A natural fix to our atmospheric mess
To the Editor:
When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. Every Congress does it.
This has been a poor sort of a winter. With the ocean a little bit warmer it has been like a tea kettle on the old wood stove. The claim has been made that our extra warmth in the oceans has made more clouds, from whence cometh our rains and snows. Someone concluded that the average cloud contained 40,000 tons of moisture in the olden days, but there is more now. Plow now or wait ‘til spring. And then comes the Polar Vortex, just at the wrong time.
It looks as though the winters are not running off as fully as they ought. What then we might need could be some sort of a sky dryer. Come spring time we could get a lot of help from 4 billion extra trees. The nuts are edible and we could roast them around an open fire. Or make bread flour with no GMO while we waited 200 years for them to be turned into beautiful straight grained lumber.
There is such a thing, or was. It was the American chestnut tree, and was affectionately known as the Eastern redwood, 4 billion of the giants once stood east of the Mississippi, but in 1904 a Chinese moth was imported which spread a fungus that killed almost every one. It was a giant, some of them stood 200 feet tall and shoulder high could reach 12 feet in diameter. It sucked carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to make 60 pounds of tree for every cubic foot it used. sixty pounds times 108,573 cubic feet for the average tree. Times four billion of them now missing. Plenty of room.
The American Chestnut Foundation has bred what it hopes is a fungus resistant tree, and since Maine farming is in a slack time, planting this tree would keep farmers’ fields in farming.
It would reduce the amount of CO2 in our air. When they are in flower they are gorgeous, which would bring back our tourists, who pay good money to eat and sleep. A former cow barn ought to make a wonderful dining hall. No fields to plow, no cows to milk.
I am not a “joiner” but I have 71 acres that might hold upwards of 1,200 annual trees to harvest for the Christmas season. We made this atmospheric mess. I betcha fixing it would be profitable.
Charlie MacArthur
Sangerville