What is going on with Rush Limbaugh?

[1bad65]

My favorite Democrat is John Edwards. You gotta admire the sheer audacity of the multi-millionaire trial lawyer who literally lives in the most expensive home in his county, yet runs as the champion of the 'common man'.

[boshea]

Well actually he was citing scientific fact. One of the reasons there are more trees in "America" than there were when the nation was founded is because we have fire control now. In the past fires burned until they burned themselves out.

I have not heard his discussion on this, so take what I am about to say with a grain of salt.

I wonder if Rush was talking about absolute numbers of trees, vs. old growth trees. There may in fact be many more trees today than there were when the nation was founded, but if they are mostly just saplings, then it's not really an apples-to-apples comparison. I don't know, maybe a zillion saplings are more beneficial to the environment than a few old growth trees, but my instinct is to doubt that (old growth forests also prevent erosion and provide habitats for more species, for example). Just my thoughts.

[RD'S Alias - 1A]

How can we have more trees when VAST geographic areas that used to be tree covered are now covered on concrete, buildings and lawns?

[BoulderDawg]

My favorite Democrat is John Edwards. You gotta admire the sheer audacity of the multi-millionaire trial lawyer who literally lives in the most expensive home in his county, yet runs as the champion of the 'common man'.

To be honest I could really care less who wins. However I do like to gossip and BS about the politicians.

I personally think Edwards is a decent man. President?....I don't know. But I do think his biggest mistake was quiting the senate to run for president. I never understood why he did that. I think it's the biggest thing that is hurting him.....in second place is his wife's big mouth!

[1bad65]

Well the stuff I said is fact. He was a trial lawyer and he made millions doing it. According to tax records, which are public, his house is the most expensive in his county.

I never said he was not decent. I just said it's audacious to be a muti-millionaire and live in a mansion and portray yourself as the champion for the 'common man'.

[boshea]

How can we have more trees when VAST geographic areas that used to be tree covered are now covered on concrete, buildings and lawns?

First, I am not claiming that Limbaugh's statement is true or false, I am only posing a possible explanation for why that figure might be true.

So to elaborate since you asked, some trees such as redwoods dominate their environments by blocking sunlight with their canopies, and covering the ground with fallen leaves and branches, blocking out sunlight for seedlings of other plants. This limits the total number of trees that can compete for sunlight in such a forest.

Limbaugh's statement may be considering trees in orchards and plantations, which contain many small trees per acre. You could clear-cut an old growth forest and turn it into apple orchards, and there might be many more individual trees per acre than the forest had, but much less total volume of living tree mass. So the figure that Limbaugh quoted is probably not an apples-to-apples comparison (no pun intended). There are certainly not as many old growth redwoods in the US as there were at the time of the founding of the nation. So in my mind, that statement is a bit misleading, and probably not relevant from a conservationist perspective.

[RD'S Alias - 1A]

Even if you count tree farms, you are still growing trees on the same plots of land.

How is that going to compare to all the land converted from forest to paved concrete and buildings? What about all the lawns that once were ground for trees?

Think about how huge the city and Suburbs are in just NY, Chicago and L.A.?

Now add that to EVERY major city, and little town, and everything in between? We are talking billions of acres converted to concrete.

No way a tree farm can make up for that, especially considering the tree farms are on the same ground as the original forest in the first place.

[1bad65]

It's not just the tree farms. The fact that humans can now fight forest fires rather than letting them burn out is a huge factor. It's only in the last 50 or so years we've had helicopters able to fight fires from the air. The Valley area in Southern California is notorious for those big fires. Most are not started by man. But now we have alot more tools to fight the fires and thus they burn alot less trees.

Technology has also given us ways to fight diseases that destroy trees also. We have better fertilizers to help them grow.

[RD'S Alias - 1A]

Wrong, fighting fires causes the excessive buildup of underbrush (Fuel for HUGE fires), that is normally kept to a controllable level by periodic forest fires.

Back before we faught fires, the underbrush did not build up so there just was not enough fuel to make these huge tree killing fires. Fires were small, and just singed the bottom of the tree, never killing them like they do now. Threy were just a treat to property and homes and such.

Fire is actually important because the heat would burst pine cone (like popcorn) spreading the seeds out.

Today because of the huge build up of underbuish due to fire fighting we are seeing mega fires that not only kill the trees, but they destroy the seeds too.

So fire fighting has actually killed MORE trees by preventing regular and periodic fires from keeping the underbrush under control.

To simplify it,

More frequent fires means less under brush becasue it is burned off before it builds to any appreciable level. This equals smaller fires that are actually helpfull to the trees because they burst the pine cones like popcorn so they spread thier seeds.

Firefighting means the normal fires are put out before they have a chance to do thier job and clean the forest floor of under brush, so it builds, and builds until there is an over abundance off underbrush to fuel super mega fires. When we do get fires now, they are astronomically huge to the point where they destroy the trees, and the pine cones so no seed gets spread.

This equals major tree destruction where in the past smaller fires actually helped trees because they were big enough to pop the pine cones, but not big enough to actually harm a living tree.

[boshea]

Even if you count tree farms, you are still growing trees on the same plots of land.

Yes, but if you had read all of what I wrote, you would see that I was suggesting that orchards might have more individual trees per acre on average than forests, which would mean that converting a forest into an orchard would result in more trees, accounting for Limbaugh's statement (but not being really all that meaningful a figure). However, 1bad65 is saying that this is not the main contributor, and that forest fire prevention is.

I have heard that periodic fires are a natural part of the lifecycle of a forest, but I don't have any figures showing how forest fire prevention has affected the total number of trees, or health of the forests in general. RD and 1bad65, can you two point us at some references for your claims?

[boshea]

Interesting discussion here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defores...#United_States

[1bad65]

Underbrush is a factor. It makes it easier for fires to start and helps them burn hotter and spread faster. The problem is that many of these knee-jerk environmentalist laws passed made it harder to get rid of underbrush. In their rush to save the environment, the environmentalits and the lawmakers who listened to them, actually passed laws DETRIMENTAL to the environment.

[RD'S Alias - 1A]

Agreed.

If they were to just let them burn, trees would not die because the underbrush would get cleaned out in a timely manor. There just would not be enough fuel for trees to be destroyed in the fires.

Of course rich mansions that are far less fire resistant than the trees would then go up in smoke....and God forbid we have that...

[KC Elbows]

Agreed.

If they were to just let them burn, trees would not die because the underbrush would get cleaned out in a timely manor. There just would not be enough fuel for trees to be destroyed in the fires.

Not to mention that a large number of those trees' seeds require fire to open and take root.

I'm somewhat dubious on the saplings making up the difference idea, though I know Boshea is simply suggesting this as an explanation of a possible context it was brought up in. Any of the really big evergreens, especially those in more mountainous terrains, grow there because they can survive on the poor, washed out soil of a mountainside. I'm pretty sure few of the saplings we plant are the same kind of trees; once such trees are completely cleared from their habitat, there is a long cycle of other plants that must take root there and recreate good conditions for the return of the big boys. It's also important to point out that a lot of mountains cleared this way are turned into ski slopes, meaning that land is again, not available for planting.

Which is all pointless, since there was no such thing as a survey of American forests at the founding of our country, and relatively little of it done a hundred years later. Hell, the Lewis and Clarke expedition, an important early event in US natural science, was not in the least important for actually contributing hard data for scientists, botanists or otherwise, to work with, as, until a bit later, most of this work was done by amateurs who didn't really know what they were doing.

[RD'S Alias - 1A]

We know what was there at the turn of the century though.