What does being a "Liberal" mean? (US)

[Undertoad]

Deforestation is an important worldwide problem, but there is a reason that map stops at 1920: after that, the US was the model of RE-forestation, and today it would look more like 1850 than 1920.

Originally Posted by wikipedia

For the 300 years following the arrival of Europeans, land was cleared, mostly for agriculture, at a rate that matched the rate of population growth. For every person added to the population, one to two hectares of land was cultivated. This trend continued until the 1920s when the amount of crop land stabilized in spite of continued population growth. As abandoned farm land reverted to forest the amount of forest land increased from 1952 reaching a peak in 1963 of 3,080,000 km² (762 million acres). Since 1963 there has been a steady decrease of forest area with the exception of some gains from 1997. Gains in forest land have resulted from conversions from crop land and pastures at a higher rate than loss of forest to development. Because urban development is expected to continue, an estimated 93,000 km² (23 million acres) of forest land is projected be lost by 2050, a 3% reduction from 1997.

[classicman]

thanks UT. I didn't know that.

[Undertoad]

Yeah I was first amazed by a pamphlet on New Hampshire forests, which said that NH was something like 98% forest in 1700, 20% forest 100 years ago, and 95% forest today. I can't remember the exact figures but it was on that level, enough to be sort of shocking.

(Someone tell the local food movement that they are encouraging American deforestation!)

[classicman]

In doing a little reading on this. (I'm avoiding sanding the drywall)
I found this site. Some good points. I have no idea how valid they are though.
For those who don't go to links ...

Where it comes from: Paper.

Paper comes from trees, and the pulpwood tree industry is large. It begins with logging, where select trees are found, marked, and felled. After they're cut, roads are built into the forest on which the large machinery, used to load and transport the timber, can be moved. This process creates a tremendous scar in the forests natural habitat(s), for both plant and animal. It can take over a century for nature to recover from even a small logging operation. Addedly, if the small operation clears only 10 acres, many hundreds of acres surrounding are affected due to the extreme interplay/interdependency in nature.

Let it be added further that a large amount of heavy machinery is used, all having its own story on how it came to be, all needing its own upkeep, and all needing its own fossil fuel, to operate. On top of this, there is the human element. Logging is dangerous. Extreme fatigue, long term physical handicaps, and numerous accidents plague the less-than-wealthy loggers.

Logs are moved from the forest to a mill. Whence they reach a mill, there is a three year wait before they can be used, allowing proper drying. When the time comes, the logs are stripped of bark, and chipped into inch-wide squares. They are stored until needed, and then cooked with tremendous heat and pressure. After this, they are are "digested" with a limestone and sulphurous acid for eight hours. The steam and moisture is vented into the outside atmosphere, and the original wood becomes pulp. For every ton of pulp made it takes over three tons of wood, initally.

The pulp is washed and bleached, both stages requiring thousands of gallons of clean water. After this, coloring is added to more water, and is then combined in a ratio of 1 part pulp to 400 parts water to finally make paper. The pulp/water "brew" is dumped onto a web of bronze wires, the water showers through, leaving the pulp, which, in turn, is rolled into finished paper.

It must be noted that this is the paper making process. All cutting, printing, packaging, and shipping, requires additional time, labor, and energy, on top of the already exorbant amounts of capital, electricity, chemicals, and fossil fuels used.

Where it comes from: Plastic.

Plastic comes from oil, and the oil industry is no small operation. In many places around the world, and in the U.S., sites exist where the geologic conditions are such that a gas and oil concentration has been trapped. Upon location of these traps, a hole is drilled and a pipe rammed into the oil deposit. The oil is pushed to the surface due to pressure in its chamber, and also from the weight of earth above. The oil drilling operation, itself, has become a rather small and sterile undertaking. An oil drilling/pumping rig is roughly the size of a house, and very little oil is spilled, anymore. Literally, you could 'mine' oil in your backyard.

At the drilling site, a storage drum is filled, and, when full, the content oil is loaded into trucks, but sometimes piped, to a refining facility. This is where plastic is made.

Plastic comes as a by-product of oil refining, and uses only 4% of the total worlds oil production. It is a 'biogeochemical' manipulation of certain properties of oil, into polymers, that behave 'plastically.' Plastic polymers are manufactured into 5 main types, of which, plastic bags are made of the type known as Polyethylene. Raw Polyethylene comes from oil refineries as resin pellets, usually 3-5 mm diameter, by 2-3 mm tall. The raw material, as it is called, since it is plastic, can be manipulated into any shape, form, size, or color. It is water tight, and can be made UV resistant. Anything can be printed on it, and it can be reused.

