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“Because plants use carbon dioxide to grow, planting forests of large, fast-growing trees is to remove the gas from the atmosphere, thus staving off global warming. But such forests need a lot of water, say Robert Jackson, of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and his colleagues.

“The team surveyed more than 500 places where new forests had been planted over the past half-century. In 13% of cases, streams dried up completely for at least a year. On average, plantations cut local stream flow by more than 50%.

“‘It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, when you grow trees on croplands, you use more water,’ Jackson says. The effect can reduce the water available for drinking and irrigation, and harm local aquatic ecosystems…

“These changes occur partly because tree-panting projects choose fast-growing species that suck up more carbon dioxide, Jackson explains. Often these are evergreen trees that grow all year round, meaning that they take up a lot of carbon dioxide and water.

“Some changes to water flow may be desirable, the team points out. For example, forest plantations in the US agricultural belt have reduced nutrient runoff from farmlands into the sea, which can cause algal blooms that kill marine life.

“The key is to consider local factors when implementing afforestation projects, the researchers argue. ‘Policy-makers often have a set of “carbon blinders” on – they’re thinking and talking only about carbon,’ Jackson says…”

To read the complete article, click on http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051219/full/051219-14.html

“GERONTOCAPITALISM
Greed is good for you”

Our title and quotes are from article in The Economist of 12/20/05:

“Getting old is a depressing prospect. If things go well, you may find yourself playing shuffleboard on a cruise ship with fellow geriatrics; if things go badly, then it is off to the old folks’ home…

“But one group is setting an inspiring counter-example: there is no apparent retirement age for tycoons and corporate raiders. The grand-daddy of them all is Kirk Kerkorian, often described in a magnificently deadpan phrase as the ‘88-year-old Las Vegas-based corporate raider.’ Mr Kerkorian made his fortune in airlines and hotels. But since last May he has bought almost 10% of General Motors and has been piling pressure on the company’s management, in an effort to get his man on to the board and shake the place up. Some might argue that a desire to get closely involved with GM is evidence of senility. But Mr. Kerkorian has a formidable reputation as an investor, and is nobody’s fool. Compared with him, Carl Icahn, another corporate raider, is a mere adolescent. At 69, he too is past the normal retirement age – but is still well-capable of striking fear in any boardroom. Mr Icahn’s latest quarry is Time Warner, the world’s largest media company…

“So what lessons can ordinary mortals glean from the Krocs and the Kerkorians? First managers, who control the fates of politicians and of ordinary workers, are foolishly susceptible to ageist prejudice. Shareholders, by contrast, don’t care how wrinkly a chap looks so long as he delivers the dividends. Second, never retire – it rots the brain. Mr Murdoch once returned an advance he had been given to produce his autobiography, remarking that sitting down to write his life story would be like admitting it was all over.

“Finally, ‘greed’ – the pursuit of wealth – is obviously good for you: keeping at it is helping to keep these men young. The money, evidently, is not the point. The Kerkorians, Redstones, Icahns and Murhcohs have stashed away more billions than they could even spend on new houses or wives, yet they go on slugging. Maybe it’s the lust for power that drives them to fulfil their evolutionary destiny. Maybe it’s the love of the chase. Either way, it beats shuffleboard.”

To read the complete article click on: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5327594

“I, T-Shirt
A T-Shirt’s Journey unravels the costs of protectionism”
By Kerry Howley, an assistant editor at REASON

Our title and quotes are from REASON of January 2006:

“Agricultural protectionism is not news, but even by the generous standards of American farm subsidies, cotton handouts are something special. Per acre, cotton farmers are treated to subsidies five to 10 times as high as those for corn, soybeans, and wheat. The Crop Disaster Program reimburses farms for the ravages of bad weather; farm loan programs offer credit to those who can’t get it elsewhere; ‘trade and aid’ programs guarantee exporters against customer default. Despite all that, prices for U.S. cotton are often higher than global prices – so tax dollars pay textile mills in North Carolina to buy cotton from Texas. In that way, cotton feeds into a new level of state-supported industry: textile factories buffeted by a complex system of quotas and subsidies.

“It’s easy to list the ways in which U.S. cotton and textile policies are intensely stupid. They jack up prices, muck up foreign policy, and keep us all looking a little more J.C. Penney than Bergdorf Goodman. What’s harder is to explain why no one much cares, or at least cares enough to change a sorry state of affairs that has persisted for centuries. In The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, Pietra Rivoli, a business professor at Georgetown University, goes a long way toward explaining why we continue to support an economically preposterous industry. Tracing the deeply politicized life of a six-dollar shirt, Rivoli draws on economic theory, American history, and her travels through Texas, Dar es Salaam, Shanghai, and Washington. The result is lively, accessible, and infuriating…”

To read the complete article, click on http://www.reason.com/0601/cr.kh.i.shtml

“SEAFLOOR STUDY TRACES CULPRITS BEHIND INDIAN OCEAN TSUNAMI
by Ben Harder and Anna Petherick”

Title and quotes are from 12/23/05 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NEWS:

“By inspecting the seafloor off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, scientists have developed a detailed geological picture of how the earthquake that caused the deadly December 26, 2004, tsunami unfolded…

“The quake occurred when an 800-mile (1,300-kilometer) segment of an undersea fault line suddenly ruptured. The fault, called the Sunda megathrust, stretches from Burma to Australia. It lies along a subduction zone, where one tectonic plate slips beneath another, shoving it upward. The rupture traveled at a rate of 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) a second, said Stephan T. Grilli of the University of Rhode Island (URI)…

“Vertical motion, or uplift, of 20 feet (6 meters) or more along the fault caused the water column above to rise and then ripple outward. The ripples formed the tsunami that devastated coastal communities of Sri Lanka and Thailand…” It killed close to 230,000 people.

To read the entire article, click on http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1223_051223_tsunami.html

OUR BLOG AND YOURS

Do you keep a blog? We hope so, for you read the things we write about and are therefore interested in the subjects that interest us. We are flattered, and we’d also very much like to read what you write about.

We don’t register on big globes of blogs for it may take us all day to examine all of them, and we might not understand much of it. Therefore, we hope you will send us the address of what you’ve written even remotely connected with the forest economy of the eastern United States. We’d also like to have permission to quote you, and we promise not to argue with you, in print or otherwise.

USED BOOK SALES

We offer for sale all books listed at http://www.vardaman.com/booksale.php.

OUR 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 107-A. tract in GA, click on http://www.Buythisfsbo.com/pineplantation/
For 2071A. tract in TN, click on Doktortombstone@aol.com

BUY LAND

*For tracts in SC, send e-mail to loblolly@surfbvi.com
For tracts in SC, send e-mail to rich@CHRISTOPHERRADKO.COM
For tracts in MD, send e-mail to meyerstm@comcast.net
For tracts in MA, send e-mail to leonelmtz65@hotmail.com
For tracts in OR, send e-mail to 7200moore@charter.net
For tracts in OR, send e-mail to ptodd@orclinic.com
For tracts in FL, send e-mail to hot63vdub@hotmail.com
For tracts in TX, send e-mail to reedkimbley@hotmail.com
For tracts in TN, send e-mail to Doktortombstone@aol.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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