Climate Change and the New York Times. The Lie is in What They Don't Tell You

Major media outlets, governments, Big Green and complicit corporations want to scare us with temperatures and carbon dioxide, without explaining or revealing the root of the problem.

The NYT laments the hottest days on record, but are they reporting the news or just giving energy and life to a false narrative? 

They write in the article titled Earth’s Hottest Days Ever: 

“In many cities, the sidewalks are hot enough to give people contact burns.”

Hmmm …

How does the sidewalk get hot? Is it because of carbon dioxide? 

In other words, does global warming make the sidewalk hot? Or does the sidewalk do its part to cause global warming? 

As per usual, the NYT and similar sources seek to generate a sense of alarm about global warming without shedding light on the true nature of the problem. Hot surfaces are an important part of the greenhouse effect. It’s not only about greenhouse gases. 

The greenhouse effect is where we have more incoming heat than outgoing heat. On average we have 342 watts per square meter incoming and 339 watts per square meter outgoing. That’s an excess of only 3 watts out of 339, less than 1%. 

This is an average. Some square meters on earth generate more than average incoming heat, and some less. The main difference is whether the surface consists of green plants or bare dirt, sand, concrete or pavement. 

There will always be sidewalks, bare dirt, sand and pavement. But we can change the ratio. And if we change the ratio we will impact global warming, possibly more than we can by simply seeking to lower carbon emissions. 

We can do both. But our Wall Street-adjacent news sources want to harp on one string: carbon dioxide. That way, they can scare people into compliance, and divide us into warring tribes, while pretending to provide solutions, in the form of profitable corporate products, mainly solar, wind and EVs. Solving the problem is secondary to profitability. 

Meanwhile, real solutions lie in the direction of changing the surface of the land back to the ecosystems we have removed, while preventing further destruction. 

The main thing we can do is to push for an increase in plant cover. Doing so would quickly reduce incoming heat. 

Step out of the shower or the pool. It feels cold. Feel the breeze on your sweating face and body. This is the power of evaporative cooling, which comes into play when we have enough plants, trees and ecosystems on the surface of the land. These plants and trees transpire, just as we perspire. They emit evaporating water, which yields a powerful cooling effect. 

We have removed about half of this vegetative ground cover in the last 5,000 years, by some estimates. If we have removed half of it, then we can move in the opposite direction and restore some of that which we have removed, kind of like returning an item you stole, because it’s the right thing to do. 

We can encourage farmers to use cover crops. We can insist that public forests be managed for the public good not for the profits of a few timber companies. We can use livestock to regreen our deserts, restoring them to the fecund grasslands they once were. And we can put limits on road building, militarism and real estate “development.”

The powers that be love to blame ecological destruction on “population,” as if all people are equally complicit. As if drawing breath, playing music, building homes and eating food are inherently destructive. 

I would assert that the real destruction comes from the extractive, exploitative, out-of-control industrial systems imposed upon the many by the few, without our consent. Most of us would rather have our time back, rather than be beholden to a system that keeps us working long hours to enrich our overlords, who then use their power to further enrich themselves, all without the consent of the governed, without the permission of those impacted, human or otherwise. 

Back to my main point. Nature cools. We have so much heat because we have so little nature, so few plants and trees, so few functioning ecosystems and water cycles. 

This message is decidedly simpler than the proposed energy transition, a project that is unlikely to get any real results in this century, if ever. Carbon drawdown is a project that will take a century of more. It’s important but it’s not the only song in our hymnal. 

Better to restore nature—whatever it takes—because we can and because it’s right. 

Here is the best short video on this topic. 

 But don’t hold your breathe waiting for the New York Times or the United Nations or the Sierra Club or the Biden/Harris administration to understand—let alone promote—this simple, powerful, common sense and actionable  message. 

In fact, vegetation will drawdown carbon, and store it long term. But as long as vegetation is viewed as a means to another end (carbon drawdown) and not a direct means of cooling the air via shade, transpiration, evaporative cooling and cloud formation, then environmentalists will continue to major in minors (solar, wind and electric vehicle) while minoring in nature. 

If you find this content stimulating or compelling, please consider joining my course, Healing Our Land & Our Climate. Here is the registration page. 

https://bio4climate.org/course-offerings/healing-our-land-and-our-climate/ 

This week our focus is on how, plants, water cycles and ecosystems cool our environment, locally and otherwise. We also have a major emphasis on regenerative farming. 

Here is a glimpse of this week’s content.