Pirate's Cove

It’s the trees, baby!

Tampa Bay trees tamp down harsh climate change effects

Be-leaf it or not, trees are doing some of the hardest work in Tampa Bay.

Driving the news: Hillsborough and Sarasota counties ranked high in Climate Central’s recent nationwide analysis of urban trees.

Why it matters: Urban tree coverage helps reduce the impacts of extreme heat, prevents stormwater runoff, mitigates air pollution exposure and can even sequester carbon, Axios’ Ayurella Horn-Muller and Simran Parwani report.

• Urban heat islands are created when developers replace natural landscapes with “dense concentrations of pavement, buildings, and other surfaces that absorb and retain heat,” per the EPA.
• A tree’s leaves can also absorb pollutants like ozone and nitrogen dioxide, the report noted.

Wait, what was that about the urban tree coverage? The trees are simply reducing the rays of the nuclear furnace in the sky, as well as the urban heat island effect. This is not global warming, anthropogenic climate change. Go sit under a tree, or walk around with an umbrella when it’s sunny. It feels cooler, right? Especially in the South.

The Cruise Industry Is On a Course For Climate Disaster

To future archeologists, mega cruise ships might be some of the strangest artifacts of our civilization—these goliaths of mass-engineered delight, armed with dangling water slides and phalanxes of umbrellas. Looking up at one, you might gain the impression that cruise companies are trying to awe their customers into having a nice time. We have built battleships of pleasure, toiling the world’s oceans, hunting for fun.

It probably won’t come as a shock that the whole thing isn’t exactly sustainable. A medium-sized cruise ship spews greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of 12,000 cars, while environmentalists accuse big industry players of investing little in decarbonization, and of covering up endless delay tactics in a heavy coat of greenwash. And for years, the industry has been dogged by bad PR from everything from routine dumping of toxic sludge to increasingly organized outrage from communities tired of hordes of tourists getting dumped at their docks.

There’s nothing the climate cult won’t sink their claws into.

Wildfires aren’t getting worse because of climate change. The real culprit will surprise you

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However, despite countless statements from liberals and climate activists over the past two decades about the dangers of wildfires and extreme weather events caused by climate change, the available evidence overwhelmingly shows that no such connection exists. Wildfires are not becoming more frequent or burning more acreage. In fact, just the opposite is true.

The U.S. National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), which has been tracking wildfires for decades, reports that the number of fires in 2022 was 68,988, and the amount of acreage burned was 7.57 million acres.

That might sound like a lot of fires, but the NIFC data show that these figures are well within the historical norm. In 2017, for example, 71,499 fires were reported and more than 10 million acres were burned. One decade earlier, in 2007, there were 85,705 fires that burned 9.32 million acres.

So, not more? And causation?

The Center for Biological Diversity, a left-leaning environmental group, acknowledges that, “The vast majority of western dry forests are at risk of large, high-intensity fire because of the effects of poor forest management over the past century. The primary factors that lead to current forest conditions include logging large trees, fire suppression and livestock grazing. Since the beginning of the 20th century, all three of these factors have been present in western forests, and they continue to play a role today.”

A slight increase of 1.5F since 1850 will not have much of an effect. But, if the cult can scare people enough they’ll give up their money and freedom.