Tree Planting Tips

A while ago I asked, “What’s wrong with this picture of two women planting a tree?”

The tree planting is part of an Odwalla promotion. Odwalla is donating $1 per click toward the purchase of trees for planting in a state parks in one of eleven states (including California). I’d like to see them expand their horizons, still it’s a noble effort.

However, if the trees are planted as shown in the picture I would guess that no trees will survive a year.

Why? Because, they’re planting in dry soil on a warm day. Seedlings like cool and moist. A drizzly day in early spring with snow still in places is nearly ideal.

The Green Loss Effect

Policymakers must address the influence of global deforestation and urbanization on climate change, in addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, according to Georgia Tech’s City and Regional Planning Professor Brian Stone in an upcoming paper to be published in the December edition of Environmental Science and Technology.

“The role of land use in global warming is the most important climate-related story that has not been widely covered in the media. ”… “Across the U.S. as a whole, approximately 50 percent of the warming that has occurred since 1950 is due to land use changes (usually in the form of clearing forest for crops or cities) rather than to the emission of greenhouse gases,” said Stone.  “Most large U.S. cities, including Atlanta, are warming at more than twice the rate of the planet as a whole – a rate that is mostly attributable to land use change.  As a result, emissions reduction programs – like the cap and trade program under consideration by the U.S. Congress – may not sufficiently slow climate change in large cities where most people live and where land use change is the dominant driver of warming.”

According to Stone’s research, slowing the rate of forest loss around the world, and regenerating forests where lost, could significantly slow the pace of global warming.

Stone recommends slowing what he terms the “green loss effect” through the planting of millions of trees in urbanized areas and through the protection and regeneration of global forests outside of urbanized regions.  Forested areas provide the combined benefits of directly cooling the atmosphere and of absorbing greenhouse gases, leading to additional cooling.  Green architecture in cities, including green roofs and more highly reflective construction materials, would further contribute to a slowing of warming rates.  Stone envisions local and state governments taking the lead in addressing the land use drivers of climate change, while the federal government takes the lead in implementing carbon reduction initiatives, like cap and trade programs.

“As we look to address the climate change issue from a land use perspective, there is a huge opportunity for local and state governments,” said Stone.  “Presently, local government capacity is largely unharnessed in climate management structures under consideration by the U.S. Congress.  Yet local governments possess extensive powers to manage the land use activities in both the urban and rural areas.”

For More Information Contact David Terraso with Georgia Tech Communications and Marketing (404-385-2966)

My thanks to Watts Up With That.

A Tempest in a Toilet Bowl – Environmentalists Say ‘Plush Toilet Paper Wipes Out Forests’

Environmentalists Say Plush Toilet Paper Wipes Out Forests

Does buying soft toilet paper really threaten the environment?

The blogosphere overflows with hyperbole saying it does. “Americans Wipe Their Butts with Non-Renewable Trees,”1 one site trumpeted. Another gushed, “Use recycled toilet paper and paper towels and reduce the demand of destroying virgin forests!”2 I’m sure she meant toilet paper made from recycled paper rather than already-used TP, but despite the fractured syntax her conviction was clear.

The great toilet paper debate has rolled to the frontlines of the mainstream media. Radio, television, and print outlets3 have all reported on the contested consequences of choosing softness over recycled brands.

Everyone quotes Dr. Allen Hershkowitz,4 the Natural Resources Defense Council’s expert on waste, who stated, “People just don’t understand that softness equals ecological destruction.”5 Peabody Award winning journalist John Hockenberry agrees, using typical American toilet paper has “enormous environmental consequences.” 6

Opposing arguments are also awash in over-the-top wording, but generally boil down to: “You can have these super-soft rolls when you pry them from our cold, dead hands! Hooray for Free Market Capitalism; we’ll wipe our pampered tushes with spotted owls if we want to because we can afford it!”

