Brickbat: It's Not Easy Being Green

Scottish Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon said that since 2000, 15.7 million trees have been felled on land managed by Forestry and Land Scotland to make way for wind farms. She said that represents about 7,858 hectares (19,417 acres) of trees. The government is looking to more than double the amount of electricity generated by wind in Scotland, and it is looking at legislation that would further weaken protection for wild lands and allow larger wind turbines of up to 850 feet tall.

Comments

[Olivahunter]

I'm making $90 an hour working from home. I never imagined that it was honest to goodness yet my closest companion is earning sixteen thousand US dollars a month by working on the connection, that was truly astounding for me, she prescribed for me to attempt it simply.
Everybody must try this job now by just using this website... http://www.Payathome7.com

[Adans smith]

Denuding your land of all trees always works so well. Ask the folks on Easter Island.

[SQRLSY One]

China is doing the same thing!

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2023/06/27/china-imposes-deforestation-in-the-pursuit-of-food-independence_6038140_114.html

China imposes deforestation in the pursuit of food independence
Beijing has adopted an authoritarian policy aimed at expanding wheat, corn and rice production, to the detriment of forest cover, green spaces and fruit production.

[AngliaJames17]

Great article, Mike. I appreciate your work, I’m now creating over $35,800 dollars each month simply by doing a simple job online! I do know You currently making a lot of greenbacks online from $28,800 dollars, its simple online operating jobs.
.
.
Just open the link———————————————>>> http://Www.OnlineCash1.Com

[Davedave]

https://forestry.gov.scot/publications/1318-trees-planted-in-scotland-estimate-2021/viewdocument/1318

90 million new trees planted in just five years. I don't think Scotland can be described as denuded of arborial cover. That doesn't even include those planted to replace harvested farmed trees like the ones Reason is lying about.

[markm23]

Funny how they don't say what percentage of Scotland's forests is affected by this. Are these "journalists" too innumerate to understand why that matters, or do they know the answer and it's so tiny as to completely undermine the narrative?

[Jerryskids]

The best thing is trees are considered a green energy source when you burn them.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Pretty sure there's laws against burning wood there now.

There are around 2.5 million households in the UK that have an open fireplace.

After the Government's recent rules, a new survey from the Coal Merchants Federations found 58% of Brits do not know what fuel they can now legally burn on their fireplace.

More than half of people in Manchester plan to get rid of, or remove, their open fireplace because of uncertainty over the law.

The Government restrictions, which began on May 1 2021, mean that sales of bagged house coal and wet wood in units under 2m3 are now unlawful.

[Davedave]

The UK is basically in the process of pretty much entirely banning open fires in cities, because of the massive impact of the resulting air pollution on public health. It's not actually that people don't know what they're allowed to burn, but that they want to pretend it's complicated rather than admit they aren't allowed to do their anti-social thing anymore.

In rural areas you can still do what you like, but rich people in cities with 'lifestyle' fireplaces are rightly being told to stop killing other people with their smoke.

[NoVaNick]

They stopped allowing new wood fireplaces in new construction at least 10 years ago, because of pollution so now everyone goes out and buys cheap outdoor fire pits and probably are releasing more smoke. Not sure if the UK still allows them, but people will find ways to make fire as they have for at least the past 20000 years

[Fist of Etiquette]

There is always a hierarchy of victimhood. In environmentalism, wind farms rate higher than trees. Deforestation is okay in service of that.

[Vernon Depner]

Could they make wind turbines from wood? Intersectionality...

[R Mac]

Only the gay trees.

[SQRLSY One]

https://electrek.co/2022/11/16/wind-turbines-made-entirely-of-wood-are-coming/

Wind turbines made entirely of wood are coming

[markm23]

Not in the sizes they've been building the turbines lately. Wood just isn't strong enough.

[Davedave]

Reason just flat-out lying again. The source material admits the headline isn't true. This is managed forestry, where the trees are a crop that is regularly harvested. They have all been replanted, as they are whenever they are harvested.

[SQRLSY One]

Yes, thanks!

Quote from source link:

She said many of the felled trees will have been “replanted on site” or replaced elsewhere, and the vast majority were part of a commercial crop that would have been chopped down anyway “at the end of their rotation”.

