coal saved the forests, oil saved the whales

Subtile lessons are......well subtile. AG, at least we know why our forests are not like Haiti.

 

No one used coal powered chain saws, just wood powered trains. Like I said before, that was the limit. The lower energy density of wood, limited supply, and lower efficiency of steam locomotives in general limited the distance a locomotive could travel to bring wood from a forest to the east coast population centers.

In terms of just the wood, this limit is roughly 800 miles give or take. That was the farthest a train could travel, pick up a full load of wood, and come back with the same amount it left with. Naturally, train tracks aren't straight shots from population centers to the forests around them, so this probably translates to something like a 600 miles radius IRL.

Obviously, this wasn't the only limit. It takes energy to build and maintain the trains/rail, which would further reduce the area we could deforest. On top of that, people don't work for free. Even if we could theoretically deforest everything up to say, 400 miles, we wouldn't because it wouldn't be cost effective. We still need to pay everyone involved, from the railroad workers to the lumberjacks, to deforest these areas. After all that, I doubt it would be practical to deforest more than 100 miles outside of a population center.

And guess what? Your handy dandy illustration shows exactly that.



One coal came onto the scene, we didn't have those limits any more. Coal was cheaper, it was abundant, it was localized, and it had more energy per ton than wood. Now that wood wasn't the limiting factor, we could travel farther, and deforest more of America than was ever possible before.

That isn't anything other than basic physics and economics. You can post all the BS greenwashing you want, from coal saved the forests to a Prius is worse for the planet than a Hummer, but that doesn't change basic physics or basic economics, or the fact that deforestation increased after the widespread use of coal.

 

One thought from histor that comes to mind - from thousands of years ago - describe cedar forests in Lebenon. You know Lebenon ... that huge desert country. Another place comes to mind, regarding one of my favorite over used places:


I wonder if the island inhabitants debated whether or not what was going on ... was in fact actually going on ... versus when they all got onto the same page.

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A modern example would be a population that used up too much of their fossil fuel resources, natural gas included, and how that was an ecological disaster.

 

It's not that they use all their coal so that they freeze. It's that they use too much coal, natural gas, etc.. which contributes to substantial changes in climate, eg more damage due to extreme climate in certain areas, or even makes certain places inhabitable.