Debunking the debunked

Though not strictly political in nature, global climate change is of immense interest to me. Understanding its fundamental components and encouraging dialogue (or polylogue?) with regard to its implications is an important step in accurately addressing the challenge it represents to human civilization and indeed life on Earth. The following is a brief comment I wrote with regard to an article posted on Yahoo news. The article suggested that planting trees in non-tropical latitudes could have a counter-intuitively negative effect on mitigating climate change. I disagreed, suggesting that that analysis was overly simplistic.

The concern cited in the article about trees actually raising temperatures near the earth's surface, is misleading and overly simplistic. 1) Global warming is an effect associated with heat not being able to radiate back into space (because it's trapped in the atmosphere). While a dark forest canopy will indeed raise surface temperatures, the carbon sequestered in the trees will reduce the over-all carbon content of the atmosphere, thus reducing the green house effect. 2) climate change is more than just about temperature. Species, plants, and animals will be greatly affected, particularly because they don't have air conditioners, and sunscreen to protect them from the changing ecosystem. Planting trees and forests is a very, very good thing because it improves the soil and air quality, it filters toxins in the environment and water supply, it provides shelter for many plant and animal species, some of which humans may depend on for our survival. Making our environment more robust is essential in preparing for the harsh effects of global warming and global climate change (a more accurate term). It would be nice if your articles in the future could address these complexities.