>>1763254>Tree farms aren't forests like a corn field is not a meadow. There might be more trees, but there are less healthy ecosystemsSays who? How do you know that actual forests haven't expanded? Show your sources. And if we're talking about carbon sequestration (which we don't need, but CO2 alarmists can't shut up about it.) Trees are the main thing that matters. And there is a big difference between a sustainably logged forest, and a "tree farm". I would immediately discount any source that fails to draw this distinction.
Most tree plantations are on land that was cleared for other agricultural use anyway.
>There are more trees now than there were 100 years ago, but still way less than there were 500 years agoHow the fuck would you know that? The world was in a mini ice age 500 years ago
Grow zones were in entirely different areas. And Indians would regularly set forest fires in an area just to create grasslands. You probably still believe in some variation of the noble savage myth. Now we are fighting any fire that occurs, meaning the natural turnover of land has been interrupted since the beginning of the 20th century at least. California is so absurdly overgrown and mismanaged that we have to pull firefighters from all over the country, and sometimes Australia, just to put it out every year.
This is happening everywhere. Look at Alberta.
The most artificial forests in the world are the pinyon-juniper lands in the western states. Compare any contemporary picture of a feature with the descriptions of mountain men and settlers of the same feature, any you'll find that we've lost almost all of our intermountain grass and forb lands.
Old growth forests are largely a myth. Nature is in constant change, and only a select few places with ideal microclimates have anything resembling your fantasy of pre-industrial north America.
