Complex Numbers

The Forest for the Trees

Here's another one for "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+]

Large Tree Planting Projects

"They're going to make us dinner."

So my cleric said to the party upon encountering a group of trolls tonight.

Sure, I suppose it was within the realm of possibility for the DM to have planned for the trolls to cook a nice venison roast and serve it to us. More likely, though, they were going to turn us into the main course.

The way English works, though, the sentence is indeed ambiguous. Is "us" the direct or indirect object of "make?" Other languages have no such ambiguity. "They're going to make dinner for us" is distinct from "They're going to make us for dinner."

So, coming off a D&D high and pulling this prompt at random from the list, initially I read it as (Large Tree) (Planting Projects). So I imagined much bigger versions of the trolls (they were big to begin with) running around and planting large trees everywhere. But it could also mean that people are planting little trees that will eventually grow up to be large trees. As opposed to, I dunno, dogwoods, which never get too huge.

One could, I suppose, also read it as (Large Tree Planting) Projects, which, I don't know, could be read to imply that the trees are the things doing the planting? Though I guess you could do that with the first example, too. These two permutations aren't really all that different.

Then there's the interpretation that, I assume, was actually intended: Large (Tree Planting Projects).

This one implies that the tree planting projects are large in scope. In other words, "large" is actually modifying "projects" as opposed to "tree."

That would make more sense, wouldn't it? A small project to plant trees wouldn't be very effective. It would be like if one person in the world recycled, and no one else did. Maybe you could initiate numerous such projects, but that would involve getting people who don't give a shit to give a shit, which ain't gonna happen.

According to sources whittled down into Wikipedia  , "In the 12,000 years since the start of human agriculture, the number of trees worldwide has decreased by 46%." Also, "...about 15 billion trees are cut down annually and about 5 billion are planted." But that last quote doesn't tell me anything about tree life cycles. With or without us, trees get seeded, grow, reproduce, and die.

I almost typed "natural tree life cycles" there, and then I remembered a) beavers and b) anything we, as part of nature, do is also part of nature.

But taking those numbers at face value, that's a net loss of 10 billion trees a year. Which certainly seems like a lot -- it exceeds the human population of the planet -- but according to the same source, there's probably about 3 trillion trees. That's... oh, hell, I'm entirely too wiped tonight to do the math. Let's just say that we're in no danger of running out of trees anytime soon.

Which doesn't mean, of course, that any net loss is a good thing. And I get the impression that it's not just the number, but the distribution. Deforesting the Amazon rainforest probably has a much bigger negative impact than, say, losing them more or less evenly all over the globe.

That would, of course, imply that it matters where any of these large tree planting projects are taking place. Which may be obvious, because, for example, you can plant all the trees you want in the Sahara; they won't grow.

So whatever these projects are, assuming I parsed the phrase correctly, I hope they're successful.

My D&D party was, by the way. Successful, I mean. It took a while, but we eventually dispatched the trolls. Now if only we could do that with the ones on the internet...