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I can only assume this is astro-turfing. The Amazon is near a tipping point of total destruction - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00508-4 https://ww

I can only assume this is astro-turfing. The Amazon is near a tipping point of total destruction - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00508-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00508-4 If your pants are on fire and you piss in them, you don't say "look how wet your pants are getting".

caiob 6y ago
Despite what these “studies” say, the Amazon is NOT near a tipping point of destruction. In fact, it’s not even close. These publications fail to disclose that these fires are seasonal and will continue to happen without man-interference. These so-called protection of the Amazon is part of an agenda rich countries have to keep Brazil uncompetitive. How about we start rebuilding green space in Western Europe? How about we start planting more trees in southern California?
- neuronic 6y ago
  I am going to go ahead and put more credibility into peer-reviewed research in Nature than some random HN comment without sources.
  - gus_massa 6y ago
    The link is no not a peer-reviewed research in Nature, it is a "News Feature" written by "a science writer based in Manaus, Brazil." The cites for the tipping point are two editorials written by the same team of two researches in Science Advances, these are editorials, not research articles. They cite https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2007GL030612 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200... that is a peer-reviewed research article in Geophysical Research Letters. The research article claims that with a 40% deforestation the rain reduction will cause problems, but in the editorial they use hand waving to reduce that to 20%.
antisthenes 6y ago
I think this is the most telling tidbit, right at the top of the article: > According to their findings, 12% of total carbon emissions from Amazon deforestation have been offset by Brazil’s secondary forests, making natural regrowth an underestimated tool for mitigating global carbon emissions and regional ecosystem collapse. 12% of carbon offset is better than 0, but still catastrophically low. Just means the the destruction of the Amazon rainforest is just slightly slower than previously thought.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  I'm more worried about bio-diversity loss than carbon offset tbh. This is purposefully framing the issue in a way to steer the conversation away from what really matters.
  - eecc 6y ago
    Purposefully? That’s a charged accusation, can you substantiate it?
  - brutusborn 6y ago
    And "really matters" is just an opinion. Can you say why carbon offset doesn't really matter or why bio-diversity loss really does? I'm genuinely curious.
    - danielheath 6y ago
      We are currently extinguishing biodiversity at a rate close to 100k years per year (that is, recovery-via-evolution of the biodiversity lost in any recent year will take 100k years). Some of that biodiversity isn’t load-bearing (that is, we can do fine without it), but some of it is and we will be paying for it’s loss essentially-forever.
    - Rexxar 6y ago
      Carbon offset can be done somewhere else or later, biodiversity is lost forever.
    - 6y ago
jillesvangurp 6y ago
Not necessarily; fatalism never solves any problems. The article just highlights that historically the problem has been ignorance. We treat the Amazon as this vast ocean of un-mapped green where all sorts of people can hide; entire tribes of native Americans reside there that have had little or no contact with the modern world. We simply don't know what is going on there in very large detail. Well, thanks to modern mapping, now we do. Formerly easy to hide and illegal activity like burning a bit of forest to get some farm land now stands out and we can track what happens or happened to bits of land. That's basically what the article is pointing out is actually happening. A few bits of information in there: - Forest regeneration is slow but significant; up to 40% of forest thought to be lost over the past decades has in fact regrown. It's a slow process that takes up to 4 decades to fully restore bio diversity. But it's possible and happening at pretty significant scale. - The whole process is basically driven by poor land management, ignorance, and incompetence. Farmers mismanage their soil, thus exhausting it and then burn more forest to solve their problem while abandoning their old land, which then starts regenerating if left alone. - Mapping provides authorities better insight where this is happening or has happened and allows them to step up attempts to crack down on this to both protect regrowing forest and put a stop to new attempts to burn forests. Simply scaling up that effort could go a long way to fixing the problem. Farming by its very nature is very local. If authorities show up within weeks of you burning a forest to start growing stuff, it gets a lot more risky. Burning forest is the lazy option; it's only convenient if you can get away with it. Mapping can fix that.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > fatalism never solves any problems Fatalism solves problems of resource misallocation. You're better off putting in the effort to solve problems you can solve than putting in the effort to solve problems you can't solve. Assuming there's a limited amount of effort, fatalism will help you.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > If authorities show up within weeks of you burning a forest to start growing stuff, it gets a lot more risky. Burning forest is the lazy option; it's only convenient if you can get away with it. Mapping can fix that. Mapping doesn't do shit if the politicians don't act - and Bolsonaro is hellbent on not acting in the interest of anyone but the rich people paying him off (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49815731 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49815731). If the rainforest is to be saved, Bolsonaro must be removed one way or the other - and I'm not sure that it will be possible at all to remove that guy at the voting booth anymore. Personally I'd welcome some sort of intervention by one of the three-letter agencies - this time it could be actually for a good cause.

