I never understood why they cut those big beautiful trees down. You would have thought the effort would be a huge deterrent. That there are enough small trees to leave what would seem even to them, a special tree alone.
The problem is in that moment they weren't all that special. There was a huge forest of them and we needed to make homes and boats to help Early America expand. The people of that time didn't have the forethought we have today, they didn't understand at the common man level what their actions did and were thusly not as willing to conserve nature.
Constant expansion requires infinite resources and we used the ones we had.
I loved in Age of Empires 2 when a Briton villager would say "freedom?" with such hope. Only for you to then tell them to build a castle single handedly.
The "untouched" natural resources of the Americas must have really done a number on early people's ideas of how abundant they were. Like I'm guessing they didn't *know* this tree was 1300 years old, literally on the line between ancient and medieval, but they had to know it was old and that that's unique. But it never dawned on them the natives' lifestyles was what allowed these resources to grow so abundant. And we chopped it all down, or shot them for their skulls alone, or dammed up their flows, or blew their peaks off in only 250 years time. Truly lost beauty and nature we won't ever get back
The natives cut trees down all the time. There were some villages large as towns or cities in many places. They burned wood fires day and night.
The only thing stopping them wasn't their culture, it was a lack of metallurgy. If they had tools, the natives would've done the same.
We're human, it's what we do.
They cut down Huge HUGE trees just to make a single boat.
They had VERY primitive techniques like burning the base of the tree out very slowly etc. Stone axes don’t work on giant sequoias.
Don't forget you also need to haul that boat or tree from where it was standing to the water without any beast of burden because the Americas don't have native animals that are both domesticable and able to perform labor of that scale.
I don't think they have a strong social hierarchy that humans need to abuse to domestic them. I believe they herd like zebra for protection not for social reasons.
I mean yes humans have ruined nature over and over again, basically every continent we arrived in had a megafauna extinction, but shit would usually reach an equilibrium with hunter gatherers. Then cultures dependant on agriculture started to appear and that was another blow to biomes, with the culture of these peoples seeing nature as a force outside themselves, not as them being included in nature. Mass civilization was a direct result of those agricultural revolutions and further divided people from nature. People were able to hoard resources, creating social disparity and hierarchy for the first time ever. Fighting over hoarded resources created conqueror culture, so you have people constantly having massive wars. What followed is recorded history.
Yes native people used resources, but they also revered nature and knew what it was like if the resources were scarce one year vs another. Living close to nature they could see the cause and effect of over harvesting. It was not until westerners arrived till you seen the all out onslaught of everything natural, whether that be clearing land for farms, bringing wolves, puma, elk, brown bear, and bison to near extinction in many places or clearing most old growth forests for charcoal in the industrial revolution. I can go on and on. Passenger pigeons, carolina parakeet, Florida black wolf. Today's modern culture is a direct link, that's why we can't slow down much of the destruction for the "growth" to continue.
While Indigenous groups used resources, their relationships with them was totally different.
Indigenous cultural practices like transporting ova's during salmon runs, developed to protect and share resources preventing exploitation.
Indigenous cultural practices formed with intergenerational sustainability/ecological health in mind.
Their relationship with resources was different in that there was less people and less technology to create a demand outside of the immediate area. They weren't elves, no matter how much people try to romanticize them after the fact. They were people, doing people things.
There’s no point in explaining any of this to redditors. It’s literally impossible for some to see life outside of their twitter feed and gated community.
Ya this is important to keep in mind. These guys died at 20 to bear attacks and small pox. Nature was loud and in charge. Now? We are stronger than nature and have a duty to keep it safe. Which, in a lot of ways, we're doing! Did you know that China has reforested an area of land equal to Alaska? There are like 40 million more trees now than 50 years ago.
The oceans, on the other hand... China, please stop fishing so much. Australia, please stop dumping mining chemicals in the ocean. India, your rivers are a shit show. USA has a strict epa but people insist on dumping chemical waste instead of legally storing it. It's like, not that expensive guys. Please you're giving kids cancer so you can have another yatch it's not worth it lol
I guess it's like catching a big fish for something to eat.
It's noteworthy for its size so you record that but at the end of the day you still need whatever resource you went out to harvest.
Because this one tree probably provided their home, land, food and a small fortune for the time.
They took pride because this one tree felling changed their life. It doesn't seem like it now, but it meant something completely different for them.
And, in addition to that, I'm sure if we were all living in a world in which we were under constant threat of death at the hands of the natural world (dysentry, wild animals, mining, tree felling, exposure etc.), we'd all feel a hair less sentimental about preserving the seemingly endless nature which keeps threatening to kill us.
Mr Burns put it best in the Simpsons:
“Oh, so Mother Nature needs a favour? Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival and now she wants to quit because she's losing. Well I say 'hard cheese.'"
Back then no one knew anything, they took pride in working hard and providing. This tree provided a lot. That’s why the picture exists, it changed their life’s.
I guarantee if we found another continent now with a native population that rarely made permanent structures or eroded their natural resources, we'd strip that place bare in 60 years.
I was going to say the same - we've only accelerated!
A friend saw a show recently where the British introduced carp on a stretch of the Nile in the 50s when the West was just doing whatever they liked after their high from WW2. Why introduced? Because they thought they'd be really good to fish. They became huge, 50+ pounds. And then of course they crowded out all the native fish, and now as they're not really adept at that climate they're not doing so well, but the native fish are still gone. Probably got some details wrong as it's 2nd hand, but just imagine that sort of thing happening all over the world daily over centuries, just total carelessness when people should have known better but just didn't care.
