Iceland’s forest and bush cover has increased sixfold since 1990
icelandreview.com
icelandreview.com
ok - better, plants whose seeds die instead of refreshing; plants that are allegedly immune to only MY brand of poison and won't hurt anything; trees with patents.
Is that a real concern when it comes to trees?
What is and isn't a tree is not as well defined as one would think.
Add to that some tree species can be nearly impossible to kill. Cutting them off at the ground does not work, the roots must also be dug up. Any green braches left on the ground can take root and form a new tree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schinus_terebinthifolia
It grows quickly. I’ve never heard of its wood having any use. While you’re cutting it down, vibration causes its seeds to fall and they sprout later. And you have to burn/poison the stump or else that regrows too.
This is pretty basic history, with endless examples of human societies that took short-term gains by screwing with ecosystems for more complex than they could understand... Only to leave behind horrific costs for their descendants and neighbors? And that some of those costs proved so high that they wiped out the societies that came up short, when the bill came due?
Are you aware of the countless famines, wars, wildfires, floods, and other disasters that happened as a result? Do you know the body counts of these choices?
If you're honestly just ignorant of all this history, I'm gonna suggest that you start by reading Mark Reisner's masterwork:
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert
And then maybe follow it up with Jared Diamond:
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choo...
If you can at least digest those, whether you agree or disagree with their theses--then I think we'll be ready to have a useful discussion about the wisdom of human interference in existing stable ecosystems.
Have you considered that you might be making a wildly inaccurate assumption that island ecology tends toward homeostasis? Does it bother you so much that someone might believe that disruption and wild fluctuation might be much more typical of ecosystems, even without the intervention of Homo sapiens sapiens?
Your question has an obvious, widely accepted answer... Whether that answer is right or wrong, your failure to reference it comes off as deliberately provocative.
And by your response, it seema pretty obvious: Yes, you knew full well the answer before you sarcastically asked your orignal question.
If you ask questions in bad faith, using an argumentative tone--then why are you surprised when I respond to you in the same fashion?
If you want better replies, you should try writing a better post, in the first place.
From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, under the section "In Comments" (halfway down)...
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
...
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
...
> Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.
Hawaii has a huge problem with this, but also California. The eucalyptus trees they imported from Australia have had the terrible affect of making wildfires in California even worse. There's also a horrible negative feedback loop because the Eucalyptus is adapted to recover quickly from such fires.
"It has been estimated that 70% of the energy released through the combustion of vegetation in the Oakland fire was due to eucalyptus.[41] In a National Park Service study, it was found that the fuel load (in tons per acre) of non-native eucalyptus woods is almost three times as great as native oak woodland." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus#Adaptation_to_fire
You can't simply cut it down, it requires a nasty chemical applied to the stump, or to be completely pulled out by the roots. They grow tightly packed together, so clearing out even a small area is best done with a team of people.
If I were a billionaire I’d fund a secret program to create a disease to wipe out buckthorn. I hate what it’s done to Minnesota’s forests.
https://arapahoe.extension.colostate.edu/2021/09/05/tree-fro...
Its original range, before European arrival, is believed to be in Appalachian Mountains, Pennsylvania to Georgia, and the Ozarks.
It has been used as a pioneer species to restore treeless land in other continents, including Europe, Asia and Africa and Australia. Spain has used them to restart forest in desertified areas, for example.
- Black Locust -- New York PRISM https://www.wnyprism.org/invasive_species/black-locust/
- Black Locust -- Massachusetts Audubon Society https://www.massaudubon.org/learn/nature-wildlife/invasive-p...
- Rethinking Black Locust -- by Maureen Sundberg April 15, 2019 Ecological Lanscape Alliance https://www.ecolandscaping.org/04/landscape-challenges/invas...
There are notable examples of invasive species in the non-tree category though, the Lupine probably being the most controversial. It's been used to reclaim and create soil in sandy areas and in only a few decades since being imported, the blue of the flowering lupine absolutely dominates some areas. I think it's pretty, but it's aggressive as all hell.
Pinus is worse
I watched the eucalyptus stands burning in the Oakland Hills fire. They go up like torches. I've never understood the rationale for keeping them. Owls really like them though.