[Inigo Montoya]

Ah, I see the mask is slipping.

Over and over, I’ve read how trees are a terrific way to actively reduce carbon dioxide. There was even an article in Reason a few years back. Cutting down lots and lots of them to put up wind farms is so contradictory.
It’s like increasing “affordable” medical care by setting broken bones and applying casts free of charge after deliberately breaking people’s arms and legs.

I can’t stand these elite “environmentalists” who actually don’t give a rat’s ass about the environment, or wildlife—they only care about power, control, and money.

[Crackers Boy]

Life is about choices. The Scots are choosing energy to run their homes over trees. Choice.

CB

[Brandybuck]

What about carbon-free energy like nuclear power?

[Crackers Boy]

That would certainly be my choice. But I wasn't asked. The Scots were. They chose wind. (Unwisely)

CB

[Longtobefree]

Well, that’s the way elites work. If you want to clear a forest of underbrush to reduce extreme wildfires, that is evil destruction of natural things, but to clearcut the same forest for wind farms or solar farms, that is glorious creation of renewable energy.

(and, oh by the way, what happens to the environment when all those batteries needed for solar and wind wear out and need to be replaced?)

[flag58]

Where I live they are called "tree farms". It sounds like the permanent forest loss will be for the actual turbines and maintenance roads.

[Davedave]

Yes, this is managed forestry. And it has increased by 80 million trees in five years, while the total harvested - ignoring that most of them were immediately replanted afterwards - is ~15m. It's just flat-out lies for credulous mouth-breathers.

[mad.casual]

So is the point to preserve the natural environment or manage the environment under our dominion? Because the brochure is selling the former and we've been doing the latter, better without green energy.

Even credulous mouth breathers can do the math that, without the wind farms, it would be 95M trees total rather than 80M new ones.

[Davedave]

Apparently you can't understand the idea of managed forestry, where trees are regularly harvested for timber and replanted.

[mad.casual]

I understand management pretty well. Lots of people, from the time they’re about 16 onward, understand *exactly* what managers are doing when they fuck something up and then say “No, no. I’m *managing* it.”

And even a 6 yr. old can understand the math that you’ve failed to present.

As I indicated, and which you don’t even refute, it’s not preserving the natural environment, as it's being fraudulently advertised, it’s choosing preferred TOP MEN to manage it. You're continued obfuscation seems to suggest that you even support the fraud.

[Davedave]

LOL. QED. You literally don't understand the meaning of the words 'managed forestry'. Hint: it doesn't involve 'managers'. It's tree-farming for timber.

[Gozer the Gozarian]

Can't fix stupid.

[Will Nonya]

Green policies making the world less green.

[sarcasmic]

Rush?

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Those aren't oaks or maples in the picture.

[Brandybuck]

When your religion is so strong that you cut down forests to make way for wind farms, perhaps your religion is not as science based as you claim.

Wind farms are fine, but cutting down forests to erect them is absolutely counter productive. If they were serious about climate change they would be building some carbon-free nuclear plants, and not strip cutting forests.

[Dillinger]

wouldn't more trees fight carbon emissions better?

[Davedave]

Scotland has planted an order of magnitude more trees than were harvested and then replanted to put in the windfarms in question. In total, Scotland has around 3 billion trees growing in forests, and is planting tens of millions a year of entirely new trees as part of creating thousands of hectares of new forest. 15 million in 20 years wouldn't register on that scale, even if they had in fact been cut down and not replaced.

[Dillinger]

so ... yes?

[Davedave]

So, yes, and like I said above, Reason has taken a story that was borderline true but twisted to create a false impression, and turned it into an outright lie by twisting it a stage further.

[Dillinger]

par/course

[Longtobefree]

Yes. But that won't benefit the corporations that feed donations to the democrats, will it?

[Dillinger]

whatever happened with Brexit?

[GroundTruth]

Isn't most of Scotland just a vast, open treeless landscape to begin with? Why not put the windmills there?

[Nazi-Chipping Warlock]

+several hundred "windswept moors"

[markm23]

Because most people don't like living on vast open windswept moors, and it costs too much to build power lines from there to where the people who need the power live.