If the Lantern has taught you anything, it’s that most consumer products make their biggest scar on the Earth during manufacture and transport, before they ever get into your greedy little hands.

He then papers glosses over an important part of the manufacture of electronics. Mining. So I commented:

Paper versus plastic

“E-readers also have books beat on toxic chemicals.” I’m not so sure of this. As noted, “E-readers do, however, require the mining of nonrenewable minerals…”

Industrial extraction of such non-renewable minerals primarily uses cyanide compounds to separate metals from the raw ore. And, though U.S. mines pollute less than others around the world, hard-rock mining produces more toxic waste than any other industry in the country, according to the EPA. For example, one ounce of refined gold (used in electronics manufacturing) generates nearly 80 TONS of toxic waste. The leftovers are akin to nuclear waste for the mining industry: around for a long time, hazardous, and no one really knows what to do with it. The waste contains “every element in the periodic table,” says Robert Moran, PhD., an expert in geochemistry. Moran’s company, Michael-Moran Associates, has commented extensively on the environmental impacts of mining projects around the world for both the mining industry and for environmental activists.

If you think clearcuts are ugly, try open-pit mines, 2,000 feet deep, and one to two miles across.“These are not your grandfather’s mines,” he says. Mines are “constructed on a huge scale unheard of less than thirty years ago.”

Bottom line: Forests return after harvesting. Plastics and cyanide dumps don’t go away. Instead of saving trees for our descendants, we’re leaving tons of toxic wastes and despoiled landscapes where trees may not grow for millennia.

For more on ereaders and dead-tree books see:

• If it’s not grown, it has to be mined
• Paper or Plastic, why ereaders are not the right choice
• Trash Talk – Why I won’t buy a Kindle soon

Ignorance is the parent of fear” – Herman Melville

Willful Sturm und Drang

A statement crafted to alarm you: “…80 percent of the world’s intact forests are already gone.” – Tzeporah Berman, co-founder of ForestEthics. But it could have come from any number of environmental organizations—in competition for your wallet. You need to act now with cash to keep the remaining 20 percent from being, in their opinion, profaned. “Thanks be to Gaia. Send those heartfelt donations to…”

Sifting fact from soundbite can help you keep your head and avoid Witoid Ricsas (when in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout)? First, recognize the calculated Sturm und Drang to get your attention, often playing up bad news and downplaying or omitting good news.

Reality rarely increases a heart rate the way Romanticism, with its magical quality of nature, does. But, clear-headedness tops fear when considering where to put your efforts.

A previous post double-checked a factoid also crafted to sound troubling: one-half of the world’s forests have been converted to non-forest use. After some checking sources: Probably not.

What set me off on this in the first place was a Yahoo Green blog, “10 big reasons to stop using dead trees.” to which I replied, “You’re pulling my Yang. Ten dead-on reasons for using dead trees.”

The “10 Big Reasons” post cited a number of references and that’s commendable, there should be more reference citing in posts. The ‘gray literature’ (e.g., non peer-reviewed sources), references need more fact checking.  Number 6 on his list struck me: “Half of the world’s forests have already been cleared or burned, and 80 percent of what is left has been seriously degraded.” The “Environmental Paper Network” was cited. Their paper on the subject cited a number of other environmental organizations. The EPN report led me to Tzeporah Berman’s assertion, “…80 percent of the world’s intact forests are already gone”

I want to look into the citation to the assertion that 80 percent of the world’s forests are fragmented. And, does forest fragmentation matter?

“Of course it matters if the world’s forests are not intact,” you may say. “Fragmentation is not natural.”

Naturally Squishy

The word, “natural,” squishes a lot. It means something produced by nature’s processes. As an example, is the growth of a planted tree seedling “natural”? I think so as long as it’s from seed from the area. But, I know lots of folks who would say it isn’t.

In the 1960s, Sequoia National Park began a prescribed fire program; the goal being to get the park back to its natural state. Parks try to preserve a place’s natural ecological, biological, and physical processes. The question then was, “What’s natural?” Was it before European descendants settled in the area, or before the Native Americans arrived? Experts could tell from fire scars within tree rings how often the forest burned during European and Indian times, but was that what the park was supposed to use as a baseline? [For more on our National Park Service’s dilemma, see Playing God in Yellowstone by Alston Chase. Jim Macdonald's The Magic of Yellowstone website has a good synopsis of Chase's book.]

