Is your neighborhood park hurting the planet?

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 2/19/10 | Cameron Scott

[SmithL]

You may recently have come to accept that lawns are bad for the planet. But urban green space is good, right?

According to a recent (and recently corrected) University of California at Irvine study, they're not. The study found that urban green space generated, through fertilizers and gas-powered mowers, three times more greenhouse gas emissions than they stored in the grass and soil.

Athletic fields stored just 10 percent of the emissions that their upkeep generated, because the constant rough-and-tumble that they support reduces their ability to hold carbon.

Is the study a shot to the heart of urban green enthusiasts? Hardly.

[dfwgator]

I quote the late George Carlin:

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles...hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet...the planet...the planet isn’t going anywhere. WE ARE!

[downtownconservative]

Sports and parks should be outlawed immediately. Fun at the expense of our loving mother planet cannot be tolerated. Start playing checkers in the dirt with colored rocks and save the planet!!!

An excerpt from the dreams of Algore.

[IYAS9YAS]

Take away yards and replace them with parks, then take away the parks. I love my 1/2 acre. Due to my location, the grass is barely 400 square feet, but the kiddies have lots of room to play and explore in the dirt.

[soycd]

And someone got millions of our tax dollars to do this “study”.

[cripplecreek]

We weren’t satisfied with destroying the earth inside of town so my little town built a park a mile away in the woods. LOL

[smokingfrog]

Problem solved.

[cripplecreek]

That’s not a half bad idea....till you hit a good sized stick or something.

[Army Air Corps]

Ping.

[Vaduz]

Parks in california are used for drud deals and drive by shootings.

[EggsAckley]

I really really do not understand why carbon dioxide is such an enemy suddenly. Trees and plants love it and they then give us oxygen. It just doesn't compute for me.

Sometimes I wonder if the doofuses out there are confusing CO2 with carbon Monoxide, definitely a dangerous gas.

And my 33 acres of GREEN are certinly not a threat to the environment.

[AbeKrieger]

Apparently the only thing good for the earth is abject neglect and the destruction of all humans. Let’s start with the 40% or so that identify themselves as liberals, then we’ll recalibrate teh equipment and see where we are.

[Signalman]

More evidence showing that be a certified leftist, you also must be certifiably insane.

[Verginius Rufus]

It depends on what they mean by "the planet." There was a column in yesterday's Wall Street Journal about why Pluto should still be classified as a planet--every object orbiting the sun equal to or larger than Pluto would qualify, which means there are 10 planets (Eris, currently called a "dwarf planet," is a big larger than Pluto).

Having a park in the middle of New York City isn't doing any harm to Eris, Pluto, or Mercury.

[TypeZoNegative]

That’s when you just switch up a gear. My idea for that mower would be to use a hardtail mountain bike frame and have cleated tires for better traction and a disc brake so you could fit on the cleated tire.

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !