\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTaking down a tree in 30 seconds | source
Now this is a real thing that would take out a medieval peasant
No its not. Y'all keep thinking they\u2019re dumb. They\u2019d be all \u201cwhat a nifty machine.\u201d
Pls I just want to live in my peasant killing fantasy in peace
Grab em with the machine
Genius !!!
\u201c#this is terrifying in its efficiency#all I can think about while watching it how quickly that can obliterate a forest#there is no way we can replant as quickly as that can destroy\u201d via @thischick25
good news, actually! see how small and sturdy the cab of that machine is? and how flexibly it can cut and trim the tree? machines like this are actually really good for logging because, when used responsibly, there\u2019s no need for clear cutting or mass deforestation.
traditional logging practices that deforested hillsides were definitely due to a brutally extractive philosophy, and are still in use today, and should be condemned. but they were also pragmatic: you had to cut a road into the forest to get your machines in place, your trucks couldn\u2019t haul things over uneven ground, and your men didn\u2019t want to drag lumber any further than they had to. so, economically, clearcutting made the most sense. build a road, cut down everything close to the road, build the road a little further. you\u2019re paying a ton of money out for all the manhours and equipment, the gas, the repairs, the injuries. so you clearcut as much as you can to get your money\u2019s worth out of the operation and you don\u2019t leave behind a stick.
more flexible machines like this let loggers mark individual trees quite far away from any access road, cut a single tree down without it hitting into any other tree or tearing up the ground by yanking the root ball out, and get it ready for hauling. in thirty seconds. no injuries, no accidents, no overtime. an entire tree harvested, as easy as that.
it\u2019s now practically and economically feasible to send a guy out to cut down a hundred individual trees in a forest, spread out over an area of miles, with an intact forest in place around each stump, instead of just having that guy cut down every single tree they can reach from the road until they get to a hundred, and leave behind a devastated mud wallow that won\u2019t regrow for decades.
tree farm forests aren\u2019t as good for the environment as forest preserves! this is certainly a thing\u2013 and not every tree planted \u2018for the environment\u2019 is actually useful. for instance, christmas tree forests are practically wastelands, nothing much can live in a place that\u2019s just All The Same Fucking Pine Tree. and there\u2019s a LOT of shitty, extractive logging still going on, and we DO still have to hold lumber companies accountable for chewing up old growth forest (IKEA) which in this day and age should not fucking be happening.
but these kind of logging machines should be applauded, and seen as ecologically wonderful, because they present our best alternative to clear-cut logging. with this kind of machine (and sustainable quotas! by a company that\u2019s actually committed to responsible forestry!!!) not only are we not going to be cutting more quickly than we replant\u2013 we don\u2019t even have to replant.
Reblogging for the excellent explanation of the role of this technology in sustainable forestry, and also to point out that, while a medieval peasant would certainly be surprised and impressed by how fast this machine is, many of them would have experience with the concept of new technologies making familiar tasks more efficient.\u00a0\u00a0
There were a ton of technological improvements made during the medieval period.\u00a0 The horse-collar is one of the more well-known ones, and what it does is allow a horse to pull more weight by changing the way that the forces are distributed on the animal\u2019s body.\u00a0 (In other words, it lets you get more horsepower out of your horse!)\u00a0\u00a0
There were also a number of incremental improvements to plowing technology, which allowed the work to be done faster, as well as a long series of developments in using wind- or water-mills to do various things\u2013which is really huge, because you\u2019re harnessing something other than muscle power\u00a0(human or animal) to do various tasks, like grinding grain or processing other materials.\u00a0\u00a0
At the very end of the medieval period, a peasant might have even encountered a sawmill, which would use water power to process logs into lumber.\u00a0 A medieval peasant who had watched that development happen might look at this thing and go,\u00a0\u201cOh, yes, I see, they found a way to bring the sawmill to the tree\u2013what will they think of next?\u201d
i will be the first in line to dunk on the british for a lot of things, notably how impressively bad they\u2019ve been at farming\u2013but one thing english peasants actually did really well, for centuries, was manage their forests.
they lived on a little island. they had little forests. they had a LOT of rain. deforesting basically anywhere that wasn\u2019t actively being used for farmland or pasture was a very bad move! but they had to have a steady supply of firewood. so they turned coppicing into an art form.
as you can see above, this machine chops the tree neatly and quickly off as a stump, rather than ripping it all out of the ground, and it does this really really fast. it\u2019s more like an amputation than a buchery. The tree\u2019s roots are still alive, and even if the tree dies, the roots will hold the ground together for a while, then nourish the soil and promote mushroom growth as they decay.
but if the tree\u2019s old enough, it has the resources to send runners up from the stump and get a bunch of leaves back in place to start photosynthesizing again\u2026. and then it\u2019ll just keep on being a tree. just a much shorter tree, for awhile. and it\u2019s still got a headstart on any other saplings in the area\u2013which themselves might be taking advantage of the sudden gap in the canopy to shoot up, though different species need different things. some trees need an extended period of time as shaded saplings to form dense inner layers, and if they grow up too fast they\u2019re fragile and split during storms or frosts. but some trees are short-lived opportunists just waiting for a break in the canopy. and there\u2019s always plenty of shrubs that can grow and reseed more dynamically.
a forest is like a really complicated conversation between all the plants and animals and fungi in it, and coppicing individual trees doesn\u2019t alter that conversation as badly as mowing down big swathes of them. a return to coppicing as a standard logging practice would be really exciting.
I mean even with coppicing, England was a wood-hungry place, demanding arriving ships bring wood for longbows, clearing Irish forests for food plantations, and sourcing unspliced ships’ masts from the virgin old-growth forests of New\ufffc\ufffc England
"}