Since plastic is so maliable, there are numerous process used to turn plastic into finished goods. To make bags, a machine heats the Polyethylene to about 340 F and extrudes, or pulls out from it, a long, very thin, tube of cooling plastic. This tube has a hot bar dropped on it at intervals however long the desired bag is to be, melting a line . Each melt line becomes the bottom of one bag, and the top of another. The sections, then, are mearely cut out, and a hole that is to be used as the bags' handle is stamped in each piece. Further finishing may be done such as, screen printing, however, for the majority of bags, it's off to the stores, etc., where they will be used.

With the exception of large, fuel burning, heavy machinery, used in the aquisition of oil, the entire plastic bag making process uses only electricity. The electricity used from start to resin/raw material is mostly nuclear. The power used in the bag manufacturing, for the most part, comes from coal fire power plants. One interesting note is that approximately 50% of the electricity generated from coal burning power plants is not from coal at all, it is, in fact, wrought from the burning of old tires, they being made of rubber, which is plastic.

[classicman]

couple more ...

Impact: Paper.

The recycling of paper is essential in cutting down on landfills: each day, enough paper is recycled to fill a fifteen-mile long train of boxcars. When this statistic was taken in 1993, only 40 percent of paper used was being recycled. That left a lot that was thrown into landfills. By the year 2000, it is estimated that 78 percent of all paper used in the United States will be recycled, as well as 15 percent of all paper overseas.

Buying recycled paper is usually more expensive than buying virgin paper products, but the government, in an attempt to encourage recycling, presented purchasing mandates that can allow a 10 to 15 percent price premium so that it can compete with other cheaper paper products.

Another factor to consider is water pollution. The making of paper, whether virgin or recycled, uses many thousands of gallons of clean water that can soon become polluted in the papermaking process. Virgin paper creates 35 percent more water pollution than recycled paper. Recycled paper also creates 74 percent less air pollution than virgin paper. However, both types of paper can contribute to contaminating area waters. Scientific evidence shows that fish can experience adverse effects through chemicals that reside in sediment. It can more than three years for any level of toxicity to lower.

Impact: Plastic.

Plastic impacts in two ways: First, it hits the environment in its use of electricity when being manufactured. More than half of the power needed to make plastic bags is generated by nuclear fission. While controversial, it is argued that nuclear power puts no direct harm or detriment into the environment. The only drawback to nuclear power is the radioactive waste, which is, so far, being safely diposed of in deep underground caves. And, in deep sea trenches where the nuclear waste is subducted into earths mantle and incinerated.

Pertaining to the rest of the electricity needed to make plastic bags, coal fire does pollute. But, plastic can be burned. In fact, the burning of plastic will yield from 10,000 to 20,000 btu per pound, of which 60% can be recovered. As stated above, plastic is burned to create electriciy, hence, we could use plastic to make plastic, and reduce sulphur emissions from coal.

There is the question, though, of recovery of energy by burning plastic. This, too, causes controversy but only because of mental block. If 93% of all oil is burned straight away, why can't the 4% used as plastic have a second life as energy? The burning of plastics isn't without its drawbacks. Inks and additives to some plastics can create dioxins, and emit heavy metals when burned. Also, after being burned, the toxic ash still needs to be disposed of in toxic wase dumps. Another problem with the incineration of plastic is the arguement that the energy produced by the process doesn't justify the misuse of a limited natural resource. The plastics already produced are better utilized by making new plastic materials by recycling.

The second way plastic impacts is through landfills. Plastic will never break down; It will never disappear. Biodegradeable plastic is a misnomer because wood fiber has been mixed with the plastic so when buried, the wood dissolves leaving a million tiny pieces of plastic, instead of one bag. As stated, plastics make up 18% of waste by volume, and 7% by weight. If plastic were to be replaced in its uses by other materials, rubbish weight would increase by 150%, packaging would weigh 300% more, and energy consumed by the industry would increase by 100%. It has been found that the reduced weight of plastic has spillover benefits, elsewhere. Reduction of weight in aircraft saves an average of 10,000 gallons of fuel per plane, per annum, world over. In automobiles, it is directly responsible for doubling the fuel efficiency since the 1970's. Applied to plastic bags, they reduce weight in landfills; They take up less space. This being in light of the discovery that most landfills are air tight, not allowing decomposition, leaving readable newspapers and chicken bones with meat still on them.

