.
- dpark 13y ago
  People also stopped cutting down all the trees to heat their homes. Moving to fossil fuels for heating meant that people could reasonably keep trees on their property without needing to cut them down for firewood (and without neighbors cutting them down for the same reason).
downandout 13y ago
Why is it that so many left-wing rants leave me with the unnerving impression that their authors care more about Koalas than humans? You created an impressive list of eco-complaints, but the simple fact is that human life expectancy - my primary concern as a human - has risen dramatically in the same 30 years. Perhaps a little more focus on humans and a little less on sad Koalas will keep us on track toward even higher life expectancy.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Human life expectancy rising over that period has nothing to do with the lost forest cover. Indeed, the vast majority of the increase is due to a few relatively low-tech advances targeted at reducing infant mortality.
  - marknutter 13y ago
    relatively low-tech advances that were made possibly by modern civilization, which was made possible by our expansionism.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      That's hardly an iron-clad causal chain there. I'm pretty sure penicillin would have happened whether or not we deforested California and turned it into a giant collection of freeways and parking lots.
      - marknutter 13y ago
        Penicillin isn't the only medical advancement from the past 100 years that is contributing to our high life expectancy rates.
        rayiner 13y ago
        Yes, but the majority of the improvements stem from a handful of relatively low-tech things: antibiotics, clean water, improved nutrition, urbanization leading to most births happening in the presence of a medical professional, social changes reducing pregnancy among young teenagers, and a handful of key vaccines. Its not blockbuster cancer drags driving the increase.
precisioncoder 13y ago
http://xkcd.com/164/ http://xkcd.com/164/ As an extra note if we manage to make large portions of this planet unlivable then maybe through trying to alter them to be livable again we'll unlock techniques that we could use on other planets to make them livable as well. The future is going to be awesome and horrifying and exciting. I'm so happy I get to live in this age, even if I do end up dying horribly it will probably be exciting.
- Gravityloss 13y ago
  You read the xkcd post as serious? To me it's clearly sarcastic.
  - precisioncoder 13y ago
    I read it as serious, but that's the lovely thing about art, everyone can have a different interpretation.
mikeash 13y ago
500 years ago is a hugely artificial point to start your forest comparison. For a fair comparison, you need to go back far enough to reach the peak of pre-Columbian civilization in North America. That civilization was heavily agricultural and cut down plenty of trees to make farmland. Old World diseases subsequently wiped out nearly the entire population, and the subsequent reforestation sucked so much CO2 out of the atmosphere that it may have substantially contributed to the Little Ice Age. For a proper comparison, you need to look at more like 600-1000 years ago. I don't know what the result of that comparison is, or how accurate it can be given how little is really known about pre-Columbian North America, but that's what you need to look at. The standard picture of North America being virgin wilderness inhabited by scattered tribes until the arrival of the Europeans is dead wrong. That's how settlers found it, but only because roughly 90% of the population had been killed off by disease not long before.
noonespecial 13y ago
OTOH, look at upstate New York, patrticularly adirondack park. They basically logged the whole place flat to build NYC but with careful stewardship, it is once again a beautiful forest wilderness. The point is that we can fix it if we want to.

Zimahl 13y ago

I can't speak to the forest practices of S. America or other continents but regarding US and Canadian forest practices that article is complete FUD. First, it equates 'forest loss' to legitimate forest management - grow, cut, replant. Second, there is more forests now than there were in 1930 (I'll find the source in the morning). Now that's a slightly dubious stat since post-railroad logging there was only natural regrowth but we manage our forests very, very well these days. The last place for environmental concern in the US and Canada should be to the forests. It's in everyone's interest to have healthy forests - from the logger to the landowner to the mill worker to the multinational.