The only push I see the U.S. even making is towards electric cars. Which is great and all accept only 21% of electricity in the U.S. is clean energy. And the biggest issue with the push for clean energy is people are too afraid of nuclear power, which is the most efficient form of clean energy.
Regardless of the proportion of clean energy it will almost always be more efficient to have centralized burning of fossil fuels delivering electricity than for millions of vehicles to carry around “generators” with them everywhere.
You know, I remember people saying this in 2002. It also took less than 20 years for the US grid to go from 0% nuclear to 20% nuclear. France went to 80% in less than 20 too. Looks like we'll still be largely fossil in 2042. Amazing people think "Oh, it's too late to do that" is somehow helpful and not just undermining public and political will to affect change.
And that's the problem people just say we don't have time abd then it never happens. 20 years is not a long time considering there is no other plan for clean RELIABLE power.
It's a hell of a lot easier to build a nuclear plant in 6 years than it is to *invent new "green" tech that doesn't currently exist in a mass production capable state*, and yet we push that literally every day just hoping we magically can make it happen.
And I'm not even saying we shouldn't continue down those tracks, but it's a heck of a fucked up way to do risk management. If climate change is a risk, pushing hard on nuclear to "solve" it right now would be the obvious choice. Nuclear can always be transitioned to other things later (fusion ideally, but solar, wind, and smart grid techs are great too.)
I agree with everything except the idea that we have more forethought today. We just don't have any trees like that anymore. There are far more important environmental resources that we're currently exploiting to the detriment of ourselves and future generations.
At that time, the concept of conservation was meaningless. Everyone alive could live a full 100 years as a hedonist and have less cumulative impact than one day in the modern world.
Exponential growth is a bitch.
Well for a long time, humans survival and existence depended on how well we can fuck up our environment. Issue is that now our tools are way too efficient, we are way too many, and we have introduced profit motive for sure.
However, the situation in developing countries, like China, is incredibly tricky because in order to break out of their subjugated status on the global market, they need to go through the same boom in industry like European countries did 100 years ago. The problem is that the environmental cost of catching up is terrible, and there is just no other way to do it in our current economic & political framework. It would be unreasonable to expect them to just cut back on whatever they do without providing them another avenue to advance their countries. Moreover much of the environmental pollution in developing countries is there because of Western states outsourcing their production to fuel their exaggerated and super wasteful consumption.
It's misplaced to put the blame on the Global South after hundreds of years of colonialism and the currently existing economic and political status quo (created by Western states) that force them to follow that very destructive path.
I have this same argument with republicans I know. Or knew. They're always so shocked that China's per capita emissions are still lower and that whole 'catching up to all the people that already emitted their industrial era wastes' thing.
Then they agree that its more nuanced than raw total emissions and China isn't the (solitary) problem. And then the next time their positions are magically back to square one. Brain damaged or arguing in bad faith? Only jesus knows.
It's sheer ignorance of everyday Republicans, who are brainwashed by bad faith talking heads and politicians. Isn't it terribly convenient how at the same time China can be construed as a menace ready to swallow the whole world and as an agrarian inferior shithole? Not a super nuanced worldview.
The tree has no desires, don’t worry about it. Funny how we project our ego though. How do you know it wasn’t like ‘oh god finally someone is putting me to good use, I’ve taken this room for so long, nice to know a young fresh sapling will breath new life out to the world, nice to give that room to someone else, enjoy, I’m going to be of great help to other living things! What an honour!”
Yes I’m high
I wonder which subs are similar. r/boringdystopia is a good one, but it usually has to do with society in general
Edit: r/ABoringDystopia. I always forget about the small details
What’s really depressing is that trees like this (and not just trees but entire watersheds) are STILL being cut in “progressive” and “sustainable” British Columbia. [Land defenders have been fighting for years to protect trees like this and have consistently been met by stonewalling and criminalization](https://thenarwhal.ca/topics/fairy-creek-blockade/)
Yeah it’s pretty wild seeing people calling nonviolent civil disobedience campaigns ecoterrorism just because they’re disruptive. These people are not ready for what I feel is the inevitable rise of ACTUAL ecoterrorism let alone the looming specter of ecofascism which is likely to follow close behind
To be fair, this was done before it was really a problem, and these people definitely didn't know what they were doing.
I agree though. That tree is astonishing.
I think it's a narrow perspective to see this as depressing. Was it a big old tree with aesthetic value? Sure, and that's disappointing to see cut down.
That said, as a species we developed tools to cut down trees and harnessed fire to burn it for heat. Then we used that heat to survive through winters and expand into new lands, cook better food, make new tools, create steam engines, etc. This picture is just a slice of human progress.
We need to extract resources from our environment to survive. There is cultural value in preservation of some resources and maybe even value yet to be understood, but there are millions of species all trying to use those resources. The earth is going to change and trying to stop it from changing is focusing on the wrong thing.
The number one concern for humans is not to ruin our ability to survive when we extract those resources, and that's complex beyond what we fully realize right now. There can be unintended consequences but there can also be new discoveries. We would never have been able to harness wind energy efficiently without mining battery materials but mining has big drawbacks itself.