There's your rationale. Owls are cool.
https://www.independent.com/2011/01/15/how-eucalyptus-came-c...
There are other Eucalyptus trees that are massive and perhaps less attractive, that I still find awe inspiring because of their massive size.
I did not know that they were such a problem in wildfires, despite being born in and living nearly the whole of my life in Southern California. You learn something every day.
https://milliontrees.me/2013/11/01/monarch-butterflies-in-ca...
> His theory is that the agricultural practices of early settlers, which cleared trees, created a population explosion of the milkweed that is the host plant of monarchs. More milkweeds resulted in more monarchs and monarchs began to migrate in response to population pressure, he believes.
So it sounds like it was all pine in that area, deforestation created an environment for monarchs, and they moved in. Monarchs are not native to the area, so I'm not sure that they can be used as a defence to keep all the eucalyptus.
Fkn hate those trees and the bugs they host!
Native is more about replanting things into a stable ecosystem, versus non native, which can become invasive and detrimental to that ecosystem
Iceland's tourism marketing department is super impressive; I see a barren rocky hellscape (I've been there twice, both times as emergency layovers due to XYZ airline problems) but people who buy into the ads consider it "beautiful and otherworldly", I think, because there are no trees there besides the ones planted in the cities. The bus trip from the new airport to the capital is about 30 minutes, other than Craters of the Moon national park in idaho I don't think i've seen a more barren stretch of land, especially so close to a major population center.
But, to be fair, if your measure of a fertile landscape is a forest then those are relatively few and far between. Personally I tend to feel a bit claustrophobic when there are trees boxing me in on all sides and I can't see the mountains. :)
However yes the ride from KEF to RVK is particularly barren looking.
There's nothing quite like hiking for miles before looking down and realizing that you've been walking on a dense two-dimensional mat of berry bushes and spiral-shaped alder trees. It's quite possible that you saw trees but did not recognize them as such -- from a distance, this "flat forest" looks a lot like moss. Not much can survive annual meters-deep snows, which is one of the reasons I'm uncharacteristically flippant about invasive species (the other reason being the sheep population).
AFAIK the main factor in those "harsh conditions" is sheep farming. Sheep on Iceland are kept pretty much without any fences. They will eat saplings and small tees. There is an amazing photo somewhere of a little island in a river that's in essence covered in forest. Everything around it is mostly moss as you call out.
Another factor, especially on the Rejkyanes peninsula towards the airport is that this is also a very young part of the island. It's mostly still lava rock. This isn't representative of other parts of Iceland.
Source: visited 5 times and travelled the island extensively.=
Actually maybe I'd call Haida Gwaii the Canadian Hawaii.
> "In the meantime, Iceland’s forests have begun to produce wood for a small timber market. Forests planted between 1950-1970 are now supplying around 5,000 square metres of wood per year: miniscule compared to industries abroad, but a start. The Icelandic birch, Siberian larch, Sitka spruce, lodgepole pine and balsam poplar are producing quality wood of equal or superior quality to that which Iceland imports from abroad. Yet an overwhelming 80% of the trees felled are burned as fuel in silicon smelting."
Iceland has a silicon production industry, which relies on geothermal electricity interestingly enough. The wood is included to grab the oxygen from silicon dioxide to produce elemental silicon metal (being emitted as carbon dioxide). Overall, if they could eliminate the coal from the mix, this would be a carbon-neutral fossil-fuel free silicon production system:
> "Silicon metal is extracted from quartzite, aided by the addition of wood chip and coal, in electric arc furnaces at temperatures of around 2,000 degrees Celsius. The new plant obtains its key raw material quartzite primarily from PCC’s own quarry in Zagórze, Poland. However, the related logistical costs are more than outweighed by the advantages of electricity procurement. And the dust emissions generated during silicon metal production are almost completely removed from the ambient air by high-performance filter systems installed in the PCC plant. Taken as a whole, therefore, the production process offers exceptional sustainability credentials."
> Forests and bushes now cover over 2% of Iceland, Vísir reports. That number may not seem like much, but since 1990, the surface area covered by forest or shrubs in Iceland has increased more than six times over – from 7,000 hectares to 45,000. In 20 years, the number is expected to be 2.6%.
