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["Kieran &/or Donna" <holycow@frontiernet.net>]

Well, I had some interesting thoughts the other day.  We had cut down a 50 year old pine and I was thinking about how they'd used these impossible-to-split virginia pines for making log cabins.  Next day I was walking in the neighboring field and thinking about how it was all once virgin timber and that all the wimpy woodlands surrounding it were huge old trees before the white man came.  Then I wondered, "Where are those trees now?"  All the timber that was cut down not just the first time, but all the times since, where did they go?  Where are the houses, the barns, the fences that were built with them?  Most have rotted away or burnt down, and they are now existing as CO2 and water and some minerals in the soil or most likely in the ocean.  What does THAT do to global temps?  I am only too aware of what it does when you chop down all the trees and have exposed soil or pavement or house roofs.  But the difference between the amount of carbon that was in trees, not to mention what was in the rich organic matter content of the soil... all that must be in the atmosphere now.  Donna