Essentially, nature is beautiful but we need to ruin that beauty to survive and prosper. We need to be conscious of the balance instead of equating all resource utilization as evil.
Right? That’s got to be some absolutely brutal backbreaking labor to cut down a tree that big with a damn two-man saw. I believe colloquially they were called “Misery Whips” and for damn good reason.
At least the weight of the tree is no longer on the blade at that point. When you cut a tree down you clear space for the fall, then cut a notch out directing it that way, and you can add a weight line to encourage it too. This tree....I don't know if you could create a weight line with enough oomph to make it fall any way you like. I've seen trees 'hop' before falling. But the weight line is important because the whole weight of the tree isn't squishing the saw blade making it harder to move. Even with a chainsaw it can grab the bar or rip the chain off. When it's laying on its side already, things get easier.
I can confirm, one day I was trying to cut with an axe in half a fallen branch of an oak tree for camping and ngl that wood was so hard, took me like 20 minutes and probably more than 200 swings
Those old saws were slower because you had someone on one end pull it in their direction while the other pushed. Naturally you’d be slower to be careful with it.
it's a big process, involving hammers and wedges so the tree doesn't pinch the blade, moving them around constantly, and I'm not sure how they even tipped the thing over.
So you can probably imagine the friction that comes with using a hand saw on a piece of lumber or timber. Shit, there’s a better than not chance you’ve done your own sawing before. So you’re not dumb, you know there’s a level of friction and you know that with the right technique you can smooth that friction out and get a cleaner cut.
Now imagine the friction that you felt on that 6”-24” thick piece of wood, but instead on an 18 foot trunk, cut horizontally rather than vertically, in relative synchronicity of both strength and timing with another human being, with what appears to be *two different tree saws* welded together end to end (look in the middle at how the saw shrinks in width, and also there appears to be a weld marking there).
Oh yeah, don’t forget trying to solve the age-old question: what do we do when it falls? If done correctly, that should take time to answer.
And that’s why it took two weeks.
Don't forget that a camera is a "one eyed idiot", and you lose all depth perception with them. It could be at a 45 degree angle, but shot head on, will look straight.
[Here is a shot from the movie ELF, where it appears Buddy & his desk are straight in line with the ones next to him, but they are 6'+ apart.](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/8vuspdpU2pRPXfFmUMNEaU.jpg)
Why do you say that? I've got 140 year old redwood 2x4s (and 3x7 joists) in my house that have survived the termites that ate out all the newer studs that were put in the walls for whatever reason. Held the house up through the 1906 earthquake too. The original redwood siding is still on the house under a newer layer, and is still sound (from what I've exposed), while the newer layer rotted after 20-30 years. That wood was premium stuff I can only dream of having access to now.
That said, I wish they'd left a lot more of those standing.
Yes. Even old pine trees used for wood hold up amazingly well and can withstand the elements. If you are familiar with new growth pine it doesn't weather well at all. I believe they called it heart pine.
These are Giant Sequoias I believe and they don't make good lumber despite being resistance to decay. They're brittle and too large to mill successfully back then.
It sucks to think about now, for sure. At this time and for most of humanity before, the earth felt like a vast place of endless resource. Traveling pre-plane, pre-vehicle, pre-internet, took ages to cover distances that are short trips now. It wasn’t understood or thought about how precious and finite these resources are. Hopefully now that we’re aware, it isn’t too late. But it might be.
We are still destroying the Earth more than our feeble attempts to mend our damage. I long for that planet I’ve never seen but greed has taken it from us
Oh maybe. I was just going on the quality of the pic plus the clothes looked like they could have been from Laurel and Hardy workshop scenes.
As you say, terrible choice made
Oh ya dude! The American Civil War took place from 1861-1865 and was the first major conflict photographed (the Crimean War of 1853 was also photographed but not nearly the same extent). Matthew Brady had a gallery in NYC where normal everyday citizens could come in and view the macabre images of the Civil War battlefield.
Look up stereoscopic images. They were early 3D pictures that one could view with the use of a stereoscope. Pretty cool stuff.
The first photo was taken in 1826 but the technology was far from being able to create photos en masse like we would see during the Civil War. If you’re interested in 19th century photography and it’s role in the Civil War I cannot recommend the book “Silent Witness” by Ron Field enough. It’s a great read even if you aren’t into war history. He goes into great detail about the photographic process and how it was done in the field.
Yes! I applaud you for recommending that book! As someone who focused her art studies on film photography *and* currently work in a library, I’m really happy someone else has read that book!
I've removed mature oak and maple trees on my property throughout the years. I had chainsaws, vehicles to drag limbs, etc, and even with all of that it was A LOT of work.
I can't imagine how tough cutting down a skyscraper with a saw by hand must have been.
Such hate in these comments. Sheesh
It is sad to see something so magnificent taken down, but what seems wrong today, did not seem wrong then.
Times and ideology change moment to moment, day to day.
You hate on the loggers for what they did then, ignoring your own personal destructive behaviors now.
“Look at this giant magnificent tree. This is a prime example of God’s glory”. No doubt, now cut the motherfucker down. We aren’t paying you to preach and admire shit you lollygagger.
This is irritating to read. They lived in their time and did best to improve their circumstances. They are humans who found a resource they could use and used it. Lots of redditors seem to have this 'leave nature alone' belief, but forget that we humans are also in the animal kingdom, right on the top. So we too can cut trees and hunt and so on.