johnchristopher 13y ago
From disparate information I gathered it seems second growth forest don't come with the same ecology (animals, fungus, etc.) so the argument could be made that regrown managed forest don't equate primary forests. I am not sure I am proponent of this argument but it seems to make sense.
- specialist 13y ago
  Yup. Tree farms are not habitat. I have no problem with timber companies managing their tree farms, so long as they protect water ways (offsets), slopes (no clear cuts causing mud slides), etc. I also think we need new management practices (eg permit more smallers fires to reduce likelihood of huge fires). My problem is when timber companies must extract every board foot from every acre, threatening critical habitat, from public forests. To add insult to injury, we (the public) build the roads, and sell the timber at a loss. I wouldn't mind so much if the mythical "free market" was working, so that timber, mining, fishing, and ranching companies actually paid fair market price for the resources they're stealing.
  - Zimahl 13y ago
    Tree farms are not habitat. How is a 40 year old forest not habitat? My problem is when timber companies must extract every board foot from every acre, threatening critical habitat, from public forests. To add insult to injury, we (the public) build the roads, and sell the timber at a loss. Lies, lies, and more lies. Have you even been to a cut down forest within the last 20 years? Streams have required easements, there are requirements for leaving a number of trees per acre and any logging roads are paid for by the landowner. The roads are a cost of the harvesting. ...actually paid fair market price for the resources they're stealing. You act like it's a quick turn around. We are talking decades after replanting, there are very few industries that have to follow this. And then, after waiting all that time, you need to hope that the market isn't in the state that it's currently in. Domestic timber is in the dumpster right now due to foreign logs and a lack of new housing.
    - 13y ago

SiVal 13y ago

No, at the risk of "getting you started", I'm not "horrified" at the loss of 70% of the North American forest over the past 500+ years, if that is, in fact, the correct statistic. Try running the film in reverse, regrowing the lost forest at the cost of 95+% of the people. Would that be an absolute delight, the undoing of the horror, the horror? Clearly it would be to some people, but not to me. I'm hardly arguing in favor of eliminating the remaining 30% of the forest and adding another billion or so North Americans. Being okay with some change doesn't mean I prefer the maximum amount of change. It's just that as I drive from coast to coast, as I have done more than once, I'm not overwhelmed with the horror of the landscape. I am willing to work to clean up the mess we humans so often make and to take steps to avoid ruining things we can't fix. I don't want to live on a pile of garbage, and it does take constant effort to avoid letting garbage of various sorts (trash dumps, dirty water, smoggy air) get out of control. Sometimes we fail, and we need to do something about it. I'm especially worried about damage that is not obvious---the oceans come to mind. But no, I'm not horrified at the thought of North America having 70% fewer trees than we had 500 years ago, if that's the real number. I want to take proper safeguards with respect to the environment, human health, human living standards, crime, political and economic freedoms, education, and numerous other important issues, but sometimes I think that some people get uncomfortably "religious" about the environment in particular. I'm not one of them.

johnchristopher 13y ago
> [...] but sometimes I think that some people get uncomfortably "religious" about the environment in particular. I'm not one of them. [...] Could it be, maybe, that your statements reflect the thought of some people that might be denying ecological disasters ? What's religious about being horrified at the loss of 70% of the North American Forest ? If that is indeed the correct number (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_the_United_Sta... : a 25% loss for the US with a stabilized 20th century but this here http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/deforest/deforest.html http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lect... hints that primary forest area aren't counted the same way http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/deforest/defores9.JPG http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lect...)... What's wrong with being religious, anyway ? > It's just that as I drive from coast to coast, as I have done more than once, I'm not overwhelmed with the horror of the landscape. May it be because you can't compare to the same ride 500 years ago and so the impact doesn't sink in ?

