Popcorn

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

Deep Into the Forest Primeval

Just after the January/February 1993 PRI Review (Vol. 3, No. 1) went to bed, a letter was received from the Native Forest Council providing documentation for one of the previous Popcorn items, “Can’t See The Forest For The Trees.”

Popcorn had reported that the Native Forest Council, the cited source for the statement “only 260 million mature trees [were] left growing on federal lands, or approximately one for every American citizen,” was unable to substantiate that claim. After several days reflection, however, the “general manager” of the Native Forest Council provided “[t]he source for the 260 million tree figure …”1

It seems that one “Michael Murphy originally published [the claim of one mature tree remaining for each American] in the Register Guard newspaper in Eugene, OR[egon]2 and [it was then] reprinted in the Forest Voice ” of the Native Forest Council.3 From there it was picked up by a publication of the Carrying Capacity Network (CCN), where this writer saw it.4

Although CCN said that there were “only 260 million mature trees left growing on federal lands,” CCN’s ultimate source Murphy had actually written only about trees growing on “public lands in the West .”5 According to Murphy, “When [he] was born, there were about 200 million people in the United States and something like maybe 4 billion trees on public lands in the West…Each American owned 20 trees at the time.”

Through the intervening years, Murphy says, due to the demands of a growing population harvesting the forests, “Now [he’s] down to four, maybe five trees…at least one of [which] is a fir, and it’s big and old .… “Murphy has “decided to keep [his] old—growth tree,” and, based on his estimate of one such old-growth tree per capita, he arrives at the figure of “260 million old trees” on Western public lands, or “one for every citizen.”

Notice what has gone on here. Michael Murphy, lamenting the alleged devastation of the old-growth public forests in the West, concocts an estimate of “something like maybe 20 trees” per capita on those lands, which, after some thirty years of harvesting and several strainings through three different publications, winds up as CCN’s claim of just one mature tree remaining per American citizen.”

Even if Murphy were correct — he’s not — CCN has taken his estimate regarding Western public forests and incorrectly applied it to all the nation’s “federal lands.” According to the American Forest Council, there are some 26.5 million acres of Western forests out of a total of some 97 million acres of federal timberland throughout the nation.6 Thus, Murphy’s estimate excludes more than 70 million acres of federal forests on which surely there must be an appreciable number of trees, including some of those prized “old-growth”ones.

As a matter of fact, the American Forest Council estimates that America’s forests contain “some 230 billion trees,” of which “104 billion [are growing] on public land.”7 That works out to nearly 1,000 trees per capita, of which some 400 are on federal lands, not a mere ONE!

Abortion Propagandists Reduce Death Toll

Mexico has long been the target of abortion propagandists who have issued a veritable torrent of phony maternal death figures allegedly caused by botched, illegal abortions in their campaign to legalize abortion in the country. Previous issues of PRI Review have commented at some length about this situation, wherein yearly maternal abortion death totals of 100,000 to 140,000 to as high as 300,000 were alleged.8

One of the principal media outlets for this propaganda has been The Sun of Baltimore, MD, which seems to delight in reporting abortion death statistics for “Catholic” countries, no matter how implausible or fraudulent the figures may be. The latest Sun treatment of the subject occurred 23 November 1992 under the front page headline “Secret abortions inflict sorrow in Mexico: Botched procedures are killing women” and an inside half-page continuation headed “Botched illegal abortions are killing and injuring women in Mexico.”

This time The Sun cited completely unidentified “population experts” for the paper’s claim that each year illegal Mexican abortions “cause the deaths of 25,000 to 30,000 women.” A year and a half prior, The Sun had cited a “Dr. Juan Louis Alvarez of the Mexican Institute of Sexology [!]…[to the effect that] annual [Mexican] abortion deaths might be as high as 100,000 .…”9

Although “25,000 to 30,000” abortion deaths is a welcome comedown from the previous ridiculous figures of 100,000 and up, the new figure would still mean that every Mexican woman between the ages of 15 and 45 who died each year, had died from a botched abortion! The yearly Mexican death toll — from all causes — for women within that 30-year “reproductive age” interval is some 30,000, as reported by both the United Nations and the World Health Organization.

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