Fact Check the Soundbites

The concept of natural gets tied up in Romantic ideals; and because it does, it’s wholly appropriate to try to separate the Romantic from the realistic and critically consider:

• What evidence is there that this figure of 80% fragmentation is true?
• If it is true, is it a problem?
• If it is a problem, what can be done to fix it?
• If it can be fixed, how much will that cost?
• And, given the cost, is that the most appropriate place to sink our dough?

These are wholly appropriate responses, not Witoid ricsas.

Find Peer-Reviewed Facts

Ms Berman, told producers and directors of the movie ‘The 11th Hour,’ “I think you need to look at the world’s resources and data showing that’s showing that 80 percent of the world’s intact forests are already gone and there are only three countries left in the world with enough forests to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem services. And that’s Canada, Russia, and Brazil.” They took the statement at face value apparently: they hired her as a consultant.

The myth of sparsely populated wilderness

It could be this intact forest doesn’t exist except in the mind of the Romantic. The Romanticism was a reaction to the rational thinking of the Enlightenment. This is after the time Europeans introduced smallpox to the new world, killing off 90 percent of the native inhabitants and wiping out their civilizations. This catastrophe allowed the native forests, which had been agricultural fields and population centers, to grow back.

“The myth persists,” writes Professor William Denevan, “that in 1492 the Americas were a sparsely populated wilderness…The pristine view [of an untouched ‘natural’ landscape] is to a large extent an invention of nineteenth-century romanticist and primitivist writers such as W.H. Hudson, Cooper, Thoreau, Longfellow, and Parkman, and painters such as Catlin and Church!”

Teasing out the Percent Fragmented

While not mythical the amount of forest on the earth depends on the definition. Given the present definition of forest from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations‘ (FAO), the Earth’s total forest area is just under four billion hectares (10 billion acres) or 30 percent of earth’s total land area [source: FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005]. This 30% figure has remained reasonably stable since 1950. Around 36 percent of 4 bn hectares gets classified as “primary forests,” i.e. “forests of native species, in which there are no clearly visible indications of human activity and ecological processes are not significantly disturbed.”

How much of the Earth’s land is forest?

So is Ms Berman’s contention ‘80 percent of the world’s intact forests are already gone’ a myth as well? To meet the 80 percent number the world would have had to have eight billion hectares (20 billion acres) to begin with (which is disputed by researchers). And, 80% X 8 billion = 6.4 billion hectares either fragmented or destroyed. This should mean that 1.6 billion hectares are intact (e.g. Primary Forest). Our earth’s present primary forests comprise 36 percent of earth’s forests, about 1.44 billion hectares. The two numbers, 1.6 and 1.4, match pretty well, so as far as I can tell, that is where her figure of 80% comes from.

Is fragmentation a problem?

The underlying concern about the lack of intactness, forest fragmentation, is about habitat and biodiversity. While tropical forests show high biodiversity, temperate and boreal forests have 1/10 the biodiversity of trees (and, presumably, other species of plant and animal). According to Willie Smits, “If you look at the number of tree species we have in Europe, for instance, from the Urals up to England, you know how many? 165. In [the Samboja Lestari] nursery [on Borneo], we’re going to grow 10 times more the number of species.” From a tree perspective, tropical trees are not as productive for biomass as those in temperate climes because tropical trees have many other plants that compete for light, water, and nutrients.

Intact forest in boreal and temperate forests can be detrimental and, in fact, fragmentation can be beneficial. Unbroken tree canopies in temperate and boreal forests can shade out plants trying to grow underneath. According to the FAO, temperate and boreal forests “bordering agricultural areas may provide additional habitats and thus harbour more species” than primary forests.

If it is a problem, what can be done to fix it?

Preventing fragmentation of tropical forests should be the highest priority because tropical forest trees have more biodiversity and are critical to curbing global warming (their presence creates clouds and rain). One way to meet that challenge is to cut more in the temperate and, to a lesser extent, the boreal forests. Currently North Americans blocking harvests in their second and third-growth forests means they get their wood from other places.

Second, the locals in the tropical forests need more efficient wood stoves. Most of the wood that is harvested in the world goes toward firewood for heating and cooking. More efficient stoves will lessen the amount of wood needed for those necessities by 70 percent while lowering the CO2 put into the atmosphere. As an example, the average Mexican Ejido family requires 40 trees annually; an efficient stove reduces this to 12 trees. (For more on the effect of efficient wood stoves click here)

If it can be fixed, how much will that cost?

Fuel-efficient Patsari stoves that use 70% less firewood cost about $120 each, according to the Ecolife Foundation.

And, given the cost, is that the most appropriate place to sink our dough?

Certainly, one could do worse than Ecolife to put one’s money. They install the stove and work with locals to help maintain the forest for the winter grounds of the monarch butterflies.

