Lloyd rants about saving trees

In which I point out a rather important flaw in the thinking of many people who believe that using paper kills trees and that recycling paper saves them. Actually, it is quite certainly the other way around.
www.LloydianAspects.co.uk

[@junoguten]

I'd print it out if it wasn't for ink prices :(

[@valhar2000]

junoguten I don't print anything out unless I have to. I just find it easier and more convenient to have things in electronic form; there are few times when having something printed on paper is more convenient. Indeed, I cannot use inkjet printers because the ink dries up inside the cartridges before I ever print anything, so when I actually want to print, I can't. That's why I only buy laser printers now.

[@plantguyrama11]

Printers use a bunch of electricity to print

[@Tester-sh1mn]

@@plantguyrama11 and? They’re saving trees you know

[@KoxenBols]

I wipe my ass with paper, because I'm thoughtful and I care

[@thepenultimateninja5797]

Sometime last year, I printed an email. It came out as three sheets, and the only thing printed on last sheet was 'please consider the environment before printing this email'. Everyone in the office had a good laugh at that one

[@MCPOSJ117films]

I also hate how on every damn hand dryer in public restrooms, there's a little sticker or whatever that claims how hand dryers "save trees from being used for paper towels" or whatever, when a fucking blow dryer probably uses so much electricity on the heating and blowing elements and it NEVER EVEN FULLY DRIES YOUR HANDS! Unlike simple paper towels.

[@GoranXII]

Paper towels are more hygienic too.

[@sharnistevens1428]

After grappling with this issue for a few years when I was younger, I've taken to drying my hands on my jackets

[@arnijulian6241]

I just dry my hand on my cloths unless im preparing food for others

[@irishbattletoster9265]

@@sharnistevens1428 same

[@narcoleptic8982]

Wow. This video made me realize that 9 years ago was 2009. I'm getting old...

[@vulkandude00]

11 now :(

[@presidentlouis-napoleonbon8889]

Imagine Lloyd is an eleven year old youtuber (I mean he's been doing youtube for that time). He is getting old, too. :)

[@lordmoss8817]

Wow this comment was 2 years ago I feel old now

[@narcoleptic8982]

@@lordmoss8817 I'm turning 37 tomorrow.. womp womp.

[@lordmoss8817]

@@narcoleptic8982 happy birthday

[@schwarzerritter5724]

Even better than saving trees is saving water. If I use so little water in the toilet that the pipes clog, it will rain more in Africa.

[@AndersonPaschoalon]

And if you eat all food on your plate, a starving kid on Africa will not feel hungry anymore

[@tofuteh2348]

Schwarzer Ritter why not save both

[@jaryH3]

Well it is about saving quality drinkable water. There is shit-load of water, but the drinkable one is not so abundant. And I am not sure how fast that drinkable can it be re-cycled -- whether we are not using too much already.

[@Theodosius_fan]

@@jaryH3 you can literally just filter saltwater and drink that. The arab countries are only drinking such water

[@OleMikaelSoerensen]

@@Theodosius_fan true, but that process is really energy intensive. It is not a process of “pouring” the water through a filter, but of squeezing it through a molecular filter under immense pressure. So yes, possible, but not desirable :)

[@SupaBeluga]

I think part of the problem with the whole "save trees" thing is that the "U MUST SAV TREEZ" argument is a misunderstood, horribly watered down version of "Preserve Ecosystems from Human Disturbance," i.e. please don't cut down all of the forests (naturally, made of trees). And then it gets filtered down from people who know what the hell they're talking about to people who have a vague idea that paper is dead trees and...trees are good (?) so...don't use paper in order to save trees P.S. I feel ridiculous commenting on a video from 2009

[@SilentNinjaPtrs]

I feel ridiculous commenting about your comment from 2015 on a video from 2009, but I have to commend you on your well written post!

[@shawndickson5809]

What are the chances?

[@berndstromberg1586]

I feel even more ridiculous commenting on a Video which is 10 years old

[@jacke2678]

@@berndstromberg1586 I feel ridiculous replying to a 7 month old comment on a video which is more than 10 years old.

[@aluminiumknight4038]

Hi

[@PhilJonesIII]

Europe's countries now have an average of 29/30% forest cover. Britain lags way behind with around 12% but it is a small crowded island after all. Reforestation in Europe is actually a lot more aggressive than you suggest. An area the size of Cyprus in excess of what is cut. BTW : Young trees absorb more of that nasty carbon dioxide so cutting down old wood really is better. China, yes the bad boy of eco-helpfulness and just about anything else the media can find fault with is currently working on an average of 11500 sq miles annually of new forest or reforestation. Russia, everyone's favorite bad boy is already 69% forest and is increasing despite horror stories about illegal logging. The US of A. Apart from the private landowners selling wood for use in UK power stations, when the UK could get it cheaper from Europe, is also planting more than is cut. The truly bad bays remain Brazil and Indonesia. The media rarely follows up. A lot of people have done a lot of work to help make things right. They need a little recognition.

