28 Mar
2012
28 Mar
'12
3:28 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jules Richardson
Sent: 28 March 2012 21:51
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: PDP-8 questions
On 03/28/2012 10:08 AM, David Riley wrote:
look
If you buy it new, you are contributing a lot
more than you think,
because you are one more data point confirming the existence of a
market out there for the foresters.
Surely the foresters are clever enough to look at the quantities being
requested though, so the fact that one person is requesting enough to make
some PDP-8 panels counts for far less than someone requesting enough to
build a few hundred pieces of furniture[1]? I'd be surprised if they just at the number of demands and don't take into
account the amounts.
[1] or, put a better way, one person in 6 months requesting enough to make
PDP-8 panels is tiny in comparison to n people over the same time period
requesting enough to make furniture.
Let's do a back of the envelope calculation.
A Dalbergia latifolia grows up to 40m high with a girth of up to 2m and is
harvested after 30-40 years
(http://www.worldagroforestrycentre.org/sea/Products/AFDbases/af/asp/Species
Info.asp?SpID=1726). Let's assume it is 2m girth all the way from top to
bottom to account for the branches. That is a radius of 0.63m, for a
cylindrical volume of about 50 cubic metres for one tree. Let's say that one
person wants a piece of rosewood that is 50cm x 50cm x 1cm. That is 0.0025
cubic metres, so a single fully grown tree would satisfy 20,000 people once
a year.
The population of the world is 6 billion. Let's assume that on average 1 in
1,000 people needs a piece of rosewood in a year for something they believe
to be a one-off that won't do any harm, that is 6,000,000 people. That is
300 trees per year. To sustain this rate of consumption would require a
plantation of 12,000 trees with 300 trees planted every year.
I have not been able to find out how many such trees there are in the world
today, or rather, I ran out of patience to search for that data too :-)
There could be all sorts of errors in my assumptions, like which tree it
really is, how often it is harvested, how much useful timber you actually
get from a tree, what proportion of people want "one-off" bits of rosewood
etc.
Regards
Rob