Too much wood for just fun?

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Huge land grabs?
I think your mixing up the "public sector" and the "private sector"

The "Imperial Federal Government" is also known as "the public." The land in question was already owned by the government (meaning the American public). All these "land grabs" did is protect it from being given away to the private sector, virtually for free.

Did you know the U.S. forest service loses money on every tree it sells to a lumber company? The BLM loses money on the land it leases to ranchers.
Those "land grabs" saved you (yes, you as a taxpayer) a lot of money. If you really are a capitalist, why are you not calling for an end to this subsidy?

Public land is a good thing. If you're worried about the effect on the economy think about how much the tourism industry generates in most of the public land-rich western states. What are most of those tourists there to do? Visit the public land!

Clinton wasn't perfect but at least under his 8 years I didn't have to worry as much about massive land giveaways.
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everything's better with a banjo

lumpy72 said:
I wonder if the amount of lumber used in coasters in a years time is more or less the amount of lumber that Lowe's throws away in that same year.

Being as I work at Lowe's (in lumber even)...
At the store I work at, we sell our "bad" wood to customers at about 50% to 75% off (contractors can utilize the wood, other customers may only need a piece of the wood so it's actually nice). The only actual wood we throw away are scraps, and badly damaged wood (broken in half) and our customers are more than welcome to pick this up and take it off of our hands too... less we have to throw away.
We throw away much more cardbord, use about a box of printer paper every single day, and go through about 10 (guessing) rolls of reciept paper every single day. Thats the issue at hand.. reduce the amout of paper produts used daily and we could see a significant decrease in demolition of forests that are used directly for paper products.
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AIM: Pritti Kittie

I'm living on a stick of island spearing Lake Superior in the soft underbelly (I call it Houghton, MI). Up here, jack pines and birch trees are weeds. The UP of Michigan is essentially one gigantic forest or beach or (typically) swamp. We log for pines that get turned into (wait for it) toilet paper! This stuff isn't even up to newspaper quality. Got a ton of it, too.
Steel, by the way, is more resource and energy-dependent than wood. Strip mining, in the US, is rare outside of sand mining, though.
Your average coaster uses a couple million board feet of wood. You could balance that with a couple of decent-sized buildimgs. There's only around 400 woodies in the world, with maintanence basically rebuilding one every 10 years.
So... I'd imagine more paper goes into newspaper per day than goes into all the coasters built in the last century.

SLFAKE - The "conspiracy theories" don't go both ways, IMO. They go one way: Since WWI, the government and big business have directed the country toward Empire (as you admitted yourself) and away from Republic. Maybe this hasn't been intentional or malicious, but it has indeed happened. I think this holds true for all administrations, Democrat and Republican. I merely used the Bush II administration as an example in light of current events (Afghanistan, Enron, Alaska, etc.). Don't take it so personally.
You're right, though, this is way off the topic of coasters, and a potentially never ending discussion.

What's so impressive about the Toyota Prius? The Geo Metro was getting damn near 50mpg about 10 years ago when I was in high school. Why didnt we see an explosion of those? I'll tell you why two reasons: 1) The were ugly as sin. Nobody looks cool in a Metro and for Americans, vehicles are a status symbol. 2) They were dinky. Not so much that they were small, but they didnt perform well in crashes with the big Cadillacs and Lincolns. The crappy Geo Storm didnt help either. Why else do you think GM went ahead and pulled the Geo line and re-titled them all Chevys? Geo had a bad rep.
And when the reports come in of these Priuses being lambasted by the neighborhood Escalade, you'll see less and less 'soccer moms' rushing out to buy them. Turning to trucks and mini-vans as a "safer alternative" (whether that is true or not, it's still the perception).
lata,
jeremy
--who has no desire to drive anything with less than 6-cylinders!
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A Nigerian Muslim sharia court sentences a pregnant woman found guilty of adultery to be stoned to death, but only after she has finished weaning her baby.
This is known in some parts of the Muslim world as compassionate conservatism

too much politics and theories in this subject. stick to rollercoasters and the amusement buisiness.

I still remember a year ago when all the people driving SUVs were complaining that they couldn't afford the gas to get to the park. I just continued not to worry in my 35 mpg Honda. And it was tough enough to take a bashing form a Ford Explorer this morning without too much damage.
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the one concern on forest impact that might be legitimate for woodies. Is there any tendency to use old growth trees for large timbers. I guess I should go look at some photos to see exactly what size the largest timbers used are. Remember that in this country most of the trees used for paper and small dimension lumber are a farm product, not a natural resource.

As much as I love the technology in the Prius, the reason they don't sell is they don't pay for themselves. You're basically getting Corolla levels of refinement for Camry dollars. So the hope is that maybe the Prius will pay for itself in gas savings. Assume that the Corolla gets 25 miles to the gallon on average and the Prius gets 50. If both cars live for 150,000 miles, which is reasonable, the prius has burned 3000 gallons of gas at $1.25 a gallon or so while the corolla has burned 6000.

The Prius costs seven grand more and saves you almost four grand in gas. Plus the Prius is going to cost a LOT more to repair for quite some time. If you don't believe me ask an Rx-7 owner about repair bills. Not the same engine, but unfamiliar and esoteric powertrain in both cases.
The darn thing just doesn't pay for itself. No, if you want to save the world and save yourself some gas money at the same time but a CRX... 50 Mpg, park them anywhere (a real consideration where parking isn't trivial to find) and still can blow the doors off of those big manly v-8 powered 8000 pound compensation-mobiles.