[@TheBoldImperator]

China's reforestation project is the Great Green Wall and it's turning into an abject failure and a disaster of water management and land erosion because the idiots tried to grow forests in the Gobi. Not only that, China's reforestation tends be monoculture fast-growing reforestation which doesn't do dick for biodiversity. And in Europe, also because the idiots planted monoculture conifers instead of actually attempting to nurture their biodiversity, all that 'nasty carbon dioxide' you say got absorbed... didn't get absorbed. science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6273/597 >Here we show that since 1750, in spite of considerable afforestation, wood extraction has led to Europe’s forests accumulating a carbon debt of 3.1 petagrams of carbon. We found that afforestation is responsible for an increase of 0.12 watts per square meter in the radiative imbalance at the top of the atmosphere, whereas an increase of 0.12 kelvin in summertime atmospheric boundary layer temperature was mainly caused by species conversion. Thus, two and a half centuries of management in Europe have not cooled the climate.

[@user-vr8qd4hk6y]

Britian is a small crowded island?? No space for trees?? Are you sure? Take a look at Japan. There live over 120 milion people. And Japan is covered by forests in almost 70%. Britian has something like 60 mln people, half as Japan. Britian is smaller than Japan, but far from half smaller.

[@killakidxyz9380]

+TheBoldImperator - An abstract can't be used as a source as it doesn't contain the evidence for it, either find a source that doesn't require an account to access so we can read the full article or stop trying to be smart on the internet.

[@TheBoldImperator]

sci-hub is your friend "publications can't be used as a source because I don't have a uni account :(((("

[@GlukAlex]

Facts are not exactly true about Russia . We have probably the world's largest wildfires annually (the whole Siberia is burning, and swamps around Moscow too) . So you can imagine the inflicted damage . Also, I suspect, that most of the Russian territory is The Barren Grounds lands such as tundra (basically all marshes and bogs where natural gas and crude oil are extracted from) . Despite that I live in the reforestation area with pine trees and birches all over the place .

[@FurryAminal]

The problem is that the paper industry saves the wrong kind of trees. They plant semi-sterile fast-growing coniferous tree plantations, notdiverse, slow-growing, broad leaf native woodland. I would love to see more broadleaf native woodland in this country (with the abundance of wildlife found there - squirrels, badgers, deer, foxes, owls, etc) but paper plantations don't lead to such.

[@2RayneR7]

Plant them

[@weaponsandbushcraft421]

yes but thankfully deciduous trees arent generally used to make paper and dont tend to be deforested as much

[@valhar2000]

FurryAminal The point probably still stands. They plant the kind of trees that they use for their own production, so the woodlands that you talk about are not affected either way. Such woodlands probably have more to fear from farmers and real state developers than from paper manufacturers.

[@weaponsandbushcraft421]

i suppose it does cause less biodiversity

[@Yorikoification]

+FurryAminal Plus you cannot replicate the history an old tree has gone through and the habitats established connected to them. Do not use paper! Preserve the trees we already have.

[@TranscendentLion]

I love how there used to be all these predictions of paperless offices and schools because 'save the trees', but we still use amounts of paper that are just as copious as before, if not more so.

[@eugenecbell]

way more so

[@tofuteh2348]

TranscendentLion well, there are VERY few offices and schools that do that, and new schools and offices are being built every single day, so yeah...

[@donald12998]

"Renewable energy!" *burns wood* "Not that way!"

[@lindybeige]

That tiger was tough, but I won in the end.

[@jorixonian]

@@thetruepsi KZbin screwed up and completely shattered most (if not all) pre-2013 comment threads. This comment was most likely a response to a comment which also got separated from its original context.

[@CaptWesStarwind]

KZbin buggering up comments years ago has left us some wonderful gems like this. This is one of those perfect one sentence stories that paints a fascinating picture and yet leaves us wanting more.

[@plantguyrama11]

The seems like too much power per download to me. 10mb = 2lbs of coal 200mb = 40lbs of coal Our university has its own coal power plant. We have 36,000 students. If each student on average downloads 200mb per day, that's (40lbs per 200mb)*(36,000 students)=1.44millions lbs of coal per day just for data. Some quick Googling shows 1.4 million lbs of coal is the average usage of a 500MW coal power plant per year (source: www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c01.html). Suppose that only 100mb of that is only using school servers (the power plant runs the servers and the computers), that means the power plant is using [1/2 * avg. yearly usage] per day just on data alone?

[@KazmirRunik]

There are a lot, a LOT of other computers that the data has to go through before reaching the students on your campus, and the on-site coal plant isn't powering all the other checkpoints that the data has to go through. That power requirement is distributed among a large array of many other power plants. I'm not saying that the 2-lb model is a good one, just that the model you're supposing debunks it isn't really a very good one, either.

[@plantguyrama11]

The purpose of my calculations was to show that 2lbs of coal per 10mb was a lot, not to create an accurate model of the power consumption of downloads. Additionally, I said "Suppose that only 100mb of that is only using school servers (the power plant runs the servers and the computers)", which means I am downloading things only through school servers while I am on the schools internet. So the power is not specifically supported by any other power plants, as I stated the university has it's own power plant. 100mb is also a really small amount of data, and probably closer to an order of magnitude higher.