For a list of worthwhile endeavors and which ones give the most return for each dollar invested go to The Copenhagen Consensus Center, whom I have written about before.

Choose Wisely

Where you put your money and what you believe should be based on facts on the true state of the environment. We started by fact-checking the question of forest fragmentation. We found the 80 percent fragmentation figure to be based on the dubious figure of the loss of 50 percent of forests since the introduction of agriculture.

Facts can be difficult to come by. There are lots of numbers and figures floating about but fewer facts. In his book The Republican Noise Machine, David Brock writes about the amplification of the conservative message through repetition and right-wing think-tanks are then used to give the talking points intellectual cover. The same happens in the green machine. Some “facts” and figures echo through cyberspace and if used can become canon; one only needs to look at the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report where they cited a seeming fact from New Scientist that Himalayan glaciers would “vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming.” The figure was based on idle speculation but ended up in a report that was supposed to be based on the best science available.

The purpose for the Sturm und Drang may not be the health of the environment, but rather to make you reach for your wallet using the fragmentation of once intact forests as the stick. “Competition [among environmental groups] for money and members is keen,” wrote Tom Knudson of the Sacramento Bee. “Crisis, real or not, is a commodity. And slogans and sound bites masquerade as scientific fact.” Without a crisis to scare you, they don’t stay in business. So many people want to frighten you to give up your money for their cause. Confirm their “facts” first and then ask the tough questions.

Who do you find reliable? Where do you find your facts to make good choices?

One such post on the web is “10 big reasons to stop using dead trees.” The reasons are a combination of fact and fabrication. Here’s a fact: “One tree can absorb as much carbon in a year as a car produces while driving 26,000 miles.” Fine. While the Yin might be correct, the writer has neglected the Yang. We can’t talk only of how great trees are at holding carbon and neglect the other side of the demand equation. If we don’t cut the trees what will take their place? (Hint: you can’t say “nothing does” because something will; every day 6.5 billion of us get out of bed and need to live.)

Using wood beats the scary here’s-what-happens-if-you-use-wood statistics. At the threat of being called a Once-ler, let me give you ten dead-on reasons for using dead tree stuff:

1. Wood comes from a renewable resource.

Logic should lead to the conclusion that using renewable resources rather than nonrenewable substitutes would be better for the environment. Apparently unwillingness to look at what happens if we don’t harvest trees for wood (and instead use plastics, etc.) causes this disconnect.

2. Wood products require less energy to produce.

Consider aluminum, from raw material extraction to finished product, the energy input is 70 times greater than an equivalent amount of wood; steel is 17 times greater and cement 3 times. It should be obvious that we must consider the minuses of not using wood as well as the pluses for a balanced decision. We can’t just look at the carbon that won’t be captured when the tree is harvested. We must also look at emissions due to fossil fuel use in the production (and disposal) of substitute products.

3. Using wood decreases CO2 in the atmosphere.

Once a tree is cut, it doesn’t immediately start spewing all of its CO2 into the air. In fact, when made into products, the carbon can be held for centuries.

4. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says using wood is good for the planet.

In fact, the UN says sustainable forestry can halt deforestation and forest degradation, while curbing up to 25% of the CO2. Using wood products instead of non-wood products (all of which require more fossil fuel-based energy and materials) delivers the most bang for the buck for the long run. “In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber… will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit.” By sustainable forestry the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change means harvesting the net growth (or less), assuring the harvested area is restocked, and doing other forestry practices to assure the forest remains healthy. (For more see the 2007 Mitigation report)
Here are the numbers of net carbon emissions from producing a metric ton of product:

5. Wood biodegrades.

Plastic is virtually forever. Steel oxidizes.

6. Wood is versatile.

It can be used to build a home and to heat the home. It is also used for paper, photographic film, plastic tape, rayon fabric, and many other products.

7. Wood is not a good conductor.

Which means wood insulates very well: 8.5 times better than concrete and 400 times better than steel.’[1] And, wood doesn’t conduct electricity (when dry).

8. The timber industry is the only net-carbon sector in our economy.

California’s forests, where I live, pull more than 14 million metric tons (MMT) annually from the atmosphere. About 10 MMT get returned to the atmosphere by fires, harvesting, insect kill, disease, and the decomposition of forest products in landfills and composting facilities. That still leaves 4MMT being sequestered. Name any other manufacturing industry that has a net carbon benefit.