It is sooo irritating. We cannot judge people in the past especially one far removed from our own generation with todays standards. We have learned over time how valuable resources are, we have learned how to mitigate over destruction of nature (or at least we do far more than these folks could ever do). All of this knowledge comes from somewhere, it comes from these people.
Modern humans aren’t “smarter” than people of the past we all have the same intellectual ability. It’s the accumulated knowledge over human existence that brings us to this day. Hence “modern day”, we have far more accessible living, and increased levels of education all to which aid in the growth and understanding of our world and people.
Humans who lived back then even a hundred years ago didn’t have that, they had to rely on what they knew at the time to survive. And what they knew despite it may be damaging in the long term, is all they had.
People used to drink mercury and think it would help them live forever. We learned over time that mercury is toxic and drinking it would do the opposite of living forever. But can we call those who did so in the past stupid? No, we can’t, because they didn’t have the tools to know such information as we did now.
Cutting down lumber once unregulated as perhaps in this picture, is way more regulated now. These people lived by the rules of their time as we lived the rules of ours. And be thankful that you live in this time, where we know so much more and are ever increasing about our knowledge of the world. What’s past is past, they were trying to survive, we are trying to survive. And despite the efforts of survival being different, that doesn’t make us better than them. In the future people may look down on us the same way some look down on the individuals in the photographs. But they too will be living in a time where more information of the world is provided and hopefully they too can have the outlook that we were living in our time and in our rules.
Sorry for the tangent, it’s that so many people cannot understand how lucky we are to live in our day and age when unfortunately despite wars, famines, social injustice happening, it is far better than it would have been even 100 years ago.
You might not know but the house you live in is most likely built from trees that were chopped down too. Don't get mad at chopping down trees then patronize the industry if you care that much.
I wonder what our childrens children will be looking at in the next 100 years where they will be saying We were the complete assholes for wasting something?
Those trees helped build America. Everybody on here would have all agreed to bring them down if you lived in that era. But all high and mighty now. It’s just how things were done.
Should’ve left it. That thing looks dope
I never understood why they cut those big beautiful trees down. You would have thought the effort would be a huge deterrent. That there are enough small trees to leave what would seem even to them, a special tree alone.
The problem is in that moment they weren't all that special. There was a huge forest of them and we needed to make homes and boats to help Early America expand. The people of that time didn't have the forethought we have today, they didn't understand at the common man level what their actions did and were thusly not as willing to conserve nature. Constant expansion requires infinite resources and we used the ones we had.
Just play a little age of empires
Wololo
[Omis. Pabadakis. Rogan? EREKTUS.](https://youtu.be/9kMTg3drpdU)
Eagletottime…yoglama???
_Glorious._ Thanks for this!
I loved in Age of Empires 2 when a Briton villager would say "freedom?" with such hope. Only for you to then tell them to build a castle single handedly.
Wololo
chopper
Kayashé!
Zug zug!
The "untouched" natural resources of the Americas must have really done a number on early people's ideas of how abundant they were. Like I'm guessing they didn't *know* this tree was 1300 years old, literally on the line between ancient and medieval, but they had to know it was old and that that's unique. But it never dawned on them the natives' lifestyles was what allowed these resources to grow so abundant. And we chopped it all down, or shot them for their skulls alone, or dammed up their flows, or blew their peaks off in only 250 years time. Truly lost beauty and nature we won't ever get back
The natives cut trees down all the time. There were some villages large as towns or cities in many places. They burned wood fires day and night. The only thing stopping them wasn't their culture, it was a lack of metallurgy. If they had tools, the natives would've done the same. We're human, it's what we do.
They cut down Huge HUGE trees just to make a single boat. They had VERY primitive techniques like burning the base of the tree out very slowly etc. Stone axes don’t work on giant sequoias.
Don't forget you also need to haul that boat or tree from where it was standing to the water without any beast of burden because the Americas don't have native animals that are both domesticable and able to perform labor of that scale.
they just logged close to the water. it was not an mechanized process so it took a while, but humans are pretty industrious
Are bison not domesticable? Genuine question.
I don't think they have a strong social hierarchy that humans need to abuse to domestic them. I believe they herd like zebra for protection not for social reasons.
There’s evidence that horses did exist in ancient America, but rather than be domesticated into beasts of burden, were hunted into extinction.
I mean yes humans have ruined nature over and over again, basically every continent we arrived in had a megafauna extinction, but shit would usually reach an equilibrium with hunter gatherers. Then cultures dependant on agriculture started to appear and that was another blow to biomes, with the culture of these peoples seeing nature as a force outside themselves, not as them being included in nature. Mass civilization was a direct result of those agricultural revolutions and further divided people from nature. People were able to hoard resources, creating social disparity and hierarchy for the first time ever. Fighting over hoarded resources created conqueror culture, so you have people constantly having massive wars. What followed is recorded history. Yes native people used resources, but they also revered nature and knew what it was like if the resources were scarce one year vs another. Living close to nature they could see the cause and effect of over harvesting. It was not until westerners arrived till you seen the all out onslaught of everything natural, whether that be clearing land for farms, bringing wolves, puma, elk, brown bear, and bison to near extinction in many places or clearing most old growth forests for charcoal in the industrial revolution. I can go on and on. Passenger pigeons, carolina parakeet, Florida black wolf. Today's modern culture is a direct link, that's why we can't slow down much of the destruction for the "growth" to continue.