[@thomasjohnson3692]

@@plantguyrama11 Another way to solve the problem which wouldn't require printing out tons of paper (which uses energy) is to use sustainable electric generations like wind or hydro power for example.

[@aVeryIntelligentDog]

Computers don't really use much electricity and it isn't dramatically affected by how much you're downloading. On the other hand it takes a fair bit of energy to make paper, to make the ink and to operate the printer, and to deliver the paper. Even if you exclude the costs of delivery it takes WAAY more energy to print 100 copies of an email than it takes to send that email to 1000 contacts.

[@iPelaaja1]

Its not really electricity usage that way. You have to include the calculations for manufacturing the harddrives and stuff thatbte files are stored on. They use rare metals, minign takes huge amounts of energy. Servers might have millions of hard drives, constantly written and read from, they need constant replacing, manufacturing and transporting them takes tons of energy and electricity. The more you download, the better connections the companies also have to put in, more wires, more work, more copper, etc. I thinknif you actually included that, it will come quite close. So I dont think it takes "WAAYY" more to print 100copies than 1000attachment, I would think they could actually be very close.

[@Andrewza1]

In south Africa there was even a complaint that the lumber industry was destroying native bush veld by growing lots of trees.

[@sethbennett617]

But then again. In malawi and Mozambique they had massive flash floods due to deforestation.

[@jwg72]

Perhaps in North Western Europe (where most forests are really multigenerational tree farms anyway) forestry is somewhat sustainable. However, European markets have imported over one billion dollars worth of Canadian timber products per year (look it up) - and much of it comes from virgin forests. Many of these operations are far from sustainable and wipe out local economies when they move through. So, your conceits make sense so long as you ignore the international picture and keep it at the local village level.

[@alen7480]

I agree. Not only that, but the tree planting campaign is centered in the Amazon, and the reforestation has never worked because of the thin soil. I made a fuller post above (I didn't see your post as yet). Also, in the pacific northwest, where Canadian timber is planted, the timber industry has only planted along the roads and other easily visible areas only to appear a full replanting is done, but it is not the case., Replanting is never deeply within deforested land, which has led to mistrust of the timber industry. This has led to soil erosion and the destruction of water tables. Most of the wood is bound for Asia and Europe. Europe cannot keep pace with it's established tree farms and imports pulp and wood for that reason.

[@weedmastersr]

@@alen7480 trees replant themselves in Canada.

[@alen7480]

@@weedmastersr Not at the rate of sustainability. Keep up.

[@augustblock3981]

@@alen7480 Is that because the forest is so mature that pioneering species are extinct in the clear-cut parts? I'm often surprised by the extreme rapidity trees are capable of turning pasture into young woods on my farm, so I wonder about how the loggers can possibly keep up with them.

[@alen7480]

@@augustblock3981 Young trees cannot be logged until they reach at least a hundred years old, if not more. You need an adequate circumference to log for wood building. It doesn't matter how many young trees there are, if they are not large enough, they are useless for making planks. Unless you make things like plywood. Wood pulp also needs mature wood (young trees are too full of sap to be really useful until they reach a certain maturity).

[@Qbot10]

1:53 what, frame by frame?

[@Kronecraft]

Yes

[@tomuhawk96]

Thats 3024 frames

[@samotten9874]

I'm so environmentally friendly that I have created conditions that encourage the growth of algae (to an extent, wouldn't want any eutrophication) since algae and zooplankton actually do the majority of photosynthesis.

[@zandemen]

A point you didn't mention is that the wood used for pulp is actually salvaged waste wood that would normally be left to rot after the trees killed off by logging an area. The merchantable timber is targeted and harvested, sawn to make lumber. Amongst those trees are also trees of lower quality which can not be used to make lumber of acceptable quality or profitably. If there was no pulp industry, those trees would still die, but be left on the ground to rot. Making paper uses no trees in that sense. It is already recycled from detritus.

[@lindybeige]

@lysae3 Looking at conifer plantations, I'd say the ratio was pretty good. The rows are neat, even, and with very few gaps, and the trees are all the same age.

[@a_stranger_loop]

Lloyd really do be taking pages from the fine wine playbook: getting finer with age, making you feel like problems can indeed be solved, and having a deep connection to the earth.

[@lindybeige]

Paper and forestry companies (surprise!) plan ahead. Trees grow unattended quite well. Recycling and many other things are paid for with public money, and so can sidestep laws of economics. If people had to make a profit from recycling, then it would change nature very quickly.

[@QarthCEO]

The trees used to make paper only take 10 years to grow to harvest size. Some new varieties, genetically engineered in the US, take only 5 years. Trees, like any other plant, are crops grown on farms. There's nothing special about trees.

[@JohnMorley1]

Increasing demand for paper certainly will make lanting trees seem viable where making land over for grazing cattle might otherwise have been the most viable use of the land so I definitely agree.

[@taitungknight]

I quite agree! 5 stars! Absolutely on the ball. You can go a lot further too. Bring back hardwood furniture! Grow it, mill it, make furniture and sell it in the home country, and give it a dollar price. No dollar price = no (economical) value = people cut down rainforest to grow ... grass. Forestry companies have been hit hard over the past few decades from new non-wood building materials being developed, the growth of recycling, and competition from people clearfelling rain forest.

