Summer's well on its way in the Northern Hemisphere. Here's a visual representation of how incredibly important tree cover is, especially in cities.
But no, let's cut them down to build one more lane, right?
Never mind shade, anyone who's ever ridden a bicycle from the country into an urban area will instantly feel the rise in air temperature. It's almost unbelievable, like you've stepped into a different planet.
But it's okay because cars have air conditioning. /s 😒
Along the same lines are all the parks in my city that cut down large trees to plant small ornamental trees. Oh, want a bench? Nowhere near the trees. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Shoreline park! WTheck
Please enjoy this one person bench with anti-homeless armrests on it so you can not sit next to your wife comfortably
And it's always the worst ornamental trees
This shows why replacing inner city roads with tree lined avenues makes a difference in city climate.
just one more lane bro, please 😩 it will fix the traffic for sure
We YEARN for the lanes.
Please also remember how hot that pavement can be for a doggos feet.
"We're gonna pave over the grassy public/dog park for a parking lot, but you can still walk your dogs! Just buy these doggy shoes for when it gets really hot. Problem solved!"
Capitalism is ingenious in creating problems that it sells the solutions for.
But the beatles taught me it's okay to leave your dog in a hot car
does that particular tree make money for some billionaire? if not it is expaendable
When trees are on the verge of extinction, they’ll grow exactly one tree, lock it behind security, and charge us money to see it.
I think they will probably make that a billionaire access only resource "fresh oxygen from a real tree"
And say: "seeeee? Capitalism actually naturally breeds conservationism. Without the monetary incentive all trees would have naturally (and through no fault of our own) died out. This is why socialism doesn't work.
if not it is expandable
If only. But I know that was a typo
it will likely become inefficient after a point and die as the surface area/volume ratio goes to zero...
I had to cut a major shade tree in my backyard, it was ready to fall over. We replaced it with a sapling and I cannot wait for it to grow up, holy shit my deck gets fucking hot! There's a couple more that gotta go soon too and I'm very reluctant - expensive to cut down, expensive to replace, especially if they are already tall.
Plant something that grows faster? That won’t last as long, but it should give some shade in the meantime.
evaporative cooling
Edit1: Bonus points for something that would natively grow there, because you have to do less to support them once they’ve grown a bit.
Edit2: You could decide to not fully get rid of them and instead slowly kill them. Like leaving the trunk and some big branches, cutting the rest off. Cutting off everything green that grows anew. That will still give a little bit of shade. But can also support other plants to give them hold and protect them from wind. Ivy probably can cover it with green. I don’t really know what I’m talking about.
Edit3: Replace ivy with other native climbing plants if it’s not native in your area etc. (It’s native where I live, but it wouldn’t be native to the Americas for example)
The sapling is native and will get huge, but its gonna be a few years. Admittedly I got it for free, anything already bigger is quite an expense. Ivy was actually a huge problem, I spent a ton of time and effort cutting it off the trees because it was choking them out and killing them. The trees I still need to get rid of are not native. I was told they will continue to grow until they are too tall to support themselves and fall over. The longer I wait the more expensive it is to cut them down. My best guess is they are 25-30 feet tall already. Shopping for trees even half that size is something I was not prepared for, but I am hoping to figure out soon knowing it needs to happen eventually.
I spent most my life in the city, so when I bought the property I wanted the mature trees, but was unaware of the problems these particular trees had. I still like this spot but I wish I knew more about what I was getting into. I'm using a pop up tent for cover while I figure out what exactly to do, but the shade it provides is nowhere near as cool as being under the trees.
Wait, are theses actual measurements? Or made-up numbers?
Concrete surface in contact with direct noon sunlight is always gonna be scorching hot, 50°C is not far fetched. On a super hot day you can cook an egg on concrete. These surface also tend to heat up slow but also lose heat slowly, which is why even after a couple of hour after sun down it will still feel warm to the touch, creating what is known as urban heat trap.
Dr. Hannah Fry made a short video about this recently -- this kind of heat retention is why London Underground stations are so bloody hot, because the clay tiles lining the underground tunnels have absorbed heat from trains braking day in and day out and are constantly releasing excess heat into the air at the stations
Thats how las.vegas stays hot at night.
The photo seems to suggest he is measuring surface temperatures, so I assume they are real. Doesn't seem that far fetched.
Concrete and dark-colored metal surfaces can absolutely reach those temperatures after a few hours of direct sunlight
In really hot and sunny weather, you can absolutely get serious burns from concrete heating up.
There's still the remains of a burn on the bottom of my foot from when I needed to cross the street to check the mail when I was a kid
Given that i have kitchen tools that could do this; yes i expect theyre real.
I think that's what the guy kneeling down at the 27,9 C measurement is doing, recording the temperature of that spot.
My doubt does come in though with the street measurement. The asphalt is cooler than the sidewalk? What? Also, did he go out into the street to take the measurement and then run back? I guess if there were no cars around he could have, but that doesn't seem like a low-traffic area. Just a few weird things about that one detail.
Asphalt has less heat retention capability than sidewalk bricks. The asphalt is venting more of its heat into the surroundings than the bricks are, which is why it's cooler.
There's also very little traffic on his side of the street -- you'll notice there are almost no cars on that side, so it's more than likely he had ample time to get a temperature read on the asphalt before a car came along
Really more than trees, it seems to be an argument for more grass to help reduce temps especially where trees aren't feasible or will take time to grow
It's primarily an argument to not cut down trees that are already there just so you can build another fucking parking lot or something
Here they cut them down to make bike lanes.
And before you demand to just take space away from the cars: this is a fast bike lane through a park. The next car is half a kilometer away.
When water shortage is a concern a simple manufactured shade is a sufficient alternative. People can't be expected to walk when it is over 40C under direct sunlight.
Im surprised the blacktop and what looks like dark gravel was less than the relatively lighter brick.
Need to plant more trees.
Spoken by someone who's never been to a place that doesn't naturally have trees.
"Lane"? Do you have any idea how many green spaces and trees are being destroyed to build WEF "densified" condos everywhere?
If the road is 48°C, so is the parking lot lol
It's the metal/glass of the car, not the parking lot?
Holy crap 76,100 degrees 😱
Somebody reported this post for being off-topic, but it's not.
yeah I mean the car is the parked car is what had the highest temperature.
76.1° holy shit
The rationale being that we would have more trees if we didn't have so many roads?
Not even roads, parking lots man, tons and tons of empty unused space
Not fewer roads (It's still important to have good street grid connectivity and small block sizes), but narrower roads and smaller parking lots.