LatvjuAvs 13y ago

We need more concentration camps where huge amount of population live in close proximity and essentially they just deplete resources by doing nothing in value. Earth will cope, always, with whatever state we will bring her to. Humans, not so.

asmithmd1 13y ago

The forest cover in New England is almost 80% - about what it was when the Pilgrims landed. Since hitting a low below 40% in 1830 it is now the most forested region in the US as well as one of the most densely populated. http://www.wildlandsandwoodlands.org http://www.wildlandsandwoodlands.org How did this happen? People stopped trying to eke out a living farming the thin rocky soil during the short growing season and went to work at the mills and factories.

kokey 13y ago
It also helps that we can transport food over longer distances, have working markets to facilitate this, and crop yields having tripled since the 60s, and if it wasn't for biofuels the US would have been reducing the amount of land for agriculture instead of increasing it.
- talmand 13y ago
  It also helps that we actively do our best to prevent and put out forest fires.
smackfu 13y ago
Yep, it's quite common in New England to find stone walls in the middle of a forest, that used to be on the edge of a field. Further, it's kind of amazing to think that the woods down the street had someone pull all the rocks out at some point... makes you reconsider what you consider "natural".
- asmithmd1 13y ago
  And makes you reconsider what hard work is.
dpark 13y ago
People also stopped cutting down all the trees to heat their homes. Moving to fossil fuels for heating meant that people could reasonably keep trees on their property without needing to cut them down for firewood (and without neighbors cutting them down for the same reason).

downandout 13y ago

Why is it that so many left-wing rants leave me with the unnerving impression that their authors care more about Koalas than humans? You created an impressive list of eco-complaints, but the simple fact is that human life expectancy - my primary concern as a human - has risen dramatically in the same 30 years. Perhaps a little more focus on humans and a little less on sad Koalas will keep us on track toward even higher life expectancy.

rayiner 13y ago
Human life expectancy rising over that period has nothing to do with the lost forest cover. Indeed, the vast majority of the increase is due to a few relatively low-tech advances targeted at reducing infant mortality.
- marknutter 13y ago
  relatively low-tech advances that were made possibly by modern civilization, which was made possible by our expansionism.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    That's hardly an iron-clad causal chain there. I'm pretty sure penicillin would have happened whether or not we deforested California and turned it into a giant collection of freeways and parking lots.
    - marknutter 13y ago
      Penicillin isn't the only medical advancement from the past 100 years that is contributing to our high life expectancy rates.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        Yes, but the majority of the improvements stem from a handful of relatively low-tech things: antibiotics, clean water, improved nutrition, urbanization leading to most births happening in the presence of a medical professional, social changes reducing pregnancy among young teenagers, and a handful of key vaccines. Its not blockbuster cancer drags driving the increase.

precisioncoder 13y ago

http://xkcd.com/164/ http://xkcd.com/164/ As an extra note if we manage to make large portions of this planet unlivable then maybe through trying to alter them to be livable again we'll unlock techniques that we could use on other planets to make them livable as well. The future is going to be awesome and horrifying and exciting. I'm so happy I get to live in this age, even if I do end up dying horribly it will probably be exciting.

Gravityloss 13y ago
You read the xkcd post as serious? To me it's clearly sarcastic.
- precisioncoder 13y ago
  I read it as serious, but that's the lovely thing about art, everyone can have a different interpretation.

mikeash 13y ago

500 years ago is a hugely artificial point to start your forest comparison. For a fair comparison, you need to go back far enough to reach the peak of pre-Columbian civilization in North America. That civilization was heavily agricultural and cut down plenty of trees to make farmland. Old World diseases subsequently wiped out nearly the entire population, and the subsequent reforestation sucked so much CO2 out of the atmosphere that it may have substantially contributed to the Little Ice Age. For a proper comparison, you need to look at more like 600-1000 years ago. I don't know what the result of that comparison is, or how accurate it can be given how little is really known about pre-Columbian North America, but that's what you need to look at. The standard picture of North America being virgin wilderness inhabited by scattered tribes until the arrival of the Europeans is dead wrong. That's how settlers found it, but only because roughly 90% of the population had been killed off by disease not long before.

noonespecial 13y ago

OTOH, look at upstate New York, patrticularly adirondack park. They basically logged the whole place flat to build NYC but with careful stewardship, it is once again a beautiful forest wilderness. The point is that we can fix it if we want to.