Make sure it is a salt resistant tree if near salt water

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bloomberg currently has an article about empress trees, which are extremely fast-growing trees (20 feet a year) that capture carbon with 10 to 100 times the efficiency of most other trees. They also produce beautiful wood (and flowers) and can be cut down for timber and regenerate from the stump into an even nicer, straighter trees.

They're being commercially cultivated in the South, particularly in Alabama.


Seems like a dream come true except...they're from China and are considered an invasive species. They produce massive quantities of seed and can grow pretty much anywhere.

The wood cant be that good from such a fast growing tree..

Better than all the cement China produces now, which is one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions globally. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46455844

Good article--thanks for posting.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bloomberg currently has an article about empress trees, which are extremely fast-growing trees (20 feet a year) that capture carbon with 10 to 100 times the efficiency of most other trees. They also produce beautiful wood (and flowers) and can be cut down for timber and regenerate from the stump into an even nicer, straighter trees.

They're being commercially cultivated in the South, particularly in Alabama.


Seems like a dream come true except...they're from China and are considered an invasive species. They produce massive quantities of seed and can grow pretty much anywhere.

The wood cant be that good from such a fast growing tree..

Better than all the cement China produces now, which is one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions globally. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46455844

Anonymous wrote:Bloomberg currently has an article about empress trees, which are extremely fast-growing trees (20 feet a year) that capture carbon with 10 to 100 times the efficiency of most other trees. They also produce beautiful wood (and flowers) and can be cut down for timber and regenerate from the stump into an even nicer, straighter trees.

They're being commercially cultivated in the South, particularly in Alabama.


Seems like a dream come true except...they're from China and are considered an invasive species. They produce massive quantities of seed and can grow pretty much anywhere.

The wood cant be that good from such a fast growing tree..

Bloomberg currently has an article about empress trees, which are extremely fast-growing trees (20 feet a year) that capture carbon with 10 to 100 times the efficiency of most other trees. They also produce beautiful wood (and flowers) and can be cut down for timber and regenerate from the stump into an even nicer, straighter trees.

They're being commercially cultivated in the South, particularly in Alabama.


Seems like a dream come true except...they're from China and are considered an invasive species. They produce massive quantities of seed and can grow pretty much anywhere.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Georgetown University is in the process of cutting down 245 acres of forest in southern Maryland in order to plant solar panels.

So they’re cutting 2,500+ old growth trees, in order to “offset their carbon footprint”.


This is why I can’t trust anything academia or green energy activists say.

That project needs some work, but I don't think you're being entirely factual in your presentation. Green energy and environmental activist are actively fighting this project.

You have Georgetown and private business on one side, and activists on the other. and just because it is Georgetown doing it doesn't mean this is academia as you say

Secondly, it is not an old growth forest. It is a young forest and all the mature big trees aren't even in there.

the concern is not over getting rid of the trees. The concern is the wildlife that lives in the area and run off into the Chesapeake

Thirdly, while I don't entirely support this project, these are choices are going to have to be made sooner rather than later. We are going to have to find a way to implement solar panels

finally, well I definitely agree there are some environmental concerns, a lot of the objection is NIMBY based.

I definitely think the whole project needs further review in terms of impact on the wildlife and the Chesapeake Bay. But don't misrepresent it

If they’re cutting young trees, that’s even worse for the environment, because young trees in active growth phases remove FAR more CO2 than big, mature trees that aren’t growth phases or are in decline. It’s actually better to cut mature trees, since they are at the end of their lives, whereas young trees will be actively consuming carbon dioxide for the next 5-6 decades.

I can’t understand why Georgetown is doing his when they have an excellent potential solar farm site right on Rockville pike across from Strathmore. It’s currently a golf course This site would be ideal for a solar farm, AND getting rid of that golf course would cut fertilizer and pesticides run off into Rock Creek. It’s not like we have a shortage of golf courses, is it?

If Georgetown simply can’t do without yet another place where rich old white guys (and their protégés) can get together and figure out how to screw others while chasing a ball around, then I’d remind them that their campus has plenty of roof space available for solar, too.

Let me guess...”we can’t alter the historical appearance of our campus” will be the excuse.

We really need to just eat the elite. Or use them for compost.

Anonymous wrote:
All the young families moving into our neighborhood are cutting down trees right and left because they are "scary" and might fall.


Trees have a lifespan. In our Arlington neighborhood, trees are falling regularly and when they come down you can see that they are almost rotted through and dead inside. They were planted 75+yrs ago and no longer have strong root systems. We talked to an arborist who said that ideally much of the old tree canopy in some parts of our area would start to be cut down and replaced by new trees.

This is happening in our West Springfield neighborhood too. I think if an area were managed correctly there would be a mix of ages of trees so that there would not be trees that are all the same age being cut down at once (and ruining the appearance of the neighborhood). Unfortunately it seems that the trees are similar ages.

I agree with the concern of someone in the comments section who basically said that this paves the way for other institutions and even the city to buy parcels of land in southern Maryland and do the same thing. It's not a good model in the long run.

Anonymous wrote:All the young families moving into our neighborhood are cutting down trees right and left because they are "scary" and might fall.

Trees have a lifespan. In our Arlington neighborhood, trees are falling regularly and when they come down you can see that they are almost rotted through and dead inside. They were planted 75+yrs ago and no longer have strong root systems. We talked to an arborist who said that ideally much of the old tree canopy in some parts of our area would start to be cut down and replaced by new trees.

