NBC Universal celebrates "Green Week" by cutting down a giant spruce tree. Does that seem right?

Question

NBC Universal celebrates "Green Week" by cutting down a giant spruce tree. Does that seem right?

Answer 1

I would have said...what's one tree but it is a big deal and hypocritical of NBC. That is what happens when the world discusses green and think it is a paint color.

NBC needs to smarten up. Go to http://www.thermoguy.com/globalwarming-h... and see advanced thermal images of what solar radiation is doing in generating extreme heat. There is also several images with tree performance and it is amazing to see the importance of not cutting down trees.

Answer 2

There is are a lot of misconceptions about trees. Trees have a life cycle, they grow, hopefully they re-seed and then they die. The best thing is for us humans to do is to not interfere with this cycle. However there are caveats, particularly in UK.

Firstly misplaced sentiment/ideology has prevented traditional practices from protecting trees and woods which have resulted in devastating losses of ecosystems. I will come back to this point but first need to explain why managing trees is a good idea.



Secondly it depends on why we are valuing trees. If it is for CO2 sequestering the answer is very different. The maximum carbon uptake point is it at at peak growing not when the tree is mature. So it starts to take up carbon as soon as it is established.  If looking at CO2 sequestering, then trees that are fully mature need to be cut down and used in buildings/cabinet made furniture so that they last for hundreds of years. A hundred year old tree is no longer growing as fast, it is 'maintenance' only.

In a managed woodland/CO2 sequestering, you take a yield. You cut down the older timber or coppice this creates space to plant more saplings;  it is the new growth that sequesters most carbon, as long as you do not burn the timber or allow it to decompose it locks the CO2 in. If it is burned it only releases the same amount of CO2 as it took in unlike oil based products it is carbon neutral. So the newly planted trees or newly coppiced regrowth then take up further amounts of carbon.

The key is to plant a broadleaved native or fruit trees, BUT that has to be in a mixed native woodland or small clumps, not singular trees. CO2 sequestering is particularly effective in a tropical climate. Figures for removal of approx. 40kg of CO2 from the atmosphere as net reduction.

However, in the UK trees and woods need to be managed because they are NOT completing their natural cycles. Traditionally since circa 1066 woods have been coppiced. This is a sustainable way of removing useful timber without losing the actual tree and preventing the tree getting so old that it dies. Ash trees are a perfect example of this. An uncoppiced Ash Tree would be lucky to reach eighty years as it is extremely susceptible to fungal attack. When coppiced some of the more famous examples can be 900 years old.

Ideally, we could leave all woodland alone and it would renew itself however, this is not possible. In the UK our native trees are on the edge of their climatic range, seed production is extremely sporadic and successful growth from seed to mature tree is rare in nature. Which is why we have forests with trees that are a thousand years old, there have been no replacements; the old existing trees have not been naturally replaced by self seeded saplings.

So even if we do manage to grow trees from seed away from the woods, the character of a plantation will never come close to matching that of an ancient wood.

How has it come to this stage? There has been few naturally seeded/grown trees because of climatic changes, the old trees have not been coppiced and people are sentimental about old trees. They are 'loving' them to death. Without a change of the sentimental but ignorant attitude towards the management of woods, trees and woods will continue to die and so will all the associated flora and fauna. Trees and woods are living things, as such, they have an age limit as all living things do. People managed woods by the traditional methods of coppicing for hundreds of years which artificially extended trees' lives. What we are seeing now is just the natural end of old trees. As there are no naturally grown replacements it will be the end of the woods as we know them in the UK too.

This is because many trees in the UK are so old now, generally oaks, that people have formed an attachment to them as they stand. Any ancient woodland left is now protected by legislation. They can only die now. They are probably too old to resume coppicing so they are all approaching the end of their natural life and will die out. Only recently we have stopped managing woodlands in the traditional way.

So basically we have got ourselves into a bit of a situation, most trees in this country can not be replaced for a number of reasons, for example: oaks are afflicted by American Oak Mildew which they have little or no resistance to and it is thought to modify their ability to grow in a Woodland situation, ie being able to cope with shade and dry conditions. This tends to affect their viability.

These woods have not adapted to environmental changes, they can not be replaced and they have not self seeded because of climate change. Evolution teaches us that organisms adapt to environmental changes or DIE out. Normally it is individual trees that die, this is part of the natural cycle and right. However, as there are no naturally resown replacements it is the entire woods that are dying out. Because of sentimentality people have prevented the woods from adapting and becoming immune to changes or new species growing.

Give trees greater value so more will be planted. If you are using them for timber, then yes they may take 80 years to grow but there is 80 years of benefit from the forest habitat, then because it is valuable it is replanted.

So does it seem right? Well the tree would complete it's natural life cycle and die out, there would be a risk of it falling onto buildings/people. Or it the timber can be used to sequester CO2 and  a new native tree planted. Be cautious of be over sentimental about trees in the UK, too much loving kills entire woods. Either manage them or let them complete their natural cycle, the risk of the latter is that they don't adapt as they are on the edge of their climatic range and they all do die out.

Ancient Woodland (2003) Oliver Rackham

Edible Forest Gardens Ecological vision and theory for temperate climate Permaculture

Hake and Tensmeier 2005 Chelsea Green Publishing

Mycelium Running How Mushrooms can help save the World

Paul Staments 2005 Ten Speed press: California

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_diox...

The Earth Care Manual Patrick Whitefield [2004] Permanent Publications

Miguel 1995 Agroecology, the science of sustainable agriculture

Kourik 2004 Designing and Maintaining your Edible Landscape naturally

Renee 1992 Saving the Seed

Crop Genetic Resources in Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture FAO 1998

Answer 3

Yep.  One thing I think is funny, is that NBC is owned by GE, and what does GE do?  Among other things, they generate electricity.  And how do they do that?  They burn coal!  So every time you see the new green bird at the bottom of the screen, think about all the pollution being put into the air by the very same people.  Nice.  Very consistent.

Answer 4

No I dont think that seems right. The forests are being destroyed right this second and people are trying to help while they are celebrating cutting down one thats been saved?! That idea sounds like a 5 year old made it up.

Answer 5

Old habits die hard.  If you checked out their website, it was just for show, a "green gimmick", if you will.  They didn't put forth one thing that the parent corporation was doing differently or had done to promote "green week."  So it was a sleight-of-hand, though perhaps a few people learned something.  Hard to say.  Just PR, as far as I can tell.

Answer 6

The burning man with everyone running around naked doesn't seem right either . Tell you the truth not to many things in this world seem right .

Answer 7

I'm assuming you are talking about the Christmas tree that they light every year, and on the surface it may seem like they are only hurting the environment, but you have to look deeper. I'm not saying that NBC is trying to help the environment, they only care about money and getting the public to believe they are trying to do something good. Oddly enough though, they may have inadvertently helped something. Very old, large trees sequester a lot of carbon dioxide over their lifetime, but at a certain age they cannot hold any more. By cutting down a huge old-growth tree, they are opening up a vast amount of canopy space for more trees to grow and fill in, and complete the circle of forest life. I'm not sure about this part, but I'm assuming that after they are done with the tree, they cut it up and toss it into a lake or pond somewhere which provides TONS of cover and living places for aquatic organisms which is good. If they burn the tree or do something else like that, then it is very bad. In other words, NBC is only out for money, but they may actually be helping in the short-run.