Matt Walsh last September:

Matt Walsh claimed on Tuesday that female sports reporters were seeking to “feminize” football, which he said is a “mostly male space,” and said at least one woman journalist was failing to “assimilate.”

Walsh made the remarks on The Matt Walsh Show, while discussing Lindsey Gough, sports director with southeast Georgia’s WOTC 11 TV station. Gough had tweeted on September 5 about the behavior of fans after Georgia defeated Clemson.

Gough posted a video of football fans apparently engaging in harassing behavior and even some men touching her without her consent as they passed her broadcast.

But that’s male behavior, and it’s awesome, and it must not be challenged, much less altered or done away with. Harassing and groping women is a sacred right of masculinityfull masculine manly people.

“I must say, this situation only demonstrates why I, personally, prefer for sports broadcasts, especially football broadcasts, to be handled mostly by men,” Walsh said.

“Lindsey, though worse than the average—even as far as female sports reporters go—is definitely not the only female to enter into this mostly male space and seek to feminize it.”

“She wants the football stadium to be quiet and gentle, considerate, respectful of personal space. She wants it to be a more feminine environment. She’s not trying to assimilate herself into the culture of football fans, she is rather hoping that they assimilate themselves to her,” he said.

So objecting to men harassing and groping her equals wanting the football stadium to be quiet and gentle? I’m not seeing it. I think people can be loud and rowdy and enthusiastic without bullying and assaulting women. In fact I think this is a distinction kids are taught to make in…what, first grade? Second grade? “Use your words” – isn’t that the lesson? Don’t shove or punch or bite or kick; use your words. Does Matt Walsh really consider sexual abuse of women inherent to men, men in general, all men? I think I have a better opinion of men than he does.

O excellent judge.

A trans-identified male pedophile has avoided jail after after a judge deemed that prison would make it too difficult for him to “cope” with his transition and anxiety.

Huh. It’s my understanding that prison makes it difficult for people to cope with pretty much everything, and that that’s the point – it’s a punishment. There are compelling arguments against the whole idea of punishment as such, but it seems quite original to say it’s bad for a trans person in particular because of the difficulty of coping.

Peter Selby, 68, was found with over 125,000 pieces of child sexual abuse media after a police raid in 2019, some of which depicted children as young as three years old. Selby is male but identifies as a transgender ‘woman.’

Of the images, over 2,400 were classified as Category A, the most serious type of child sexual abuse media. Images and video in this category can depict penetrative sexual activity, bestiality, and/or sexual sadism.

But, he’s a trans laydee, so he would find it difficult to cope.

According to the Shields Gazette, during sentencing on June 1, the presiding Judge stated that no one would seek out child sexual abuse media “unless they have a sexual interest in children to start with,” yet declined to sentence Selby to an immediate prison sentence.

“You identify as transgender and that has caused issues for you and anxiety for you in how you would cope with that if you were sent immediately to prison,” the Judge said, adding: “You are someone who identifies as transgender and the impact of custody would be significant for you in the circumstances.”

Compared to……………………………….?

The Mail on that insulting “hey laydeez come race against some men and lose” arrangement:

An ‘inclusive’ cycling race that saw male-born trans athletes trounce women competitors has been condemned by critics.

“Inclusive” means “women guaranteed to lose.”

Gold in the ThunderCrit race at Herne Hill velodrome in South-East London went to Emily Bridges, a trans cyclist who was barred from a woman’s race in March and who had competed in men’s events only the month before.

Because he’s a man.

In second place was Lilly Chant who, despite identifying as a woman, is still designated as male on official records.

Yes but his name is Lilly. End of.

In an attempt to devise an ‘inclusive’ event, the ThunderCrit organisers created two new non-binary races called ‘thunder’ and ‘lightning’.

Its website said: ‘Thunder category is for cis men, non-binary people whose physical performance aligns most with cis-men, trans men and women whose physical performance aligns most closely with cis-men.

‘Lightning category is for cis-women, non-binary people whose physical performance aligns with cis-women and trans men and women whose physical performance aligns most closely with cis-women.’

So Bridges and Chant should have raced in the Thunder category, because their performance “aligns most closely” with men, because they’re men.