[@lindybeige]

@531rgb Three men crawling around a suburb, stopping and starting, to transport half a ton of low quality paper that needs a lot of bleaching, does not compare well with one man driving a lorry at cruising speed with many tons of pristine wood. If things are done on a large scale, where they happen is not very important.

[@RobertSeviour1]

Lindy, I doubt if you would hold this opinion if you had seen what clear-cutting has done to the first growth forests of British Columbia.

[@chadparsons50]

Silly comment.

[@lindybeige]

@Roflcopter4b We could cut down all the trees to plant hemp? Not sure how well hemp grows in Norway, though.

[@lindybeige]

@lordrah In Sweden, the trees they chop down for paper are the same type as those they plant.

[@lindybeige]

Where do you stand on the tectonic plates issue? Are western Icelanders American and eastern Icelanders Eurasian?

[@lindybeige]

@Keasri True, but how about not worrying about paper consumption, or not making ourselves comparatively miserable with paperless 'solutions'. Wouldn't those two things help make us happier?

[@outerik90]

That you said about plantning 2-3 tree for everyone they cut down, that true, but only one of those tree lives for the whole cycle.

[@lindybeige]

@Intelus This is such a bizarre assertion, that I think you must have misunderstood what I said. There must be some other figure you are using as part of this calculation.

[@zappababe8577]

Planting two or three seedlings is NOT equivalent to replacing one established tree which was ten or twenty years old. Therefore, we should STILL think of ways to reduce paper usage, and there is no reason why we shouldn't also plant more trees at the same time.

[@ottopike737]

I think the people in these comments don't realize that the paper industry wants trees. if it doesn't have them, it's out of business. so growth in that industry would save trees. you could argue that perhaps in the short term it's better not to replant trees. but due to public image concerns and tax cuts centered around it, that's not true either.

[@lindybeige]

Well, the trees being cut down for paper in places like Sweden are the same sort of trees they are planting. I have visited paper mills there and the logs in piles outside are all alike. Yes, if virgin ancient woodland were replaced with conifer plantation, this would not be like-for-like, but I don't think that that is the case here.

[@lindybeige]

@531rgb Sweden is the example for Britain. Some 60%b of paper used in Britain comes from Swedish wood pulp, processed in Sweden. The Swedish don't have warm winters, and northern Sweden is not far off a monoculture naturally.

[@lindybeige]

Depends how many trees you want to save. How about one frame spread over four pages?

[@captainnyet9855]

I loved the final slide, oh what a great place the world would be if everyone used 100% recycled ideas! But I just thought of another great way of saving trees, we need to burn lots and lots of books book burning day should become a global holiday.

[@magnusbjarnisk]

Where I come from, many areas are covered by trees...I have even planted about 2500 trees my self in my summer job over three summers, as the company I work for plans on making Iceland partially tree covered again. Iceland has also cleaner air and water than Britain, as our glaciers give us a bit of water and there are few vehicles and factories to pollute our land. Besides, who wants trees to cover all the awesome views we have here?

[@joeywever9194]

how can you not love this guy😂😂😂

[@lindybeige]

It's done mainly for political reasons, but possibly we have to go through a period of being rubbish at it before we get good at it, but there are alternatives, like burning it, but the big problem with that is getting paper that is guaranteed dry.

[@ronaldrhatigan7652]

The pulp mill about 5 miles from where I live uses a large percentage of recycled paper. The worn out fibers are some how separated and sold very cheaply to the farmers to spread on their fields as a soil amendment.

[@rmalarkey188]

Young Lindy! .. why did youtube serve this up to me, hmm?

[@lindybeige]

@Squeejee09 Perhaps, and this is one reason I never buy "organic" food.

[@josephteller9715]

I'd like to see a return to the use of QUALITY paper (which uses rag content). Then we'd be using less wood and instead otherwise waste cotton and hemp materials. But thats because I like good paper. The whole 'don't use paper' nonsense makes little sense. We have very efficient recycling, the people who want to avoid paper are usually companies who really don't want to pay for postage (thats why our post office system is in such a poor state) and want to make records easily erased or altered so that you have no physical proof to present when you show up in court to sue them. I suspect by not using paper we're also ending up with more loose carbon, which would otherwise be bound up in the trees or the paper. Someone needs to run a calculation about how much carbon is stored in non-living wood products someday. And well, if folks are worried about running out of trees...or hates tree farms.... bamboo can be used to make paper and grows rapidly compared to a tree....

[@lindybeige]

All salt has mass, and some giants have terribly large fingers.

[@digitalhdgaming9553]

What a quote to see out of context!

[@Thx1138sober]

If you are worried about a shortage of trees, just by a ticket (window seat) on an airplane and fly from NY to Dallas.

[@nuadathesilverhand3563]

Well, there is a difference between the century old oak that just got chopped down and the little twigs that got planted in its place, many of which will not grow to adulthood. That said, I'm not too concerned either way. Mother nature has proven that she can handle a lot more than we happen to be dishing out, though we should be aware of just how hard we're pushing.

