> Police said that, based on current information, there have been irregularities and shortcomings in drainage and water management at the data centre project's worksite
250K trees sounds like a lot, but Finland has like 20B trees, so it would take 3 hours for Finland to grow this back
That's not how math.....or trees.....work.
Finland, comparable in size to Montana, is basically one huge forest (75% tree cover) dotted with lakes, and a lot of those forests are harvested every year. Of the entire EU, this is probably the place where trees are the least rare.
250 thousand trees cut down in England would have been a very different story.
I realize it is seasonal, but the maths still works. distribute all trees in cohorts of three hours age. every three hours they move one up. every three hours there's 250k trees more over the entire range, allowing Finland to cut the mature trees to make paper.
Growing stock volume: ~2.66B m^3
Annual volume increment: 103M m^3
Approximate number of trees: 20B
Implied average tree volume: ~0.1275 m^3
Volume of 250K trees: 250K x 0.1275 m^3 ~ 32K m^3
Time for remaining trees to grow that volume back: 32K m^3 / 103M m^3/year ~ 0.00031 years ~ 2.7 hoursIn this case, it's 3.3 sq-km (or 1.3 sq-miles) of forest.
Turns out, if the trees lost are about 2000kg, it takes about ~ 2.5 days.
a. Even if this model were reasonable, removing trees isn't ameliorated by letting them grow back in 2.5 days. As an analogy, if I steal $100 from you, it's not reasonable for me to say, "But it only takes you x hours to earn that $100 back." No, you're out that $100.
b. Tree growth (eg, carbon sequestration) is non-linear. The first year of growth of a tree is much less productive than the 50th year.