About that race that “Emily” Bridges “won” –

In what sense does “Emily” Bridges’s physical performance “align most closely” with women? Why do both trans men and trans women compete in the women’s category?

Also interesting that “cis people cannot choose their racing category.” It should have a “nyah nyah nyah” after it for the full effect.

The stupid is up past our upper lips now. Drowning is imminent.

The census could ask “do you menstruate?” instead of “are you female?” to be inclusive of transgender people, a taxpayer-funded study has suggested.

One, how fucking insulting.

Two – are they serious? Spot the flaw? Women over 50 or so don’t menstruate, so if they answer truthfully, the census won’t be a census. (There are also women who’ve had hysterectomies etc.)

The Future of Legal Gender Project, led by King’s College London, has assessed how legal sex would be abolished in England and Wales and replaced with a single “gender” category, with an aim of contributing to policy discussions.

Contributing what to policy discussions? An inability to talk about women and policy? What kind of “contribution” would that be?

The study, which received £579,717 of taxpayer funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, acknowledged the concerns from campaigners who argue biological sex provides vital binary data, and that trans women are not women.

But the research said that in surveys such as the census, respondents understand the question on their sex in different ways – some “assume the question is about their genitals, about their legal status or about the sex they were registered as having at birth”.

Oh shut up. No they don’t – not unless they’re nitwits or fanatics bent on making their stupid “point.” People know perfectly well what the census means by female/male.

As a result, the researchers said: “In some contexts, more precise questions may help to avoid distortions or inaccuracies, for example, ‘do you menstruate?’ or ‘are you perceived or treated as a man at work?’ rather than, or in addition to, ‘are you male or female?’.”

That’s not more precise. Would you like to know what it is? I’ll tell you. It’s much much much much much much less precise.

In their final report last month, the seven academics who carried out the study from KCL, Kent and Loughborough universities added: “For medical purposes, good practice means asking questions at a higher level of specificity. ‘Are you menstruating?’ rather than: ‘what is your sex?’”

Woman age 60 replies No. Higher level of specificity achieved!!

And where law mentions gendered physical processes, the researchers suggested it could say “gestational or birth parent rather than mother or woman – this recognises that people other than women also become pregnant”.

So it recognizes a stupid childish lie. There are no “people other than women” who become pregnant.

What is wrong with everyone.

Cheats “win” cycle race:

This one is some of each.

These female health-care workers won a huge WHO honor. They’d like a raise, too

India’s task force of over a million female health-care workers has won a prestigious award from one of the highest institutions in global health.

But their pay remains insultingly low.

Ghugare works as an ASHA, short for Accredited Social Health Activists. It’s a program run by India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare that provides health care to rural and low-income communities in the country. They are not medical professionals but are entrusted with a long list of crucial health-care responsibilities, from advising new mothers about breastfeeding to raising awareness about COVID vaccines.

…

They earn around $60 a month on average and have few benefits. In recent years, the government has raised monthly pay by a few tens of dollars, but workers say this is still too low. Many ASHAs, as the workers are known, and those in the global health community hope this moment can put pressure on the government to bump up their salaries, among other job improvements.

…

When the ASHA program began in 2005, the health workers were envisaged as volunteers working about 2 to 3 hours a day and a bit extra on some days, according to the National Health Mission, a program that’s part of India’s Ministry of Health. But over the years, ASHAs say their responsibilities have increased multifold.

At the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, Archana Ghugare says she was working 14 hours a day. And even today, she’s got a full workload. She’s been going door-to-door to identify people in the community who have a variety of medical needs, from pregnant people to kids under the age of 14 eligible for COVID vaccinations.

Pregnant people. Even in a story about exploited women, the Pregnant People have to raise their buzzcut heads.

Oh look, another one.

It was only 50 years ago this month that the first female rabbi was ordained

For many American Jews, seeing a female rabbi is a pretty regular part of life. But it’s a fairly recent development. Sally Priesand – the first American female rabbi – was ordained just 50 years ago, on June 3, 1972.

This groundbreaking ordination changed women’s roles, and the course of Judaism itself.

Although Priesand had strong support from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, where she was enrolled in seminary, a lot of people still didn’t want to see her in the role.

“There would always come a time where some person would come up to me and tell me why women shouldn’t be rabbis,” says Priesand. “And I would say, ‘Thank you for sharing your opinion.’ And I would walk away.”

