Environmental science reporting and medical science reporting have one thing in common: if you bother to follow either very closely, you’ll wind up with a nasty case of mental whiplash.

One day, you’ll read something like: “eating chocolate will KILL you.” A few months later, your trusty ol’ health news journalist will be urging you to eat nothing but:

Researchers Find Chocolate Eaters Taller! Able to Levitate!

So I was hardly surprised to read that scientists are now accusing trees — those cute, lovable green fellas we’ve been told to nurture and love — of being, yes, bad for the environment.

This was reported in Nature, folks, not by some schlocky, publish-in-the-back-of-a-van anti-greenery fringe group:

They have long been thought of as the antidote to harmful greenhouse gases, sufferers of, rather than contributors to, the effects of global warming. But in a startling discovery, scientists have realised that plants are part of the problem.

According to a study published today, living plants may emit almost a third of the methane entering the Earth’s atmosphere.

Above quoted from the Guardian, Global warming: blame the forests, which later adds:

A recent study in Nature found cutting air pollution could trigger a surge in global warming. Aerosols cool the Earth by reflecting radiation back into space. Scrapping them would have adverse consequences

There’s no period at the end of that last sentence. I imagine because Alok Jha, science correspondent, at that point slumped down in his chair, senseless.

He should try eating more chocolate.

[tags] Environment [/tags]