So maybe artificial trees were back in style up here in the northeast, the hub of the stereotypical American Christmas.

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In 2010, U.S. consumers purchased 27 million farm-grown Christmas trees and 8.2 million artificial trees, according to The National Christmas Tree Association.

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Americans are not buying more artificial trees this year and at least one Chinese manufacturer is going to have a blue Christmas because of it.

FORBES: Bad Year For Christmas Trees Made In China

The first artificial Christmas trees were made in Germany using goose feathers that were dyed green.

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The technology, though, is already being employed, most notably on artificial Christmas trees.

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There were so many stores decorated with tinsel and streamers and balloons, selling little artificial fir trees, displaying gross Christmas cards hawkers had even set up on the sidewalks peddling these nauseous things (usually with pictures of a snowy scene in Vermont and some saccharin verse inside about ol' Jack Frost).

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Behavior trees, and other basic concepts of artificial intelligence, might soon be part of the grammar of articulate self-expression.

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Whether the carbon dioxide is captured by real trees, as some would like, or by artificial devices, environmental problems caused by the process would be local ones at the site of the sucking.

ECONOMIST: Geoengineering