The assembly line where (primarily) men pull green lumber off the conveyor and stack into piles for drying. Each puller will have a given size and quality assigned to him for removal from the green chain. The work is physically demanding because green lumber weighs much more than the dried version.
According to US Forest Service (1919) Technical Note B15 Average weights of various species of wood, a cubic foot of conifer (pines, firs, larches, cedars, etc.) will weigh between 25-55 pounds. An 8 foot 2×4 contains around 5 cubic-feet. There are 7.48 gallons per cubic-foot. So an 8 foot 2×4 could hold 35 gallons. If the two by four is only one-quarter water, thats about seventy pounds (plus the weight of the wood).This puts an 8 foot 2″x4″ piece of wood between 125 and 275 pounds.
I put in a full day pulling green chain.
See a mill and real green chain here:
The Green Chain is also the name of a Canadian movie. I love the tag line and wished I’d used it first, “Nothing is ever clear cut.”
The assembly line where (primarily) men pull green lumber off the conveyor and stack into piles for drying. Each puller will have a given size and quality assigned to him for removal from the green chain. The work is physically demanding because green lumber weighs much more than the dried version.
According to US Forest Service (1919) Technical Note B15 Average weights of various species of wood, a cubic foot of conifer (pines, firs, larches, cedars, etc.) will weigh between 25-55 pounds. An 8 foot 2×4 contains around 5 cubic-feet. There are 7.48 gallons per cubic-foot. So an 8 foot 2×4 could hold 35 gallons. If the two by four is only one-quarter water, thats about seventy pounds (plus the weight of the wood).This puts an 8 foot 2″x4″ piece of wood between 125 and 275 pounds.
I put in a full day pulling green chain.
See a mill and real green chain here:
The Green Chain is also the name of a Canadian movie. I love the tag line and wished I’d used it first, “Nothing is ever clear cut.”
People have used the properties of wood for music for plenty of millennia: percussion, acoustic, wind. Now electronic has merged with organic.
Joel Scilley, the owner of Audiowood has a goal “to sell products with eco-credentials including low-power and efficient amplifiers, and products made from sustainable and recycled materials.” The turntables “usually use the Origin Live DC motor controller and quality bearings.” Scilley with a PhD in media studies from Pitt wants to be “America’s premier builder of burlwood turntables!”
If you are in the Bay Area today (Saturday, March 14, 4-8 p.m.), he’s having an Opening Reception at FiveTen Studio831 Broadway
Oakland, CA 94607. phone – (510) 451-9900
That’s the number of jobs the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said that investing in sustainable forest management could create worldwide.
According to a recent study by the International Labour Organization, unemployment worldwide could increase from 179 million in 2007 to 198 million in 2009, it could go as high as 230 million.
“As more jobs are lost due to the current economic downturn, sustainable forest management could become a means of creating millions of green jobs, thus helping to reduce poverty and improve the environment,” says Jan Heino, Assistant Director-General of FAO’s Forestry Department.
The main thrust of World Forest Week, March 16-20 in Rome will be meeting society’s changing demand for forest-derived goods and services through improved forest management. Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy on Climate Change, will deliver the keynote address, stressing the critical role of forests in society’s response to the challenges posed by climate change. The meeting takes place against the backdrop of an unprecedented global economic crisis. A crisis, which has also severely affected the forest sector.
Improved forest management and new tree planting could significantly reduce the downward trend in forest cover in many countries, thereby reducing carbon emissions from land-use change. According to the FAO, improved forest management has the potential to “have a larger positive impact on climate change than any other initiative currently being planned or considered by world leaders.”
Watch him speak in this TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) video. Be careful, if you keep your computer in your lap hold onto it because you will want to give him a standing ovation at the end.
California Uses Internet ‘Wiki’ to Develop California’s Green Chemistry Regulations
At the end of January, California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) launched a “wiki” to gather comment for development of ‘Green Chemistry’ regulations. Wikis, such as Wikipedia.org, allow anyone to contribute or modify content using simple on-line tools. Regulations flesh a bill’s intent and set metrics for compliance, in this case for the Green Chemistry bills signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger in September 2008.
These new laws require DTSC to develop a comprehensive approach for assessing potential hazards from chemicals in consumer products and for finding safer alternatives for harmful chemicals used in those products and in the manufacturing processes of goods sold in California.
In typical news-release speak DTSC Director Maureen Gorsen said:
“This wiki brings transparency to our rule-making process blah, blah, blah [and will] help us blah, blah, blah to [begin] designing less toxic products from the start.”
The California Green Chemistry Initiative wants to:
• Expand pollution prevention programs
• Develop green chemistry workforce education and training
• Create an online product ingredient network
• Create an online toxic clearinghouse
• Accelerate the quest for safer products
• Move toward a “cradle-to-cradle” economy
A pieceworker paid at a rate per thousand board feet.
