I guess we disagree on what trees do well. I’m in the Midwest with warm semi humid summers. Trees keep the area around them massively cooler, not by evaporation but by shading.
Maybe it’s a disagreement of terms? I guess they aren’t technically “cooling” the area in an active sense, but they absolutely keep it cooler even when it’s 95 and the dew points over 70
I live in Vietnam. It is 8am right now and the dew point is 80. It only 80 at the moment but is supposed to get up to 90 later in the day. I assume the dew point will also go up to around 90.
AccuWeather says the "RealFeel" will be 97 and "RealFeel Shade" will also be 97, so being in the shade does almost nothing, since it is overcast and raining very slightly at the moment.
We're not in a heat wave or anything, this is just normal weather basically year round. If anything it's been especially rainy and cool the past few weeks.
Trees are nice but are not remotely a substitute for air conditioning. Trees do not lower humidity enough to stop the average European/American from sweating constantly just sitting still here.
Vietnam is sub-tropical, not directly comparable. Better to compare Vietnam to itself, with and without trees. How much hotter is it in the city compared to the jungle?
of course trees are not a substitute for air conditioning. but, on a sunny day a street heavily shaded by trees is significantly cooler than the same street with no trees. this is true no matter how hot out it is
that's not to say that the heat under a trees' shade cannot still be oppressive. merely that shade matters, as the existence of two "RealFeel" measurements you shared indicates
Going back to the beginning what started this is a debate about whether trees cool cities.
I don’t think anyone (certainly not me) has intended to argue that trees can replace AC, just that they make the city around them (including indoors in many cases) much cooler than they would be without the trees
The shade is the important effect. Air conditioners have to use energy to remove heat from the indoors. That means that if the indoors are less hot, then you need to move less energy out of the room. Trees are great here, because the trees stand in the way of our solar system's largest energy source and the indoors.
To be fair, things like insulation are also good here. You want something outside to get hot when the sun shines on it instead of whatever space you're cooling.
(There are, of course, many heat sources inside that are annoying. I was running some fuzz tests yesterday and was annoyed to watch my air conditioner scale up in power to remove the heat that was wasting. I guess that's why people use The Cloud for everything. You can heat up someone else's city while enjoying the comforts of home!)
Maybe it’s a disagreement of terms? I guess they aren’t technically “cooling” the area in an active sense, but they absolutely keep it cooler even when it’s 95 and the dew points over 70