>>9919630>>Deforestation is a south america, african, and chinese thing. Fair enough. You're right.
He's wrong about this. Forest cover affects climate globally. Even on the basis of forestation, he's wrong, unless he is talking about a few areas in northern asia, where the transition to net loss is just slower and masked by other factors.
In the US, forests have changed in composition, they are less biologically diverse, and thus less productive, and currently face the threat continent-wide from invasive insects taking advantage of warming conditions.
The trend is not our friend here either. Even now, as thousands of acres burn, even more are silently killed off by the bark beetle. Every day exoitc insects find their way into the ecosystem from human cargo transport systems despite a massive program of detection and trapping.
I worked for a Forest service research station. I've walked the experimental plantations of various exotic species in remote locations, a half-hearted attempt to see what *might* grow. I've got news for you guys. Replacing an ecosystem which took thousands of years to develop in complex interdependence cannot be mocked up and replanted in a gigantic manhattan project.
There is no way un-fuck the ecosystem.
Anyway, this sad little experimental plot (run by canadians on American soil) was situated within a larger context- the blight of an insect and fungal invasion that, within the last 30 years had infected the dominant species of tree in a bioregion on the scale of about 36,000 square miles. It isn't lethal, but it does effectively choke off about 50% of the tree's photosynthetic ability which is theorized to lower its resistance and inhibit its growth.
Similar stress is showing up in trees around the globe. Some of the oldest trees in the world are dying every single day.
