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.<\/p>\n
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:<\/p>\n
Researchers Find Chocolate Eaters Taller! Able to Levitate!<\/strong><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n This was reported in Nature<\/em>, folks, not by some schlocky, publish-in-the-back-of-a-van anti-greenery fringe group:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n According to a study published today, living plants may emit almost a third of the methane entering the Earth’s atmosphere.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Above quoted from the Guardian<\/em>, Global warming: blame the forests,<\/a> which later adds:<\/p>\n 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<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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.<\/p>\n He should try eating more chocolate.<\/p>\n [tags] Environment [\/tags]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Environmental science reporting and medical science reporting have one thing in common . . . Continue reading