Thus is the debate framed: John Muir versus Adam Smith, environmentalism versus capitalism. Which are we to believe: the recycled-choice set which sounds like a public radio pledge-drive striving to guilt people into changing or the plush-choice side which relies on less-than-perfect market systems to rein in excesses? Neither, we need facts, not a conflated mish-mash of hearsay.

Here are some points to consider:

The production process.

The production of our paper has changed only in speed and scope from its beginnings two thousand years ago in China: make a cellulosic slurry by dissolving the wood’s lignin and hemicellulose binding the wood’s fibers, rinse, spread the pulpy mush over a framed mesh to drain, and dry. 7 The Chinese also invented toilet paper about one thousand years later.8

The source of wood fiber.

We don’t use filet mignon for generic dog food and timber companies don’t use tight grained, knot free wood for low-profit ends. While environmentalists conjure pictures of paper companies hewing virgin forests with majestic trees and then chipping the logs directly into toilet paper, such is not the case. Fully half of the raw material for paper manufacturing comes from mill scraps—sawdust and end pieces that would otherwise be burned or dumped.

So even though the chips used for pulping may come from an older tree, the tree itself was not harvested expressly for paper, its wood went into furniture and dimension lumber. Then the mill sold its waste scraps and sawdust in a secondary market. When the choice for the outcome for this waste sifts down to landfill, burning, converting to ethanol, composting (all which release greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere) or pulping the waste into paper (which binds the cellulose fibers), the choice seems obvious. These scraps have desirable fiber lengths for the pulping process.

Fiber length is an issue because longer fibers make softer paper. Old-growth fiber is not necessarily longer than young-growth. Wood fiber length varies by species and the location on the tree.9 How far the tracheid (fiber) occurs from the center pith and whether it is above or below midway up the tree affects length. Species matters too: A 25-year-old Pinus caribaea has longer fibers (2.34 mm average length)10 than a 50-year-old Eucalyptus regnans (0.80mm average fiber length)11.

A few old trees do not an old-growth forest make.

There is a tendency in the news stories to label second-growth stands established in the 1950’s or 1960’s as “old-growth” because the trees happen to be past an average American’s middle-age. You can see the tendency in the Washington Post piece, “… trees that were decades or even a century [old].”12 To a forester, thinking a quarter-century ahead constitutes short-term planning.

Though what ‘old-growth’ is is a matter of debate, analogous to US Supreme Court Justice Stewart Potter’s definition of pornography as: “I know when I see it.” There is consensus that old-growth refers to a forest stand’s structure and characteristics.13 The University of California’s Cooperative Extension’s definition is: “Trees that have been growing for such a long time that net growth or value is often declining.”14

The effectiveness of choosing recycled over plush.

I applaud the environmental community for heralding the need to curb the demand side of the supply-demand equation. We Americans consume three times as much wood per capita than the world average, we use one-third more paper than the average European, and much of the wood we use is imported. And while the U.S. may lead the paper pack, the rest of the world is at our heels.15

But toilet tissue is the wrong target because only about five percent of our total paper consumption is for toilet paper—about forty pounds per person per year. The remaining 760 pounds per person per year includes packaging, office supplies, books, newspapers, and magazines. 16

One place to cut down is in office use. Due to computers and fast printers, America’s paper consumption skyrocketed from 4.2 million tons to 7 million tons in just three years alone between 1981 and 1984. 17 Obviously, creating fewer copies for distribution in offices will make a greater contribution to lowering our consumption than changing brands of toilet paper.

Finally, much of the toilet paper consumed in the U.S. is for institutional use, and therefore is already from recycled paper (it’s the least expensive). Given all those clarifications, the argument devolves into niggling fussiness.

Follow the Money.

The purpose for the great TP debate may not be the health of the environment, but rather to make you reach for your wallet using the “destruction” of old-growth as the stick. In 2001, Tom Knudson wrote a series in the Sacramento Bee called Environment, Inc., “Competition [among environmental groups] for money and members is keen…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.

