Monday, February 13, 2012

#OccupyDuke

You can join today's occupation today too!  Tell Duke to stop mountaintop removal by clicking here.

7 comments:

  1. I found this picture from 1865 of an area near where I live. Look at the trees....

    http://sapperton.atspace.com/the_retreat_c1865.jpg

    Weird.

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  2. It won't open for me! :( Can you try again, or email to witsendnj at yahoo? Then I could post it.
    thanks.

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  3. Here is the full site, it is the 5th photo down. http://sapperton.atspace.com/photos.htm

    Those trees look pretty bad, worse than these days even. and today I was looking at a tree planting website with photos from their camp in northern BC from 2011. The trees look perfectly fine. It's really weird. I'm starting to think I really am nuts for believing the trees are all dying.

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  4. Got it. I think with the quality of those pictures, it's impossible to tell. I think the hills look like they have fog in front of the trees in that particular photo.

    But keep in mind several things:

    1. Trees have always died! They are supposed to - just when they are old.

    2. Forests everywhere really have been seriously disrupted by logging. Not only does logging mess up the interconnected ecosystem of the other flora, fauna, and soil microbes and fungus etc., it messes up precipitation patterns.

    3. There have been studies done by actual scientists, not just me, indicating that statistically, after removing the influence of local insects and so forth, forests are in decline. They blame it on drought from climate change - whether it's that or ozone or something else is another issue. But there is no question, the trees are dying.

    4. Every year, trees draw on stored energy to produce new leaves and needles. In the case of evergreens, they shed their inner (longer cumulative exposure) needles so progressively they become thinner on the inside and develop a "tufted" look on their branches.

    5. Check back for the next post - I found some amazing historic pictures of what trees really should look like, for perspective.

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  5. Thanks for the response. It will be nice to see some comparisons so I don't feel like I'm going mad. Here is a site with some pictures from 1990 all the way up to the present, if you're interested.

    http://www.replant.ca/diaries.html

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  6. There are an awful lost of trees with bare branches on this August 2010 set: http://www.replant.ca/photos2010_canada.html
    or for a random example of brown leaves, the one labeled "downtown Edson" with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band sign.

    In this series from 2000 I can't find any dead trees other than those that were cut. It's hard to say without comparing exact trees over time. There is a Dutch man who has been keeping track - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUR7rcot1GY

    Keep in mind, every tree will not die at the exact same minute, anymore than a bunch of people thrown into the ocean will all drown at the same time - there are many factors. The important thing is the trend.

    God, the logging of those huge trees is so horrible.

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  7. Yeah, if you'd like to get a general idea of just how much of B.C. has been logged, go to google maps and zoom out/in a bit on the province, you'll see that pretty much without exception the entire province is a patchwork of clearcuts/replants. I doubt there is much virgin forest left anywhere in this province, with a few exceptions maybe in protected areas of Vancouver Island/Queen charlotte islands. It really sucks.


    I guess another factor with the tree death in the urban areas is that lots of them are removed once they are dead, then its out of site, out of mind and hard to remember how many trees their used to be I suppose.

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