Priesand even reports a faculty member asking her boyfriend at the time when he would marry her, and “get rid of her.”

So women do exist, and they do matter, and they have faced discrimination and exclusion, and they have fought for their rights, and that too does matter.

So why does that change when abortion rights are the issue?

I would really love to know how NPR squares this.

Hey, sometimes NPR does manage to use the word “women” – for instance in a story that talks about the “gender imbalance” in China. They must have worked out, after a lot of hard thinking, that you can’t have a “gender imbalance” if gender (aka sex) can be swapped for its opposite at a moment’s notice.

Just as in the United States, people born after the 1980s in China are facing the prospect of worse outcomes than their parents. Property prices rise beyond their reach; college graduates have to compete over limited jobs; and a gender imbalance favoring males — made worse by decades of the one-child policy — puts marriage out of reach for poorer men. Hard work no longer seems to be worth it.

Males? Males? What are males? Why don’t they just put on skirts and watch the marriage proposals roll in?

Mike B commented:

Yesterday, my partner and I listened to a long segment on NPR on abortion. Not once was the word “woman” used. In its place, “somebody,” “a person/people,” “patient.” The verbal gymnastics was astonishing, like watching horses run an obstacle course.

So I went looking. I found a segment from today, so not the one Mike listened to (unless they tweaked the date), but it fits the description – the only use of “woman” is in the name of a women’s center, which NPR is not at liberty to “correct.” Other than that, zilch. What we get instead is:

Following the leaked Supreme Court decision that suggests Roe v. Wade will be overturned, many Americans of childbearing age are wondering what they can do now to prepare for that possibility.

…

Robin Marty is the operations director for the West Alabama Women’s Center, and the author of Handbook for a Post-Roe America. Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosely is a practicing OB-GYN and the CEO of Power to Decide, a sexual health and planning nonprofit. They both joined NPR’s All Things Considered to provide some guidance on what reproductive healthcare might look like in the future, and how people can keep themselves informed and prepared if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

NPR whispers that the interview has been “lightly edited” – I’m betting that means all mentions of women changed to People or Americans or Cunt-havers.

On what options a pregnant person has in an anti-abortion state:

Robin Marty: There are a number of different options that a person can undergo. Some of them involve trying to go to a clinic outside of their state. That requires research.

Their state? Her state.

There are abortion funds and practical support groups that can help provide financial assistance and logistical support. But also, what we’re seeing is that most people, especially in the South, have an immense amount of difficulty to be able to afford all of the bus tickets, plane tickets, time off of work. That’s simply not going to be doable for a lot of them.

Women. Most women have an immense amount of difficulty. This burden falls on women. Men can of course share it, but for them it’s optional. For women it’s inside their own bodies. The burden is on women.

Robin Marty: I actually put together a checklist of questions that people can ask their doctors. So it’s a checklist that a person can go through and say, ‘How do you feel about abortion?’

Woman is a dirty word now.

Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosely: I just wanted to chime in from a medical perspective and point out, realizing that someone may not have the opportunity to fully vet a provider, it’s important to realize that if someone is having prolonged bleeding, or may need medical attention after having a medication abortion, with medications that they obtained themselves, or with the care of a provider, that very much looks like a miscarriage. So someone can potentially present to an emergency room and to their provider and say, ‘I’m having cramping and bleeding, and I had a positive pregnancy test’, and receive the care that they need without having to reveal that they have taken abortion medications.

It’s women who have to deal with this. If it were men, there would be nothing to deal with.

Janice Turner informs us that civil servants (in the UK) are being told appalling drivel as official “training” – by people who are secretive about it.

Here are some facts I learnt by watching an “inclusion workshop” for civil servants. A brain in a jar “knows” if it is male or female and, if transplanted into the “wrong” body, would exhibit distress. This country has no legal sex-based rights. It is impossible to define what “woman” or even “female” means. There is zero conflict between women’s rights and trans rights, so beware colleagues asking too many questions; they’re probably bigots.

So by “inclusion” the people who send civil servants to these workshops mean exclusion of women. Interesting.

A:gender, “a network supporting all trans and intersex staff across government”, trains thousands of civil servants annually, from the NHS to the Cabinet Office, yet it forbids its presentations being recorded. Having endured 90 minutes of anti-scientific, legally fallacious twaddle, I can see why it avoids scrutiny.