caiob 6y ago

Despite what these “studies” say, the Amazon is NOT near a tipping point of destruction. In fact, it’s not even close. These publications fail to disclose that these fires are seasonal and will continue to happen without man-interference. These so-called protection of the Amazon is part of an agenda rich countries have to keep Brazil uncompetitive. How about we start rebuilding green space in Western Europe? How about we start planting more trees in southern California?

neuronic 6y ago
I am going to go ahead and put more credibility into peer-reviewed research in Nature than some random HN comment without sources.
- gus_massa 6y ago
  The link is no not a peer-reviewed research in Nature, it is a "News Feature" written by "a science writer based in Manaus, Brazil." The cites for the tipping point are two editorials written by the same team of two researches in Science Advances, these are editorials, not research articles. They cite https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2007GL030612 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200... that is a peer-reviewed research article in Geophysical Research Letters. The research article claims that with a 40% deforestation the rain reduction will cause problems, but in the editorial they use hand waving to reduce that to 20%.

antisthenes 6y ago

I think this is the most telling tidbit, right at the top of the article: > According to their findings, 12% of total carbon emissions from Amazon deforestation have been offset by Brazil’s secondary forests, making natural regrowth an underestimated tool for mitigating global carbon emissions and regional ecosystem collapse. 12% of carbon offset is better than 0, but still catastrophically low. Just means the the destruction of the Amazon rainforest is just slightly slower than previously thought.

rorykoehler 6y ago
I'm more worried about bio-diversity loss than carbon offset tbh. This is purposefully framing the issue in a way to steer the conversation away from what really matters.
- eecc 6y ago
  Purposefully? That’s a charged accusation, can you substantiate it?
- brutusborn 6y ago
  And "really matters" is just an opinion. Can you say why carbon offset doesn't really matter or why bio-diversity loss really does? I'm genuinely curious.
  - danielheath 6y ago
    We are currently extinguishing biodiversity at a rate close to 100k years per year (that is, recovery-via-evolution of the biodiversity lost in any recent year will take 100k years). Some of that biodiversity isn’t load-bearing (that is, we can do fine without it), but some of it is and we will be paying for it’s loss essentially-forever.
  - Rexxar 6y ago
    Carbon offset can be done somewhere else or later, biodiversity is lost forever.
  - 6y ago

jillesvangurp 6y ago

Not necessarily; fatalism never solves any problems. The article just highlights that historically the problem has been ignorance. We treat the Amazon as this vast ocean of un-mapped green where all sorts of people can hide; entire tribes of native Americans reside there that have had little or no contact with the modern world. We simply don't know what is going on there in very large detail. Well, thanks to modern mapping, now we do. Formerly easy to hide and illegal activity like burning a bit of forest to get some farm land now stands out and we can track what happens or happened to bits of land. That's basically what the article is pointing out is actually happening. A few bits of information in there: - Forest regeneration is slow but significant; up to 40% of forest thought to be lost over the past decades has in fact regrown. It's a slow process that takes up to 4 decades to fully restore bio diversity. But it's possible and happening at pretty significant scale. - The whole process is basically driven by poor land management, ignorance, and incompetence. Farmers mismanage their soil, thus exhausting it and then burn more forest to solve their problem while abandoning their old land, which then starts regenerating if left alone. - Mapping provides authorities better insight where this is happening or has happened and allows them to step up attempts to crack down on this to both protect regrowing forest and put a stop to new attempts to burn forests. Simply scaling up that effort could go a long way to fixing the problem. Farming by its very nature is very local. If authorities show up within weeks of you burning a forest to start growing stuff, it gets a lot more risky. Burning forest is the lazy option; it's only convenient if you can get away with it. Mapping can fix that.

thaumasiotes 6y ago
> fatalism never solves any problems Fatalism solves problems of resource misallocation. You're better off putting in the effort to solve problems you can solve than putting in the effort to solve problems you can't solve. Assuming there's a limited amount of effort, fatalism will help you.
mschuster91 6y ago
> If authorities show up within weeks of you burning a forest to start growing stuff, it gets a lot more risky. Burning forest is the lazy option; it's only convenient if you can get away with it. Mapping can fix that. Mapping doesn't do shit if the politicians don't act - and Bolsonaro is hellbent on not acting in the interest of anyone but the rich people paying him off (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49815731 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49815731). If the rainforest is to be saved, Bolsonaro must be removed one way or the other - and I'm not sure that it will be possible at all to remove that guy at the voting booth anymore. Personally I'd welcome some sort of intervention by one of the three-letter agencies - this time it could be actually for a good cause.