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Rob Lewis's avatar

Go ahead and be "miffed," Hart. I'm more than miffed. It's an outrage hiding in plain sight.

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Hart Hagan's avatar

Thanks for the validation, Rob!

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Linda Hagge's avatar

I'm constantly amazed by the number of people who don't want to plant even one tree on their property. The other day I saw a post from a woman who wanted someone to come and dig up the one young tree she had on her property because she "didn't have time" to water it. When I look at real estate offerings in our small city, the vast majority of properties for sale have completely empty back yards. There will be a deck, but nothing to look at when you are on it. No trees, no bushes, no flowers, nothing. If every single person with property planted trees and bushes on that property we could make a huge difference. Oh, and let's move all the temperature stations to spots with lots of trees as well. We would immediately get rid of half our warming.

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Hart Hagan's avatar

Excellent points. Are temperature stations in heat islands, like airports?

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Linda Hagge's avatar

Yes, many are. The NOAA rates temp stations. 90% of our stations are rated 3 or lower, with only 10% rated as good or excellent (4 and 5). That is, they are rated as not fit for purpose because of where they are placed, and those are the ones that are functioning at all. The non-functional ones are provided with temperature "guesstimates" when warming is calculated. I wish I were making that up, but I'm not.

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Justin McAffee's avatar

Thanks for the post. This is an important illustration of the cultural hegemony. The academy, while seemingly promoting academic freedom and critical thinking, is also mired with the conventional beliefs of the culture. One of those beliefs is growth. You can’t increase vegetation and continue economic growth! So the information about vegetation is ignored. The academy continues to be a mouthpiece for the ruling class.

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Hart Hagan's avatar

I couldn’t agree more.

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Chris Dixon's avatar

Excellent piece, to the point. Several other advantages arise- the plants take carbon out of the atmosphere and if we can keep the soil moist, that carbon rich plant litter and leaf-fall gets incorporated into the soil as humus, available for further plant growth and a carbon store. The leaf surfaces also hold water after rain, which then evaporates and together with the transpiration, increases air humidity that can lead to further rainfall downwind.

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Hart Hagan's avatar

Great points. Thank you!

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Leaf Rhetoric's avatar

Reminds me of other ways we're going in the wrong direction on this, primarily in replacing trees and arable land with solar and wind farms, things that must be manufactured, that we didn't need for the first 99.9% of human existence, and allow us to eek a few more years out of our overshot, overconsuming civilization. Nature doesn't need to be manufactured, we just have to go back to living within Her limits.

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David Ellison's avatar

Dear Hart Hagan, perhaps you would appreciate taking a look at one of my recent publications. I do believe it effectively demonstrates that the point you are trying to make about trees cooling the planet is indeed correct... See: https://bit.ly/46PTpzi.

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Hart Hagan's avatar

Thank you. I read a good portion of it. Very interesting.

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