Open Thread

An observation:

Cutting down trees is good for the environment. Trees remove carbon dioxide from the environment and store the carbon in the form of wood. The carbon can be re-combined with oxygen and re-released into the environment if the wood is burned or decomposes, but otherwise the carbon is permanently removed from the environment.

A tree in a non-mature stand removes carbon from the environment much faster than a mature one. This means that if you cut down a mature stand and replace it with a young, fast-growing stand of trees, you suck carbon out of the environment at a much faster rate.

If we were serious about removing carbon from the environment we would simply cut down billions of trees in mature stands, sequester the wood in some way that does not re-release the carbon (use it to buuild houses, store it in big piles, even dump it in the sea if it’s more dense than water) and allow newer stands of trees to vacuum carbon out of the atmosphere. It’s not even necessary to plant trees, as trees are incredibly good at simply regenerating themselves as long as you practice good silvaculture.

Tell this to the next hippie who yaps on about saving trees.

Market reaction to good productivity report will be a key technical indicator. If stocks continue to trend lower despite positive news, that will be a sign that current correction has further to go.

DIBS, you might be correct about the Porsche Panamera being a sissy car – saw 3 of them on the road last 2 days and all lady drivers

I saw what must be the new NY license plates on 2 cars today. This must be the result of what I thought was a ruling mandating that NY remove the Statue of Liberty from its license plate. Assuming it’s the new plate, it’s back to the old colors of navy and orange, i.e., bottom 2/3 is navy with a small embossed outline of the state, and top 1/3 is orange.

Nonfarm Productivity 1Q was +3.6% vs. expectations of +2.6%

Were any of you more productive in the first quarter????