And from another article :
> The Forest Service intends to deliver six million plants this year, says Þröstur, which is equivalent to pre-crash levels of production. “It was around five million last year, and four million the year before that. This is a rapid increase. Then we need seven to eight million next year, which we may not manage, and ten to twelve in 2025.”
Finland has 23 million hectares (76%) of forest cover.
Probably that only works for people that are from nearby Finland and/or into geography, though. For huge scales like these, I'm thinking degrees might theoretically be a better unit, since it's easier to visualize a fraction of the globe (presuming people know there's 360 degrees around the globe) than picturing hundreds of thousands of some other unit.
Here is my reasoning. Say I give enough to plant 10 trees a month. In 10 years that's 1,200 trees. Let's say half of them die, we're left with 600. Assuming a tree absorb 1 ton of CO2 throughout its life, that 600 tons. I live in a place where CO2 emissions per capita are about 6 tons a year (check for yourself here and don't forget to compare with the US https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis... ).
According to this back of the enveloppe calculation after 10 years I would have planted enough trees to offset 100 years of carbon emissions.
In any case, it really puts into perspective how messed up our continued use of fossil fuels is.
Just found this estimate 'the average tree absorbs an average of 10 kilograms, or 22 pounds, of carbon dioxide per year for the first 20 years.' My quick calculation of 1 ton of CO2 being absorbed is off by a factor of five then (200kg over 20 years).
"Carbon footprint" was originally invented by the public relations agency Ogilvy & Mather for BP as a concept to divert attention from industry to individuals.
https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sh...
That's not to say that public pressure is not a good thing. It is. But the actual causal effect it has for a better future is in the form of creating political sentiment. Individual carbon economy is mostly about promoting a political sentiment via signaling.
But generally it's a fools errand trying to scientifically balance your "carbon footprint" since this was not an engineering concept to start with. If it makes you feel good to plant trees do it! Trees are awesome. Buying less stuff you don't need is also always good I think. For example I use my cell phones until something irrevocably gives up and drive my current car as long as possible (generally making a new car is always more resource consuming than driving the current one I think).
[0] For example Vaclaw Smil "How the world really works" discusses our fossil fuel based economy at length
In German, it's more common to refer to an ecological footprint, its usage which goes back to at least 1992, and it wasn't coined by a PR company, but by very straight laced environmentalists.
I don't know whether BP falsified the evidence here, but everything kinda points towards that it really is the consumers that drive demand.
> generally it's a fools errand trying to scientifically balance your "carbon footprint"
How would you, then, unscientifically solve climate change if we aren't supposed to take individual action to bring our own footprint to net zero, encourage others to do the same, and bring about societal change using market pressure and all that?
> If it makes you feel good to plant trees do it! Trees are awesome.
But if the "you" in this sentence is being made to feel good for the wrong reasons, isn't that dishonest? Shouldn't we be looking at what is actually effective use of your money, and not let people fall for feel-good tree planting only for them to find out ten years down the line that their hard-earned money went into /dev/null and they should have done (and could have been told about) something like meat reduction or solar panels instead?
They didn't say that.
> How would you, then, unscientifically solve climate change if we aren't supposed to take individual action to bring our own footprint to net zero, encourage others to do the same, and bring about societal change using market pressure and all that?
The individual action here is minor. Market pressure can work but only in certain circumstances. They already suggested working on political sentiment, since laws can do a lot here to tax or force certain methods.
> But if the "you" in this sentence is being made to feel good for the wrong reasons, isn't that dishonest? Shouldn't we be looking at what is actually effective use of your money [...]
I'm pretty sure the person you're responding to is also an advocate for effective use of money, specifically by focusing on the wider changes and not focusing much on the carbon footprint concept.
But you don't have to spend all your money on improving the world as much as possible.
The simple answer is to vote, and if you can spare the time/money/effort to go and become political active.
Removing coal/oil/natural gas plants won't occur without political will. We need political will to build out rail infrastructure, regulating air/boat fuels, changing subsidies for fossil fuels into emission free alternatives, prioritize bike/pedestrian infrastructure, and so on.
