Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company
FRIDAY REPORT OF 8/5/05
The Most Direct, Frequent Link to Knowledge Workers in the Eastern Forest Economy
TIMBER MART-SOUTH SOUTHWIDE STUMPAGE PRICES $/TON
2Q05 1Q05 Chng 2Q04 Chng
Pine Chip-n-Saw 23.47 24.28 -3.3% 22.69 +3.4%
Pine Sawtimber 40.53 40.48 +0.1% 37.41 +8.3%
Pine Pulpwood 7.41 7.78 -4.3% 6.35 +16.7%
Hdwd Sawtimber 21.56 21.62 -0.3% 18.91 +14.0%
Hdwd Pulpwood 7.03 6.68 +5.2% 5.43 +29.5%
To read Timber Mart-South’s excellent quarterly newsletters, click on http://www.tmart-south.com/tmart/news.htm
“DOWN WITH TREES
Planting trees can exacerbate drought and fail to tackle climate change”
Our title and quotes are from THE ECONOMIST print edition of 07/28/05:
“Conventional wisdom says trees are good for the environment. They absorb carbon dioxide – a greenhouse gas – from the atmosphere and store it as carbon while releasing oxygen, a process for which forests have been dubbed ‘the lungs of the planet.’ The roots of trees have been thought to trap sediments and nutrients in the soil, keeping rivers free flowing. Trees have also been credited with steadying the flow of these rivers, keeping it relatively constant through wet and dry seasons, thus preventing both drought and flooding. Pernicious nonsense, conclude two pieces of research published this week.
“The first, a four-year international study led by researchers at the University of Newcastle, in Britain, and the Free University of Amsterdam, identifies several myths about the link between forests and water. For example, in arid and semi-arid areas, trees consume far more water than they trap. And it is not the trees that catch sediment and nutrients, and steady the flow of rivers, but the fact that the soil has not been compressed..
“The government of South Africa has been taking a tough approach to trees since it became the first to treat water as a basic human right in 1998. Trees lose water through evaporation (the technical term is transpiration) at twice the rate of grassland or South Africa’s unique fynbos scrubland. In a scheme praised by hydrologists, the state penalizes forestry companies for preventing this water reaching rivers and underground aquifers…
“The second piece of research looked at how long the forests of the Amazon basin cling on to carbon. Growing trees consume carbon dioxide and it was thought that only when a tree died, perhaps hundreds of years later, would the carbon be returned to the atmosphere. No such luck. In a paper published in NATURE this week, a team of American and Brazilian scientists found that trees were silently returning the carbon after just five years…”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.economist.com/science/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=4221504
“FUTURE POWER
WHERE WILL THE WORLD GET ITS NEXT ENERGY FIX?”
By Michael Parfit”
Our title and quotations are from 08/05 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC:
“I have just installed a dozen solar panels on my roof, and they work. A meter shows that 1,285 watts of power are blasting straight from the sun into my system, charging my batteries, cooling my refrigerator, humming through my computer, liberating my life…
“I’m free! Well, almost. Here comes a cloud. Shade steals across my panels and over my heart. The meter shows only 120 watts. I’m going to have to start the generator and burn some more gasoline. This isn’t going to be easy after all…
“‘Terrorism doesn’t threaten the heart of our high-technology lifestyle,’ says Martin Hoffert, a professor of physics at New York University. ‘But energy really does.’”
“Energy conservation can stave off the day of reckoning, but in the end you can’t conserve what you don’t have. So Hoffert and others have no doubt: It’s time to step up the search for the next great fuel for the hungry engine of humankind.
“Is there such a fuel? The short answer is no. Experts say it like a mantra: ‘There is no silver bullet.’ Though a few true believers claim that only vast conspiracies or lack of funds stand between us and endless energy from the vacuum of space or the core of the Earth, the truth is that there’s no single great new fuel waiting in the heart of an equation or at the end of a drill bit.
“Enthusiasm about hydrogen-fueled cars may give the wrong impression. Hydrogen is not a source of energy. It’s found along with oxygen in plain old water, but it isn’t there for the taking. Hydrogen has to be freed before it is useful, and that costs more money than hydrogen gives back. These days, this energy comes mostly from fossil fuels. No silver bullet there…
“The big problem is big numbers. The world uses some 320 billion kilowatt-hours of energy a day. It’s equal to about 22 bulbs burning nonstop for every person on the planet. No wonder the sparkle is seen from space. Hoffert’s team estimates that within the next century humanity could use three times that much. Fossil fuels have met the growing demand because they pack millions of years of the sun’s energy into a contact form, but we will not find their like again…
“At present levels of efficiency, it would take about 10,000 square miles of solar panels – an area bigger than Vermont – to satisfy all of the United States’ electricity needs. But the land requirement sounds more daunting than it is: Open country wouldn’t have to be covered. All those panels could fit on less than a quarter of the roof and pavement space in cities and suburbs…
“Biomass energy has ancient roots. The logs in your fire are biomass. But today biomass means ethanol, biogas, and biodiesel – fuels as easy to burn as oil or gas, but made from plants. These technologies are proven…
“What limits biomass is land. Photosynthesis, the process that captures the sun’s energy in plants, is far less efficient per square foot than solar panels, so catching energy in plants gobbles up even more land. Estimates suggest that powering all the world’s vehicles with biofuels would mean doubling the amount of land devoted to farming.
At the National Bioenergy Center, scientists are trying to make fuel-farming more efficient. Today’s biomass fuels are based on plant starches, oils, and sugars, but the center is testing organisms that can digest woody cellulose, abundant in plants, so that it too could yield liquid fuel. More productive fuel crops could help as well…”
To read the complete article and see outstanding photos, click on http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0508/feature1/fulltext.html
CHANGES IN BOOK SALES
This week we sold several batches of books and deleted them from the offering at http://www.vardaman.com/booksale.php. We deleted all empty spaces and added new books beginning at #406.
NEW SYSTEM FOR BUYING OR SELLING LAND OR TIMBER
For the details, click on http://www.vardaman.com and then on the red horizontal bar “Buy/Sell Land/Timber.” You can offer to buy or sell timber
or land. You must post the general area of your interest; be sure to include the state. You must also post your E-MAIL ADDRESS and the URL of your Internet site. Our tracking report will not report the number of visitors UNLESS you enter your URL. If you are selling, you should post the name of the tract. When you have entered all details, click on “Submit,” and what you just entered will appear on our Internet site at the bottom of the page under the red horizontal bar “Buy/Sell Land/Timber.” Be sure to check for and correct errors.
For each tract posted after 05/12/05 and whose owner posted his URL, we charge $0.25 for each visit his ad receives. On each Friday at 0900 Central Time, we will e-mail him a bill for $0.25 for each visit his ad received during the week just ended. You can pay us by e-mailing the money to “Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company” at PayPal or mailing it to P.O. Box 12293, Jackson, MS 39236. We will delete your ad when your payments cease. The new fee schedule does not apply to tracts marked with asterisks::
SELL LAND OR TIMBER
For tract in IA, send e-mail to windyhillt@aol.com
For tract in NC, send e-mail to savel23@aol.com
For 107-A. tract in GA, send e-mail to slaseter@comcast.net
BUY LAND
*For tracts in SC, send e-mail to loblolly@surfbvi.com
For tracts in MD, send e-mail to meyerstm@comcast.net
For tracts in MA, send e-mail to leonelmtz65@hotmail.com
BUY TIMBER
*For tracts in AR, send e-mail to dyork@digitalpassage.com
*For tracts in IL, send e-mail to psftimber@hotmail.com
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