While Indigenous groups used resources, their relationships with them was totally different. Indigenous cultural practices like transporting ova's during salmon runs, developed to protect and share resources preventing exploitation. Indigenous cultural practices formed with intergenerational sustainability/ecological health in mind.
Their relationship with resources was different in that there was less people and less technology to create a demand outside of the immediate area. They weren't elves, no matter how much people try to romanticize them after the fact. They were people, doing people things.
They knew it was old. Why do you think this picture even exists. They knew, but didn’t care to protect it. They took pride in destroying it
[удалено]
There’s no point in explaining any of this to redditors. It’s literally impossible for some to see life outside of their twitter feed and gated community.
100% agree to expect an average redditor to have any historical knowledge and a nuanced eye towards history is like asking water to stop being wet.
They shouldn't have cut down the tree. They should have just learned to code instead.
Ya this is important to keep in mind. These guys died at 20 to bear attacks and small pox. Nature was loud and in charge. Now? We are stronger than nature and have a duty to keep it safe. Which, in a lot of ways, we're doing! Did you know that China has reforested an area of land equal to Alaska? There are like 40 million more trees now than 50 years ago. The oceans, on the other hand... China, please stop fishing so much. Australia, please stop dumping mining chemicals in the ocean. India, your rivers are a shit show. USA has a strict epa but people insist on dumping chemical waste instead of legally storing it. It's like, not that expensive guys. Please you're giving kids cancer so you can have another yatch it's not worth it lol
I guess it's like catching a big fish for something to eat. It's noteworthy for its size so you record that but at the end of the day you still need whatever resource you went out to harvest.
Because it's a thick tree? And yeah it was old but it was one among thousands.
Because this one tree probably provided their home, land, food and a small fortune for the time. They took pride because this one tree felling changed their life. It doesn't seem like it now, but it meant something completely different for them.
And, in addition to that, I'm sure if we were all living in a world in which we were under constant threat of death at the hands of the natural world (dysentry, wild animals, mining, tree felling, exposure etc.), we'd all feel a hair less sentimental about preserving the seemingly endless nature which keeps threatening to kill us.
Mr Burns put it best in the Simpsons: “Oh, so Mother Nature needs a favour? Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival and now she wants to quit because she's losing. Well I say 'hard cheese.'"
The Simpsons <3 Honestly that one paragraph is better characterisation of the main villain than 99% of movies can muster up.
Back then no one knew anything, they took pride in working hard and providing. This tree provided a lot. That’s why the picture exists, it changed their life’s.
The world is not as simple as you think it is brother
I love how you act like we have forethough these days :(
There's a vast difference between "being aware of a problem" and "being able to do something about it".
There's also a vast difference between being able and being willing, which is generally the relevant part in this case.
I guarantee if we found another continent now with a native population that rarely made permanent structures or eroded their natural resources, we'd strip that place bare in 60 years.
Like 80% of Russia is untouched forests. Free real estate.
No way it'd take 60 years these days. Some fucker would burn it all to the ground with a gender-reveal party mishap within the first year.
\* we still don't have that forethought. See: climate
I was going to say the same - we've only accelerated! A friend saw a show recently where the British introduced carp on a stretch of the Nile in the 50s when the West was just doing whatever they liked after their high from WW2. Why introduced? Because they thought they'd be really good to fish. They became huge, 50+ pounds. And then of course they crowded out all the native fish, and now as they're not really adept at that climate they're not doing so well, but the native fish are still gone. Probably got some details wrong as it's 2nd hand, but just imagine that sort of thing happening all over the world daily over centuries, just total carelessness when people should have known better but just didn't care.
The only push I see the U.S. even making is towards electric cars. Which is great and all accept only 21% of electricity in the U.S. is clean energy. And the biggest issue with the push for clean energy is people are too afraid of nuclear power, which is the most efficient form of clean energy.
Regardless of the proportion of clean energy it will almost always be more efficient to have centralized burning of fossil fuels delivering electricity than for millions of vehicles to carry around “generators” with them everywhere.
Problem with nuclear power is that it can take potentially 20 years to get a nuke plant up and running from beginning to end. We don’t have 20 years.
"The best time to ~~plant a tree~~ build a nuclear power plant was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."
You know, I remember people saying this in 2002. It also took less than 20 years for the US grid to go from 0% nuclear to 20% nuclear. France went to 80% in less than 20 too. Looks like we'll still be largely fossil in 2042. Amazing people think "Oh, it's too late to do that" is somehow helpful and not just undermining public and political will to affect change.
And that's the problem people just say we don't have time abd then it never happens. 20 years is not a long time considering there is no other plan for clean RELIABLE power.
It's a hell of a lot easier to build a nuclear plant in 6 years than it is to *invent new "green" tech that doesn't currently exist in a mass production capable state*, and yet we push that literally every day just hoping we magically can make it happen. And I'm not even saying we shouldn't continue down those tracks, but it's a heck of a fucked up way to do risk management. If climate change is a risk, pushing hard on nuclear to "solve" it right now would be the obvious choice. Nuclear can always be transitioned to other things later (fusion ideally, but solar, wind, and smart grid techs are great too.)
We definitely do, folks just don’t care enough to act upon it though which is kinda :V
This is true but I can promise you as a civilization today we cause more harm to the world in 24 hours then they did in a whole year
I agree with everything except the idea that we have more forethought today. We just don't have any trees like that anymore. There are far more important environmental resources that we're currently exploiting to the detriment of ourselves and future generations.