[@pyramear5414]

The correct statistic is actually 5.2 lb of coal for every gigabyte. Assuming this white paper by EnerNOC Utility Solutions is correct.

[@lindybeige]

Not much of a water shortage in Sweden. One trouble with recycling paper is that you need to bleach the inks off it.

[@Altrantis]

Because when you chop them down, the earth is left at the mercy of the rain, so it erodes. A lot. I've seen gaping holes 10 meters deep because of this, in spanish we call them carcavas. Also, the tree plantations don't have vegetation beneath the planted trees' canopies, so even when the trees are there, the water flows underneath, eroding it. This also increases the level of minerals in the water, which is pollution if you stick by definition. I'm out of space but there's a lot more.

[@rickj.9202]

Most trees used in paper products are from trees that are specifically grown for paper. Saying “save the trees“ makes about as much sense as saying “save corn.“

[@bashkillszombies]

As with your climate change videos, again you are looking at oversimplified arguments from a five second evaluation based off of false premises. The consumption of paper isn't problematic because of it's usage of trees. It is the industry surrounding pulp milling that does extreme damage to the environment, especially chemical saturation of the environment. It's the fact people want the whitest of white clean crisp chemically treated paper, not 'just paper'.

[@Altrantis]

They could, but it'd be slower to harvest, and overall more expensive. it's the same reason why vegetables are grown all of the same type on a given plot of land. The difference is in agriculture, it's almost always in flat surfaces, so the erosion is less noticeable and most of the water goes into the earth/plants or evaporates. Also, the farmers put a lot of effort in keeping the soil rich, and there's crop rotations, although over time it also degrades the soil, just not so dramatically.

[@douglasfulmer5483]

That video just killed 10 baby panda bears who were sacrificed to the blood god Khorne to power it's upload to KZbin.

[@declanedmison5442]

SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE

[@devinm.6149]

We should use hemp to make paper. Hemp grows significantly quicker than trees so it would be much more sustainable.

[@junoguten]

They will call this broken window's fallacy, which is quite surprising since most of them are keynesians otherwise. They'll say "but wouldn't it be more efficient if we saved the paper *and* planted new trees. Of course they're not actually going to spend lots of money on replanting trees though. Then there's the issue of them behaving like if deforestation is a general problem. My own country is over-forested. They still whine about it over here like a broken clock.

[@barkebaat]

I'm a professional woodworker and I save trees in the best way possible. I make useful and sometimes even beautiful things from them. Things that will last for generations or even hundreds of years. I pay people to kill trees for me. I love wood.

[@Intelus]

If the 2 pounds of coal/10MB thing were true, it would mean that in Y2008, the entire network traffic in the US didn't exceed 2.7GB. This includes running all networked computers (home computers, servers, etc.) and network equipment. If there are, say, 10 hops to the destination host (and that's quite an underestimate), actual users couldn't squeeze out more than 250MBs of traffic. That's about 1 byte/user. I could write a detailed explanation, but it exceeds 500 characters (by about 8501).

[@deckard541]

Brilliant !

[@stahleis]

What a young man

[@richardcarlstedt3701]

The joke at the end actually made me laugh this time.

[@aDifferentJT]

Things like AWS are making the internet far more efficient than it used to be

[@reav3rtm]

Of course, but frankly in some countries forestry companies are funded from public money and some other provide 'Christmas tree' sort of products, nothing really suitable for large scale paper production in question. My point really is, that imho both lobbies ('recycle, save the trees' and 'overuse paper, save the trees') are quite silly hence apart from 'debunking myth' in first part I assume intended comical value in second. Btw, trees grow unattended, true, but when one excludes thievery.

[@presidentlouis-napoleonbon8889]

The reason why I don't waste paper is because when I determine myself to use something a lot, I use them aaaaa lot. But I am also care a lot about financial stuffs. I save energy for my family to pay less for them.

[@georgiahancock3142]

I printed out this video 🤣

[@cheesypoohalo]

I agree with what Lloyd is saying in regards to the paper industry, but I don't think the paper industry is the biggest problem. Destroying forests in order to use the land for farms and housing is a much better example of how save the trees should be applied. A good example recently would be in Brazil, where much forest land is set on fire to clear it quickly. In regards to the paper industry, yes they do replace the trees they cut down, but until they have grown, the animals that live in the forests have had their homes disturbed and destrroyed, and many of them cannot survive in a forest of mere saplings while waiting for the trees to regrow. I also suspect the paper industry plants different types of trees, presumably trees that are good for making paper, and perhaps not so good for the animals that depend on them.

[@bikram_shrestha]

well according to video that the paper company have a policy in place that if they cut one tree to make a paper they are required to plant three trees to replace it . which will basically increase the number of trees in nature .(as i know companies who make toilet paper they do such scheme of re-plantation or they just provide funds to those organisation who are basically concern about saving trees and nature as a good will .)

[@arnaudshirt2798]

I got an add about planting trees on this video lol.

[@AlexMilenk]

Eleven years in the future and there are everdecreasing number of trees and books.