Right now we had politicians in EU voting that natural gas is "green", driving primarily by a specific political party in Germany, and now the same people are turning on coal and oil power plants. Societal change need to start with replacing people in power that view fossil fuel as a tool to be used rather than something that should be left in the ground. No individual action can get near to undo the damage that those politicians are doing by allowing fossil fuels to be burned.
Ofcourse if you get your gas from a not so friendly imperialistic autocrat who decides to go full in on military territorial expansion and uses gas as a economic weapon you are screwed and need to do whatever you can and is necessary.
Gas is a terrible for backup for wind/solar, especially further up north. Even in countries who in optimal weather can have 100% energy from wind (Denmark reached this a while back), gas and other fossil fuel power plants are still the single highest source of emissions by a large margin. Wind operate on average around 40-60%, which mean that half the energy used has to be sourced elsewhere. When ~50% of your energy comes from "backup", then the word "backup" looses its meaning, and that is in fairly good situation where wind has been built out to have 100% capacity.
I could see an argument for gas if it was used less than 1%, and with a decrease use as the grid expanded their capacity, but that is not the reality we got in northern Europe. Instead we see an increase in fossil fuels usage each year. With increase use we also get increased prices, with energy prices being exceptional high and rising. Politically this is a terrible loss for everyone except those investing into fossil fuels, and in the current economical downturn, fossil fuel companies are doing very well at the moment.
It’s not about will you fly or take the train. The food we eat, the clothes we wear - everything has fossil fuel inputs at some point.
One can choose to consume less. Buy second hand etc. Then the fossil inputs in mining, transport, farming and whatnot will not be repeated.
Consumer choice electricity? You can’t choose non-fossil based electricity unless someone has invested large amounts of capital in e.g wind power.
The only thing that can affect things this large is industrial policy which again in democratic countries needs political support.
That’s why consumer carbon footprint is gaslighting. The individual choise does not exist, and trying to spin the carbon economy narrative towards consumer responsibility was a backhanded attempt to delay the energy transition which only the war in Ukraine launched to a better trajectory.
I was not suggesting people spend all of their money planting trees. I was thinking it in the context that sometimes people want to do something symbolic with extra cash that makes them feel better. It was not intended as a moral imperitive.
I'm all for planting more Icelandic trees, but I don't think you're getting as much bang for your buck as you could.
Also, I wouldn’t mind retiring early and doing some tree planting in Iceland or similar volunteer work to pay my way around a country.
Only when they are initially planted and growing is there a net CO2 sequestration going on.
Burning fossil fuels is the problem we need to fix.
That initial sequestration can't make up for ongoing use of fossil fuels, sure, but it still has nonzero value.
the problem with climate change is the wild swings in weather - if you want to stabilize and buffer these swings, you need to maximize biomass. having a mature forest ecosystem acting as a carbon/nitrogen buffer does a lot of good, but in a way that is difficult to measure
I think we get tunnel vision on CO2 ppm because it's a metric with a nice clean causative effect (greenhouse), but more energy on earth is not what's actually causing us grief, we've destroyed most of the mature ecosystems and decimated total biomass, and we are surprised that this causes issues with the total ecosystem because we consider atmospheric problems somehow unrelated to all the living things participating in chemical cycles with that atmosphere. we need more buffer wherever we can get it, and I hate to see someone poo-pooing ecosystem restoration in favor of carbon sequestration.
Can we cut down forests and store them deep in former mines?
I'm not advocating for new mines.
The only way to sequester CO2 using trees is keeping the trees alive (or blasting them with chemicals to prevent rotting).
But of course, the solution you mention is the simplest: Treat the wood with one of the several known ways to make it not break down, and leave it in big piles somewhere.
I'm sure there are no possible repercussions to doing this.
If they rot the CO2 will still be below the surface?
That's kind of a given. People generally don't like it when their homes and furniture decompose.
You know what would really be better than planting trees? For the world to stop burning so much coal.
40% of global electricity is from coal. Europe needs to increase coal usage because of the war.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/germany-coal-renewable-energ...
There are 8 billion people on the planet. “Hey, everyone stop what you’re doing, let’s all do this” is quite ineffective. We don’t need to stop planting trees in Iceland in order to save the rain forests.