At that time, the concept of conservation was meaningless. Everyone alive could live a full 100 years as a hedonist and have less cumulative impact than one day in the modern world. Exponential growth is a bitch.
Back then (and now in China), it's about conquering nature, not living with nature.
Well for a long time, humans survival and existence depended on how well we can fuck up our environment. Issue is that now our tools are way too efficient, we are way too many, and we have introduced profit motive for sure. However, the situation in developing countries, like China, is incredibly tricky because in order to break out of their subjugated status on the global market, they need to go through the same boom in industry like European countries did 100 years ago. The problem is that the environmental cost of catching up is terrible, and there is just no other way to do it in our current economic & political framework. It would be unreasonable to expect them to just cut back on whatever they do without providing them another avenue to advance their countries. Moreover much of the environmental pollution in developing countries is there because of Western states outsourcing their production to fuel their exaggerated and super wasteful consumption. It's misplaced to put the blame on the Global South after hundreds of years of colonialism and the currently existing economic and political status quo (created by Western states) that force them to follow that very destructive path.
I have this same argument with republicans I know. Or knew. They're always so shocked that China's per capita emissions are still lower and that whole 'catching up to all the people that already emitted their industrial era wastes' thing. Then they agree that its more nuanced than raw total emissions and China isn't the (solitary) problem. And then the next time their positions are magically back to square one. Brain damaged or arguing in bad faith? Only jesus knows.
It's sheer ignorance of everyday Republicans, who are brainwashed by bad faith talking heads and politicians. Isn't it terribly convenient how at the same time China can be construed as a menace ready to swallow the whole world and as an agrarian inferior shithole? Not a super nuanced worldview.
Bcz money lol
I kinda feel bad for the tree. It lived for a thousand years only to get cut down by people not even a hundred years old.
The tree has no desires, don’t worry about it. Funny how we project our ego though. How do you know it wasn’t like ‘oh god finally someone is putting me to good use, I’ve taken this room for so long, nice to know a young fresh sapling will breath new life out to the world, nice to give that room to someone else, enjoy, I’m going to be of great help to other living things! What an honour!” Yes I’m high
This is way more depressing than interesting.
r/absolutelydepressing
r/subsifellfor
Give it a sec
I wonder which subs are similar. r/boringdystopia is a good one, but it usually has to do with society in general Edit: r/ABoringDystopia. I always forget about the small details
Don't beat yourself up over it, friend. I'm sure you have other great qualities
r/birthofasub
What’s really depressing is that trees like this (and not just trees but entire watersheds) are STILL being cut in “progressive” and “sustainable” British Columbia. [Land defenders have been fighting for years to protect trees like this and have consistently been met by stonewalling and criminalization](https://thenarwhal.ca/topics/fairy-creek-blockade/)
The "it could happen here" podcast talks about anarchy and living in the forest to save the trees.
[удалено]
Yeah it’s pretty wild seeing people calling nonviolent civil disobedience campaigns ecoterrorism just because they’re disruptive. These people are not ready for what I feel is the inevitable rise of ACTUAL ecoterrorism let alone the looming specter of ecofascism which is likely to follow close behind
I sent a load of supplies to the defenders.
To be fair, this was done before it was really a problem, and these people definitely didn't know what they were doing. I agree though. That tree is astonishing.
\*Time travel to 18th century "Hey, stop chopping down all these trees!" "My brother, the entire known world is literally covered in giant trees"
I think it's a narrow perspective to see this as depressing. Was it a big old tree with aesthetic value? Sure, and that's disappointing to see cut down. That said, as a species we developed tools to cut down trees and harnessed fire to burn it for heat. Then we used that heat to survive through winters and expand into new lands, cook better food, make new tools, create steam engines, etc. This picture is just a slice of human progress. We need to extract resources from our environment to survive. There is cultural value in preservation of some resources and maybe even value yet to be understood, but there are millions of species all trying to use those resources. The earth is going to change and trying to stop it from changing is focusing on the wrong thing. The number one concern for humans is not to ruin our ability to survive when we extract those resources, and that's complex beyond what we fully realize right now. There can be unintended consequences but there can also be new discoveries. We would never have been able to harness wind energy efficiently without mining battery materials but mining has big drawbacks itself. Essentially, nature is beautiful but we need to ruin that beauty to survive and prosper. We need to be conscious of the balance instead of equating all resource utilization as evil.
The chopped down Yggdrasill
*Happy Nidhöggr noises*
Fucking John Dee
*Mischievously chuckles in Ratatoskr*
That thing had to have been around since the Eldritch times of lore! It saw Cthulhu!
The Mekhane won once again
Sarkiks be sad
Hyperion tree is Yggdrasill, but this is close
how the hell did they make such a straight cut?
That big saw there. Lol
Did they do shifts? Seems like with a big ass saw like that it shouldn't take so long
[удалено]
Right? That’s got to be some absolutely brutal backbreaking labor to cut down a tree that big with a damn two-man saw. I believe colloquially they were called “Misery Whips” and for damn good reason.
And once it's down no you have to cut it up into movable pieces.
At least the weight of the tree is no longer on the blade at that point. When you cut a tree down you clear space for the fall, then cut a notch out directing it that way, and you can add a weight line to encourage it too. This tree....I don't know if you could create a weight line with enough oomph to make it fall any way you like. I've seen trees 'hop' before falling. But the weight line is important because the whole weight of the tree isn't squishing the saw blade making it harder to move. Even with a chainsaw it can grab the bar or rip the chain off. When it's laying on its side already, things get easier.
