Around the Minster Church

The other day, Red Baron went to a lecture by Anton Bauhofer at the Münsterforum.

The occasion was his retirement as head of the archbishop's building office. In this capacity, he also oversaw the reconstruction of the Andlau Palace, where he now gave his humorous presentation.

He showed some of his watercolors, which he made around Freiburg's Minster Church, and enriched his lecture with funny construction stories.

Traffic jams often occur at the narrowest point of the Höllental (Hell Valley). According to legend, a deer leaped across the gorge while fleeing from its hunters.

Driver, if you squeeze via the Black Forest through the Höllental, go tell the Freiburgers that you were stuck in traffic at the Hirschsprung*.

*A free translation of the famous Epitaph of Simonides, commemorating the heroic Battle of Thermopylae: 

Ὦ ξεῖν’, ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε

κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

(Stranger, go tell the Lacedaemonians that here

we lie, obedient to their commands).

The situation is no better in Freiburg's inner city, where Duke Bertold, on his monument, had to contend with five tram lines. Today, the Freiburg transport company still operates four lines at Bertoldsbrunnen.

Freiburg is proud of its title as a Green City. Since trees don't grow in places, the city planted small trees in pots and decorated the city like on Münsterplatz. These pots often double as seats.

The Münstermarkt, which operates every day except Sundays and Assumption Day, is popular with locals and tourists alike.

Edward Munch and Freiburg's Crocodile. Perhaps the horrified scream can be explained by a cruel incident.

Opinions are divided on the black diamond, Freiburg's new university library.

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Lüften

According to the New York Times, this German word went viral on the Internet. Red Baron blogged about lüften previously, so there is no need to repeat the information here.

 
What is interesting is the adopted American word for lüften: 'house burping'.

 
The Environmental Protection Agency (Hasn't POTUS cancelled it?) sees an argument for "burping" American homes that I hadn't heard yet. 

"EPA  recommends opening windows to reduce the concentration of volatile organic compounds in the home, which are released by a vast array of household items, including furniture, mattresses, cosmetics, and cleaning products. These compounds can cause adverse reactions like headaches, itchy eyes, and breathing problems."

 

In summer, Red Baron sleeps with the bedroom window tilted; in winter, it is too cold. So in the morning, I get the following warning:

Before midnight, I had already exhaled 1000 ppm of CO₂. So in the morning it was time to burp my bedroom.

This is what I get after a ten-minute lüften.

The word lüften is written with an umlaut where the ü is pronounced like "rue" in French. Will lüften lose its tüttels in America like über? 

Uber means 'super' or 'extra'. So Übermensch became Superman/Woman. It is uber-cool to read Friedrich Nietzsche's book.

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It’s All Exponential

Prof. Emanuel Deutschmann had made the long journey from Flensburg to Freiburg to present and sell his book "Die Exponential Gesellschaft, Vom Ende des Wachstums zur Stabilisierung der Welt" (The Exponential Society: From the End of Growth to the Stabilization of the World).

One of humanity's most significant weaknesses is its inability to understand exponential functions (Al Bartlett, 1976).

It is undoubtedly the most important function in mathematics (Walter Rudin, 1970).

Has its relevance in sociology been underestimated until now?

The lecture hall was well-filled. Prof. Deutschmann had divided his talk into three theses.

1. Today's society is characterized by exaggerated exponential trends that cause fundamental problems. 

2. These problems make stabilization a central issue of social order.

3. This constellation gives rise to new social conflicts.

In a double logarithmic scale, exponential functions are presented by a straight line.

Indeed, the economy and global production have grown exponentially with the industrial age. 

As early as 1848, Marx and Engels warned of "a continuous revolution in production, which will cause an uninterrupted upheaval of all social conditions."

 Here are some graphs:

The money supply in various countries is growing exponentially with a doubling time of 8.5 years.

The consumption of various building materials follows an exponential trend.

An exponential function represents a straight line in double logarithmic representation.

The number of scientific publications and the production of microprocessors increase exponentially over time, whereas AI grows even faster.

World tourism, the number of students studying abroad, and road traffic follow the trend.

Despite many international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, their levels continue to rise. Due to thawing permafrost, methane emissions have increased sharply in recent years.

Here is the verdict. Measured global warming and sea levels continue to rise exponentially.