Summary

As a forester, I support conserving trees, but I also support using trees. With four decades in the field, I have marked trees for harvest, have seen them cut down, and have planted seedlings in their place. I have watched those seedlings grow more than sixty feet on their way to becoming three or four times that height. Bottom line: Forests replenish with proper stewardship, even slow-growing ones such as Canada’s northern boreal forests.

Let’s manage forests in accordance with scientific principles, not fear, guilt, or romanticism. Our goal must be sustainability and balance. That discussion might be had when we possess the facts. Unfortunately, facts don’t seem to stop this debate, rather than discussing a realistic balance point and how to stay there, we squabble over the non-consequential. Environmentalists should not emulate fundamentalists who only have “no” for an answer.

To learn what to say yes to, I recommend “Natural Capitalism – Creating the Next Industrial Revolution,” by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins. They show how environmental conscience and business sense can work together for a cleaner, greener future.

So change to toilet paper using recycled materials if you wish, but do not think that this choice will slow deforestation. Weigh the arguments critically, looking for those misuses of terms and concepts.

Norm Benson is a Licensed Forester living north of San Francisco. He uses Costco’s store-brand toilet paper.

Notes

[1] Gutierrez, David. “Americans Wipe Their Butts with Non-Renewable Trees,” Natural News Website, July 15, 2009, http://www.naturalnews.com/026627_paper_toilet_paper_forests.html (accessed November 19, 2009)

[2] Lindo, Nancy. “Daily Green Living Tips,” The Green Girls Website, March 24, 2009, http://www.thegreengirls.com/blog/post/2009/03/DAILY-GREEN-LIVING-TIPS.aspx (accessed November 19, 2009)

[3] Fahrenthold, David. “Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper, Soft Toilet Paper’s Hard on the Earth, But Will We Sit for the Alternative?” Washington Post Website, September 24, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/09/23/AR2009092304711.html (accessed November 21, 2009)

Kaufmann, Leslie. “Mr. Whipple Left It Out: Soft Is Rough on Forests,” New York Times Website, February 25, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/science/earth/26charmin.html?_r=1&em (accessed November 19, 2009)

[4] Hershkowitz, Allen. “Will recycled fiber toilet paper become the next compact fluorescent light bulb?” Natural Resources Defense Council Website, February 27, 2009, http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ahershkowitz/will_recycled_fiber_toilet_pap.html (accessed November 19, 2009)

[5] Goldenberg, Suzanne. “American taste for soft toilet roll ‘worse than driving Hummers’,” Guardian UK Website, February 26, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/26/toilet-roll-america (accessed November 19, 2009)

[6] Hockenberry John. “Americans won’t stop squeezing the Charmin, despite the environmental impact,” The Takeaway [Podcast], February 26, 2009, http://www.thetakeaway.org/stories/2009/feb/26/americans-wont-stop-squeezing-charmin-despite-environmental-impact/ (accessed November 19, 2009)

[7]   Hawken, Paul, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, 1999. “Natural Capitalism – Creating the Next Industrial Revolution.”

[8]     “The Paper Project” (http://paperproject.org/paperfacts.html)

[9] Panshin, A. J. and C. De Zeeuw, 1970. “Textbook of wood Technology Volume 1.” Pp 164-245

[10] Oluwafemi, O. A. 2007. “Wood Properties and Selection for Rotation Length in Caribbean Pine (Pinus caribaea Morclet) Grown in Afaka, Nigeria.” pp 350-362

[11] Panshin, A. J. and C. De Zeeuw, 1970. “Textbook of wood Technology Volume 1.” Pp 164-245

[12] Fahrenthold, David. “Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper, Soft Toilet Paper’s Hard on the Earth, But Will We Sit for the Alternative?” Washington Post Website, September 24, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/09/23/AR2009092304711.html (accessed November 19, 2009)

[13] The UN’s Forest and Agriculture Organization has only a list of characteristics that vary between forest types. See “Old-growth forests in Canada – a science perspective.” http://www.fao.org/docrep/article/wfc/xii/0042-b1.htm

[14]         UC Extension

[15] Hawken, Paul, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, 1999. “Natural Capitalism – Creating the Next Industrial Revolution.”

