Nothing To Do With The Bakken -- But Trees Cause More Pollution Than Automobiles

And that was back in 1981.

• Tree cause more pollution than automobiles do." -- Ronald Reagan, 1981 

Since then automobiles have become much "cleaner" and ... to best of my knowledge ... trees haven't changed.

Biologists all know this (the source is CBC News):

The world's trees, shrubs and other plants do produce massive amounts of hydrocarbons - nine times as much as do automobiles, by some counts.

Those gases, most notably isoprene, are major ingredients of ozone, a lung irritant linked to asthma and other serious respiratory ailments.

Ozone formation also requires a second ingredient: nitrogen oxides, a byproduct of the combustion of fossil fuels. A major source of those gases is the tailpipe of just about every car, truck and bus on the planet. [Catalytic converters were introduced on a wide scale in 1975 to decrease production of nitrogen oxides.]

A forest of 10,000 of the trees emits perhaps 22 pounds of hydrocarbons an hour - the equivalent of spilling a dozen gallons of gasoline and allowing it to evaporate, according to an estimate by the University of California Cooperative Extension.

Those emissions can contribute to ozone formation wherever there is enough sunlight and a ready source of nitrogen oxides.

Wow, I miss Ronald Reagan.