Category Archives: Forestry

iPads and Kindles are better for the environment than books? Come again?

Brian Palmer (aka Slate’s Green Lantern) writes that “iPads and Kindles are better for the environment than books.” If the Lantern has taught you anything, it’s that most consumer products make their biggest scar on the Earth during manufacture and … Continue reading

Posted in Forestry, Sustainability, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Postcards from 1938-1939

In 1938, Walter C. Lowdermilk, Vice-Director of the Soil Conservation Service, was dispatched by then Secretary of Agriculture, Henry Wallace, on a world tour to learn of soil conservation successes and failures. Lowdermilk called the enterprise, “agricultural archaeology.” Lowdermilk packed … Continue reading

Posted in Forestry, environment | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Deforestation: causes and cures

Cute, clever, incorrect. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations’s Forest Resource Assessment for 2005 uses the word “alarming” 20 times to describe the trend lines for deforestation. And, a commonplace inference is that forests are rapidly … Continue reading

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The Emperor’s New Power Grid

If you have not yet read Robert Bryce‘s excellent books, Power Hungry and Gusher of Lies, you must. He takes down the fallacies of “energy independence” and “renewable energy” with physics and simple math.

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Comment on a HuffPo column

Here’s a comment I posted on an opinion piece written by Richard Stuebi, The Petroleum Industry: Past the Tipping Point? Interestingly, where it’s the minerals and non-renewable resources that should run out: oil, gold, aluminum, etc.; it’s been the renewable … Continue reading

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