[16]   “The Paper Project” (http://paperproject.org/paperfacts.html)

[17]          Hawken, Paul, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, 1999. “Natural Capitalism – Creating the Next Industrial Revolution.”

A Tempest in a Toilet Bowl – Environmentalists Say 'Plush Toilet Paper Wipes Out Forests'

Environmentalists Say Plush Toilet Paper Wipes Out Forests

Does buying soft toilet paper really threaten the environment?

The blogosphere overflows with hyperbole saying it does. “Americans Wipe Their Butts with Non-Renewable Trees,”1 one site trumpeted. Another gushed, “Use recycled toilet paper and paper towels and reduce the demand of destroying virgin forests!”2 I’m sure she meant toilet paper made from recycled paper rather than already-used TP, but despite the fractured syntax her conviction was clear.

The great toilet paper debate has rolled to the frontlines of the mainstream media. Radio, television, and print outlets3 have all reported on the contested consequences of choosing softness over recycled brands.

Everyone quotes Dr. Allen Hershkowitz,4 the Natural Resources Defense Council’s expert on waste, who stated, “People just don’t understand that softness equals ecological destruction.”5 Peabody Award winning journalist John Hockenberry agrees, using typical American toilet paper has “enormous environmental consequences.” 6

Opposing arguments are also awash in over-the-top wording, but generally boil down to: “You can have these super-soft rolls when you pry them from our cold, dead hands! Hooray for Free Market Capitalism; we’ll wipe our pampered tushes with spotted owls if we want to because we can afford it!”

Thus is the debate framed: John Muir versus Adam Smith, environmentalism versus capitalism. Which are we to believe: the recycled-choice set which sounds like a public radio pledge-drive striving to guilt people into changing or the plush-choice side which relies on less-than-perfect market systems to rein in excesses? Neither, we need facts, not a conflated mish-mash of hearsay.

Here are some points to consider:

The production process.

The production of our paper has changed only in speed and scope from its beginnings two thousand years ago in China: make a cellulosic slurry by dissolving the wood’s lignin and hemicellulose binding the wood’s fibers, rinse, spread the pulpy mush over a framed mesh to drain, and dry. 7 The Chinese also invented toilet paper about one thousand years later.8

The source of wood fiber.

We don’t use filet mignon for generic dog food and timber companies don’t use tight grained, knot free wood for low-profit ends. While environmentalists conjure pictures of paper companies hewing virgin forests with majestic trees and then chipping the logs directly into toilet paper, such is not the case. Fully half of the raw material for paper manufacturing comes from mill scraps—sawdust and end pieces that would otherwise be burned or dumped.

So even though the chips used for pulping may come from an older tree, the tree itself was not harvested expressly for paper, its wood went into furniture and dimension lumber. Then the mill sold its waste scraps and sawdust in a secondary market. When the choice for the outcome for this waste sifts down to landfill, burning, converting to ethanol, composting (all which release greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere) or pulping the waste into paper (which binds the cellulose fibers), the choice seems obvious. These scraps have desirable fiber lengths for the pulping process.

Fiber length is an issue because longer fibers make softer paper. Old-growth fiber is not necessarily longer than young-growth. Wood fiber length varies by species and the location on the tree.9 How far the tracheid (fiber) occurs from the center pith and whether it is above or below midway up the tree affects length. Species matters too: A 25-year-old Pinus caribaea has longer fibers (2.34 mm average length)10 than a 50-year-old Eucalyptus regnans (0.80mm average fiber length)11.

A few old trees do not an old-growth forest make.

