Timber

The opening paragraph of The Power of Trees by Peter Wohlleben sums the book up rather wel

And the subtitle adds quite a sad reproach: 

How Ancient Forests Can Save Us if We Let Them

<speculation subject="reproachfulness quotient?">
I wonder how carefully Wohlleben's translator Jane Billinghurst (a long-time collaborator) reflected this reproach: does it really mean How Ancient forest can save us if only we'd let them? The last paragraph of Wohlleben's introductory note suggests this sort of doubt:

</speculation>

The author was one of the guests on this week's Start the Week. The other guests are introduced by the BBC Sounds blurb thus:

Jill Butler is an ancient tree specialist and a trustee of the Tree Register of the British Isle which records the nation’s ‘champion trees’ – the tallest and biggest trees of their species. But she’s also keen on getting the public involved in helping to find and care for some of the country’s oldest trees with the citizen science project, Ancient Tree Inventory, run by the Woodland Trust. 

 The healing powers of ancient trees is celebrated in stories throughout history, including the great Icelandic sagas. In The Norse Myths That Shape the Way We Think Carolyne Larrington, Professor of medieval European Literature explores the renewal that comes from the roots of Yggdrasill, the World Tree.

While listening I thought back to three podcasts. The first was this (about the "nuclear milestone" reached on 5 December 2022...

<parenthesis>

(though the work was done at the US National Ignition Facility, so perhaps we can date this milestone to the Feast of St Nicholas – providing a possible explanation for the energy source used by Santa's sleigh; (well, I did say 'perhaps'))

</parenthesis>

...) by getting more energy out of a fusion reaction than they'd put in (a tiny amount, but its a start.

What they do is in effect use lasers to contain a tiny star (the American speaker says 'the size of a BB', but the English woman says 'the size of a peppercorn' – draw from that whatever cultural conclusioins you like).

When they waxed lyrical...

<cliché-watch>

What else can one wax (apart from cars, obv.)?

</cliché-watch>

... about "a practically limitless supply of fusion energy", I thought 'Hang on a minute. Haven't we already got that – the Sun?

Aha, comes the objection; but only in the daytime, and when it's sunny enough. Well I've thought of that: those other two podcasts:

• A huge solar farm in the Sahara: The Inquiry
• An even bigger one in space, assembled by robots: The Climate Question

But the highest tech solution, apart from depending on as-yet uninvented kit, would involve the burning of huge amounts of rocket fuel. And anyway it all seems a lot of bother, when the the Sun and the trees are doing the job anyway.

Time for my walk.

b