Joel notes that the Diamond Match Company sources its wood from responsible forests. Reading this on the package obviously makes the NPR-listening demographic feel better about buying them, since no sequoias were harmed and no Spotted Owls were made homeless to make their firesticks.
My corn last night came from responsible corn fields, too; no old-growth corn was harmed in harvesting it.
As anyone who's driven past miles of Georgia-Pacific loblolly farm knows, cutting down on paper use to Save The Trees is like giving up peas to Save The Vegetables.
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Good point. A Loblolly II pine forest is about as natural as a corn field.
ReplyDeleteSing it with me now-
ReplyDelete"All we are saying...... is give peas a chance....."
:p
We bought some little fruit snacks for my daughters. The brand name is Florida Natural with all sorts of patriotic bunting printed on the packaging.
ReplyDeleteIt's not until you read the fine print that, yes, the product is responsibly made in China.
It baffles me that it's cheaper to grow some of the fruit needed here, ship it over there to have a bunch of Chinese people squeeze it, mix it with other 'organically grown' fruit juices and form it into snacks, then ship it back across a rather large pond of water.
At least it's made by responsible people in China!
All cutting down on paper does is put a bunch of my neighbors out of a job. Paper making is a huge industry around here, and one of the plants closed this year, leaving a good 500 or so people without a job.
ReplyDeletePine plantations are interesting, nothing natural about rows of pine trees.
When the revolutions of 1848 started in Europe, one of the first things some of the peasants in the Rhineland did was attack the Prussian pine plantations and the foresters. After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, when Prussia was granted control over parts of the Rhine Valley, Prussian government foresters went in, chopped down the old deciduous forests with their oak and nut trees and planted pines. This hurt the locals because it eliminated one source of food, specialty and renewable timber and wood, and grazing (especially for swine). Very different from US commercial pine plantations, but an interesting historical quirk.
ReplyDeleteLittleRed1
Pretty much.
ReplyDeleteWood is a cultivated resource, and the Big, Evil, Tree-Raping Companies have been working on increasing their acreage for the future, much to the befuddlement of the Gaia worshippers.
Can't fix stupid.
Maine has some big "pulp lots" too. Yep its no different than growing corn, just the timeline is a little longer.
ReplyDeleteAcres and Acres of white pine all in neat little rows, all the EXACT same age and size. If you walk through it you get the same visual effects of walking through Arlington National Cemetery.
Then they clear cut the whole thing and replant.
Pretty hard to get broken up about it, especially when your ass is in need of wiping!
I laugh at anti-paper people.
ReplyDeleteThey will spend bucks using energy to power their E-Readers and tablets to "Save a tree". Here's a news flash...the tree is going to get cut down anyways, then it will be replanted, regrown, and turned into paper again.
Meanwhile, the electricity used to power your iPad from a coal or gas burning electric plant is not recoverable. Neither is the silicon, nickle, lithium, or platinum used in the components particularly recoverable either. Nor the energy used to transport components from China and Korea to Japan to China to the U.S. to the sales store and from the store to your house.
Last time I checked, paper went to the mill next door and then to the store, a bit less in overall transportation and energy usage.
Save Gaia, kill a tree.
-Rob
Speaking facts to Eco's (rhymes with gecko's) causes them to cover their ears and chant. "La,La,La, I'm not listening."
ReplyDeleteFor what do NPR listeners use matches?
ReplyDeleteThe Diamond Match Company was an early paragon of employee sensitivity and caring! In 1910, after employees of the Diamond Match Company became ill from phosphorus necrosis or phossy jaw (due to inhalation of phosphorus, a major ingredient of matches at the time) the company patented a non-poisonous match made using a chemical called sesquisulfide.
ReplyDeleteOn an dual-sport ride out in the middle of nowhere, we came across the very small, still-inhabited ghost-town of Sterling City - two-streets and one store - up near Oroville, CA where they had chopped down many trees in Teh Past. It was founded by Diamond match company owner Columbus Barber, who had come west seeking wood for his matches and built a lumber mill there up on Paradise ridge...