There is a tendency in the news stories to label second-growth stands established in the 1950’s or 1960’s as “old-growth” because the trees happen to be past an average American’s middle-age. You can see the tendency in the Washington Post piece, “… trees that were decades or even a century [old].”12 To a forester, thinking a quarter-century ahead constitutes short-term planning.

Though what ‘old-growth’ is is a matter of debate, analogous to US Supreme Court Justice Stewart Potter’s definition of pornography as: “I know when I see it.” There is consensus that old-growth refers to a forest stand’s structure and characteristics.13 The University of California’s Cooperative Extension’s definition is: “Trees that have been growing for such a long time that net growth or value is often declining.”14

The effectiveness of choosing recycled over plush.

I applaud the environmental community for heralding the need to curb the demand side of the supply-demand equation. We Americans consume three times as much wood per capita than the world average, we use one-third more paper than the average European, and much of the wood we use is imported. And while the U.S. may lead the paper pack, the rest of the world is at our heels.15

But toilet tissue is the wrong target because only about five percent of our total paper consumption is for toilet paper—about forty pounds per person per year. The remaining 760 pounds per person per year includes packaging, office supplies, books, newspapers, and magazines. 16

One place to cut down is in office use. Due to computers and fast printers, America’s paper consumption skyrocketed from 4.2 million tons to 7 million tons in just three years alone between 1981 and 1984. 17 Obviously, creating fewer copies for distribution in offices will make a greater contribution to lowering our consumption than changing brands of toilet paper.

Finally, much of the toilet paper consumed in the U.S. is for institutional use, and therefore is already from recycled paper (it’s the least expensive). Given all those clarifications, the argument devolves into niggling fussiness.

Follow the Money.

The purpose for the great TP debate may not be the health of the environment, but rather to make you reach for your wallet using the “destruction” of old-growth as the stick. In 2001, Tom Knudson wrote a series in the Sacramento Bee called Environment, Inc., “Competition [among environmental groups] for money and members is keen…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.

Summary

As a forester, I support conserving trees, but I also support using trees. With four decades in the field, I have marked trees for harvest, have seen them cut down, and have planted seedlings in their place. I have watched those seedlings grow more than sixty feet on their way to becoming three or four times that height. Bottom line: Forests replenish with proper stewardship, even slow-growing ones such as Canada’s northern boreal forests.

Let’s manage forests in accordance with scientific principles, not fear, guilt, or romanticism. Our goal must be sustainability and balance. That discussion might be had when we possess the facts. Unfortunately, facts don’t seem to stop this debate, rather than discussing a realistic balance point and how to stay there, we squabble over the non-consequential. Environmentalists should not emulate fundamentalists who only have “no” for an answer.

To learn what to say yes to, I recommend “Natural Capitalism – Creating the Next Industrial Revolution,” by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins. They show how environmental conscience and business sense can work together for a cleaner, greener future.

So change to toilet paper using recycled materials if you wish, but do not think that this choice will slow deforestation. Weigh the arguments critically, looking for those misuses of terms and concepts.

Norm Benson is a Licensed Forester living north of San Francisco. He uses Costco’s store-brand toilet paper.

Notes

[1] Gutierrez, David. “Americans Wipe Their Butts with Non-Renewable Trees,” Natural News Website, July 15, 2009, http://www.naturalnews.com/026627_paper_toilet_paper_forests.html (accessed November 19, 2009)

[2] Lindo, Nancy. “Daily Green Living Tips,” The Green Girls Website, March 24, 2009, http://www.thegreengirls.com/blog/post/2009/03/DAILY-GREEN-LIVING-TIPS.aspx (accessed November 19, 2009)

[3] Fahrenthold, David. “Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper, Soft Toilet Paper’s Hard on the Earth, But Will We Sit for the Alternative?” Washington Post Website, September 24, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/09/23/AR2009092304711.html (accessed November 21, 2009)