[@johngalt3614]

If you really want to save trees lobby for paper production using anything besides trees. Trees are relatively low in fiber compared to hops, cannabis, grape vines, or really anything that is green and bends. Its easier to keep using trees than retool the paper industry which is why we still use them.

[@GunFunZS]

But they've chosen trees that grow quickly and are an efficient uniform crop without a bunch of other gunk that needs to be removed some how. In point of fact the trees are pretty much like the first stage of regrowth after a forest fire or landslide. They pump a ton of nitrogen into the soil, and make it extremely fertile for the longer lived types of trees.

[@johngalt3614]

Still its less efficient then hemp, grape vines, or cotton. I didnt say trees were bad i said they were bad for paper production, and actually grass and fungus tends to start growing before hard woods and disiduous trees

[@tristonhall3856]

Haha...oh the marketing opportunities. "Dunder Mifflin is now the first company in the industry to produce pot, beer, wine, and fluffy paper."-Michael Scott

[@wanderingwatcher3981]

We need our farmlands for food, not for paper. Most of the world's decent soil have already been turned into farmland. We lose nothing from turning forrests into paper. The same can´t be said if we were to use something else, like hops or grape vines. That said, lack of biodiversity and reduced carbon absorption are both valid concerns.

[@justindie7543]

There's a rather important flaw in your thinking, Lloyd. When people say "save the trees", it's not really about the trees in particular. The process of humans planting and chopping trees destroys pretty much every other living thing that once called that forest home. The forest must be exploited for peak efficiency, which means eradicating everything else to maximize tree growth.

[@pepegomezmerchan7685]

Lloyd denies the massacre of Nanjing

[@ypsilonick8738]

huh?

[@WritingFighter]

You do what I can't because I have no good working camera. But of the many videos I've seen are words out of my mouth. But I didn't think about using paper. Right then, when I get the money, I'll get your entire video onto one of those flip books, where you bend the pages and flip them rapidly to make a "video". :D

[@Xzazazazia]

Printing out this video will take a while. How many frames per printed frames?

[@ppsh43]

The true reason businesses do not want to use paper is that this is an expense. for the company. Not only in the consumption of paper and toner, but more use means that the printer will need to be serviced sooner.

[@gnomorian]

im tempted to get the stream of the video, convert it into integers and print out the "video" on paper.

[@magnusbjarnisk]

Geologically is Iceland both in North America and Eurasia, but politically and economically, we are in Europe. Personally, I like it better being in Europe as US Americans can be quite stupid (obviously not all of them, but enough are for the entire nation to be considered dull). Europe also shares heck of a lot more history with Iceland.

[@Intelus]

@lindybeige I can't be sure in this exact case, but I've Google'd a bunch of similar studies and what they usually take into account is the electricity cost to _manufacture_ each component, which is just absurd. It's like saying an airplane trip costs 100 mil. USD, presuming the plane only makes one trip. As a side-note, I noticed soon after posting that my calculations could've been a bit off (not much), but it's still quite impossible to use that much energy for downloading 10MBs of data.

[@Lillkenta1]

Well, a replated tree cant replace the ecosystems that are destroyed to harvest the trees in the first place. "Saving trees" is actually more about preserving ecosystems where lots of spicies can live and thrive. Thats actually really daft to think that treeplantages can replace natural forrests, you should know that! And of course making paper takes other resourses too. Wasting something is never good, unless you belive in like infinite growth of the economy on a non-infinite planet or something. Best regards Christoffer from Umeå, Sweden

[@Mr_Squiggle]

Can this video pretty pretty 😍 please have an update with current figures?

[@Jesses001]

I conserve paper and save every little scrap I can. Not because I want to save trees, but because I am to darn cheap to go buy paper all the time. I bought about 2million pages of paper (no exageration) about 10 years ago and have not bought paper since.

[@sasop117]

@lindybeige totally agree with you on that!!

[@Kbrkbass55]

Oh God, thank you sir for that comment :'p

[@magnusbjarnisk]

As an Icelander, I can download as much as I want because our electricity comes from renewable resources.

[@XCritonX]

Interestingly, when we try to prevent natural events like forest fires from happening we can actually be doing more harm than good. I have seen the use of controlled burns by forestry services used to actually mimic the benefits of natural fires.

[@WakarimasenKa]

@Lathox Sure.. but most paper comes from plantations.. and they are cut down in stages.. also young trees are far better at converting CO2 than older trees so plantations or hemp farming is a good idea.. Though we should ofcourse try to have reservations for true wild growing forests,

[@elgostine]

in terms of trees it helps that most of north europe has very heavy populations of pine, in australia paper still uses pine yet the dominenttrees i the trouble spos are really old and valuable forests. you europeans are lucky in that if forests in one contry go, they can be more easily reestablished using organisms form another nation wich can have very similar ecological value.

[@badegg4909]

How does one print a video :D?

[@AgentDRJ]

+Taylor Di Angelo So you download the video, open the video file in some sort of movie editing program that lets you convert frames to images. Now you convert all the frames to images and then print out all the images. Though it is a bit trickier to print out the sound.

[@badegg4909]

should I do .WAV or .MP3?