Anonymous wrote:Georgetown University is in the process of cutting down 245 acres of forest in southern Maryland in order to plant solar panels.

So they’re cutting 2,500+ old growth trees, in order to “offset their carbon footprint”.


This is why I can’t trust anything academia or green energy activists say.

Not a fan of that decision but 1) they are not old growth trees and 2) how you leap from one project that appears questionable to those of us who don’t know all of the details to “ can’t believe anything they say” is bizarre.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/georgetown-wants-to-raze-210-acres-of-trees-to-meet-green-energy-goals-environmentalists-are-crying-foul/2019/02/17/428c22f2-2584-11e9-ad53-824486280311_story.html%3foutputType=amp

Anonymous wrote:Georgetown University is in the process of cutting down 245 acres of forest in southern Maryland in order to plant solar panels.

So they’re cutting 2,500+ old growth trees, in order to “offset their carbon footprint”.


This is why I can’t trust anything academia or green energy activists say.

That project needs some work, but I don't think you're being entirely factual in your presentation. Green energy and environmental activist are actively fighting this project.

You have Georgetown and private business on one side, and activists on the other. and just because it is Georgetown doing it doesn't mean this is academia as you say

Secondly, it is not an old growth forest. It is a young forest and all the mature big trees aren't even in there.

the concern is not over getting rid of the trees. The concern is the wildlife that lives in the area and run off into the Chesapeake

Thirdly, while I don't entirely support this project, these are choices are going to have to be made sooner rather than later. We are going to have to find a way to implement solar panels

finally, well I definitely agree there are some environmental concerns, a lot of the objection is NIMBY based.

I definitely think the whole project needs further review in terms of impact on the wildlife and the Chesapeake Bay. But don't misrepresent it

Georgetown University is in the process of cutting down 245 acres of forest in southern Maryland in order to plant solar panels.

So they’re cutting 2,500+ old growth trees, in order to “offset their carbon footprint”.


This is why I can’t trust anything academia or green energy activists say.

Ethiopia just planted 350 million trees in one day (note that the URL has a typo):

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/29/ethiopia-plants-250m-trees-in-a-day-to-help-tackle-climate-crisis

Ethiopia has a population of about 100 million people and its GDP per capita is around $800. Can't we do better?

Anonymous wrote:What native trees can I plant that can live in what is now the marshy environs of my backyard? I don't want to put a Florida cypress back there.

Betula nigra, River Birch, Red Birch | Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia
https://mgnv.org/plants/trees/river-birch/

Anonymous wrote:

I just talked to my husband about this and he knows more than I do for sure. He mentioned that the worst are the kinds of lawns that use chemicals on them and also do not keep the lawn clippings there to rot both of which produce richer soil. There are fewer insects and worms to enrich the soil as well (basically the ecosystem is totally disrupted). Lawns where chemicals are not used have grass and yes, weeds, with much longer root systems. He mentioned that a lawn that is chemically treated has grass with maybe one inch roots, but untreated you can get grass with 10 inch roots. Obviously this will soak up much more water in a rain. Another thing we do is to cut the lawn, but not too short. A lot of people cut their grass too short.

Before about the 1960's nobody put this stuff on their lawns. It became a "thing" after that.

Interesting article just published on the history of lawns in this country, which represent a $40 billion industry. I thought the following stats, particularly the last paragraph, were particularly enlightening:

The following is a list of some things the industry does not want you to know.

Between 1994 and 2004, an estimated average of 75,884 Americans per year were injured using lawn mowers or roughly the same number of people injured by firearms.
Using a gas-powered leaf blower for half an hour creates as many polluting hydrocarbon emissions as driving a car seventy-seven hundred miles at a speed of thirty miles per hour.
Nearly half of the households sampled in one study failed to carefully read and follow the label directions when using pesticides and fertilizer.
Approximately seven million birds die each year because of lawn-care pesticides.
In the process of refueling their lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and other garden equipment, Americans spill about seventeen million gallons of gasoline every summer, or about 50 percent more oil than marred the Alaskan coast during the notorious Exxon Valdez disaster.
A single golf course in Tampa, Florida — a state that leads the nation with over a thousand of these emerald green creations — uses 178,800 gallons of water per day, enough to meet the daily water needs of more than twenty-two hundred Americans.
Suburban households and lawn-care operators apply more herbicides per acre on lawns than most farmers spread to grow crops.
Of the approximately sixty thousand landscape workers in California subject to leaf-blower noise every day, less than one in ten is likely to be wearing hearing protection.
Diazinon, for decades a widely used lawn-care pesticide similar in chemical composition to nerve gas but touted as safe, was finally banned by the E.P. A. in 2000, and yet a loophole allowed retailers to go right on selling it as late as 2002.
Lawn chemicals are commonly tracked into the home, where they build up in the carpet, thus placing small children, whose developing bodies are far more vulnerable to toxins, at risk of chronic exposure.

https://longreads.com/2019/07/18/american-green/?utm_source=Longreads+Newsletters&utm_campaign=044139d801-Longreads_Top_5_July_19_2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bd2ad42066-044139d801-241367381&mc_cid=044139d801&mc_eid=4c51e00c88