Kaufmann, Leslie. “Mr. Whipple Left It Out: Soft Is Rough on Forests,” New York Times Website, February 25, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/science/earth/26charmin.html?_r=1&em (accessed November 19, 2009)

[4] Hershkowitz, Allen. “Will recycled fiber toilet paper become the next compact fluorescent light bulb?” Natural Resources Defense Council Website, February 27, 2009, http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ahershkowitz/will_recycled_fiber_toilet_pap.html (accessed November 19, 2009)

[5] Goldenberg, Suzanne. “American taste for soft toilet roll ‘worse than driving Hummers’,” Guardian UK Website, February 26, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/26/toilet-roll-america (accessed November 19, 2009)

[6] Hockenberry John. “Americans won’t stop squeezing the Charmin, despite the environmental impact,” The Takeaway [Podcast], February 26, 2009, http://www.thetakeaway.org/stories/2009/feb/26/americans-wont-stop-squeezing-charmin-despite-environmental-impact/ (accessed November 19, 2009)

[7]   Hawken, Paul, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, 1999. “Natural Capitalism – Creating the Next Industrial Revolution.”

[8]     “The Paper Project” (http://paperproject.org/paperfacts.html)

[9] Panshin, A. J. and C. De Zeeuw, 1970. “Textbook of wood Technology Volume 1.” Pp 164-245

[10] Oluwafemi, O. A. 2007. “Wood Properties and Selection for Rotation Length in Caribbean Pine (Pinus caribaea Morclet) Grown in Afaka, Nigeria.” pp 350-362

[11] Panshin, A. J. and C. De Zeeuw, 1970. “Textbook of wood Technology Volume 1.” Pp 164-245

[12] Fahrenthold, David. “Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper, Soft Toilet Paper’s Hard on the Earth, But Will We Sit for the Alternative?” Washington Post Website, September 24, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/09/23/AR2009092304711.html (accessed November 19, 2009)

[13] The UN’s Forest and Agriculture Organization has only a list of characteristics that vary between forest types. See “Old-growth forests in Canada – a science perspective.” http://www.fao.org/docrep/article/wfc/xii/0042-b1.htm

[14]         UC Extension

[15] Hawken, Paul, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, 1999. “Natural Capitalism – Creating the Next Industrial Revolution.”

[16]   “The Paper Project” (http://paperproject.org/paperfacts.html)

[17]          Hawken, Paul, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, 1999. “Natural Capitalism – Creating the Next Industrial Revolution.”

Occam’s Razor and the Former Snows of Kilimanjaro

Occam’s Razor is often interpreted as “the least complicated answer is usually right.”

The Huffington Post has a post blaming global warming for the loss of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro. “The increase of Earth’s near surface temperatures, coupled with even greater increases in the mid- to upper-tropical troposphere, as documented in recent decades, would at least partially explain” the observations. The research, led by paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University, was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Maybe global warming is not the cause of the snow loss.  A paleoclimatologist will look at problems from a point of view that may not see other possibilities. (When you’re a hammer every problem looks like a nail.) According to at least two peer reviewed studies,  other researchers have put forward a more prosaic reason for Kilimanjaro ice going bye-bye: deforestation.

“Studies show local climate in mountain regions are impacted by deforestation at upwind locations….While the prior investigations have focused on the effect of low land deforestation on Tropical Montane Cloud Forests, low land deforestation also has the potential to impact alpine glaciers.” — Impact of Upwind Land Cover Change on Mount Kilimanjaro

Another group of researchers noted the same root cause:

“Deforestation of the mountain’s foothills is the most likely culprit because without forests there is too much evaporation of humidity into outer space. The result is that moisture-laden winds blowing across those forests have become drier and drier.” — Nicholas Pepin of Britain’s Portsmouth University

Read the Guardian article

It’s worth noting again that deforestation is the opposite of forest harvesting: the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) defines deforestation as “the conversion of forest to another land use or the long-term reduction of tree canopy cover … Deforestation implies the long-term or permanent loss of forest cover. Such a loss can only be caused and maintained through a continued man-induced or natural perturbation.” (World Forest Resource Assessment in 2000, On Definitions Of Forest And Forest Change). [emphasis added]

Occam's Razor and the Former Snows of Kilimanjaro

Occam’s Razor is often interpreted as “the least complicated answer is usally right.”