9. Forests and their inhabitants have evolved with disturbances.

While harvesting is a temporary disturbance, this is something that forests and its inhabitants can cope with. It is the permanent loss of habitat that causes problems.
We need to weigh not just the carbon lost when a tree is harvested but also the carbon dioxide emissions due to fossil fuel use in the production of the substitutes.

10. We simply need to use wood.

A lowered demand for wood means greater demand for something else. Without an incentive to keep a forest in production owners will need to sell off their lands, which more often than not, get subdivided into ever-smaller parcels.

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There has been a concerted effort to restrict logging by labeling it deforestation or degradation. Some green activists call for zero-cutting on publicly-owned lands. If green organizations truly cared about reducing CO2, they would embrace forest management. They would promote using forests because finished wood products store carbon and other products emit carbon. Rather than calling for zero-cut, they would demand that the national forests begin harvesting timber in greater quantities. They would insist that we begin using wood instead of concrete, aluminum, steel, and other substitutes. And they would see harvesting not as the end but the beginning of a new forest.

Let’s face it, we do consume stuff. The stuff we consume should be wood-based over most other products. What do you think?

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[1] Patrick Moore http://greenspirit.com/logbook.cfm?msid=212

[Illegal logging and unsustainable forest practices] lead to the loss of nearly 36 million acres of natural forests each year, an area roughly the size of New York state. The world’s poorest people often bear the brunt… – World Wildlife Fund

Now I crosschecked with the 2005 Global Forest Resources Assessment compiled by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO):

Deforestation, mainly due to conversion of forests to agricultural land, continues at an alarmingly high rate – some 13 million hectares [32.1 million acres] per year. – 2005 FAO report

Now, that’s close enough that I wouldn’t quibble, but the FAO adds that due to reforestation the number is less:

“At the same time, forest planting, landscape restoration and natural expansion of forests have significantly reduced the net loss of forest area.

And is the culprit illegal logging and poor forest management? Sometimes. From this FAO graphic it looks like it might be fuelwood gathering.

In fact, it’s an improvement. An improvement of over a million and a half hectares (4 million acres) per year:

Net global change in forest area in the period 2000–2005 is estimated at -7.3 million hectares per year (an area about the size of Panama or Sierra Leone), down from -8.9 million hectares per year in the period 1990–2000.

I know, I know, we’re still losing acreage and I agree with the WWF that “The world’s poorest people often bear the brunt…” but much of that is due to the United States desire not to harvest in its own forests.

Consider California. It has 40 million acres of forest with 313 billion board feet (BBF) of timber In 2000, 2 BBF were harvested.

California has 40 million acres of forest with 313 billion board feet (BBF) of timber. In 2000, 2 BBF were harvested from California and we consumed 8.5 BBF, a difference of 6.5 Billion board feet had to be imported from somewhere else.
(Source: McKillop, William. “Forestry, Forest Industry, and Forest Products Consumption in California.”)

Last month, an out-of-state special interest group derailed the forestry portion of a provisional carbon cap and trade system aimed at lowering California greenhouse gas emissions.  You might guess that an oil company that pressured the California Air Resources Board to fold, but it was in fact a Tucson-based environmental lobby, the “Center for Biological Diversity” (CBD).

“We commend the Air Resources Board for its commitment to addressing the critical environmental questions related to forest carbon credits,” crowed a CBD spokesperson. “It’s crucial that the state not give incentives to business-as-usual clearcutting and other destructive logging practices that hurt our forests and do nothing to address the immediate impacts of climate change.”

It’s a case of the wrongheaded politically spinning a regulator, who should know better. Once again, spin consumes science, and those putatively for a healthy environment have obfuscated for their own gains. “Crisis, real or not, is a commodity,” Tom Knudson wrote in his 2001 series, Environment, Inc., “And slogans and sound bites masquerade as scientific fact.”

For California to be part of the climate change solution, it must remove the “Do Not Disturb” sign currently on its forests. When we don’t cut here, we cut “over there,” contributing to deforestation and environmental degradation elsewhere while also increasing greenhouse emissions. (For more, see “The Illusion of Preservation.”) And it isn’t just foresters like me who think this way. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommends that we cut more wood, and use wood in place of concrete, steel, and other wood substitutes. By cutting forests, our forests, not someone else’s forest, we can contribute to saving the world.

For many of us the climate change debate borders on incomprehensible. I’m not saying I understand it all; but some context might be helpful for discerning how forests relate to global warming.