Now a bushel is an outmoded unit of grain equal to four pecks or thirty-two dry quarts. It’s measured in a cylindrical vessel, eighteen and a half inches in diameter, and eight inches deep. According to one source the term bushel dates back to the early fourteenth century when King Edward I defined the bushel as eight gallons. The American colonies formally adopted the measure in 1696.
How bushel came into English is not certain. Charles Hodson, author of Global Wording, says at Podictionary that bushel came to England with William the Conqueror in the eleventh century. Since William came from Normandy he spoke French. According to one source I checked the old French word for bushel is boissel, which then would link it back to Latin. I’m not able to know for sure but I think that it means “box” since the Latin word for the box wood tree is buxus. The term buxom also comes from Latin word an article made from the box wood tree, buxum; “She’s built like a wooden box” just doesn’t do it for me.
English being the word scavenger that it is, has another meaning for bushel as a verb. Merriam-Webster’s on the web says the etymology of busheler is “probably from German bosseln to do odd jobs, poor work, to patch; akin to Old English beatan “to beat.” This goes well with another definition of busheler (or “Bushelman”) as a tailor’s assistant for repairing garments.
A pieceworker paid at a rate per thousand board feet.
Now a bushel is an outmoded unit of grain equal to four pecks or thirty-two dry quarts. It’s measured in a cylindrical vessel, eighteen and a half inches in diameter, and eight inches deep. According to one source the term bushel dates back to the early fourteenth century when King Edward I defined the bushel as eight gallons. The American colonies formally adopted the measure in 1696.
How bushel came into English is not certain. Charles Hodson, author of Global Wording, says at Podictionary that bushel came to England with William the Conqueror in the eleventh century. Since William came from Normandy he spoke French. According to one source I checked the old French word for bushel is boissel, which then would link it back to Latin. I’m not able to know for sure but I think that it means “box” since the Latin word for the box wood tree is buxus. The term buxom also comes from Latin word an article made from the box wood tree, buxum; “She’s built like a wooden box” just doesn’t do it for me.
English being the word scavenger that it is, has another meaning for bushel as a verb. Merriam-Webster’s on the web says the etymology of busheler is “probably from German bosseln to do odd jobs, poor work, to patch; akin to Old English beatan “to beat.” This goes well with another definition of busheler (or “Bushelman”) as a tailor’s assistant for repairing garments.
A month ago I wrote here about Stephen Colbert and his Alpha Dog of the Week award to the Boy Scouts of America for Chain Saw Scouting. He finished the award with, “… [the Boy Scouts] will have to start a fire using the apparent friction between what they say and what they do.”
I commented at ColbertNation.com with “A wag of my finger for confusing preservation with conservation…We should not simplistically fob off the providing of our country’s wood needs to other countries with low environmental standards and call it conservation. Unless, it’s a good idea to log elsewhere (or mine for the substitutes) and the deforestation of the Amazon is a good thing?”
Heidi Siegelbaum of Marketplace’s The Greenwash Brigade blog has also wagged her finger at the BSA, “How about reverence for nature as opposed to cash?” Hmm, “A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.” – William James I left a comment. In case they don’t print it, here it is:
Heidi, I completely agree that BSA’s exclusion of gays, atheists, agnostics, and United Way funding runs counter to many of the virtues to which the Boy Scouts aspire. You are right to point out these inconsistencies.
However, as a Registered Professional Forester in California, I take issue with “Intensive timber harvests and development= 34,000 acres of potential conservation learning… poof!… gone.”
Logging does not equal deforestation. 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) The Boy Scouts explicitly said they replanted the areas following logging. There is no “long-term or permanent loss of forest cover,” where that is the case.
I am especially troubled with the conflation of cause and effect that their “Myopic and hateful exclusion [of gays, atheists, agnostics, and United Way funding]” inevitably “leads to clearcutting forests, yet insistence that they are a good land steward.”
Really? Being anti-gay, anti-atheist, anti-agnostic makes one want to clearcut? And in turn, harvesting trees somehow shows the Boy Scouts organization to be poor land stewards?
Along with being an RPF in California, I am an agnostic who I voted for California’s Proposition 8, so, I take issue with your Manichean depiction that clearcutting, a legitimate silvicultural practice, as evil. Trade-offs and gray areas are part of life. As noted, I have my differences with the Boy Scouts, but we should give them credit for wrestling with forest stewardship, rather than simply perpetuating the illusion that wood comes from the lumber yard. Greenpeace co-founder, Patrick Moore points out, “Wood is the most renewable and sustainable of the major building materials. On all measures comparing the environmental effects of common building materials, wood has the least impact on total energy use, greenhouse gases, air and water pollution, solid waste and ecological resource use.”
