Y2Kyoto: I Miss The Amazon Rain Forest

Well, there you are! Seriously though, whenever I hear "crisis" type news stories, I have to question the true motive for the story or report and also the accuracy of the information. Global Warming, Climate Change, Climate Crisis or Rain Forest depletion......you should always consider the underlying motivations and who stands to gain from the latest buzz.

Just ask and the vast majority of people will tell you that there is much less forest now than there used to be 100 years ago.

Never mind that there is actually much MORE forest now in NA than 100 years ago.

Must not let them little ol' annoying facts clog up the discussion.

and with the NYT and sundry other daily bladders going tits up there will be a lot less demand for pulp and newsprint....which translates into whole forests kept safe from loggerly depredations....

Gaia is smiling....

As long as there is a buck to be made on "catastrophes" then the party will rock on. First it was rain forest, then whales, then polar bears, etc. Fear mongering has always paid off, just ask Al Gore.

Unless I'm mistaken, the peninsula that comprises Stanley Park was clear-cut around 100 years ago and there wasn't a tree standing, according to pictures I've seen from the time. Looks pretty much like 'old-growth' forest to me now.

So nature replenishes itself? Who knew?

It's a fundamental policy of environmental groups that they never admit that - just occassionally - things get better. They see their very existence dependent on maintaining a constant state of alarm among the general public.

I've always thought that this attitude was a mistake. People get weary of the "chicken-little" schtick. Any good manager will tell you that success leads to success, that giving people a sense of accomplishment is the way to even further accomplishment.

On the other hand, this relentless litany of ecological disasters that we're subject to produces a feeling of hopelessness and cynicism. People quit trying because they see that credit will never be given and the litany will never cease.

Love it!!

Not surprised. I will be surprised if i see this reported on CNN, CNBC or the CBC - ever...

"People quit trying because they see that credit will never be given and the litany will never cease." .... ?

People quit trying what exactly?

Perhaps quit allowing themselves to be manipulated by self righteous and self serving bullshit artists.

In the first place for anyone with even rudimentary ability for critical thought the message of the con artist activists is transparent fear mongering. In the second the claims of success in influencing great numbers of people are always just more of the same.

So over time the only possible outcome is that there is always a group of bandwagon jumpers and clueless fools who are waiting for the next cause to climb aboard and the rest of the world just gets less and less tolerant of the same old ....
I'd suggest that if there is any group who as you put it "Gives up" it will be those bandwagon jumpers for the simple reason that they need a New Cause to arouse their stunted characters to passion.

"So nature replenishes itself? Who knew?"

Everyone without an environMENTAL agenda...

Speaking of which, Peta got punked...

http://www.seakittens.com/seakittens.html

Free thinker - yeah, maybe Naomi Klein can write a book about "Disaster Environmentalism", about how evil big enviro gets its money through its shady practises

"Unless I'm mistaken, the peninsula that comprises Stanley Park was clear-cut around 100 years ago and there wasn't a tree standing, according to pictures I've seen from the time. Looks pretty much like 'old-growth' forest to me now"
Algonquin Park in Ontario was once razed for the 19th cnetury square timber trade.
I recall mentioning to a LIBRANO (his enviro-sense is tied to his party) about the increase in Canada since satelite pictures had started in the 60's. He looked serious and declared "THEY have studied this and the forest cover lacks the QUALITY.......
It always THEY..you would think they were defending their favourite breakfast cereal......

OMMAG:

Everybody, at some level, is an environmentalist. We all love nature. No one wants to live in polluted surroundings, and we all want to see improvements made and man's impact on the environment minimized.

But many people quit working towards this goal because of the very ecological groups that purport to be furthering the cause. People's response to the alarminism, the negativity, the extreme political views, the anti-scientism, and the occasional violence, is to distance themselves from environmental concerns and to reject problems that might be very real.

That's what I mean by "giving up."

The ability of nature to renew itself is vastly understated. I worked in the Venezuelan jungle s while back. Roads that we built a year before had twelve foot high trees growing on them when we returned.

