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Hi folks, Chuck here on a Saturday morning, for me, maybe Saturday afternoon, maybe it's not Saturday at all in your world who knows.
But we released these curated selects on Saturday, and here's my pick for this week from January 21st, 2016.
Tember! Outtember works.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio.
Hey and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there, with Post nasal drip some sort, and that makes this stuff you should know.
It makes this room the infection zone.
Oh, Jerry, are you sick?
No, she's not sick, are you?
No, good. She's just snottied.
That's fine, as long as she's not sick.
Are you sick? No, man. How are you feeling great?
Good, it's hard. Are you?
Yeah, well you're a dad.
All dads are tired of me.
No, I just have nothing to do with it.
Oh yeah. No. Why are you tired?
Just, uh, didn't get enough sleep last night.
Okay. But not because dad's tough.
Okay. Well, leave it at that.
How's that for building a wall?
Let's back away from that question, shall we?
Instead, Chuck, take my hand and let's wander off into the forest.
This was pretty neat, I gotta say.
I was excited about this because A, it's a dent.
Like a forest? B, it's cool.
Like a forest. And C, it provides a great canopy over our heads.
It does, a canopy of knowledge.
Yeah, I reverse engineered that last one.
Oh, you did? Yeah. I don't know, man, he is not a role today.
We're gonna get a few, we're gonna get some stuff wrong on this one.
I don't know if that's correct.
I don't feel like any time we tackle something that's in any industry like this, the people in that industry are gonna have way better current information than we will.
So I think it's funny because I picked up on the same thing, not just with the industry, but also with the battle over forestry rights.
This is a minefield, my friend.
It really is because this article was written a number of years back and is very friendly to the forestry industry.
It's not extraordinarily conservation-minded as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah. Well, I don't think I had a slap.
I don't think I had a slap.
I saw it was pretty neutral.
I don't know, man. But here's how confused I was, and we'll get to this later, but these initiatives and certification programs, so we'll get to later.
I didn't know which one I should like and not like at the end.
I can tell you. Well, save it.
Okay, all right. Because I need somebody to tell me what the like and not like.
I can tell you. Just save it.
All right, I'm saving it.
All right. Let's talk about forests in general, Chuck.
Yes. Well, let's talk about our country a little bit.
In the United States. Well, even more, let's talk about our continent.
Okay, North America. That's right.
When settlers came over here, there was a lot of trees.
There were a lot of trees.
Do you remember in our pigeon episode, like the idea that there were so many, what was it, passenger pigeons that died off that were just driven to extinction because of humans?
I'm pretty sure it was passenger pigeons.
I got confused in the episode about which pigeon was very confusing thing.
And they think that ultimately the pigeons had been managed by Native Americans who were wiped out by disease.
So that when the first Europeans really came along, they saw tons of pigeons, places over Rome with pigeons because there was no one there to hunt anymore, right?
Same thing with the forest.
They think there was so much forest cover that it was because the Native Americans who had managed the forest before had all died off, largely died off.
And then what we thought was just this crazy stretch of forest that had always been there, was actually fairly new.
But it's probably not the case.
Well at any rate, way back in the 1600s, about 40% of land north of Mexico was trees.
Yeah. Not too bad. No, that's a lot of trees.
And trees are great because they give us wood.
I mean, they led to pre-metal.
It was all about wood. Yeah.
You know, ships, buildings, houses, wagons.
William Harris who wrote this article, yeah, he makes the very smart point that we came and cut down trees and basically built a new nation.
Yeah. Certainly a new economy.
Several new nations out of wood, definitely.
For sure. Like literally out of wood.
If you're talking the world in planet Earth, about 30% is forest land and Russian Brazil lead the way because they have huge tracks of land.
Yeah. But as a continent actually, Europe is the most.
They have the most forest of any kind.
The most dense, I believe that.
They have 1,000 and 1 million, which is a little over a billion, hectares, hectares, 0.4 acres, right?
Sure. The total number of acreage, if you're in the US of forest land throughout the world, 1.58 billion acres of forests.
Is that the most broad definition of the forest?
That includes everything.
And that's in the US? No, no, no, that's the world.
1.58 billion acres in the world.
Gotcha. Yeah. Because in the US, if you talk to a forester, they will say everyone thinks that you see a bunch of trees and that's a forest, but they would narrow down that definition to at least one acre of land, which has at least 10% tree cover.
That's a good definition for a forest.
I'm on board with that. Well, if you're talking that definition, then the US has about 750 million acres, 766 in Canada.
And that's forest, my friend.
Boom, we're done. Yeah.
It was a minefield, though.
We navigated it. But this is about timber, and that's different than forest.
It is different than forest.
So a forest is that definition that you just said.
It's an acre of land with 10% tree cover, right?
