Re: Off Topic: NMD/Environment was: (Re: Ada and the NMD)

[Larry Elmore <ljelmore@home.com>]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> 
> ... When we first came to this
> continent it was covered with forests, except for the Great Plains in the
> middle, which was covered with bison. Forests covered the entire eastern
> seaboard, which is now just one big city from Boston to DC. At the time, the
> forests were just cleaing up all the CO2 the bison were putting out. We replaced
> the bison with domesticated cattle, so there's no net gain there. We cut down a
> lot of the forests, and are still not planting more than we are cutting, so
> there's no net gain there. Then we industrialized and started pumping out
> *extra* CO2 by the ton. Saying that these forests are cleaing up our new CO2,
> when they were cleaning up other CO2 sources (that are still around) before we
> ever got here is just plain silly.

The fact is, there is a great deal more land under forest in America now
than there was 100 years ago. Nor was much of the continent a primeval
forest when the first Europeans landed, though as the plagues reduced
Indian populations by upwards of 90%, much of the land under their care
did rapidly revert to heavily forested wilderness. America was not a
virgin land, but a widowed one.

see:
	http://www.lib.duke.edu/forest/usfscoll/landscapes.htm
	http://www.lib.duke.edu/forest/usfscoll/AmIndian.htm

There's quite a lot more about the subject available, but these are good
introductions.

Larry