The Huffington Post has a post blaming global warming for the loss of snow on Mount Kilimanja. “The increase of Earth’s near surface temperatures, coupled with even greater increases in the mid- to upper-tropical troposphere, as documented in recent decades, would at least partially explain” the observations. The research, led by paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University, was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Maybe global warming is not the cause of the snow loss.  A paleoclimatologist will look at problems from a point of view that may not see other possibilities. (When you’re a hammer every problem looks like a nail.) According to at least two peer reviewed studies,  other researchers have put forward a more prosaic reason for Kilimanjaro ice going bye-bye: deforestation.

“Studies show local climate in mountain regions are impacted by deforestation at upwind locations….While the prior investigations have focused on the effect of low land deforestation on Tropical Montane Cloud Forests, low land deforestation also has the potential to impact alpine glaciers.” — Impact of Upwind Land Cover Change on Mount Kilimanjaro

Another group of researchers noted the same root cause:

“Deforestation of the mountain’s foothills is the most likely culprit because without forests there is too much evaporation of humidity into outer space. The result is that moisture-laden winds blowing across those forests have become drier and drier.” — Nicholas Pepin of Britain’s Portsmouth University

Read the Guardian article

It’s worth noting again that deforestation is the opposite of forest harvesting: the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) defines deforestation as “the conversion of forest to another land use or the long-term reduction of tree canopy cover … Deforestation implies the long-term or permanent loss of forest cover. Such a loss can only be caused and maintained through a continued man-induced or natural perturbation.” (World Forest Resource Assessment in 2000, On Definitions Of Forest And Forest Change). [emphasis added]

WWF Sweden says stopping deforestation helps to slow climate change

Note that I fundamentally agree with the World Wildlife Fund of Sweden:

“Sweden should follow the examples set by its northern neighbors in developing systems to halt deforestation…Stemming deforestation is one of the most efficient tools we have to slow down climate change.”

– WWF CEO General Lasse Gustavsson

It’s worth noting that deforestation does not equal timber cutting (not even clearcutting counts)

The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) defines deforestation as “the conversion of forest to another land use or the long-term reduction of tree canopy cover below the 10% threshold … Deforestation implies the long-term or permanent loss of forest cover. Such a loss can only be caused and maintained through a continued man-induced or natural perturbation.” (World Forest Resource Assessment in 2000, On Definitions Of Forest And Forest Change). [Italics added]

You can read the full news release here: WWF Sweden.

Six Reasons Why Fancy TP is No Big Deal

Well, an article in the October 2, 2009 issue of The Week caught my attention. It’s titled “Soft toilet paper: Environmental threat?” If you’re not familiar with The Week, it draws from multiple sources to give an idea of the news and opinions currently filling newspapers, magazines, and our airwaves.

One of the sources quoted is David Fahrenthold in The Washington Post. In his article, Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper he writes:

Environmental groups say … [using soft toilet paper constitutes a] dark-comedy example of American excess … [because] plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old.

Faithful Timberati readers know I’ve written about this tempest in a toilet bowl before (see Toilet paper, hummers, and global warming oh my!).

1. Old-growth trees are not cut down to be made into paper … tissue or otherwise.

My reading of this kerfuffle is that people seem to think paper companies hew massively majestic over-mature trees to be chipped directly into paper. Such is not the case. Tight grained, knot free wood does not go for such low-profit ends. That is akin to using filet mignon for generic dog food.

