Newsgroup sci.environment 109491

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Don Staples  wrote: 
 And you and I have discussed to length that the old 
> growth you love is a stagnant, over mature, climax mono-culture forest. 
It supports a 
> very narrow band of plant and animal species that are associated with a
climax forest.  
> Many more species of plant and animal find a niche in sub-climax forest. 
I love the big 
> woods, but, look at them with an open eye and see a very few of the 2000
year old trees 
> to the acre, and look at a younger forest and see the multitude of
species and heavier 
> number of stems per acre.  
> 
Good point.  I'd also like to point out that the new-growth forests so
hated by environmentalists actually perform much more CO2 uptake and oxygen
production.  And yet, 
we get snippets like the one below, from a poster here:
> What do you think creates the oxygen we breath and helps clean the air of
> our polution?  Kindness to trees is very much in our best interest!
If we're solely worried about air quality, it's in our best interests to
saw down all the old growths.  Air quality is a weak argument for
preserving such stands.
--
Mike Asher
masher@tusc.net
"Nothing is more conducive to progress than the widespread 
  belief that it can occur."
  --Charles Van Doren

Extremely Right (99@spies.com) wrote:
: There is a presupposition by the left, a dialectical argument, that the
: choice is between "saving the environment" or "destroying it." This is
: false reasoning.  Who wants to live in their own waste? The REAL extreme
: rhetoric is from the eco-socialist left and the Republicans are left
: arguing without a mainstream media microphone. ###8up
You forgot to include the "Wise Use" movement in your fair and
even-handed list of extremists.
--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
Remember John Hron:       http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hron-john/

Harold Brashears (brshears@whale.st.usm.edu) wrote:
: bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK ) wrote for all to see:
: >John McCarthy (jmc@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
: [edited]
: >: My Web pages
: >: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/ deal at length with the
: >: sustainability of progress.  It discusses 15 billion people at
: >: American standards.
: >
: >What happens when (not if) we get 30?
: Why do you say "when"?  There is increasing evidence the world's
: population will not double again.  Primarily, I think, because of
: increasing wealth.
: The best predictor of population stability is the societies wealth.
: The society with access to wealth and education is the society with
: the lower birth rate.  What we need to do is try to increase the
: standard of living of the world.
Apply this model to increasingly industrialising China of the 12th
Century and you'd be wrong.  When a culture becomes better at providing
energy and therefore more food, it usually responds by creating more
children.  The only reason this isn't being done in Europe today is
space, eg, most people who want children or more of them actually don't
because they can't afford it.  The expense of living space is the
reason.
--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
Remember John Hron:       http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hron-john/

Mike Asher (masher@tusc.net) wrote:
: Side note:  genetic engineers are already discussing the possibility of an
: organism which could efficiently extract fresh water from salt.  Of course,
: Greenpeace wants to ban all such activity.
I'd like to hear more about this.
--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
Remember John Hron:       http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hron-john/