[@ScienceDiscoverer]

+Taylor Di Angelo wav will use much more paper, cos its uncompressed, so use it ;)

[@lindybeige]

@ftapon I don't follow the logic of your Japan argument.

[@6rasta6bhoy6]

for god's sake the paper is already printed. i completely agree with you; just because you're not wasting paper it doesn't mean that you're saving rainforests.

[@KairuHakubi]

I remember the first time I discovered definitively that loggers have been replanting. makes so much sense when you think about it it's the people who want to raise beef where beef shouldn't be raised who are the problem, clearing land for that. Plenty of prairie land on the less forested continents.

[@VincentGonzalezVeg]

lets farm oxygen and save soler energy in oxygen, wood and fruits as a feature of cities to encourage better health , the roots hold water along with the amount of the tissue above the ground, the roots also help prevent thibgs from washing away in mud and boulder slides, waxy leaves can collect pollutants from vehicles and be washed away each time it rains also there can be trees pruned for children to climb over hundreds of years

[@benlamborn5792]

Wasn't the Black Forest once a huge percent of continental Europe land mass?

[@blackdeath4eternity]

interesting stuff. dont know why they wouldent plant a few differont types of trees & have a cover crop underneith though... it would fix most of the problums you mentiond.

[@user-gl7ly9lu2m]

The real problem is that our machines are wastfull. THe internal combustion engine used for automobiles for example uses only a tiny part of the fuel it burns(INternal combustion: it burns the fuel on the inside) We are still playing around with steam for generating elecricity and our principal fuel is ineficient with reserch for an eficient fuel or alternate ways to produce electricity blocked by the petrochemical giants in every turn. Progress is been stifled in the name of profit.

[@valhar2000]

νικος γιαλιτακις How do you turn the energy in coal into electricity without using steam?

[@ScienceDiscoverer]

+Lorenzo Benito disassemble it to molecules and use them somehow?

[@iPelaaja1]

The best and most efficient powerplants probably harvest around 30% of the energy of coal. And then, some, or quite a lot, is used to get the coal there, crush the coal into powder, keep the boilers heated (reserve heat, powerplants have to be on standby when the electricity is not needed, so all the energy is wasted as it still takes huge amounts to keep everything warm and ready). The theoretical maximum for a powerplant is also not much, it is dependant on the temperature at the boiler, and the cooling water. Around 500°C would be max, and arounf 20°C for the water. This gives the Carnot efficiency or 1-((20+273)/(500+273))= 48%. So even with absolutely no heat loss to friction, bad insulation etc, only 50% of energy of coal can ever be harvested. What Im saying, it is extremely inefficient. We should build a lot more nuclear power. Renewables are good, but expensive, and building them takes a lot of materials (mining rare metals for solar cells, concrete foundation and meal shaft..

[@iPelaaja1]

+iPelaaja1 ..of wind turbines... Nuclear is what needs to be built. Invest in fusion, no waste and safe, just like fission. Fusion would be basically free energy. Also solves another problem, it turns Hydrogen into Helium, and helium isnrunning out in twenty or so years. Helium could be used for new airships, which are extremely efficient for cargo. No lorries or trucks for long distances.

[@linkxsc]

