lithocarpus

This is true but the last few years have seen this dislike grow and spread a lot more than it was before - in my personal experience.

Most people I talk to use it because it's useful, but also hate what it means and what it is doing to the world.

There definitely has been a broad change in public perception of big tech and the future that it is taking us toward.

Thanks, that's interesting. I mostly agree. I'm not sure the dominant tree species would vary much, as Finland's forests, both old growth and managed, are mostly scots pine, norway spruce, and birch -- which looks to be what we see here in both the old forest and the trees around the edge of what Google cleared.

Definitely an older forest will have more complexity and thus diversity of understory etc.

I imagine a lot of the beneficial aspects of old forest, e.g. structural complexity, snags and downed logs, canopy gaps where trees fell, etc will develop on their own given time, in many of Finland's managed/logged forests. I think this is what we see in the "old forest" examples. And it is what I've seen in the areas I've lived in the USA. And, humans can try to help these things develop sooner, which like you say is often expensive and complex.

Some places like California, eucalyptus will come in and completely take over some forested areas after they're cleared, and so it won't naturally become like old native forest again. I don't think they have something quite like that in Finland but I'm curious if they do. I don't know what will happen with these patches of eucalyptus in another few hundred years if humans don't intervene.

I agree, and, want to point out this wasn't old growth forest. At least, none of the standing trees in the photos look like old growth. If it was, that would be a huge story, but it would have been very odd for Google to put a data center in old growth forest. Almost all of Finland is covered by managed/logged forests like this, so it's kind of inevitable if building a datacenter there that it is going to replace forest.

The same is true in much of the world actually, over half of the earth's surface was forested before humans started clearing it.

This is probably all native scots pine or norway spruce, as that is what almost all of finland's forests are, and they don't plant sitka spruce plantations there like they do in Ireland or other places in Europe.

That said, there's very little old growth forest in finland and this obviously is not old growth.

I'm curious though if you know, what other species you'd expect to see here if it was properly restored?

All the other forms of life are also sentient. We are literally relatives of theirs, even if distant.

Exactly, forest fires usually don't kill most of the trees in an old growth forest. The trees are much bigger, hold a lot more water, and have much thicker fire-resistant bark. This is why you usually see charred parts on the bottom of living old growth trees - they survived fire.

Because the old growth was logged, the fires we have now are often able to kill 100% of the trees in an area because the trees are all small and young and vulnerable. And this is self perpetuating, because after such a fire the soil often erodes, and sun hits the ground directly keeping it dry - it takes a really long time to recover from in some places.

Each cycle of logging removes even more soil and makes the landscape drier, and resets the timer on how long it will be before the forest is able to survive a wildfire. It's a short term thing.

I'm not saying no one should ever cut a tree or use wood - and it can be done in better and worse ways, it's really complex. But in general, the repeated clearcutting of the pacific northwest is steadily degrading that landscape the same way repeated intensive till farming of the prairies is degrading that landscape - it's a relatively short term thing with diminishing returns.

Old growth forest continually grows becoming richer and richer, until one of those major setbacks which often are many thousand years in between.

Old growth forest creates more wood per year per acre than second or third growth after the old growth is cut. It also produces more food for humans and habitat for wildlife. It literally stabilizes the weather and pumps moisture inland by storing water and then releasing it. It holds water in the ground so that streams don't go dry and can support fish. It is much more resilient to wildfire.

In the redwood forest for example, 95% of it was clear cut, for a short term benefit. 90% of this wood that had been accumulated by the forest over thousands of years has now burned or rotted away within 100 years, and is gone.

What we're doing now is rapidly consuming everything, and these resources are steadily declining, and will run out and the human population will crash.

But yes, I do think more abundance and diversity of life is an intrinsic good, both for its own sake and for the long term thriving of humans on earth. Like any population of animals, if we consume everything that we live on and undermine the capacity of earth to support us, we will collapse.

That said humans can figure out how to help ecosystems recover and be more abundant. So it's not all over. But clearing the old growth forest is one of the worst things we do - up there with reckless mining that contaminates water.

Sure, from a deep time perspective it's maybe no big deal, but the loss of the forest affects all of us including future generations significantly in the meantime.

There are often other factors too, than just the direct fishing, that keep a population low.

In the west of North America, like most places, almost all of the old growth forest was logged.

Some places where the soil and subsoil was particularly vulnerable to erosion and landsliding or just didn't have a lot of water capacity in the first place like on dry mountains, after these trees were removed and most of the soil washed away from rain, the forest simply has not come back a hundred years later. There are little trees gradaually getting started, and lots of mostly bare soil or rock still where erosion from rain is able to outpace the vegetation growth. It will likely take many thousand years for trees to get to the size they were before, and to build up the capacity for holding water like it had been.

In more abundant forests, trees regrow faster. But even there, a hundred years later, the total biomass per acre is often 10% of what it was as old growth forest, and the capacity for holding water on the land similarly much reduced. The old growth forests were the result of nature doing its thing often with help from humans for thousands of years and continually becoming richer. Eventually a major disturbance sets it back, but this might only happen ever 5 or 10 thousand years. This time humans did it.

In simpler language:

The top 0.1% increased their share of the total wealth by 67%.

The top 1% increased their share of the total wealth by 40%.

And the bottom 50% decreased their share of the total wealth by 30%.

In 27 years

The top 1% went from holding 22.8% of wealth to holding 31.6%

The bottom 50% went from holding 3.5% to 2.5%.

That's what I meant, but you put it a bit more clearly.

I do know a lot of people who grind their own flour fresh - that is real homemade bread and not ultra processed, and agreed, not magically unhealthy.