An ever-rising global population is accelerating climate change.

All curves have a universal mechanism in common: More brings more, or growth is the basis for further growth in a positive feedback loop.

To stabilize the world economy, Justin Connolly "had a dream" of a donut-capped economic limit, i.e., a humanity living in a safe and just space with a regenerative and distributive economy.

In our world, two extreme attitudes clash: further expansion into space as Mother Earth's resources near exhaustion, with the opposing view that there is no planet B.

Prof. Deutschmann was clear: Ad astra expansionism a la Musk is a castle in the air, and metaverse expansionism a la Zuckerberg is a pipe dream.

The balance of power between the two extreme camps is uneven and one-sided.

The stagnant German economy must grow again, while the US breaks every record on GROWTH.

Since long, Red Baron has believed that the global economic pie has reached its maximum size and that growth is only possible when the pie is sliced differently, with one nation's gain being another nation's loss.

Whether a green economy will drive economic growth remains a subject of debate. The Camino Real is the decoupling of resource use from economic activity.

However, here is a caveat: the rebound effect known as the Jevons Paradox. Technological progress that enables more efficient use of a resource ultimately leads to increased use of that resource rather than to its reduction.

Here are Prof Deutschmann's conclusions:

The task: Crafting stabilizing utopias.

The goal: A good life for all within planetary boundaries, what Ernst Bloch called: "Optimism with a black ribbon."

Lagniappe: 

The other night, Red Baron attended the annual meeting of the Association Supporting the Freiburg Documentation Center on National Socialism. The president presented the growth in membership as a bar chart, with an exponential function superimposed. When will all Freiburg citizens be members?

**

Tomorrow‘s Forests?

I still recall an Umweltgespräch (environmental discussion) in Freiburg that addressed droughts and heavy rainfall. The predictions made by the speaker six years ago have essentially come true.

That's why I was fascinated when I read about two evening lectures in the series Umweltgespräche, focusing on the forests of tomorrow.

German forests have always fascinated me. In 2015, I blogged about the severe damage to forests in Germany's Mittelgebirge (medium high mountain regions), such as the Harz Mountains.

In 2020, I revisited the topic of Waldsterben. The beginning of the coronavirus pandemic was a challenging year for people, but particularly devastating for German forests.

Finally, in 2023, I learned that not only do forests surrounding a city mitigate the local climate, but individual trees within the city can also reduce heat spots.

That's why I was excited about the two lectures, whose content was contrasting and therefore made for a fascinating evening. 

Prof. Jürgen Bauhus, Chair of Silviculture at the University of Freiburg, played the skeptic and demonstrated in his lecture, "Wald im Wandel, Wandel in den Köpfen (Forest in Transition, Transition in Minds)," that the topic of forests is much more complex and multifaceted than I had previously assumed.

In contrast, Ms. Nicole Schmalfuß, head of the Freiburg Municipal Forestry Office, took a pragmatic and practical approach to the subject in her presentation "Stadt - Wald - Vielfalt (City - Forest - Diversity)."

Freiburg's Environmental Mayor, Christine Buchheit, welcomed those present and pointed out that tonight's lectures would be attended not only by Freiburg citizens, but also by participants in a specialist workshop entitled "Wald neu denken (Rethinking the Forest)" taking place in Freiburg this week.

The evening's moderator, Prof. Heiner Schanz (left), introduced Prof. Bauhus as the first speaker. The latter emphasized the balancing act he had to perform to satisfy both the citizens and the experts present with his lecture.

He then complained about the small projection screen, as the hall was overflowing with people. Many listeners had to stand in the back, where they could probably only see splashes of color. Red Baron had arrived early, managed to get a seat in the third row, and was just able to read the slides. Nevertheless, the quality of my shots of the screen you will see in the following leaves much to be desired.

Here are a few points that stood out to me and were new to me.

Prof. Bauhus presented the research approach of the Cluster of Excellence on Future Forests in Freiburg.

Feedback on risks and potential adaptation options for forests, as well as their impacts on future forest decision-making, is incorporated into forest research. These two inputs can be used to develop transformation pathways for future socio-ecological forest systems.