Again, I think planting Icelandic trees is awesome! Just since OP specifically mentioned "offset my carbon emissions" I thought I'd shill one of my favorite ways of doing that :)
https://www.duke-energy.com/home/products/renewable-energy/n...
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/19/deforestation-in-brazils-ama...
Isn’t the land being destroyed so people can have more meat, palm oil, etc.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/03/09/...
What are organizations doing to improve the situation? Fighting consumer demand is difficult
My ancestors on my “civilised” country uprooted an tore down all the trees and forests, most of the countryside is farmland. And now that we have destroyed our forests we go “no no, preserve the rainforests”… so we can keep planting wheat?
Or put another way, because they didn't bother to become energy independent and shut down nuclear plants instead of investing in more.
I'd expect the politicians to be launching a WWII-style industrial mobilization to ramp up heat pump installations. Even if they can't switch away from coal / natural gas this year, typical heat pump coefficients of power are well above 4. Going from 100% gas furnaces to 100% heat pumps powered off of natural gas peaker plants would more than halve natural gas demand! (And, in coming years, the natural gas plants could be replaced with greener options.)
The insulation needs to happen first for those houses, and this can be a massive undertaking costing tens of thousands of euros. The next best thing is a hybrid heat pump.
Although there's some subsidies here and there, you're very much right that we need something way more aggressive. For the houses I mentioned (which is almost all), a total sum of ~50K EUR is just not something the average family can afford. Those that do probably up their mortgage to finance it.
Also take into account the shortages. I have a family member that installs heat pumps, he orders them by the dozens. Currently he's afraid to place orders as the delivery time is a minimum of 6 months with no guaranteed final date nor is the price fixed. It's "6K but we will charge you whatever it will actually be when we deliver". "I don't know when it is coming or what it will cost" is not a great message towards home owners.
https://www.beefmagazine.com/beef-quality/update-us-cattle-e...
In January 2022 alone, Brazilian beef imports registered a more than 500% increase.
Record high U.S. beef prices and drought-impacted supplies in Australia, where the U.S. would otherwise source beef, have also contributed to growing imports of processing-grade beef from Brazil
https://www.beefmagazine.com/news/us-beef-imports-brazil-sur...
I don't see them mentioning the Amazon or hinting that the USA's imports are contributing there, but maybe I'm misreading their comment then (also when re-reading it now I don't see what you're referring to). Oh, or are you referring to the link they posted rather than their comment itself?
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/soy [2]: https://awellfedworld.org/feed-ratios/
Not eating beef / meat / dairy is the single best thing one can do to help.
It’s hard to quantify these things and get a conclusive answer on which is better; I think we can leave it at “both are good.”
I wonder why :P
When I was in Iceland, they told me the reason they don't have forests anymore is that the vikings and other later settlers logged it. (Of course, a random horse tour person isn't the best source so I could very well be misinformed.)
(More concretely: individuals cycle, while household units generally compost together. A household of 4 produces a nontrivial amount of compostable waste and diverting it can be a significant ecological outcome, especially if it's replacing purchases of topsoil or artificial fertilizer. It also makes taking the trash out more pleasant, since it doesn't spend days rotting indoors before being tossed to the curb.)
If you’re spending your limited time and effort on 2% measures we’ve all already lost.
> If you’re spending your limited time and effort on 2% measures we’ve all already lost.
We're talking about one measure, one that's specifically coextensive with managing your waste (assuming you don't throw your trash into a pile in the corner of your room). It takes me no extra time to throw a banana peel in the compost bin instead of the trash can; they're right next to each other.
Also note that buying a different product in the supermarket is an entirely different order of magnitude than changing your life around so that you can cycle to work without less free time / degrading quality of life. I'd argue there's sense to recommending doing low hanging fruit.
And note that my statement also included restoring native plants. We cannot survive on agriculture without pollinators, and given that forest cover has been reduced from around 70% to 20% in less than a century, it’s not hard to believe. Just look around you and notice the expanse of lawns around you. Lawns do almost nothing. They don’t support wildlife, pollinators, and they don’t capture carbon.
And like I said, this is something people can do now. People can’t magically start driving electric cars fueled by green energy or start driving substantially less or rework city and nation transportation infrastructure. It’s actually debatable how much electric cars will reduce emissions. I think it’s not much. Same for so-called green energy.