Ok so why, I wonder, does government assign that job to this particular network? Why does government have civil servants attend such ludicrous and damaging “training”? They might as well send them to Catholic mass.

This A:gender session is conducted by Emma, who tells us she is intersex, having a vagina and uterus but XY chromosomes. She claims that as many people are intersex — 1.7 per cent — as have green eyes. The more precise figure is about 0.018 per cent. But intersex here is deployed to muddy the very idea that human sex is binary.

Indeed, the difference between sex (biology) and gender (a social construct) seems to confuse Emma. “You’d look at my nails and make-up and realise I am female,” she says. We are asked to position ourselves on spectrums of “woman-ness” and “man-ness” and told if some days we wake feeling more manly or womanly than others, we may be “gender fluid”.

This is indoctrination government employees are told to listen to by their employers.

This might just be tiresome gender woo-woo if it wasn’t being taught as fact to people who write and implement the small print of public equality guidance. Emma warns that defining a woman as an “adult human female” is a transphobic dogwhistle, equivalent to antisemitism. She claims that sex-based rights, which feminists speak of defending, don’t even exist. “We have equal rights!” she cries.

…

Then Emma turns to the controversial debate about reform of the Gender Recognition Act. The government recently decided not to introduce “self-ID”, whereby a person can change the sex on their birth certificate with a simple declaration. “Many anti-trans groups spoke out in a very clever way [to stop it],” says Emma. “Like you could wake up and identify as a man and we’d be legally obliged to treat a person that way. If that was the case, there’d be nothing to stop someone identifying as trans in bad faith, a violent male prisoner could be transferred to the female estate.”

Er, yes, which is what does happen. Paying attention much?

“I’m a civil servant,” says Emma. “I’m not allowed to be an activist. I’m just sitting in my back bedroom in fluffy slippers.” But she is training government employees to disregard laws, while agitating for change. Most concerning, she tells us to perceive colleagues who defend existing sex-based protections as transphobic.

Women civil servants say they are scared to speak up for fear of bullying and suffering professionally. Their union, the FDA, won’t protect them. It has passed a conference motion stating there should be “boundaries” on gender-critical speech, while banning “trans-exclusionary language”, which could just mean insisting that NHS cervical smear guidance retains the word “woman”.

The Emmas are ruining everything.

Some tipping points:

The second is the loss of the Amazonian rain forest. Deforestation is drying it out, and when it reaches a tipping point, there will be no going back. (We’re in the lucky generation that gets to watch Bolsonaro making it happen. On purpose.)

…with a significant loss of trees, less water will enter the atmosphere so areas of the Amazon will become drier and drier as the water cycle breaks down. This is already happening in the southern and eastern Amazon, where dry seasons have become longer for at least the past 2 decades.

Global warming will intensify this damage. Along with deforestation, it will lead to increased forest fires, regional droughts and flooding, and biodiversity loss.

The Amazon will pass a tipping point when the water cycle is so badly ruined that areas of the forest stop producing enough rain for a rainforest to grow. It would be permanently lost and transformed into degraded savannas.

TBC

Tipping.

More on the drought:

The megadrought currently choking the western United States is the worst drought in the region in more than 1,000 years. It’s having an enormous impact across many states and on several major reservoirs including Lake Mead, a water source for millions of people in the West. 

…

This week, local officials in Southern California started restricting water use, including watering of lawns to once or twice a week, for about six million residents. It’s also having a major impact on Lake Mead, which is a major source of water for agriculture and for millions of people in the American West.

Ok hang on – why not just ban watering lawns entirely? Lawns make no difference to anyone apart from a stunted kind of aesthetics. Lawns can come back. Lawns don’t feed anyone. Lawns don’t matter. When it’s a choice between crops and lawns why in hell are lawns getting any water at all?

The megadrought is connected intimately with climate change, of course. And our story is part of our ongoing coverage of the Tipping Point.

The Colorado River Basin, a lifeline of the American Southwest, is shrinking. And, with it, the country’s two largest reservoirs are going dry. Just 30 miles east of Las Vegas sits Lake Mead on the border of Arizona and Nevada. It’s the largest manmade reservoir in North America.

