Of the human footprint

There's much being published nowadays on the subject of the individual's footprint on the earth - that is, the amount the individual living on the earth will consume. Most recently, a TV show had a piles of all the vegetables we'll eat in our lifetime, all the cars we'll use, etc.
Image being presented: Mother Earth being looted. The BBC magazine Radio Times gave us the lesson we're supposed to take away: the earth would be better off without us.
A bit of a misanthropic tone, perhaps? And a huge value judgement, too, that the earth without reasonably intelligent life on it would be "better".
It's also one-sided. Because one could also make a show illustrating how much we all produce during a lifetime. That would show the other side of the ledger - everthing we consume has been produced by someone too - otherwise we'd never buy it. Even "free" stuff like water, has to be purified and delivered to us.
An honest review would comment that some resources are being depleted, used up. But similarly, we are also adding to a long-lasting store of knowledge, which never runs out and can be used gain and again to invent ingenious solutions to our problems.

So let's not be pessimistic, shall we?

Numberwatch

Drawing your attention to the excellent blog "Numberwatch", dediceted to the misuse of statistics and science to scare the public.
See side bar for link.
The "Number of the Month" collects the latest insanities, errors and downright lies that infest the popular press.
This month he picks apart a fancy scheme to fly wind turbines in the upper atmosphere and produce electricity that way. (Briefly, the real problem is not flying it - it's getting the electricity down the cable).
Might also be a problem with conservation of energy too - if the wind is providing enough energy to lift it, can it also be providing a surplus too?

Worth a regular look.

Forests

Saw the BBC2 feature this week about the Forest of Dean. A group of wild boar were filmed in the dusk. They are breeding there for the first time in 300 years or more.
Interesting because - put simply - the animals died out or were hunted to extinction at that time, when there were one tenth as many people as now. Yet now the boar live in forests in Sussex, in the most densely populated part of the country.
Obviously, they are not being hunted. But also, forests are not being utilised the way they were in the past.
There is no such thing as untouched, pristine forest nowadays, and there never was. Mediaeval woods were a resource for feeding animals and gathering firewood (by hook or by crook). The land was cleared of undergrowth by the villagers, and it became the greenwood of Robin Hood.
That process, perhaps, made the environment unsuitable for the wild boar.
It was similar in American forests; the native Americans cleared the ground by fire.
Beautiful environments are as much the product of mankind's intervention as they are the product of nature.