The benefits of composting and retiring native plants are undeniable.
We need institutional solutions; we can't afford to punt climate change to individual choices.
[1]: https://helpmecompost.com/home-composting/implementation/how...
From what I have gathered the biggest obstacle to tree regrowth in Iceland are sheep which can roam anywhere in the island for I think 4 months in the year and just eat saplings.
Obviously the sheep farming industry does not want to hear about limiting their herding areas and you can guess the result.
The current habit of wild gracing is making reforesting much harder then it needs to be.
Before that we had visited the redwoods in California and those absolutely dwarfed our trees here in the midwest of US (Iowa specifically) and made us feel like all the trees here were just tiny, but our trip to Iceland and their lack of trees made us feel good about our small trees.
Went to the witchcraft and sorcery museum and the girl who was working the counter spoke perfect English and even sounded American and she said to us "Oh Americans, where ya from?!" and we told her and she goes "Oh cool, I'm American too!" and we followed up "Oh cool where you from?" she said Colorado, then laughed and said nah she's Icelandic but loved pulling that joke on Americans.
I obviously support the replant action efforts, but want to highlight the beauty in the current state as well.
There is in fact a saying: “If you get lost in an Icelandic forest, stand up”.
is another.
No, not a misread
https://www.teagasc.ie/crops/forestry/advice/general-topics/...
That's something of a myth. Most of the deforestation in Ireland occurred long before the plantations (even BCE). While trees were cut for shipbuilding, deforestation was primarily the result of agriculture and a booming population pre-famine.
https://www.teagasc.ie/crops/forestry/advice/general-topics/...
Iceland wasn't settled by humans until the Viking age, in the 9th century CE. Are you claiming it was deforested a millennia earlier than that?
Edit: I'm an idiot, I misread your comment. Apologies!
https://www.forestryservices.ie/history-of-forestry-in-irela...
Basically my opinion is that we should be allowed to mess up our own island but another country messing with our island is a crime and infringement of our sovereignty. So yea -- thumbs up to Neolithic farmers trying to make ends meet vs a thumbs down to a global Empire bent on taking over the world through it's military navy.
It’s better to have legitimate complaints when making a criticism of the British empire. There’s plenty of them.
EDIT: though the lighting would probably be awesome for TV viewing or gaming… it’s important to remember that if the house is sticks and siding with asphalt covered shingles, there’s an increased maintenance burden and security risk from having a ton of trees close to the house.
That said, there's a difference between reforesting efforts the countryside and (stupidly) cutting down a couple of trees in your garden. Scotland and Ireland are I think similarly deforested after previously having been nearly covered in it. There are reforestation efforts in Scotland, though I don't think we'll see a huge difference within my lifetime :(
edit: ok it's maybe less negative than I thought, Wikipedia thinks we've jumped from 5% forested to 17% since the ~1950s.
I can't imagine chopping down a lovely conifer. We have a dozen ~20 meter tall trees in a row and our neighbours sounded almost annoyed we didn't chop them down with the rest that we had to fell when building our house. It killed us to lose the ones we did. Mind you we're on 3 acres; we're not shading anyone else.
I have a couple hundred saplings growing, fingers crossed I have a nice starter forest in a decade or so.
Not only that, they took our young men to fight in their colonial armies; and deracinated the educated to serve as middeling officials in their colonial governments!
Anyway, I'm being ironic, the Irish were part of the colonial project as much as working class factory workers were in Manchester were.
But in the sagas all the Icelandic outlaws would instead travel overseas (quite literally, since Iceland is surrounded by sea) - which now makes a lot of sense to me knowing that Iceland was already deforested early on, so there wasn't really a lot of forest to go to.
The reason I've heard for this is that most of the country was (and is) forest. Enough forest that you can hide from, and/or ambush, anyone coming to mess with you.
Also, the thralls were mostly taken prisoner in raids abroad, so the local forests were not a factor.
- What should you do if you get lost in a forest?
- Stand up! (other version: Just get off your knees!)
Thankfully most people are sane.
So important today!!!
