Then There Are Terpenes

[Way Back Jack]

Many plants, particularly conifers, emit abundant terpenes, especially in hot weather. When combined with pollution, terpenes radically increase ozone to levels considered dangerous. This is probably why Ronald Reagan told the tree huggers that trees pollute.

I was a greenie, 1976-84, during which time I personally planted 1,000 trees. Of course, this area at the time was exurbia, not urban, and now I guess you'd call it somewhere between suburbia and exurbia, altho this particular valley is still mostly agri. I wonder how much my efforts have contributed and will contribute to pollution. Maybe should've left the area remain as meadow.

[Tunderbar]

The arrogance of man..... to think that they can plant a few trees and gain enlightenment from it.

[1treePetrifiedForestLane]

yum, ozone; of course, if you really want to taste it, stand on a hill in a lightening storm.

it is cetainly true, that the active forms of oxygen

-- I've read that it can or has go all the way to O_21, or some such number -- are free-radically.

thus: I am no longer going to reply directly to you-know-of-whom, or to anyone who is so confarned lonely as to reply to it, ever, again.

on the other hand, there are many ways to see that the climate is changing very rapidly, if not to make-out The 'global' warming analogy; it's just a crappy metaphor, circa 1896.

[Pat Kiewicz]

I'd worry more that you contributed to the loss of meadow habitat. In one park I used to visit a lot (before I moved here) the meadows were slowly being swallowed up by woodlands. What happens to the bobolinks, meadowlarks, and grasshopper sparrows then?

Some people are too fond of trees.

[Billy]

Only 500 years ago, the land we call the United States was covered with over 1 billion acres of pristine ancient, virgin, and native forests. A squirrel could travel from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River without touching the ground!

[A]ccording to local lore, a squirrel could travel from Maine to Texas without touching the ground.

One thousands trees is just a drop of water on a hot rock in an environmental sense.