It’s not good when a country’s two largest reservoirs go dry.

Lake Mead gets water from Lake Powell, the second largest reservoir in the country. Its water supply is around a fourth of what it used to be.

States in the Southwest have started limiting some of their use of the Colorado River Basin. And, last month, federal officials took unprecedented action to temporarily keep enough water in Lake Powell, one of the country’s largest reservoirs, to continue, generating hydropower for a million homes.

Is the situation going to improve?

No.

Meanwhile, drought.

A once-in-a-lifetime drought in the western part of the US is turning up dead bodies – but that’s the least of people’s worries.

It’s not once-in-a-lifetime any more. Lifetimes are going to be radically different in the future (the future meaning now and tomorrow and so on – not some distant prospect beyond the horizon).

Sitting on the Arizona-Nevada border near Las Vegas, Lake Mead – formed by the creation of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River – is the largest reservoir in the United States and provides water to 25 million people across three states and Mexico. Here, the stunning scale of a drought in the American west has been laid plain for all to see.

Used to provide.

If the lake keeps receding, it would reach what’s known as “dead pool” – a level so low the Hoover Dam would no longer be able to produce hydropower or deliver water downstream.

And why would it not keep receding? It’s not as if we’re doing anything differently.

Nasa, which monitors changing water levels, is warning that the western United States is now entering one of the worst droughts ever seen.

“With climate change, it seems like the dominoes are beginning to fall,” Nasa hydrologist JT Reager told the BBC.

“We get warmer temperatures, we get less precipitation and snow. The reservoirs start drying up, then in a place like the West, we get wildfires”.

Not next century or next decade or next year but now.

75% of Lake Mead’s water goes to agriculture. 75% of not much is not much.

Over a third of America’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts are grown in California. But tens of thousands of acres lie idle because farmers can’t get enough water to grow crops.

There it is – the bottom line I keep mentioning in climate disaster posts: crop failures. Something the most obliviously optimistic of humans can’t ignore forever.

Now there’s a surprise.

When Hillary Clinton ran for the US presidency in 2016, she received sexist comments “on a constant basis” and her team had “no idea” how to deal with them, her former aide Huma Abedin has said.

Abedin, who worked closely with Clinton on her campaign, recalled that the former secretary of state was deluged with openly sexist remarks as well as unhelpful advice, or instructions to emulate male politicians.

Really? Women get abuse? I thought it was only trans people – especially male trans people. We’ve been told for years that women are the evil domineering phobic cruel sex, but now it seems that a woman running for high office has to expect nonstop sexist abuse?

Abedin said these started when Clinton sought the Democratic nomination in 2008 and continued when she ran for president in 2016, and “nothing changed over that period”, which took place before the #MeToo movement began in 2017.

What would #MeToo have to do with it? Does the Guardian really think sexism had faded away, or that feminism had, before #MeToo came along?

Speaking to the Hay festival to promote her recent memoir, Both/And, Abedin said Clinton and her team would feel obliged to laugh off offensive remarks from conservative commentators such as the newsreader Tucker Carlson, who said: “When Hillary Clinton shows up on TV I inadvertently cross my legs.”

Awhawhaw geddit? Castrating bitch! A woman with power is a castrating bitch Karen! Any woman who’s not sexy but compliant but hawt but obedient is gonna cut your balls off with a rusty paring knife.

Girls to the Front has a thread on “Sophie” Cook.

We were not “quite happily” using “Mx” a few years ago. I’ve never used it and never been the slightest bit happy about it. It’s just one more intrusion on and theft of what’s ours.

But it gets worse.

The Times on “Sophie” Cook:

Senior prosecutors are facing criticism over the recruitment of a transgender activist to a key diversity role despite evidence that she has posted derogatory tweets about women.

And is a man.

Sophie Cook, who has supported the replacement of the word woman with “womxn” and used the acronym “terf” — trans-exclusionary radical feminist — has been appointed the Crown Prosecution Service’s “speak-out champion”, a new role.

You know, the CPS could have appointed a woman. It wouldn’t be a bad idea – women have all kinds of issues with the CPS, conspicuous among them the staggeringly low rate of prosecution of rape cases. What does a man who calls himself a woman have to offer the CPS? Why pick him instead of a woman? What’s his edge?