In 1895, Svante August Arrhenius, presented a paper to the Stockholm Physical Society titled, “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground.” In it, he argued that thermal radiation from the sun warmed the earth’s surface during the day and as the surface cooler at night, certain gases which included CO2 and water vapor, acted as a blanket retarding the escape of heat. The idea of plates of glass in a greenhouse allowing sunlight in and trapping the heat inside worked as a metaphor for the process, hence the ‘greenhouse effect.’

The worry now is that through our use of coal, oil, gas, and other fossil fuels; we have added too much CO2 as a result could the earth may be over-heating.

In 1988, the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to assess scientific information concerning human-induced climate change and the options for adaptation and minimizing its effects. In 1997, representatives from around the world met in Kyoto. They passed the Kyoto Protocol which sets binding targets for 63 industrialized countries to create five per cent less of their 1990 greenhouse gas (water vapor, methane, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and ozone) emissions.

In 2006, California passed a law similar to Kyoto, pegging our CO2 output to 1990 levels. Now I am skeptical that reducing our CO2 output will have any meaningful results. I think planting trees in urban settings and painting roads and rooftops white are better uses for our taxes. And we need to reduce tropical deforestation by cutting more trees in temperate forests such as California. All of these actions increase the albedo, the reflectivity of objects, which is part of the models used to predict global warming.

Nevertheless, because trees soak up CO2, the California Air Resources Board adopted a program that included allowing forest management activities for which CO2 emitters could buy carbon credits. The Center for Biological Diversity contends logging practices hurt our forests and do nothing to slow climate change. As I said before, the United Nations’ IPCC disagrees.

The IPCC says deforestation and severely degrading forests accounts for 20-25% of greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC is not talking about timber harvesting regarding deforestation and degradation). It also says the best strategies to prevent degradation and deforestation are: 1) “carbon conservation,” which includes both preventing forest conversion to agricultural uses, subdivisions or other non-forest uses, as well as controlling major fires; 2) “carbon sequestration and storage,” which means expanding forest area and/or biomass of natural and plantation forests; and 3) “carbon substitution,” which broadly means using wood products instead of non-wood products, all of which require more fossil fuel-based energy and materials. According to the IPCC, carbon substitution (wood products over cement, steel, aluminum, plastic, to name a few) has “the greatest mitigation potential in the long term.”

I’m a subject matter expert on growing wood; frankly it’s my passion. The growth and yield of forests is what forestry revolves around. Our California forests have the capacity to produce all the wood we need and export some as well, yet we import 75% of our wood. You can bet the wood we import wasn’t harvested under restrictions as comprehensive as those within California’s Forest Practice Rules requiring Timber Harvesting Plans that consider water, wildlife, and other concerns.

We need to stop trying to preserve everything and pretending that it doesn’t cause a mess elsewhere just because we can’t see it. The “not in my backyard” (Nimby) mentality outsources the mess: to Brazil, to Siberia, to countries not willing to enforce environmental regulations the way California can and will.

There has been a concerted effort to restrict logging by many environmental groups, from the Sierra Club to the Center for Biological Diversity. If green organizations truly cared about reducing CO2, they would embrace forest management in California. They would promote using California forests for the wood products that store carbon. They would demand that the national forests begin harvesting timber in greater quantities. And they would insist that we begin using wood instead of concrete, aluminum, steel, and other wood substitutes.

What can you do? Start buying sustainable California wood. At least, buy wood certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) or the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Write congress and tell them to push for harvesting in the national forests, rather than letting wildfires send more CO2 into the air (the California wildfires of 2001 – 2007 reportedly equaled 30 million cars on the road for a year).

Let’s stop pretending wood comes from the lumberyard.

Sources:

Berlik, Mary M., David B. Kittredge^, and David R. Foster. “The illusion of preservation: a global environmental argument for the local production of natural resources.” Journal of Biogeography, 29, 1557–1568

Center for Biological Diversity Media Release, “California Withdraws Harmful ‘Carbon Credits for Clearcuts’ Forest Policy.” (http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2010/logging-credits-02-25-2010.html accessed 14 March, 2010)

Dekker-Robertson, Donna L. and William J. Libby. “American Forest Policy: Some Global Ethical Tradeoffs.” BioScience, Volume 48 No. 6

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,  Technical Paper I: Forest Sector (http://www.gcrio.org/ipcc/techrepI/forest.html accessed 14 March, 2010)

McKillop, William. George Goldman, and Susanna Laaksonen-Craig. “Forestry, Forest Industry, and Forest Products Consumption in California.” UC Berkeley, Publication 8070  (http://anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/Forestry/8070.aspx accessed 14 March, 2010)

NASA, Earth Observatory Biography. Svante Arrhenius (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Arrhenius/ accessed 14 March, 2010)