Lawrence van Rijn – Law Lord to be

That is the topic of the day (for me). You see, we all have our ways and that is fine, however one app that I ‘embraced’ is Conqueror. Conqueror is a walking tool that keeps you on point to a degree. To a degree is a little ‘stiff’ but as I had to endure two open heart surgeries within two months, I thought it a good idea to embrace a little more active lifestyle. Conqueror had that and it was on point for me, the gamer in me embraced it. I am now on the third Tombraider challenge and I only started this third one yesterday.

The first thing I got was a gaming stage to a real deal, a virtual challenge. And with this, besides the ‘postcards’, the maps and the videos was a setting that with every 20% done a tree was planted. As such I have been the instigator on 10 trees so far. This gave me food for thought. You see it takes 8 trees to create the oxygen that I require. The first realisation was that if there are 8 billion people at this time. We need to have 64 billion trees to keep this world oxygenated. So, how many trees in the amazon, Indonesia and other places have been cut for the need of money? There is a limit that ‘brown gold’ gets you and in a global economy. What places have this? A partial fact was given in 2015 “We estimate that there are approximately 3.041 trillion trees in the world, an entire order of magnitude greater than the previous estimate of 400.25 billion. For each person on Earth there are 422 trees”, this presumptuous estimation is rough and not entirely believable. You see, in the last decade massive lumber issues were seen in several places. And when we consider  “there are approximately 3.041 trillion trees in the world, an entire order of magnitude greater than the previous estimate of 400.25 billion.” My issue in this is that there are always issues with these numbers, that’s fine but to make an estimation issue that is off by almost 800% is too far fetched. Even being off by 100% makes the issue dubious at best. One of the estimations was not done with a clear scope in mind. So was it the first or the second? In 2023 we were given “Cattle ranching and soybean farming are colossal culprits, with cattle ranching accounting for 80% of current deforestation in the Amazon. As demand for these products increases, more and more land is cleared to make room for crops and grazing.” Which gives us the first worrying issue “80% of current deforestation in the Amazon” the issue is the percentage. This doesn’t state this as a percentage of the stated Amazon, which might have been X. Then there was the issue in Indonesia and Global Forest Watch gives us “In 2001, Indonesia had 93.8 Mha of primary forest*, extending over 50% of its land area. In 2023, it lost 292 kha of primary forest*, equivalent to 221 Mt of CO₂ emissions. 144 kha of this loss was found to be within Indonesia’s official forest land cover classes and with a patch size larger than two hectares according to MoEF-WRI analysis.” As such, when we consider these two facts, how believable was the first numbers we got? There is no other way to consider these facts then the clear notion that certain people are trying to sell us a bag of (optional corrupt) goods. As such we need to get real numbers. Because we are wasting the oxygen we desperately need to breathe. The optional thought that I have 5-10 years ago that we would have to decimate the population by 97.3%, a harsh but not unrealistic number. This gets me to the third issue, the fires of New Guinea. It was stated that from 2001 to 2023, Papua New Guinea lost 139 kha of tree cover from fires and 1.73 Mha from all other drivers of loss. So how does the initial statement of “We estimate that there are approximately 3.041 trillion trees in the world, an entire order of magnitude greater than the previous estimate of 400.25 billion. For each person on Earth there are 422 trees” with these three simple setting there is no way that this is set to any level of truth. People are optionally lulled to sleep and the danger is that soon Russia with its East Siberian taiga is now the only region remaining having the title ‘the lungs of the earth’ possible shared with the forests of Africa. Namely the rainforest of the Congo Basin, the Guinean Forests of West Africa, which run from Sierra Leone to Cameroon; the Eastern Afromontane, which span Ethiopia to Southern Africa; the Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa from Kenya to Mozambique; and the forests of Madagascar. So there are a few, however, how many trees there are remains a topic of debate. Is there any validity in the statement of “3.041 trillion trees” or “400.25 billion trees”. In both cases we are still OK, but in case of the second, I feel a lot better that I have contributed to my oxygen supply with so far 10 trees. I reckon that as these numbers are actually revisited and counted with some level of precision (Google, wake up, your Gemini talents are needed) we need to be cautious. I predict that someone will start vamping up the phrase ‘Oxygen neutral’ we might be in a lot more trouble than we think we are.

And that is merely the first issue. A second one was the challenge that I will be doing next (my fourth trial). Here I a stepping away from the gaming section to something more historically real.

It is the challenge ‘the St Francis way’. This is a virtual walk of 503km. 

It is the walk Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone made around 1204 when he went on a pilgrimage to Rome. The part I walk was a description from Florence to the Vatican. 

It is a ‘mere’ 503km but still a decent challenge. The ‘issue’ here is that we have become complacent in our luxuries. We are too eager to resort to cars and planes (I am not against any of them), I am merely a person who walked everything with a public transportation or two on the side. Living next to the office (place of business) is no longer an option for many of us. And as Sergey Brin is not likely to fuel my retirement, walking is nearly all I have. No complaints from my side mind you. I made my own bed and I accept my larger part in this. But as this trial came across my eyes I started to consider a few things. First of all the realisation what St. Frances accepted as his goals. He was a child of an Italian father, Pietro di Bernardone dei Moriconi, a prosperous silk merchant, and a French mother, Pica di Bourlemont, about whom little is known except that she was a noblewoman originally from  the French Provence and decided to marry his ‘lady Poverty’ as a bride. I have seen many things in my life, but the wealthy accepting the life of poverty is not one of them, and in all honesty, neither would I (although I have next to nothing), so what does that matter. The setting of walking that distance is not one of contemplation, it is a drive to succeed. A very different dive Giovanni ever had. And this challenge is one that we should all have, if it was only to get into a better healthier shape.

One mere app giving me more than one train of thought. There are still a few other trials to get and to complete after this one. The Harry Potter trials (7 of them) and the Lord of the Rings with 5 trials all towards an ending at Mount Doom is a wanting achievement as a Tolkien fan. So I can proudly state (if ever) to Elijah Wood: “I did that too. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah” OK, I admit, a little childish, but at times proud moments must be diminished by simple words to make the act (a total 1095km) a seemingly trivial one. The distance or journey didn’t matter, it is the total achievement that has meaning (be it in my own mind). 

So what did you learn (virtual or not)? Have a great Saturday, I still have almost half a day to go.