+νικος γιαλιτακις "tiny part" actually a lot of engines now for gasoline are pushing the upper 20%, diesel engines in the 30s, and opposed piston diesels they figure they can push into the 60% range. Coal plants, and oil plants on the other hand are only working in the 20-30% range, and so on and so forth. But coal is coal, and diesel is diesel, and you can't interchange them. Also as far as it is, steam is the only effective mass power generation system we have. Nothing else is even remotely better. And if you spent a bit of time studying thermo, you'd understand pretty quick that it is the most effective heat engine. Seabeck effect (aka Pellitier effect) can be used to turn a heat differential directly into electricity... however all of the systems doing that I think the highest efficiency peaked yet was something liek 3-4%. But it is useful, afterall, thats how the voyager space probe has been getting power for its lifetime (and should still be doing ok in another 10 or so) Other than that, all a windmill is is wind pushing on blades, hydroelectric is water on blades, and all heat engines are steam against blades. Also as far as LOL profit. no, no no no no NO. There are vast profits to be made in the advancement of alternative energies which I'm going to describe a bit below. However there is a major environmental "issue" with most every one of them, which you'd find its the environmental "problems" that seem to have the most drag on these other sources than any "profit" in remaining how we are. Nuclear is great as it generates TREMENDOUS amounts of power with relatively little input. (I recall reading an article about nuclear saying that all of the worlds waste over the last 60 years since nuclear started, would fill a soccer pitch ankle deep, which sounds like a lot, but isn't even a tiny fraction of what goes into coal or oil plants) But there's so many groups against nuclear, that they haven't been able to go super heavy into optimizing that process. And on the nuclear waste front, well they've been trying to get in with some newer reactors that will "burn" a large portion of that off. But again, environmental groups are a problem. Also some bits about how a lot of the designs can output weapons grade material (which they usually then burn themselves, so i don't see the problem) so everyone's afraid of that. So nuclear's out. Windmills are nice, generate quite a bit of power and they just sit there. But everyone bitches about them because "birds fly into them" (Trust me, I've worked around them for years and haven't found a dead bird yet. Birds aren't that stupid, and most windmills don't turn that fast). Though I will say, up the street form my house is an oil fueled power plant. Back in college during thermodynamics I think we had done the math that based on that power plant, a 1MW windmill working at 50% was offsetting like 160 gallons of oil burned per hour, every hour, every day that it was running, and that was only running at 50%. Then we had figured some stuff about the thing's green footprint over 10 years and the money saved that was no spent on oil... forget the actual numbers, but lets just say they were "noticeable". But dead birds, and "they're an eyesore". So wind is out. Solar is even nicer, no danger for birds, and you could easily go about the country, strap them to the appropriate roofs of everyone's house, and start taking a sizeable chunk out of local power demand throughout the day... Only people think they're prohibitively expensive and most people don't want to have to build shit onto their houses. But if you figure that a new house costs 100-200k, and solar panels installed on the roof would be another 10-20k, that's actually not so bad of a cost to not have to worry so much about your electric bill and such. But theres nothing like a gov't incentive (at least in my country) to give say, the contractor building houses a kickback or tax break to make them want to build houses with solar included. Added bonus for people living in snowy areas because they can include a heating circuit inside of the solar panels. Oh, got some snow on the roof, panels not working. Hit a button, melt the snow for an hour, get back to generating power. Even better would be panels made to be built into your driveway so you could make power and not have to worry about shoveling... but thats just wishful thinking. Also there are "a lot of harsh chemicals that go into the process, and it takes like 5 years for them to offset their carbon footprint, also they don't look nice up on the roof of buildings" so solar is out. Then there's hydroelectric, which we can't use because of the fishies. Even though in my state, there are hundreds that have been spanning rivers for 200+ years, and those rivers seem to have no lack of fish (we are quite inland from the spawning waters farther downstream), but all of those are turned off for the last 50 years because of protesting, and are slowly being torn down. Too bad, if one of the long power lines had gone down for whatever reason, it would have been nice to have a local generation source to keep the town going, but NAW. So Hydro is out. From there we have satellite based microwave electric, which people have no clue what it is. (Its basically solar arrays in space with a microwave beam that can be pointed at a collector on earth, or a satellite or such) But would basically be worthless for large scale power generation for earth. (Pretty great for powering satellites with super efficient ion engines and such though, which could drive science in space and help us learn more about our solar system. Also could beam power up from earth to maintain say a base on the moon, or satellites too with the same system) but people see the word microwave, star convulsing because they think its the fucking death star laser and scream NOOOOOOOO. Geothermal is passive and nice in the areas where it works, and it is done quite often. But is restricted to a few areas, and can't output much so... Tidal ocean, yeah that's not gonna happen anytime soon as it'd probably be MORE environmentally damaging (at least to marine biologists) Fusion, is high powered nuclear without the nuclear waste... but I think the Germans just finally after years drew a positive with one of their reactors for a few seconds. But likely at least another few decades before a real fusion plant can be deployed. It will be a grand day. But to all the ones who are afraid of a nuclear meltdown. Just remember, a fusion plant will actually be even less efficient than a nuclear one, and if some shit goes wrong with that, the detonation will make a nuclear plant look like a cherry bomb. But at least it won't be radioactive. Dunno bro, theres a lot of tech out there, and theres lots of money being sunk into them. And I can tell you, theres certainly profit to be made in alternative energy, and companies are trying. But take for example. Some outfit built up about 2000 windmills in northern California and its been a year since I went by them, but over the course of 2 years I never saw them run, because some group complained about them and they were told to shut them all down. I'd hate to be a guy that put up the money for that project only to get fucked that hard by some environmentalists.

[@ioda006]

haha. so true. The argument about trees truly is flawed. Waste and energy use though is another issue. WRT recycling ineffeciency - I always tell people that the phrase "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" goes in that order for a reason - it goes from best to worst.

[@mariosebastiani3214]

It's not about saving a NUMBER of trees, it's about avoiding the destruction of natural woods to plant an homogeneous mass of trees all of the same kind, with no undergrowth where woodland life can thrive and guarantee biodiversity (they use poplar trees in my area). Also, paper production needs a ludicrous amount of water, which is taken from rivers and streams and gets evaporated (only recent plants recover a fraction condensing it; mainly, due to the cost of machinery, they are very old ones). This means less water for the environment and agriculture, and putting steam (which acts as a greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere. And producing paper takes a LOT of electrical and thermal energy, so it leads to pollution in another way too. Finally, carrying it around with trucks pollutes far more than downloading MB from the internet. If you use less paper, you also need to recycle less of it, so less trucks gathering it from the neighborhoods. Sorry Lindy, I'm not on your page this time.

[@RDTheAwesome]

What about logging industries elsewhere in the world?

[@Dechthem]

@lindybeige yeah, I live here so I know, but have you walked in a "grown" forest that has been planted for industrial use?and have you compared it to a natural grown forest?or what it looks like after the machines has been there?compared to what it was before? your logic is perfect in simple terms but saving the trees does not mean the industiral grown trees but the actual real forests that is left. also there is the question on how egologialy sound a industrial forest are.