I take issue with your statement that state forest regulatory agencies provide “wholly insufficient monitoring and enforcement.” According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer story, “Trees are a renewable resource, said some [Scouting spokespersons], adding that their councils practice only sustainable forestry. … Forestry records uphold such claims in many cases.” So, “many cases” of properly practicing sustainable forestry adds up to “wholly insufficient?” That dozen of their councils “have implemented long-range management plans with assistance from professional foresters to help better manage [their] woodlands,” adds up to “wholly insufficient?”
We should not fob off providing this country’s wood needs to other countries with low environmental standards and call it conservation. That just makes us hypocrites. In fact, I’d say the hypocrisy is on those wagging their fingers at the Boy Scouts:
If we are going to continue using more and more wood, then we have a moral responsibility to grow more wood to meet that demand. By not striving to grow our own wood, we inevitably shift that burden to other nations and regions not able to do it as responsibly and sustainably as we do. That makes us a nation of hypocrites, preaching the virtues of environmental protection while encouraging other nations to disregard those virtues for our benefit. – Jess D. Daniels, Ph.D.
I would hope that you also comment here in favor of America taking responsibility for providing the wood our country’s needs. Logging is no more the prelude to deforestation than the sunrise is. Deforestation is the conversion of forest to another land use.
This is not deforestationThis is what deforestation looks like.
Are e-book readers going to save trees? You're asking the wrong question.
As a forester, I’d wondered about the claims that ebook readers such as the Amazon Kindle or the Sony PRS-700 would save trees and therefore, be better for our environment than a physical book made from like…trees.
I concluded that the question, “Do ereaders save trees?” is not the right question to ask.
Then, I read about our problem with plastic. Plastic hangs around, perhaps for eons. Eventually, something will come along that can feed on PET and PVC but that’s a long way off. Here’s a sobering TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talk by Charles Moore on Sailing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, 270,000 square miles and 100,000,000 tons of plastic floating on the ocean.
My back-of-the-envelope calculation (based on things like the Ecological Rucksack developed by the Danish Friends of the Earth, another estimate from Earthworks, this PBS Frontline report The Toxic Shimmer of Gold, and Robert Moran Ph.D.’s paper on the Chemistry, Toxicity and Analysis of Mining-Related Waters), and Silicon Valley Toxics CoalitionToxics in Electronics that leads me to believe that each Kindle, mobile phone, etc., leave about 100-200 pounds of toxic garbage in its wake. Our carbon footprint is more than CO2, it includes CN (cyanide).
A side note, according to the EPA the metal’s mining industry used 1.5 million pounds of cyanide compounds in 2006. A human’s lethal dose is a teaspoonful of 2% cyanide solution.
It’s these externalities that convinced that we have a cure that is worse than the disease. To his credit, Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos doesn’t claim the Kindle will save any trees. Even if it did save trees, the pollution from the mining, manufacturing, and the disposal of the ewaste and plastic that makes technology something that will make me consider the (total) cost to the benefit. An E-book reader, or just technology in general, is responsible for more pollution than logging of the trees some proponents think it can save. You can look it up.
Are e-book readers going to save trees? You're asking the wrong question.
As a forester, I’d wondered about the claims that ebook readers such as the Amazon Kindle or the Sony PRS-700 would save trees and therefore, be better for our environment than a physical book made from like…trees.
I concluded that the question, “Do ereaders save trees?” is not the right question to ask.
Then, I read about our problem with plastic. Plastic hangs around, perhaps for eons. Eventually, something will come along that can feed on PET and PVC but that’s a long way off. Here’s a sobering TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talk by Charles Moore on Sailing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (I’d embed it but TED videos start immediately and I find that annoying), 270,000 square miles and 100,000,000 tons of plastic floating on the ocean.
My back-of-the-envelope calculation (based on things like the Ecological Rucksack developed by the Danish Friends of the Earth, another estimate from Earthworks, this PBS Frontline report The Toxic Shimmer of Gold, and Robert Moran Ph.D.’s paper on the Chemistry, Toxicity and Analysis of Mining-Related Waters), and Silicon Valley Toxics CoalitionToxics in Electronics that leads me to believe that each Kindle, mobile phone, etc., leave about 100-200 pounds of toxic garbage in its wake. Our carbon footprint is more than CO2, it includes CN (cyanide).
A side note, according to the EPA the metal’s mining industry used 1.5 million pounds of cyanide compounds in 2006. A human’s lethal dose is a teaspoonful of 2% cyanide solution.
It’s these externalities that convinced that we have a cure that is worse than the disease. To his credit, Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos doesn’t claim the Kindle will save any trees. Even if it did save trees, the pollution from the mining, manufacturing, and the disposal of the ewaste and plastic that makes technology something that will make me consider the (total) cost to the benefit. An E-book reader, or just technology in general, is responsible for more pollution than logging of the trees some proponents think it can save. You can look it up.
Nullius in Verba 