elodieunderglass:

NO BUT THESE ARE THE THINGS I WAS TALKING ABOUT HERE: https://elodieunderglass.tumblr.com/post/185703978243/okay-so-we-all-agree-lawns-suck-are-outdated-and

See how the slyly worded, rather weaselly marketing claim for CityTrees claiming that these panels of moss contain “The cleaning power of 275 trees” got changed, in people’s minds, to “each panel of moss ABSORBS AS MUCH CARBON DIOXIDE as 275 trees”, a completely ridiculous and impossible claim?? And then see how people immediately decided that moss is therefore somehow more “eco” than trees and that “moss lawns” will magically solve global warming? See how everyone did that, by themselves? The important facts, like ‘when plants absorb carbon dioxide, they release the oxygen and use the carbon for their own construction; therefore, plants only absorb as much carbon as they physically need to grow’ have been utterly discarded in the rush to believe something more viral and exciting.

One sly bit of marketing that the public has been widely encouraged to misinterpret, verbally repeated from a random person to a random Guardian blogger at a garden show, who blogged about it as if it was a fact, has now gotten so scrambled that people on tumblr honestly believe that 12 square meters of moss absorbs as much carbon dioxide as 275 trees.

These screencaps show the actual claims about the CityTrees, which are that the moss, having a lot of surface area for its mass, can filter the particles in air pollutants more efficiently than equivalent-sized plants that are smoother.

You will see the effects of this for years. Years from now, people will insist that moss has the ability to simply erase carbon molecules from the universe. And you’ll know differently, but because it won’t match what people prefer to believe, nobody will listen to you.