Re: Anybody looking for some Mary Jane?
Staying out of the MJ end of things, I would like to answer the difference between a 300 year old tree and a cornstalk.
I doubt that you could prove that a field of corn produces more 02 than the same acreage in old growth trees, but if you can provide some evidence to back that up, I would be interested to see it.
But trees provide something more than just oxygen and some tp to wipe yer hiney with.
if you go and look at a creek that flows through old growth forest in a heavy rain, you will see a creek that does not rise much and still runs clear.
if you look at the same creek after the clearcut, and for years afterwards, you will see a creek that floods regularly and runs brown even during modest rain events. it is shallow and warm and fish that try to live there are exposed to predators and disease.
Old trees not only soften the fall of the rain, reducing erosion, but each big tree acts like a water tank, absorbing literally tons of water and transpiring it back into the air. Small plantation trees and seedlings cannot do this on the same scale that old trees can.
that right there is enough of a reason for me to want to be moderate in the taking of old growth trees, and especially intact old growth forests. I love clean water, healthy salmon runs AND quality lumber and other forest products, such as edible wild mushrooms. The corn field does NOT provide much protection against erosion, whatever its other benefits are.
If I look at the satellite photos of my region, I see a LOT of bare brown dirt, and a lot less of older forests. And my creek runs brown and high and floods frequently, and the salmon runs are hanging on by a thread. Almost no chinook return to this watershed for the last two seasons. The mouth of the creek where it goes into the Columbia is about 18 inches deep at low tide, where it used to be twenty feet.
I went walking in a small patch of protected old growth forest today, and I can tell you that there are a LOT of other important differences between a forest full of 3-10' thick spruce and hemlock trees and a field of corn.
from what I've heard, of course 