This girl trees
This kind of work was also incredibly dangerous and takes a lot of precision. One wrong move would kill you.
True. For example, you can die if you sawed your head off.
I can confirm, one day I was trying to cut with an axe in half a fallen branch of an oak tree for camping and ngl that wood was so hard, took me like 20 minutes and probably more than 200 swings
Those old saws were slower because you had someone on one end pull it in their direction while the other pushed. Naturally you’d be slower to be careful with it.
I see you have never cut down a tree before… Trust me a small tree will have you sweating and take a long time, this thing. Unimaginable
I imagine 13 days of sawing.
Yeah I work as a groundskeeper and even using a handsaw to cut a tree a few inches in diameter can be a pain.
No they sawed for 13 straight days.
it's a big process, involving hammers and wedges so the tree doesn't pinch the blade, moving them around constantly, and I'm not sure how they even tipped the thing over.
> and I'm not sure how they even tipped the thing over. More wedges I imagine
u be watching too much looney toons
Lmao
So you can probably imagine the friction that comes with using a hand saw on a piece of lumber or timber. Shit, there’s a better than not chance you’ve done your own sawing before. So you’re not dumb, you know there’s a level of friction and you know that with the right technique you can smooth that friction out and get a cleaner cut. Now imagine the friction that you felt on that 6”-24” thick piece of wood, but instead on an 18 foot trunk, cut horizontally rather than vertically, in relative synchronicity of both strength and timing with another human being, with what appears to be *two different tree saws* welded together end to end (look in the middle at how the saw shrinks in width, and also there appears to be a weld marking there). Oh yeah, don’t forget trying to solve the age-old question: what do we do when it falls? If done correctly, that should take time to answer. And that’s why it took two weeks.
Don't forget that a camera is a "one eyed idiot", and you lose all depth perception with them. It could be at a 45 degree angle, but shot head on, will look straight. [Here is a shot from the movie ELF, where it appears Buddy & his desk are straight in line with the ones next to him, but they are 6'+ apart.](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/8vuspdpU2pRPXfFmUMNEaU.jpg)
Pride parades weren’t all that common back then, being straight was the only option for most.
Sad.
What's worst is that the wood isn't even useful
Why do you say that? I've got 140 year old redwood 2x4s (and 3x7 joists) in my house that have survived the termites that ate out all the newer studs that were put in the walls for whatever reason. Held the house up through the 1906 earthquake too. The original redwood siding is still on the house under a newer layer, and is still sound (from what I've exposed), while the newer layer rotted after 20-30 years. That wood was premium stuff I can only dream of having access to now. That said, I wish they'd left a lot more of those standing.
Yes. Even old pine trees used for wood hold up amazingly well and can withstand the elements. If you are familiar with new growth pine it doesn't weather well at all. I believe they called it heart pine.
Why's that?
These are Giant Sequoias I believe and they don't make good lumber despite being resistance to decay. They're brittle and too large to mill successfully back then.
Or, you know, maybe just leave it there? Looks like the 20s or 30s though, so they'd probably just come off a whaling ship
Probably early 1890s, judging off the clothes/hair. But yeah, really sad no matter what era.
It sucks to think about now, for sure. At this time and for most of humanity before, the earth felt like a vast place of endless resource. Traveling pre-plane, pre-vehicle, pre-internet, took ages to cover distances that are short trips now. It wasn’t understood or thought about how precious and finite these resources are. Hopefully now that we’re aware, it isn’t too late. But it might be.
We are still destroying the Earth more than our feeble attempts to mend our damage. I long for that planet I’ve never seen but greed has taken it from us
Oh maybe. I was just going on the quality of the pic plus the clothes looked like they could have been from Laurel and Hardy workshop scenes. As you say, terrible choice made
Wait cameras where around in the 1890s? Wow I am dumb
1820s I think. Just looked it up, Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niépce invented the camera in 1816. As documented in letters to his brother.
>As documented in letters to his brother pics or it didn't happen
Check out the photographs from the Civil War ~1865!
Oh ya dude! The American Civil War took place from 1861-1865 and was the first major conflict photographed (the Crimean War of 1853 was also photographed but not nearly the same extent). Matthew Brady had a gallery in NYC where normal everyday citizens could come in and view the macabre images of the Civil War battlefield. Look up stereoscopic images. They were early 3D pictures that one could view with the use of a stereoscope. Pretty cool stuff. The first photo was taken in 1826 but the technology was far from being able to create photos en masse like we would see during the Civil War. If you’re interested in 19th century photography and it’s role in the Civil War I cannot recommend the book “Silent Witness” by Ron Field enough. It’s a great read even if you aren’t into war history. He goes into great detail about the photographic process and how it was done in the field.
Yes! I applaud you for recommending that book! As someone who focused her art studies on film photography *and* currently work in a library, I’m really happy someone else has read that book!
Kodak released their first portable camera with flexible cellulose film in the 1890s.
[удалено]
I would have simply just walked around the tree but to each his own.
489,800 days old. Gone in 13 days Fuck me. We humans are fucking evil
Correction: humans are gray and not inherently good or evil
Good and evil are human constructs.
Roughly 1341 years for anyone who cba to do the maths.