“[Fifteen] percent of the wood harvested is used to manufacture pulp and paper mainly for printing, packaging, and sanitary purposes. Fully half of this wood is derived from the wastes from the sawmills which produce the solid wood products for building. Most of the remaining supply is from tree plantations many of which are established on land that was previously cleared for agriculture. So even if we did stop using wood to make pulp and paper it would not have the effect of ‘saving’ many forests.”

— Co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore

So while the chips used for pulping may come from an over-mature tree, the tree itself was not harvested expressly for paper; its wood went into furniture and dimension lumber. Then the end-pieces and sawdust from the mill went to the secondary market for pulping.

2. Fiber length hinges more on species than on age.

Fiber length is an issue because longer fibers make softer paper. David Frielander at Treehugger.com says that paper companies use old growth because, “Old growth and virgin fibers are longer than recycled ones.”  This is true as far as it goes. True, tracheid cells (the fibers) increase with age, yet the species and even the cell’s position on the tree factor much more in the final result.1 (to read David Frielander’s post see Plush Toilet Paper: Soft on Your Butt, Hard on the Environment)

Within every tree are fibers of differing length, some shorter than average for their species and some longer than average for their species; it all depends on the position in the tree. A 25 year-old Pinus caribaea has longer tracheids (2.34 mm average fiber length)2 than a 50 year-old Eucalyptus regnans (0.80mm average fiber length).3


3. It’s a safe bet virgin fibers didn’t come from virgin tracts.

Virgin fibers are fibers that have not yet seen their first pulping process. Yes, virgin fibers average longer than recycled ones. That’s because recycling breaks fibers during the process of making new paper. But “virgin fiber” is not synonymous with fibers from primary forests4 and it’s definitely not synonymous with “old growth” (see the point above). Virgin fiber, as far as the paper process is concerned, is that fiber coming directly from a cellulose producing plant.

4. Fibers from old trees doesn’t necessarily equal old-growth.

There seems to be a trend to label second-growth and even third-growth stands as “old growth” because they happen to past middle age for the average American. You can see such a conflation in David Fahrenthold’s Washington Post piece, “… trees that were decades or even a century.” Up to a century is not terribly long in most forestry circles (New Zealand being a notable exception). You might say, foresters think in quarter centuries not quarters.

The University of California’s Cooperative Extension defines old-growth as “Trees that have been growing for such a long time that net growth or value is often declining.” Therefore, old-growth forest stands are so old they have numerous afflictions: rots, dead trees, broken tops, fire scars, etc. Yet, for purposes of pulping, older just means no longer a sapling.

For more information on old-growth forests see Old Growth Forests and Ancient Woodlands.

5. There is more variation between species than between over-mature and young-growth trees.

As you have read, not all trees have the same properties, partly because fiber length varies by species and partly the fact tracheid length varies by the location on the bole: whether it’s in the circumference and whether it’s above or below midway up the tree.

6. It’s okay, tissue paper accounts for only five-percent of the forest products market.

As noted before here, most of the material, in fact fully half, comes from scraps in the milling process not useable for higher end uses: sawdust and end pieces. The rest usually comes from tree plantations. I wonder if any of the quibblers are in bed with Big Bidet?


Summary

Facts won’t stop this debate and that’s unfortunate. Our goal should be sustainability and a balance. And rather than consider and discuss the balance point and how to stay there, we  hear quibbles about truly weird sh*t.

Literature cited

1. Source: Panshin, A. J., De Zeeuw, C. 1970. Textbook of wood Technology Volume 1. Pp 164-245

2. Source: Oluwafemi, O. A. 2007. Wood Properties and Selection for Rotation Length in Caribbean Pine (Pinus caribaea Morclet) Grown in Afaka, Nigeria. Pp 350-362

3. Source: Panshin, A. J., De Zeeuw, C. 1970. Textbook of wood Technology Volume 1. Pp 164-245

4. “Forest/Other wooded land of native species, where there are no clearly visible indications of human activities and the ecological processes are not significantly disturbed.” United Nations, Food And Agriculture Organization.