> 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.

how is it not? Finland cuts down hundred of millions of trees every year. they grow back, that's how their lumber industry works. Google presumably cut trees that were of a random age, not of harvesting age.

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.

Actually, that's exactly how forestry departments think of forest: how many (harvestable) volume units of wood grows per time unit. No cute, parental firefighting bear needed: Smokey doesn't like wildfires because burnt wood can't be sold.

While this is indeed not how trees work, it puts the number into a useful perspective.

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.

Bro is using the Factorio model of resource reallocation.

Exactly. There's a whole gestation period where the mom tree carries the baby tree to term. Then the baby tree needs years to mature and develop. And because the dad tree was lost in the great google felling of 2026, the baby tree will be raised in a single tree family household, which will put additional strain on its development.