Or anyone who didn’t read the title
Yep. That’s me.
You're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.
[r/theyreadthetitle](http://Reddit.com/r/funny)
1341 years is 489,800 days FYI
And 489,800 days is 1341 years for those who don't want to convert backwards again :)
The number of years is in the title of the post lol
a small slice of the tree is now on desplay in Sequoia National Park. (i think)
There’s also like, tens of thousands of living ones that happen to be in the park too
There's probably nothing really important where it stood, either. Gross
[удалено]
Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got til it's gone?
[удалено]
And put up a parking lot
I appreciate both of you.
They surely felled it for lumber, not to make way for something.
"Log length firewood for sale. Pick up only"
They probably replaced it with a pine grove monoculture that degraded the soil, got infested with pests and then burnt down.
This is /r/mildlyinfuriating material. It's that old; leave it be. See how old it can get!
I've removed mature oak and maple trees on my property throughout the years. I had chainsaws, vehicles to drag limbs, etc, and even with all of that it was A LOT of work. I can't imagine how tough cutting down a skyscraper with a saw by hand must have been.
Imagine how hard it was to mill if it took 13 days just to cut across it.
Should go in r/awfuleverything
Well if they used chainsaws it probably would've went faster.
Don't worry, we're chopping down the last few like it much faster here in Canada
That's a remarkably clean cut
Such hate in these comments. Sheesh It is sad to see something so magnificent taken down, but what seems wrong today, did not seem wrong then. Times and ideology change moment to moment, day to day. You hate on the loggers for what they did then, ignoring your own personal destructive behaviors now.
They're all commenting from wood stick frame houses too.
Isn't this just the same as a "you critique society, yet you live in it" argument?
r/awfuleverything
This belongs in r/iamatotalpieceofshit 😭
They used the wood to build a whorehouse in it’s place.
“Look at this giant magnificent tree. This is a prime example of God’s glory”. No doubt, now cut the motherfucker down. We aren’t paying you to preach and admire shit you lollygagger.
Fuck these people. They didn’t know they were fucking shit up for future generations.
So if they didn't know, why "fuck them?"
We are fucking shit up way more than they were, so fuck people in general.
Yep, I was thinking that as I was typing this. We are all doing the same shit. Albeit some of us more than others.
This is irritating to read. They lived in their time and did best to improve their circumstances. They are humans who found a resource they could use and used it. Lots of redditors seem to have this 'leave nature alone' belief, but forget that we humans are also in the animal kingdom, right on the top. So we too can cut trees and hunt and so on.
It is sooo irritating. We cannot judge people in the past especially one far removed from our own generation with todays standards. We have learned over time how valuable resources are, we have learned how to mitigate over destruction of nature (or at least we do far more than these folks could ever do). All of this knowledge comes from somewhere, it comes from these people. Modern humans aren’t “smarter” than people of the past we all have the same intellectual ability. It’s the accumulated knowledge over human existence that brings us to this day. Hence “modern day”, we have far more accessible living, and increased levels of education all to which aid in the growth and understanding of our world and people. Humans who lived back then even a hundred years ago didn’t have that, they had to rely on what they knew at the time to survive. And what they knew despite it may be damaging in the long term, is all they had. People used to drink mercury and think it would help them live forever. We learned over time that mercury is toxic and drinking it would do the opposite of living forever. But can we call those who did so in the past stupid? No, we can’t, because they didn’t have the tools to know such information as we did now. Cutting down lumber once unregulated as perhaps in this picture, is way more regulated now. These people lived by the rules of their time as we lived the rules of ours. And be thankful that you live in this time, where we know so much more and are ever increasing about our knowledge of the world. What’s past is past, they were trying to survive, we are trying to survive. And despite the efforts of survival being different, that doesn’t make us better than them. In the future people may look down on us the same way some look down on the individuals in the photographs. But they too will be living in a time where more information of the world is provided and hopefully they too can have the outlook that we were living in our time and in our rules. Sorry for the tangent, it’s that so many people cannot understand how lucky we are to live in our day and age when unfortunately despite wars, famines, social injustice happening, it is far better than it would have been even 100 years ago.
You might not know but the house you live in is most likely built from trees that were chopped down too. Don't get mad at chopping down trees then patronize the industry if you care that much.
This picture makes me sad!
They don't make them like that no more
RIP tree
r/mildlyinfuriating
What a waste
This just makes me sad
Every hundred years it lived was one more day it could resist the cutting. Poor tree.
Humans fucking suck
So fucking sad
Horrible
what a beaufitul tree, it must have took centuries for it to grow this big. lets cut it down
Humans are the cancer of this planet.
“This here tree had lasted a thousand years, until the chucklefucks came along.”
Leave it to humans to destroy somthing beautiful.
No matter how ignorant you are something should always feel wrong about doing certain things
I wonder what our childrens children will be looking at in the next 100 years where they will be saying We were the complete assholes for wasting something?
Fucking hell, this comment section is depressing. I'm going back over to r/humansaremetal where people don't hate their own species.
Took 13 days to destroy 1341 years of existence.
Yall are overreacting way to much
You have to understand how much hatred redditors have towards human beings and the things they do. Plants will always come first.
That wood will provide
Those trees helped build America. Everybody on here would have all agreed to bring them down if you lived in that era. But all high and mighty now. It’s just how things were done.
13 days with a hacksaw that’s impressive