Climate Change

[Matias]

The house my wife and I are building will be about 300 square feet of living space. We have one kid. This one gets the county off our backs, and then I want to build a ~450 square foot earth bag house half buried a la hobbit house. I'll post pix of the plans for the little house later.

It will be nice to have more insulation after 5 years of living in a 224 square foot tent with an out house, out door shower and kitchen for the last 5 years.

 

[data farm 26]

If you haven't seen it, the person that invented the akimbo climbing device has a thread on "the treehouse" website called 'my dirt bag cabin.' Great thread with photos, you might enjoy checking it out.

 

[ATH]

I'm glad they are making an effort, I just can't help but think that unless we can grow trees to maturity faster than laps around the sun, I'm pretty sure the trees are disappearing faster than they are growing. I'm not arguing. I don't know the answer.

Whether measuring numbers or trees or volume of timber, the United States grows more than harvested. Growing almost 2x as much volume as harvesting. In Ohio, all species except White oak growth exceeds harvest. Whiskey barrels play a big part of that...

 

[ATH]

......
@ATH may disagree with me on this point, as we have talked about it in the past, but it is my contention that the U.S. Forest Service is the biggest culprit of environmental damage with regard to forests. At least here in Minnesota and the Chippewa National Forest. They keep clearing what I call woods and planting rows of Red Pines. Corn rows of Red Pine. What was once a diversified forest is now farmed Red Pine trees. That or Big Toothed Aspen that they don't have to replant when clear cut because it just regens. Red Pine farming and clear cut Aspen is what most of the Chippewa National Forest has become.
...

I don't disagree with most of that.

IIRC, our disagreement is that I think IF the USFS holds land, that should be used to meet their original purpose for existence which includes providing timber products. If they aren't going to harvest timber, IMHO, the USFS shouldn't hold land except perhaps some small tracks for research.

Where I do agree is that they should not be converting natural forest covers to single species plantations. (I don't call those monocultures, because they aren't like a corn field where there is truly nothing else growing. In most pine plantations (though, I am not familiar with the Chippewa NF), there is a lot of diversity in the understory.). Anyhow...yeah, the idea of forest conversion seems like an idea of the past. I'm OK with areas that were converted in the past being maintained as plantation, but I my opinion, I agree we don't need to be converting more. Especially USFS land.

Big-tooth aspen...some of that management is important for early successional species - for example Ruffed grouse. But there are a lot of animals that need that habitat type. If you look at the migratory song birds in decline, many of those are species that rely on early succession forests. There aren't many left. Again, not knowing the Chippewa National Forest, I'm not going to pretend whether I know that is their management goal or not.

 

[Shadowscape]

I don't disagree with most of that.

IIRC, our disagreement is that I think IF the USFS holds land, that should be used to meet their original purpose for existence which includes providing timber products. If they aren't going to harvest timber, IMHO, the USFS shouldn't hold land except perhaps some small tracks for research.

Where I do agree is that they should not be converting natural forest covers to single species plantations. (I don't call those monocultures, because they aren't like a corn field where there is truly nothing else growing. In most pine plantations (though, I am not familiar with the Chippewa NF), there is a lot of diversity in the understory.). Anyhow...yeah, the idea of forest conversion seems like an idea of the past. I'm OK with areas that were converted in the past being maintained as plantation, but I my opinion, I agree we don't need to be converting more. Especially USFS land.

Big-tooth aspen...some of that management is important for early successional species - for example Ruffed grouse. But there are a lot of animals that need that habitat type. If you look at the migratory song birds in decline, many of those are species that rely on early succession forests. There aren't many left. Again, not knowing the Chippewa National Forest, I'm not going to pretend whether I know that is their management goal or not.

I will relay this one story on the Chippewa National Forest. Your song birds pulled it out of my memory.
I was given a copy of the year long plan for the Chippewa National Forest a few years ago. As I sat and read it at home, it had a section on the song bird habitat. It had a section on Goshawk habitat, (Goshawks main diet is song birds) and it seemed like one was fighting the other. But I moved on. When I got to the section on study of the forest floor, that was where I got to wondering what idiots put this plan together. It said, and I am not kidding one bit, after a careful study the Chippewa National Forest floor was short fallen logs, and they will import 3 (Yep that is three) logs from California to place on the forest floor of the 670,000 acre Chippewa National Forest. That was when I marched into the head office of the Chippewa National Forest and slammed the copy of their year proposal on the desk of the supervisor and asked if he was a total idiot. He was, and is no longer there, but his stupidity carries on.

 

[ATH]

I'm not saying that wasn't idiotic...but sometimes people follow policy long enough with little regard for budget, something like that finds some weird justification. For example, perhaps the logs needed to be over a certain diameter, sourced from an FSC-certified forest (there are relatively few in the US), and from a limited list of species. They may have gotten so determined that the logs were a good idea, they forgot to apply logic when sourcing the logs???

Not defending the plan...by any stretch! just pointing out that to many bad policies lead to bad decisions to stay within those parameters...especially when you are spending somebody else's money.