Scotland cuts down 16M trees to build wind farms?

[AsylumResident]

end of the world is quite mobil, it has to be they always get it wrong

Didn't Al Gore say the world was going to end in 10 years, back in 2000?

Personally, I'm more of an optimist. I think human beings are really good at messing up a lot of things, but I won't give us enough credit to say we are powerful enough to destroy something as complex and amazing as this planet within about 150 years of fossil fuel burning. And realistically, the heavy use (subjective, I understand) didn't start until 1950ish.

 

[Prometeo]

I just saw a report of products to eliminate weeds before growing wheat, products that pollute (seriously) the food and the waterways, all this has repercussions on health, but people will still want to make money,
also creating fake studies

 

[woodgeek]

So, lets spitball 600 trees per acre, and 640 acres per square mile is 384k trees per square mile. So 16 M trees is like 50 square miles of mature forest clear cut for wind power in Scotland. Sounds like a lot of forest removal in a country without much forest. Weird.

ETA: BG's link says there are 1.4 M hectares = 5400 square miles of forest in Scotland now, most of it regrown in the last 100 years. So if the claim of 50 square miles of forest being cleared for wind is true, it is 1% of the current total, on a rising figure.

 

[AsylumResident]

I just saw a report of products to eliminate weeds before growing wheat, products that pollute (seriously) the food and the waterways, all this has repercussions on health, but people will still want to make money,
also creating fake studies

Fake studies. That's what scares the crap out of me. People have been misleading people since the beginning of time. But now because of how fast information travels (good or bad) around the world and new age of AI, there's really no way to trust what we read.

Who knows, I may be fake. Just an AI generated bot trying to be a real boy.

 

[woodgeek]

Fake studies. That's what scares the crap out of me. People have been misleading people since the beginning of time. But now because of how fast information travels (good or bad) around the world and new age of AI, there's really no way to trust what we read.

Who knows, I may be fake. Just an AI generated bot trying to be a real boy.

While I agree about internet content, is this a problem with peer reviewed scientific studies?

 

[joop]

TELL THAT TO THE SQUIRRELS MAN TO THE SQUIRRELS

 

[gthomas785]

While I agree about internet content, is this a problem with peer reviewed scientific studies?

Based on my own experience in research, plenty of dubious and/or falsified results make it through peer review. That's why you need an extensive literature review and not just a single citation to back up a claim.

 

[Ashful]

I just saw a report of products to eliminate weeds before growing wheat, products that pollute (seriously) the food and the waterways, all this has repercussions on health, but people will still want to make money,
also creating fake studies

What, if anything, does this have to do with cutting down trees to build wind farms?

 

[EbS-P]

Let’s dig a little deeper. That figure16M is tree’s harvested since the year 2000. Assume is does represent 1% of the total. You are harvesting 1/20th of one percent per year. Seems like that could represent the totals on well managed forest land. In fact that’s what they said below.

https://www.scotsman.com/heritage-and-retro/heritage/scotland-caledonian-forest-heritage-explained-4262417

In a letter to Mr Kerr, dated July 13, Ms Gougeon said 7,858 hectares of trees had been cut to make way for wind farms since 2000.

With an average of 2,000 trees per hectare, she said: “This gives an estimated total of 15.7 million trees felled to facilitate windfarm development.”

16M Trees Cut: Scotland Looks to Wind to Power UK Energy Needs

The Scottish government has cut down almost 16 million trees on public land as part of a significant drive to erect wind turbines. The staggering number - ab

woodcentral.com.au

 

[EbS-P]

Let’s dig a little deeper. That figure16M is tree’s harvested since the year 2000. Assume is does represent 1% of the total. You are harvesting 1/20th of one percent per year. Seems like that could represent the totals on well managed forest land. In fact that’s what they said below.

https://www.scotsman.com/heritage-and-retro/heritage/scotland-caledonian-forest-heritage-explained-4262417

In a letter to Mr Kerr, dated July 13, Ms Gougeon said 7,858 hectares of trees had been cut to make way for wind farms since 2000.

With an average of 2,000 trees per hectare, she said: “This gives an estimated total of 15.7 million trees felled to facilitate windfarm development.”

16M Trees Cut: Scotland Looks to Wind to Power UK Energy Needs

The Scottish government has cut down almost 16 million trees on public land as part of a significant drive to erect wind turbines. The staggering number - ab

woodcentral.com.au

And the soars that over 500M trees have been replanted.

 

[Ashful]

So, lets spitball 600 trees per acre, and 640 acres per square mile is 384k trees per square mile. So 16 M trees is like 50 square miles of mature forest clear cut for wind power in Scotland. Sounds like a lot of forest removal in a country without much forest. Weird.

ETA: BG's link says there are 1.4 M hectares = 5400 square miles of forest in Scotland now, most of it regrown in the last 100 years. So if the claim of 50 square miles of forest being cleared for wind is true, it is 1% of the current total, on a rising figure.

Surely economic forces prevailed. Of course everyone would agree it's probably better to build wind farms without cutting down dozens of square miles of trees to do it. But if the land available for this purpose happens to be the land with the trees, you know which way it has to go. Not any surprise.

Glad to hear the net is positive, in any case. I guess it'd be more positive if done in already-pastural landscape, but compromise is always required.

 

[joop]

you know how it is ashful start of in scotland end up in chibougamau

 

[Prometeo]

What, if anything, does this have to do with cutting down trees to build wind farms?

directly nothing, but they have some similarities, In my opinion

 

[peakbagger]

I'm happy to be wrong, but I was planning on collecting and burning the methane. I have seen people proposing this. Or charcoaling them and burying the charcoal.

Its a new industry, the wood is heated without oxygen to form effectively pure carbon (biochar). When buried its effectively inert. It is used as a soil amendment. I saw a study in VT where it was used as a filter to treat surface run off from dairy farms to keep nutrients from getting into the watershed. The volatile gases given off during the heating process are burnt to supply the process. In some cases various high value products are collected before burning and used to replace fossil fuel derived products. https://www.standardbiocarbon.com/o...CiMceqYTYkT_KcY5RFZUNwyZ4ONXKIdhoCfugQAvD_BwE

 

[weee123]

That actually seems like a rather useful way to use cut down trees rather than just burying them

 

[gthomas785]

The volatile gases given off during the heating process are burnt to supply the process.

So what percentage of the tree carbon ends up as biochar? I'd suspect it's less than half

 

[peakbagger]

So what percentage of the tree carbon ends up as biochar? I'd suspect it's less than half

You are pretty close.