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Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

If you think that, you probably haven't lived anywhere that's actually green.

Source: I lived in Seattle for 7 years, followed by an 8 year period in SoCal. SoCal is basically a desert with some green plants.

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I grew up in Victoria, which is pretty much like Seattle. I currently live in Orange County. I've also lived in New Hampshire, New York, and a few other places with varying levels of lushness.

When I go for hikes these days in the hills of OC, it really is green. Shockingly so. The flat areas remind me of your description still, but tradersam is not crazy here.

Agree. Lived in NC for 20+ years, now live in OC too. It was a bit of a culture shock moving here, seeing all the desert and dust everywhere. Happy to see quite a bit of green again!

I had a similar, yet opposite experience moving from AZ to CA.(Northern)

Going from a lifetime of desert living with miserable weather and the greenest sight being olianders, to a sea of green trees with more normal weather. Night and day difference.

And to think, we didn't get nearly as much rain as other parts of the state.

Ditto in Ventura County

The grass isn't greener in seattle or ireland than SoCal. It's just that the grass in socal turns brown in the summer, and sometimes for a few years at a time. But right now after a several months of rain, and spring arriving, the hill I look out my window at is 100% green. It can't be any greener, because it is entirely covered in green. SoCal is literally a desert, that turns green when it rains.

I live in SoCal and have lived in or worked in most other parts of the country, including Seattle. You are only seeing SoCal from the ground level: looking straight across the earth, yes, it looks green right now. I did a trail run this afternoon, I definitely agree it's green. But it's still a light green. Some of the palms are still yellow. Get in a plane and look down. You have no idea how brown it still is. You fly that plane to Seattle, there's three layers of green canopy, held up by trunks covered with green moss, rising indistinguishably from the ground which is also dripping with green.

https://twitter.com/tinashakour/status/845730376660103168

I lived in Texas and other states for quite a few years, I do know what I'm discussing so I'd refrain from making assumptions like that in the future.

Try visiting Ireland for a holiday. Your eyes will bleed green.

I live in Ireland. It's not that green; there's lots of thorny, hardy plants that honestly look more brown/yellowish. Lots of greenery, yes. :)

Visit Norway sometime, and you'll know what a truly green country looks like.

(Can we get another few links on this chain, I wonder?)

Since we're dick measuring: come to Slovenia some time. 60% of the country covered in forests. NatGeo just voted us the most sustainable country in the world.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/features/2017-best-...

/micdrop

Come to Finland!

Forests cover 75 percent of Finland's land area. For every Finn, there is around 4,2 hectares of forest. In Finland, land area is classified according to its use. 86 percent of land area is forestry land.

It is very green, unless it is winter in which case it is either white (due to snow) or bleak and miserable due to darkness.

As a Finn, I second the "bleak and miserable".

Hell, I moved to London for the weather.

I moved from Scotland to Helsinki. The snow & cold aren't so bad, but the darkness is really something that took some getting used to.

As a Norwegian (from Oslo) living in London, who has visited Finland during the summer and found it "bleak and miserable" even then (ok, so not all the time we did have some days with sun too), I'm not surprised. Though London is bleak and miserable compared to Oslo even during the winter (I prefer snow over rain any day..)

You should see my cousin's green.

But anyway, come to Tasmania in June through August, go for a hike in the temperate rainforests and see some of the tallest flowering trees in the solar system.

Also we do artisan coffee (or just coffee if you're not in to that wank) out of a trailer we hand-built from the ground up.

Bucketlisted.

There's a reason why an area of California is referred to as "the emerald triangle".

Definitely lots of green.

Belgiu m ! We're super green, but the climate is so horrible that you'll be depressed anyway :-)

Michigan - no place in the state more than about 5 miles from a river, lake, swamp. :-)

It's on the list for next year, trust me.

Wait, you think Texas is green? Hahaha. Good one.

Texas is a large state, with many different climates.

The Eastern part of it is classified as humid subtropical. It is indeed very green. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Texas#Piney_Woods for verification and https://www.pinterest.com/CollyBlackSheep/east-texas-piney-w... for plenty of acceptably green pictures.

Cool picture from the Texas climate page, showcasing the darkening affect of rainfall. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rain-Darkened_Texa...

You've obviously never been.

I live in Austin. I do know what I'm discussing so if I were you I'd refrain from making assumptions like that in the future.

It's not, compared to the pacific northwest. I recall taking photos on my first visit to an Oregon university because they _obviously_ were watering their lawn in the winter to keep it that green instead of letting it go dormant.

A large sliver of the PNW is temperate rainforest, so yes. When you have areas that get 100-170 inches of rain a year (e.g. Olympic peninsula area), it's probably going to be very green at that point.

Other than during the spring, most of TX is not particularly green (to put it charitably), even by the coast where it rains more. Source: have lived there for a long time

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