When we-all showed up - ten guys on dirtbikes, it was the event of the month.
It's even worse for the believers in the religion of anthropogenic global warming (Algorians). Because new-growth forests absorb (and turn into cellulose) somewhere between 5 and 10 times (depending on which study you use) as much carbon dioxide as do old-growth forests, recycling paper will actually INCREASE that dreaded CO2 content.
ReplyDeleteIf you recycle paper, you're reducing the acreage of new-growth that'll absorb that much more CO2. On the other hand, if you use as much paper as possible and make darned sure it goes into a landfill instead of recycling, you can think of it as "carbon sequestration".
So you see, if you REALLY love the planet, you'd be advocating cutting down every old-growth forest on the planet and replacing them with nice, sterile, mono-culture pine plantations.
If you phrase this just right, you can make the warmist's heads explode.
staghounds,
ReplyDelete"For what do NPR listeners use matches?"
Punchline contest!
-To light their organic incense cones.
-To spark up a bowl when you're out of butane.
-To run from, shrieking "Eek! Fire! Carbon footprint!"
-To get the organically-grown charcoal going before grilling dolphin-safe tuna steaks on cedar planks.
-To double-check that the gas tank on the Prius is really empty.
NB: Google spellcheck knows "DeGeneres", but is still baffled by "Prius". All is not yet lost...
ReplyDeleteHow did they teach the trees to feed the dog, clean up their room and not drink milk right out of the carton?
ReplyDeleteMom would like to now because she had little or no luck with her boys.
Gerry
Matches are generally birch, but, as mentioned, there are tree farms in Maine picking up the match-stick slack.
ReplyDeleteNJT,
ReplyDeleteDiamond says their tree farms are in Minnesota, you betcha.
Most any non-diffuse porous lumber will work, is my guess. Beech, birch, maple, sycamore. Eschew the oaks and pines ifn you want to start your own match factory.
ReplyDeleteHolly would make some very white match sticks. If you could secure holly in commercial quantities. Maybe for the custom high-end match market. White stick, black tip with a blood red strike-anywhere section. Think of how many Emos would pay $8 a box for 60 matches to light their clove cigarettes....
If only you could get black flames... ;)
ReplyDeleteThe correct spelling of the Toyota hybrid is "Pious".
ReplyDeleteToothpicks demand equal time on NPR - and benefits!
ReplyDeleteTam,
ReplyDelete@12:08...excuse me while I mop the spittle off of my keyboard.
It's stuff like this that keeps me coming back.
It always confuses me that people still think that paper is made from Wild Old Growth Trees, even here in the Northwest where we can see all these damned tree-farms.
ReplyDeleteOld Growth is far too regulated and far too valuable as lumber to pulp up anything but the scraps.
Boise Cascade isn't turning Pristine Forest into toilet paper. They're turning scraps from logging into TP, but mostly farmed GM cottonwoods or the like.
"For what do NPR listeners use matches?"
ReplyDeleteI don't know about now but they'll need matches for lighting organic tallow candles to keep the angry earth spirits at bay after the downward curve of peak oil meets the 'unexpected' lack of reliable and affordable energy.
No nukes, no coal, no fracking, no Utne reader.
"For what do NPR listeners use matches?"
ReplyDeleteI think Robert wins, but I'll try-
As evidence to convict carbon footprint violators once the Eco-courts get going.
You are now entering the Eco Zone, where logic and reason have no meaning.
ReplyDelete"For what do NPR listeners use matches?"
ReplyDeleteUm, doobies?
I lived in Washington state for a while; it was disconcerting to suddenly come upon a large patch of denuded hillside where ALL the trees were gone and only shattered residue remained. Then I realized the trees wouldn't have been there in the density of the surrounding forest if'n they hadn't been cultivated for wood in the first place. I'm still kinda a wanna-be hippy but I am pragmatic enough to say fck'em, they'll grow back.
ka9vsz(a different Robert)