The move, praised by Max Hill QC, the director of public prosecutions, has raised concerns over whether Cook will use the role to “embed” trans activism at the heart of the body that prosecutes serious crime in England and Wales.

If they let him, he will. Bank on it.

Cook describes herself as a “writer, speaker, actor, broadcaster and photographer”. On her website, Cook says that she is an “LGBT & mental health campaigner”, a Royal Air Force veteran and “self-harm and suicide survivor”.

A Renaissance pretend-women.

According to a CPS job advertisement, the new four-day-a-week job has a salary of more than £31,000 and is “home-based” but with an expectation that the postholder will travel to offices and attend meetings.

The advert said the speak-out champion would “be responsible for improving confidence amongst our employees in being able to speak openly about their experiences”. The CPS said that the role would be “instrumental in underpinning positive progress in leadership behaviours”.

I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean or why they think a smirking fraudulent guy who pretends to be a woman is the right fraud for the job.

Hill welcomed Cook in a tweet. However, concerns were raised over historic tweets in which Cook uses the term terf…

In September, Cook tweeted: “Apart from menstruate and give birth (just to keep the TERFs happy (are they ever happy?) nothing. I may not be able to do everything well, but I could potentially do anything just as long as there isn’t a required grade.”

We Are Fair Cop, a group of gender-critical lawyers, tweeted: “Female gender-critical employees of the @CPSUK require urgent reassurance that their political belief will not leave them vulnerable to unlawful discrimination”.

In a post directed at Hill, Sarah Phillimore, a barrister, asked: “What would happen to a female member of the CPS workforce who objected to [your] new ‘Speak Out Champion’ referring to her in this derogatory way? Would she be heard? Or sacked?”

And why pick him? Why him? Why any him, and especially why a him who pretends to be a woman? Why not a woman???

It seems to me far more urgent for the CPS to hear more from women than it is for the CPS to hear more from men who call themselves women. No comparison.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on One’s estates.

The third* most common argument I hear from pro-monarchy Norwegians is something along the lines of “Would you rather have something like the American model and get someone like Trump as the Head of State?”. This seems to presuppose that the monarchy does indeed serve a real function that must be served somehow, so if the monarchy is abolished we need to put something else in its place. My answer is the same as the one I give when religious apologists ask what atheists want to put in religion’s place: Neither the monarchy nor religion serves any function that needs to be served at at all, so we can just abolish both and have nothing in their place.

The fourth most common argument is that the monarchy supposedly plays some unspecified yet vitally important role in luring foreign investors to Norwegian companies. At this point I always imagine someone like Bill Gates or Elon Musk sitting there and thinking to himself “I was going to invest my money where one would expect the highest returns, but then I learned that Norway has a monarchy, so now I’ve decided to invest everything in Norwegian salted and dried cod instead and watch my financial empire crumble”.

*The first two are (1) “I still get warm fuzzies about the King’s admirable refusal to concede to the Nazi occupiers in 1940, therefore monarchy good” and (2) “but the Norwegian royal family is so much nicer and more in tune with ordinary people than those pompous snobs they have in Britain!”

Originally a comment by Enzyme on One’s estates.

Campaigners have said much of this land lies on peat bogs, which should be allowed to grow wild to sequester carbon instead of being used for grouse shooting.

OK, but this is important, and it perhaps does undermine some of the point about tree-cover. I’ve no love for grouse-moors, and many grouse moors are close to peat areas: anyone who’s been to the Peak District can attest that there’ll be grouse-butts in one place, and a couple of hundred metres away you’re up to your thighs in peat.

BUT… Peat-bogs are not forest. They are AMAZING carbon sinks. According to the Beeb,

Peatlands cover around 12% of the land in the UK and store an estimated 3 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to all the forests in the UK, Germany and France put together.

Granted this, complaining that they have lower-than-average tree cover is to miss the mark. In fact, if they had more tree cover, they’d be worse for the environment: much worse, in fact.

Bluntly, in huge parts of the UK, what you want is scrubby upland moors, some of which will be waterlogged, but some of which won’t – and the not-waterlogged bit is ideal for grouse-shooting.

By all means put an end to that. But pointing out lower-than-average tree cover is environmentally misleading.