Yep. It is a type of forest land, but it has to have a certain amount of usable trees on it or timber to make it timber land, right?
Yes. I grew up in a forest actually now that I think about it.
Oh, yeah. By that definition.
Nice. What was it called?
It was called Chuck's House.
Chuck's House Forest. Yeah.
I mean, it was, I think we had like an acre and a half, and most of it was trees.
So more than 10%. Oh, yeah, easy.
So you had a dense forest.
It was pretty dense. That's awesome.
Yeah. Did you learn to climb trees out there?
No, but I used to get poked fun at because it didn't grow up in a neighborhood like most kids.
It was just a street with like six houses in the forest.
Who would make fun of you for that?
What were they saying? Well, you know, it's cool to grow up in a neighborhood when in the 80s.
Hey, man, I grew up in a neighborhood in the 80s.
It wasn't that great. I was jealous, man, because everyone else would sneak out at night and then go to their friends house, and there were swimming pools and tennis courts and community dinners.
And it was just like me and my brother in woods.
But I guess I can see it. I got older and everyone was like, dude, your house is awesome.
You live out in the middle of the woods.
Yeah, well, plus you were lucky to have your brother to hang out with.
He's a great guy. True. Yeah, good point.
So, you know, I had a door that led out to the back porch when I was growing up.
It's like there's no sneaking out.
I just opened the door and went out for my room.
You're there. You should just like go ahead.
Come and go as you please.
No, I wasn't supposed to, but it wasn't a lot of sneaking involved.
It was opening the door and quietly closing it.
You didn't have to. I always wanted to shimmy up a drain pipe to my room.
Have you shimmy up or down?
Downs a lot easier than up.
That could have shimmy when I was 10 or 12, though.
No shimmy in anymore. So people have sent in that guideposts cover.
Is that you? No. Okay. It's just some other kids in 1984 playing the trumpet.
Yeah, I never played the trumpet.
I never wore blue blockers on glass to see there.
It doesn't look like you, but I was like, no.
And it may not have been a four piece picture, but I think it was.
Okay. Someone will find it.
I hope so. Okay, so let's get back to Timberland.
Yes. Timberland is a forest that's capable of growing something like 20 cubic feet of commercial wood per acre per year.
That's right. That's it.
And people estimate two thirds of our nation is forest land and 500 and two million acres of that is Timberland.
Yeah, that's not bad. Not bad at all.
No. So the key here, though, is, and this is where the big debate comes up.
We're not going to get into it necessarily now, but the key is that, yes, you can have a forest that is capable of growing 20 cubic feet of commercial grade lumber timber a year.
But you also wanted to be able to regrow sustainable harvesting.
Right. So what you're after is what's called the net annual increase.
This article calls it a net annual gain.
That's wrong. It's a net annual increase, which means that the amount of stuff you're growing in a given year is more than what you're harvesting.
What's the difference between a gain and an increase?
I'm just saying the industry term.
Oh, gotcha. Yeah. I looked up net industry gain or, yeah, net annual gain.
And they said you must be city folk.
Right. It's an increase.
So basically, it's pretty simple.
You just want to take less trees than you're growing in a particular year or that you have than you have in reserve.
And actually, the United States has been in an annual gain for decades now.
Yeah. It's a real concern and it's a cause for a worry that we over, over harvest trees.
Well, we'd used to, man.
We deforest, but if you look at the historical data, we are growing more trees than we're taking every year.
Yeah. I think the stat was since the 1920, we haven't made anything worse.
Right. And apparently, in the 50s, we've gotten way better.
I think the four times the 70s were like kind of bad, but I think that was like the transition decade.
Yeah. Yeah. We really appreciate early conservationists.
Yeah. Yeah, because post-civil war and during pre-civil war, even people just sort of took what they wanted and did what they wanted with the land.
There wasn't a lot of foresight.
And so early conservationists were really fighting an uphill battle back then, I think.
So I just have a lot of respect for them to say, you know what?
I don't know if this is smart.
What's going to happen in 100 years?
It's a huge deal. Like, I know you need your log cabin, Jebadaya.
What's mind-boggling to me is that the debate still goes on.
Yeah. That's true. But not even just with timber, with like climate in general, climate change, things like that.
Agreed. All right. So if you're a scientist, you're going to classify forests usually by what kind of trees are there.
For instance, a tropical rainforest.
You're going to have broadleaf evergreens, a boreale forest.
You're going to have needle leaf evergreens.
Then there's the temperate forest, which is like what we have here in the southeast.
Yeah. And the US are five major regions, Pacific Coast, Rocky Mountain, North South.
And I love it. Alaska has its own region.
Yes. Just because it deserves it.
And there's a lot of trees up there.
Yeah. And in fact, there's been a little bit of a scandal recently as far as Alaska and trees go.
That really? Yeah. Are you going to?
Is that a tease? It's a tease.
Okay. But we're going to consider a couple of regions here.
And we're going to mainly be talking about the United States because that's where we live.
Yeah. But there are trees everywhere.
Yeah. And you can apply this to a lot of places.
But east of the Old Mississippi is the hardwood region and west is softwood.
And if you're talking hardwood, you gums, maples, oaks, walnut, very hardwood, walnut.
And the mahogany. Is myhogany in there?
Actually, not. I think myhogany is a tropical rainforest tree.
Is it? Yeah. I'm an idiot.
All right. So, I'm going to be talking about the wildwood.
I'm going to be talking about the wildwood.
I'm going to be talking about the wildwood.
I'm going to be talking about the wildwood.
I'm going to be talking about the wildwood.
I'm going to be talking about the wildwood.
I'm going to be talking about the wildwood.
I'm going to be talking about the wildwood.
I'm going to be talking about the wildwood.
I'm going to be talking about the wildwood.
I'm going to be talking about the wildwood.
I'm going to be talking about the wildwood.
I'm going to be talking about the wildwood.
I'm going to be talking about the wildwood.
I'm going to be talking about the wildwood.
I'm going to be talking about the wildwood.
Should we take a break here?
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All right. What is good?
Because you can use it for lots of stuff, which we'll talk about.
And I didn't realize this that we've been using it for a very long time.
One, at least one and a half million years, right?
Nothing with fire and like clubs and...
Yeah. Did you realize that we'd harnessed fire that many years ago?
I don't know if I really thought about it.
It has a long time for people to be building fires a million and a half years ago.
That completely reshaped my ideas of hominids from 1.5 million years ago.
What'd you think about them before?
Not that they could create fire.
They were a bunch of cold doaps.
A little bit. Maybe that they just kind of may do with what came their way rather than actually making fire.
We should do a podcast on the origins of fire.
We did do one on fire. Yeah, but I don't think we covered like the first fires, did we?
Or did we? Probably not.
I think I've since seen Quest for Fire, which we've talked about.
Oh yeah. Good movie. I kind of want to talk about my favorite part, but this is a family podcast.
So I won't. It's pretty brutal in a lot of ways, isn't it?
Yeah. All right. So why is wood good?
Like I said, you can make stuff out of it.
Another big thing is carbon sequestration, which is why you hear a lot of people battling clear cutting for us because carbon sequestration is great.
It traps carbon. So the build up of CO2 is reduced.
Yeah, as a matter of fact, trees account for 70% of the organic carbon locked in the earth.
That's why that canopy is important.
Right. They also provide habitats for all our animals and birds and insects and all the plants and good things that we love.
And the hydrologic cycle.
So a forest will help soak up rainfall and filter the water as it becomes groundwater.
All very important stuff.
Yeah. If you like drinking water, you can thank trees for helping keep the soil in tip-top shape to filter out all that nasty stuff.
Yeah. So yes, forests are extraordinarily important, right?
Wood is good. But you also can make pretty good use of it too.
Sure. Like if you're a clever primate like we humans are, who you can not only use it for fire, which a lot of people still do around the world, fire wood is still a huge use of wood, yeah, timber around the world.
Nothing beats a natural wood fire in a fireplace in your home.
No, it's true. But do you remember when we shot those Toyota videos that Carnegie Mellon?
Oh, yeah. And one of the innovation things was like a filter, like an easy, cheap, portable filter for cooking fires.
Yeah. Indoor cooking fires.
I remember that. Because that was a big problem.
People were like using wood fires to cook with, but they were doing it indoors and like suffering all sorts of lung problems.
Yeah, and that still happens in non-industrialized nations.
Yes. Is that what we call things?
It says it's the primary fuel for cooking and heating in developing countries.
Right. Non-industrialized, I think that's even better.
All right. So here in the US, though, in a lot of countries these days, only 7% of timber is used for, I guess, heating and cooking.
Yeah, there's a big push against even that 7% too.
Really? Yeah, it's just such a...
I agree with you. I love that fire fire place.
But it's wasteful. Yes.
Okay. Well, I don't have a working fireplace, so I just like them.
You just like the idea of it.
Well, I want one, but I have one of those old, you know, houses from the 1930s.
It's expensive to get it retrofitted.
Have you ever gotten an estimate on it?
Yeah, I need chimney work.
I need a bigger fire box, they said something like 8 or 10 grand.
The guy tried to talk me out of it.
Yeah. The dude, I was like, you don't want to make money.
Yeah. It's like, I want to fire.
And he was like, I don't know.
It's pretty expensive.
I would. It's wasteful.
So 7% goes toward that lumber, which we'll get to in a minute, is about 53% in the US of timber.
Yeah. And most of that goes to new house construction.
It turns out. Oh, really?
Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.
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