Conclusion

The making of paper can waste many thousands of gallons of water, as can the recycling of paper. The human and mechanical efforts and costs are very high, not forgetting the physical cost to loggers and those who work around the numerous chemicals. Plastic is, by comparison, efficient and low energy to produce, and, easily and efficiently recycled. Plastic reduces, recycles marvelously, and in that, is reused. After contrasting the efforts behind the making of paper and plastic, it is our unbiased opinion that plastic is indeed more beneficial to the environment, in that it is less harmful. The next time you are asked the dreaded question, "Paper or plastic?", you can answer knowing that you are making the informed choice.

[Stormieweather]

My concern is less about paper or plastic, but more about reuseable vs disposable. If we used more products that could be used over and over and less that got thrown out after a single use, we could help the environment. I use more metal, glass, and fabric as containers than trash bags, zip loc baggies, saran wrap, or plastic store carry bags. I'm trying to eliminate them altogether, but it's a slow process.

[HungLikeJesus]

That site is obviously highly skewed toward plastic. Look at these words:

Paper -

All cutting, printing, packaging, and shipping, requires additional time, labor, and energy, on top of the already exorbant amounts of capital, electricity, chemicals, and fossil fuels used.

Vs.

Plastic -

The oil drilling operation, itself, has become a rather small and sterile undertaking.

and

Plastic is, by comparison, efficient and low energy to produce, and, easily and efficiently recycled. Plastic reduces, recycles marvelously, and in that, is reused.

and

Plastic comes as a by-product of oil refining, and uses only 4% of the total worlds oil production.

And I don't know where they come up with this:

The electricity used from start to resin/raw material is mostly nuclear.

I highly doubt this is true, though I don't have time to research it right now, but I strongly question most of the statements and conclusions in this article.

The power used in the bag manufacturing, for the most part, comes from coal fire power plants. One interesting note is that approximately 50% of the electricity generated from coal burning power plants is not from coal at all, it is, in fact, wrought from the burning of old tires, they being made of rubber, which is plastic.

[Undertoad]

It's one of those issues where fighting about it is more important than determining truth.

I did learn that most plastic bags in this country are made from natural gas.

[classicman]

I noticed that too HLJ... Thats partly why I prefaced the post.
Personally, I use whats there if I don't have my own there. My biggest issue is two things. 1) I forget to put them in the trunk after unloading the groceries and 2) I forget them IN the trunk when I go to the store.

[Pico and ME]

Its easy to forget until it starts costing you when you do.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Yeah I was first amazed by a pamphlet on New Hampshire forests, which said that NH was something like 98% forest in 1700, 20% forest 100 years ago, and 95% forest today. I can't remember the exact figures but it was on that level, enough to be sort of shocking.

I took an ecology course in college and one of the books we read was Changes in the Land. I loved that book, it spends a lot of time talking about just this. There was a series of photographs in there taken from a hillside in Connecticut, I believe. It showed a forested valley, and then rolling farmland and fields, and then a forested valley again. Anyone who has hiked through the woods and seen stone walls should hopefully be aware at how much the land has changed.

[infinite monkey]

Then there's how they'll accost you and demand your receipt as you leave the store because, being unofficial bags, you could very well have stuffed stuff in one of them as you were shopping and gone through the "cashier yourself" lane and be all like 'oh I didn't use that one' or 'oh that's my purse' when all they believe is that you sure look like the kind of person who would steal the latest Adam Sandler vehicle along with a DVD of some fat 'professional' wrestler's many antics.

[classicman]

@Pico - nah - I usually run out and get them at the end. Or I send son2 back for them.

[classicman]

Anyone who has hiked through the woods and seen stone walls should hopefully be aware at how much the land has changed.

There is a lot of that around here as well.

[glatt]

The stone wall obviously means that there used to be open fields there before. Another lesser know sign is when you look at the trees and you see trees with branches reaching out to the sides. In old forests, the trees are all tall with branches that point up reaching for the light through the canopy. In younger forests, where trees started growing in abandoned farmlands, the branches reach out to the sides because the light was all around. When you start to look for it, you can see it easily in different forests. Many forests now are a mixture, where you have older mature trees that are all branched out, and younger trees that are all skinny trying to get to the available light up high.