Many trees - including the noble maple - are, in effect, WEEDS. You can't keep them down. You can't get rid of them. They will destroy a wooden house in 20 years. No no no kiddies, we are not the Lords of Creation. Plants ARE. The only way to kill off the vegetation in a region is to park a mile of ice on top of it - ice ages are effective - nothing else is.

Many trees - including the noble maple - are, in effect, WEEDS. You can't keep them down. You can't get rid of them. They will destroy a wooden house in 20 years. No no no kiddies, we are not the Lords of Creation. Plants ARE. The only way to kill off the vegetation in a region is to park a mile of ice on top of it - ice ages are effective - nothing else is.

Interesting. A few more reports of this type and we might start to see some semblance of sanity get back into this whole environmental movement.

"and with the NYT and sundry other daily bladders going tits up there will be a lot less demand for pulp and newsprint....which translates into whole forests kept safe from loggerly depredations....

Gaia is smiling...."

Funny how the original story appeared in the NYTimes :)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/science/earth/30forest.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Interesting. A few more reports of this type and we might start to see some semblance of sanity get back into this whole environmental movement.
Posted by: Ron at February 1, 2009 12:15 AM

Don't count on it Ron. The environmental industry is big business. They need some kind of imaginary crisis to keep the contributions rolling in from the unwashed masses.

If somebody, from their garage, invented an energy source that operated on water, created no pollution, and was immediately replicable on a large scale, the enviro-nazis would come up with some other crisis, based on bogus science, within the year.

Mark my words. No amount of progress on environmental issues, real or imagined, will bring any level of sanity to the movement.

All we need is the ozone hole to close, pic a pop in the fridge and coaches smoking on the bench in minor hockey and its like the last 30 years didn't happen. Oh David Suzuki, where did we go wrong?

sasquatch at January 31, 2009 8:22 PM

yup, when a lefty brings out """"THEY"""", I think OMG:-))))))

Back in the 1960's and 1970's, we were taught about how quickly nature would move back in. The rain forests were touted as a prime example of this.
Not only did the rain forest move back in on the Mayan cities but it was also discussed about how the vegetation moved back in when previously cleared farmland was abandoned.

All of a sudden in the mid eighties this subject was dropped Instead teachers told their students that we (mine and earlier generations) were killing the planet and we didn't care because we would be gone and it would be our children's problem. I had a few heated arguments with my (then) step-daughter who drank her teacher's blue kool-aid wholeheartedely.

Of course this "development" will be quickly swept under the rug by the far-left as quickly as possible.

Hey dumb dumb, last time I checked Panama isn't part of the Amazon. Nice title brainiac.

SteveV
You're such a cool cat. Don't walk too close to WK, he might take a snap at you. The brow wouldn't like that.

there is a book and a TV documentary , facinatating look at the ability of nature to recover and reclaim. When We Have Gone.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-534190/Revealed-world-look-like-weve-gone.html

the time scales look a little short to me , but according to this book nature takes hold in weeks and finishes for the most part in a few millenium.

Reminds me of the movie "Logan's Run" when they escape and find themselves in Washington, I think.The film makers portrayed a city almost completely taken back by nature.

Well, the difference between an old rainforest and what the tree-planters come up with is that a forest is more than straight lines of one species of tree.

The value of the old forest is that theirs lots of other stuff in it. Go into a "forest" planted by some government paid summer students and it's the other stuff, like many animals, which are lacking. The other thing is you have to plant more than one type of tree in most types of forest for it to be anything like what was levelled.

Logging, if done correctly, can be perfectly sustainable and even a good thing (like forest fires opening up space for larger critter habitat.) cutting a lot of small sections (letting the old forests on two sides fill in the middle) is just fine. Levelling whole forests isn't.

Sure, you get back a lot of species and your forests can come back somewhat. But you'll never get back species that have gone extinct.

There is a balance between the SDA "kill everything" mentality and the leftarded "don't touch the sacred gaia" luddite mentality which can see both healthy environment AND healthy and prosperous people living in a modern economy.

Balance and compromise isn't always good, but it helps on occation...