I've seen it with my eyes!
Las Vegas only gets 4 inches of rain a year, so I imagine supplemental water is likely needed nearly every week for several years.
Choice of tree matters. These areas are deserts and it just seems wrong minded to plant trees if the land can’t support them.
Then again building a city like Las Vegas in the first place was a mistake imo. Seems a little late to try and make it sustainable and livable for humans. All that water could be used for much better things
Our engineering, at every turn destroys nature by default. We have the ability to stop this if we try hard enough.
The population is roughly the same ~ 2.2 Million each[1], however Doha proper is very small at only 50 sq miles, compared to Las Vegas metro area of 1600 sq miles , even all of Qatar is only 4700 sq miles and most of that is empty desert.
Doha is right next to the sea, desalination plants supply 99% of its water supply reliably. Vegas on the other hands gets bulk of its water from Colarado river(via Lake Mead) and rest from ground water, both come with its own set of problems. Colarado river water is weather variable and also sharing the water is complicated by the pact between the 7 states that share the water.
Qatar is very gas rich and can run those desalination plants pretty cheaply, plus they have no choice but to live where they are i.e. there aren't other alternative locations they can live at, Vegas residents have freedom of movement to rest of the U.S. and with tougher climate may find those cheaper/ attractive.
[1] Out of the 2,000,000 only 300,000 or so are citizens/permanent residents, rest are immigrant workers without permanent residency rights, meaning they would leave when there is less work or visa is not renewed if the government desires to reduce the population of the city, they wouldn't need to convince/pay and provide alternative location foreign workers - who rarely are allowed or bring their family with them and would leave if there is no money to be made without a movement's regret.
The post is about LOCAL climate, and trying to cool down Las Vegas itself.
The BBC article is about the affect on GLOBAL climate change.
- Subsidy schemes can often cause problems where monoculture farmable tree crops can reduce biodiversity can cause problems. But I think it's worth noting that replacing trees with another is not what I would call, or what most people likely think, when referring to new forests, and even if we ignore that point, the problem is not the new forests in general but the incentives used to cause it to happen.
- Carbon sequestration may be overestimated because if the ground is already rich in carbon, some of that may be reduced so the overall additional effect of sequestration is less than one might assume.
Neither of those are really in support of "new forests can do more hard than good" in my opinion. They may be worth discussing, but this isn't a good start for a useful conversation on the BBC's part.
It's complaining about:
1) Corruption in Chile led people to tear down existing forests in order to plant trees again to make money.
2) "Some study" found out that planting trees in soil which is already rich in carbon does not lead to a significant increase in carbon soil.
None of these suggest "more harm than good", it's just a sensationalistic piece ... against planting trees? What an extremely distorted agenda to push.
It's always better - if possible - to stop something from happening than to try to counteract it afterwards.
Don't get me wrong: planting trees is a good thing. But the word "solution" implies a reduced rate of increase of CO2 over time, which this will not do. We have to use far less energy and far less fossil fuels to actually do that, and shift away from consumeristic innovation, which no one will do. Instead, they'll just plant trees to keep them cooler.
You seem to dislike the article's framing, which is fine, but then you start on a crusade.
It's ok to plant trees so that hot people will feel slightly less hot. It doesn't need to fix every problem, just the small problem that there's too little shade in their tourist district.
The unstated premise of your post is that you know better than the Las Vegas city planners and that your ideas are purer than theirs. It's just so annoying to see this smugness from online commenters. "Their solution isn't Pure enough [therefore I'm smarter/purer than them]."
Maybe the Las Vegas city planners have good reasons for doing what they did. I mean that's possible right? Could it even be possible that there's more to this story than you understand?
That said, we need to start qualifying the phrases we use to describe climate change issues. This one (if it works) is a "climate change adaptation solution".
Wrong. The unstated premise of my post is that I'm sick of articles pointing out "solutions" to the climate change problem which contributes to people believing that recycling and planting trees in their yard of their big house will help. This has to do with the person who wrote the title, not the city planners. The city planners didn't claim it was a solution. I'm not commenting on the city planners at all –– and I understand the situation perfectly.
They are both free when you are the one who prints the money. Governments can definitely afford to plant trees, even though I agree that it won't solve the problem.
It's going to make them use less aircon, which seems like a good start
We need to burn more coal and return more land nowadays covered by permafrost into the agricultural circulation.
If we are truly worried about climate change and are unable to curb our consumption, then we should plant as many trees as we can and aggressively shift as much of our long-lived infrastructure to using wood products as possible.
Grow it, use it, maintain it.
Living things typically don't store carbon long-term, unless you take extra steps like burying them in bogs. Even if we were to collectively invest in that strategy, it's more effective to do it with lower-maintenance trees that are more densely situated in a more-convenient place. Or maybe even something with algae.
I believe they can to a point. Trees, parks and greenery lower the average temperature for an area. Less heat being absorbed.
This would likely leads to less of a need for cooling and energy use.
That being said, I don't remember reading about how much of an effect it does have, just that it's not zero.
My garage is on the same level as my basement, so there's a 5' retaining wall on either side of it. Leaves blow around and get trapped in the corners. Once I didn't bother cleaning it up for several years and when I did I had to move several hundred pounds of new soil into my back yard because of how many leaves had decayed there. Small trees were growing in it.
Similar story with the drainage on the side of my house. Not long after I moved in a heavy rain filled my basement with water. I had to rent a machine to dig a trench on either side so that the back yard would stop becoming a pond when it rained. I'm sure this wasn't a problem in the 60's when it was built, but over time the decaying leaves from my neighbor's tree raised the ground level by something like 1.5 ft and spoiled the original slope (I eventually found the original grade, there was a whole brick patio down there).
We may have to be a bit more intentional than "plant a bunch of trees" to get this effect, but I think it's worth exploiting.
https://barac.at/essays/we-only-need-to-plant-1-trillion-tre...
It's almost always going to be vastly easier to reduce emissions than to try to re-absorb it.
Vegas is depressing man, I don’t think I wanna go back.
why?? (because it takes water to maintain?)
It’s a local climate solution for high heat and little shade.
egberts1•3h ago
Sacramento planted 2.2M trees since 1975 and cooler than historical data (still reaches 90s and 100s)
plemer•2h ago
roland35•2h ago
apt-apt-apt-apt•1h ago
nadermx•1h ago