> BTW what a rare example of a joke that does not offend anyone
I realize that being overly sensitive is an online virtue in teenager websites like Reddit or Instagram. But HN users can be assumed to be adults. No need to point out "look, a joke that _doesn't_ offend!" here.
And risk getting called a ashkenazi?
But yeah, being able to shrug off insults/find insults/jokes funny is something I hold in high regard.
Sadly, too many people take offense on someone elses behalf.
Oh well, thats what I get for trying to add a joke while being from Austria.
> misunderstanding that ashkenazi jews are nazis
Germans have some good Jewish jokes, I posted one above in a reply to a Pole. I know it's a crazy sensitive subject, I couldn't bring myself to write the punchline in English.
Since I would personally call that a religion and not a race, which is likely some heated discussion hence proper material for humor: do you happen to have a joke covering that aspect?
God comes down from heaven and says to Moses: "Thou shall not cook a lamb in its mother's milk". Moses asks in reply "So, I shouldn't eat meat with dairy?". Said God: "No, Moses. Just don't cook a lamb in its mother's milk". Moses asked for clarification "So, I shouldn't put cheese on chicken, no more Cordon Bleu?". And God clarified: "No, Moses. Just don't cook a lamb in its mother's milk". And Moses asked "So, I should keep separate dishes for meat, and separate dishes for dairy? And wait a few hours between meals?". And God clarified thus: "Do whatever you want Moses."
We probably wouldn't risk joking about your folk.
A German once told me a German Jewish joke. How do you get 100 Jews into a Kafer (VW Beetle)? Im Aschenbecher.
I'm still yet to hear Arab jokes about Jews, even though I live with and am friendly with Arabs. I know they probably have some good ones.
Damn, that's rough!
My Jewish friends tell really appalling jokes like this - mostly, I suspect, so they can watch gentiles squirm.
Could have fooled me.
Even worse than walking would be driving, and that is also illegal in Iceland.
I'll see myself out...
1 kg of dry wood captures 1.65-1.80 kg of CO₂.
Not because the tree is bigger on the inside, but because the oxygen atoms are most of the CO₂ weight.
Are you saying that every single KG of dried wood will have the exact same number of carbon molecules?
But that isn't even the biggest issue with your comment. You seem to think that facts can't have ranges.
Fact: There are between 6 billion and 10 billion people in the world.
70%+ seems a lot; I'm not sure where you got that number from? For example in [1] mentions about 15% in 1086 for England, [2] mentions ~2% 1750 for the Netherlands and ~11% in 1775 for Belgium. Numbers will undoubtable differ for other countries, but 70%+ is really a lot.
Neolithic people already cleared a lot of forest for agriculture in Europe, which happened thousands of years ago. In some countries (such as the Netherlands) forests have actually grown in the last few centuries (from the ~2% in 1750 mentioned before to ~10% today).
Iceland had "only" about 30% forest before settlers arrived.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/jul/27/history-of-en...
[2]: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bos_(begroeiing)#Oppervlakte
Sweden and Finland today have ~70%. 30% is the number for most of Europe today, and it's usually considered low, among the people I know. So it seems that Iceland historically already had very little forestation.
Then again, life in Iceland was cold, dark and miserable for centuries all the while nature kept trying to kill everyone.
Some interesting things in there beyond the more obvious things like hot springs, peat, and other biomass that Iceland would have. But drift wood being a thing that I did not think off. Of course, there would have been some forests initially and also the ability to import timber and other materials from elsewhere in exchange for some of the exports (fish, whale oil, etc.).
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/drift-wood-in-the-remote...
https://www.darnoldhiking.com/uploads/4/3/1/8/43181693/dsc06...
- Build incredibly insulated turf+stone housing
- Put livestock in the basement
- Body warmth of livestock heats up the house during winter
- The good insulation keeps the home temperature liveable all winter
Rather than relying on the aggresive burning of wood in a fireplace, they relied on the consistent burning of livestock's body temperatures fed by a store of feedstock grown in the prior Summer.
And like others mentioned here, widespread sheep & goat farming can keep the new saplings down.
Not a source, but an interesting story about iron in Iceland: https://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text...
This article says that in all of Iceland there are now 45,000 hectares of forest. So there is 225% more land burning in Siberia this year alone compared to all the forest planted in Iceland.