NY Times: Trees Cause Global Warming

No wait, don't save the trees. The trees are evil!

No wait, don’t save the trees. The trees are evil!

Apparently the only two things that don’t cause Global Warming are giving lots of money to environmental consultants and the New York Times.

Everything else causes Global Warming.

It’s understandable that we’d expect trees to save us from rising temperatures, but climate science tells a different story. Besides the amount of greenhouse gases in the air, another important switch on the planetary thermostat is how much of the sun’s energy is taken up by the earth’s surface, compared to how much is reflected back to space. The dark color of trees means that they absorb more of the sun’s energy and raise the planet’s surface temperature.

That’s right. Those pesky trees are too dark. If we kill them, they’ll bleach and turn pale or tan and that will be good for the environment.

Worse, trees emit reactive volatile gases that contribute to air pollution and are hazardous to human health.

Quick, chop down a tree. It’s the only way to save the planet from its evil gasses.

While trees provide carbon storage, forestry is not a permanent solution because trees and soil also “breathe” — that is, burn oxygen and release carbon dioxide back into the air. Eventually, all of the carbon finds its way back into the atmosphere when trees die or burn.

We can’t kill the trees and we can’t live with the trees. All we can do is turn the trees into copies of the New York Times and hope that will save us from the Flying Global Warming Monster.

  • liz

    It seems they’ve come full circle – maybe now they’ll begin eating their own tails.

    • http://www.stubbornthings.org NAHALKIDES

      Let’s hope they began eating each other. That’s the fate of the Left anyway, sooner or later, and too late for them they discover that when you don’t value the individual, that includes them.

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      • Pete

        JoannePNelson

        DisQUs now has the Spammer / Phisher and they will be tagged and bagged.

  • http://www.stubbornthings.org NAHALKIDES

    Obviously the NYT author is ignorant of basic science (an apparent qualification to write about global warming for the Left), such as the fact that matter is neither created nor destroyed by ordinary biological processes. Of course the amount of carbon taken in by the tree when it grows must exactly equal the amount of carbon released when the tree is burned or otherwise reduced to its basic elements – what else did the author expect? A “black hole” process in which carbon is destroyed and not created? And did it never occur to this genius that such a process would in time deplete the Earth of all its carbon? Or that there was life on earth before so much carbon became tied up in fossil fuels, and therefore we should expect life on earth to continue even if all the fossil fuels that were created are burned?

    That’s the problem with the Left’s idiotic thinking – carbon dioxide is evil! Evil!

  • http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/ Edward Cline

    What? You mean that if you build a tree house, you’re committing suicide? Breathing more greenhouse gases than if you stood on the ground and watched squirrels scamper hither and yon? If cats get stuck in trees, they must die immediately from inhaling those gases. But they don’t! It’s a real head-scratcher, isn’t it? Ah, global warming and trees! Who’da thunk it!

  • http://ebbenmaradtunk.tumblr.com/ Pensiveus

    Oh My! Like a burlesk: Zigoto saves the world. Chaplin would love it. Nevertheless, I think there’s nothing pollutes the environment more than the enviromentalists. Tried anyone telling them climbing back to the trees would save the planet? From themselves at least.

  • UCSPanther

    So to do my part to save the planet, I now need to fire up a chainsaw and cut down a tree?

    These enviro-whackos can’t make their minds…

  • Gamal

    How about this argument. Trees, convert carbon dioxide to wood. Often they do not burn and simply get absorbed by the ecosystem. Trees absorb heat but convert that heat to the energy of life and store that energy as they grow. Trees provide shade that cools the ground. Trees transpire water vapor into the air which becomes clouds which reflects infrared into space. Trees contribute to global cooling.

    • Pete

      The NYT like the dogma given by their scientific shamans that clouds only cause a runaway greenhouse effect. Everything else is heresy.

      If anyone else has a different theory about clouds like Roy Spencer, they call them a nut. If a scientific body like CERN confirms the theory they ignore it.

      The NYT is perfect in their ignorance.

  • Pete

    How badly will the mavens of the NYT freak when they find out microbes cause rain?

  • Pete

    Reagan pointed out that trees emit volatile gases.He was scorned.

    The NYT point out that trees emit volatile gases and they are lauded.

    Interesting.

  • Pete

    “Eventually, all of the carbon finds its way back into the atmosphere when trees die or burn.”

    Not if trees are turned into coal. Heaven forbid!

  • robert clark

    It would seem that the NYT and most of the people on this planet has never heard of photosynthesis the process in which plants absorb CO2 and emit O2, however here is the rub this only occurs during daylight, at night the process is reversed and plants absorb O2 and emit CO2 which may very well negate the process.
    However when plants die and decompose they emit methane the amount of which is 86 times the weight of the deceased plant.

  • tagalog

    The world of radical environmentalists and their procurers becomes stranger and stranger each day.

  • Virgil Hilts

    Someone on the New York Times is INCREDIBLY stupid!

    • MukeNecca

      That’s more than credible.

  • JB Ziggy Zoggy

    Trees raise the Earth’s surface temperature? And here I thought it was cooler in the shade. Next the global warming scammers will say snow raises the surface temperature.

  • MukeNecca

    “The dark color of trees means that they absorb more of the sun’s energy and raise the planet’s surface temperature.

    Well, the same must apply to broccoli, no?

  • MukeNecca

    “The dark color of trees means that they absorb more of the sun’s energy and raise the planet’s surface temperature.”

    Am I the only one who can see the inevitability of racist conclusion this assumption must lead to when carried to its logical extreme?

  • hrwolfe

    “All we can do is turn the trees into copies of the New York Times”
    Talk about a gross polluter!

  • glpage

    Too bad the dolts at the NYT just don’t understand science. Since they don’t and I have no real expectation they will in any reasonable time, I wonder if it would be too much to ask that they just slow down on convincing us they really are idiots.

  • ShermanLogan

    The Little Ice is generally considered to have ended around 1850 to 1900. Its start is put anywhere from 1300 to 1550. Both of which start dates are well before any genocide of Native Americans could have affected the climate.

  • Louis Emery

    It’s good that the statists are starting to learn the basic principle of conservation of matter, which I learned in 9th grade 40 years ago. CO2 is but a molecule (with H20, O2 and others) in the carbon energy cycle. One molecule is not more or not less important than another. There has to be a reservoir of each type to make the cycle continue.

  • Louis Emery

    Also, I read somewhere today (sorry I don’t have the reference) that if the earth was (even partially) covered with solar cells, then we’d have problems too: the earth’s surface will get pretty hot (like a dark-colored car) in the daytime from absorbing the sunlight. (Of course nights would be colder for the same physics reason.)

  • ShermanLogan

    I like Mann. Charles not Michael. I’ve read several of his books, including 1493.

    I’m not disputing your statement that “some scientists state” this. I’m disputing their claim. The dates alone, to my mind, disprove the theory.

    Several hundred years earlier, there was apparently massive reforestation as a result of the Mongol genocides across most of Asia and into Europe.