This is kind of funny:
An expansion of Europe's forests towards dark green conifers has stoked global warming, according to a study on Thursday at odds with a widespread view that planting more trees helps human efforts to slow rising temperatures.
Forest changes have nudged Europe's summer temperatures up by 0.12 degree Celsius (0.2 Fahrenheit) since 1750, largely because many nations have planted conifers such as pines and spruce whose dark colour traps the sun's heat, the scientists said.
And they say that similar effects are likely in countries with major planting programs, such as America, China, and Russia.
So two centuries before scientists believe industrial activity began to have an effect on the climate with carbon dioxide production produced from fossil fuels, Europeans were affecting the climate by planting the "wrong" kind of trees.
I'll leave you with this message from science:
They said the changes in the make-up of Europe's forests outweighed trees' role in curbing global warming. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from burning fossil fuels, from the air as they grow.
"It's not all about carbon," lead author Kim Naudts told Reuters, saying government policies to favor forests should be re-thought to take account of factors such as their color and changes to moisture and soils.
Indeed. It's not all about the carbon.
If it was, we wouldn't be in a 19-year-long "pause" of flat global temperature despite increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that should have raised the global temperature significantly according to predictions from the climate models that assume a central role for carbon.
I, for one, am not willing to wreck our economies on the premature conclusion of activists that carbon is the key.