The drivers of change include extreme events, disturbances, interactions, targeted environmental changes, system shifts, tipping points, and societal changes. Their predictability is limited. Here are examples:

According to the German Climate Protection Act, greenhouse gas emissions (essentially carbon dioxide and methane) in the land-use ecosystem are to be reduced by 25 million tons by 2030. However, after three consecutive dry summers between 2018 and 2020, so many trees died in the low mountain ranges that the balance was ruined, and only a saving of around 1 million tons of greenhouse gases is expected by 2030.

The planting of late-flowering black cherry trees (Prunus serotina) in the Netherlands was a complete misjudgement. The species forms dense stands and suppresses the regeneration of native trees (e.g., oak or beech). Prunus serotina's leaf litter changes the soil chemistry and hinders the growth of other plants. Between 1965 and 2018, this American import spread so rapidly that to date €500 million has been spent on combating it. 

Therefore, plans and decisions on climate protection can only be made against a backdrop of great uncertainty. In the above graphic, the lower blue ecological system state will be reached when no action is taken. Although planned remedy activities point in the right direction, they are not very targeted.

Changes in forests also require changes in society, or environmental changes generally go hand in hand with social changes.

On the one hand, forests have the capacity to provide a range of ecosystem services. On the other hand, society relies on the services this ecosystem provides. The resilience of these socio-economic factors is crucial, so risks must be mitigated through adaptation and overcome through transformations.

Results of studies show that locally adapted tree species are not always the best choice for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, changing tree species alone does not preserve the carbon sink properties of forests either. The best approach is flexible regeneration of adapted tree species, coupled with controlled changes in their composition. A suitable selection will maintain the CO₂ balance and can even improve it.

The future utilization potential of trees can be derived from forest utilization between 2012 and 2022. This results in an 18% decrease for spruce, a 43% increase for pine, a 160% increase for oak, and a 178% increase for beech in the years up to 2037.

The second speaker of the evening was the lively Ms. Schmalfuß.

She showed that forests cover 42% of the 6,509 hectares of the city of Freiburg. The small image illustrates the drought index in Germany for the year 2024. It shows that the moisture situation in the far southwest of Germany is quite different from that in the east (indicated by the brown areas).

Here are the predictions of future droughts made in 2019.

Freiburg boasts a diverse range of forests, from mossy to mountainous, and everything in between.

Ms. Schmalfuß presented the Freiburg Forest Convention of 2020. The city forest is preserved and managed in a way that ensures and promotes all four forest functions - protection, utilization, recreation, and climate mitigation - equally.

The objectives are:

1. Permanent preservation of the city forest
2. Preservation and promotion of biodiversity and other protective functions
3. Stability through diversity
4. Sustainable timber production
5. Increased use of timber in construction (buried  CO₂)

6. Preservation and promotion of the climate protection performance of the city forest
7. Preservation and further development of the recreational function of the city forest
8. Forest and environmental education in the city forest
9. The city forest as a workplace: occupational safety and training quality
10. The Freiburg city forest as an object of research, teaching, and study

The city forest (light green) is primarily a multifunctional commercial forest. Blue areas are forests with a prominent recreational function. Purple areas are extensive and maintenance areas, while dark red areas denote decommissioned forest areas.

The equal importance of the various functions does not mean that the same goals should be pursued everywhere since the diversity of forests requires differentiation.

Forests with a long history of forestry have great potential for biotope protection. Forests with high growth rates have great potential for climate protection. Forests with high-quality wood have significant potential for commercial use, while those located near cities have substantial potential for recreational purposes.

The concepts and instruments for implementing the Freiburg Forest Convention are:

1. Systematic management control, i.e., forest management with interim reviews and annual planning
2. FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certification
3. Near-natural forestry and the forest development type guideline
4. Long-term adaptation to climate change
5. Old and dead wood concept
6. Biodiversity action plan
7. Integration of management planning in Natura 2000 areas*
8. Regulated hunting
9. Information and guidance for forest visitors through attractive infrastructure offerings and a forest recreation map
10. Forest education in the city forest as a contribution to education for sustainable development and inclusion - offerings by the Forestry Office and Waldhaus Freiburg

*European animal and plant species protected areas

The slide on the planned management of forest facility renewal within the 10-year plan of the updated Freiburg Forest Convention was simply not legible.

Tomorrow's forests? Ms. Schmalfuß ended her lecture with an optimistic outlook:

Still forests tomorrow!

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