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The Amazon Rainforest Now Emits More Greenhouse Gases Than It Absorbs

86 points by aracena 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
airstrike 5y ago
Feels like the bigger tragedy is what deforestation does to the rainforest's biodiversity
- totesraunch 5y ago
  There have been multiple mass extinctions in the past. Humans are just causing/accelerating the next one. It is sad though but at this point earth as we know it is doomed--all so the ultra-rich can hoard money, and for what?
  - Dma54rhs 5y ago
    That is why there has to be a tax for the whole population of America and for other rich nations. These people are top of top considering the world population, there's no other way around to say poor nations should stop their economic development.
anthuswilliams 5y ago
What the article is saying here is, --ignoring the rest of the Amazon (A), if you take the amount of CO2 what would have been sequestered if the forest had been left alone (B) and then add it to the amount of CO2 emitted by whatever business interests thereafter occupied the land (C) you get a large number of greenhouse gases! Such that, when you subtract that from the amount of CO2 the Amazon would have absorbed if not for A, you get a negative number.-- They're double counting the deforestation. There's nothing else to see here.
- wtallis 5y ago
  That doesn't look like double-counting the effects of the deforestation, just breaking it down into two segments: the difference between leaving the forest in place vs. cutting it down, and then the difference between leaving the now-bare land idle vs. using it for industry.
  - anthuswilliams 5y ago
    No. Double counting is an effect of ascribing the emissions. When you ascribe the effects to the Amazon, you combine the two. As a simple exercise, imagine that the deforested land had been left fallow, and the CO2 emitting business had set up shop at a different plot of land. You wouldn't ascribe the CO2 emitted by the business to the Amazon, and therefore, when you DO ascribe it to the Amazon, you are double-counting the effect. None of this is to say that it's okay to deforest the Amazon. I just hate it when people lie with numbers for the sake of a catchy headline.
    - wtallis 5y ago
      > As a simple exercise, imagine that the deforested land had been left fallow, and the CO2 emitting business had set up shop at a different plot of land. You wouldn't ascribe the CO2 emitted by the business to the Amazon, and therefore, when you DO ascribe it to the Amazon, you are double-counting the effect. Here you're assuming all the same industrial activity would have happened, just elsewhere. But that seems like an unfounded assumption that ignores how deforesting the Amazon opens up new cheap land to enable more industrial activity with lower costs than would otherwise be the case. Land is finite and not cheap. Pretending that eg. new farming would have simply happened in the same way and quantity elsewhere had the Amazon been protected is a more egregious lie than trying to include economic activity in the net greenhouse effect of the whole Amazon.
      - anthuswilliams 5y ago
        That's fair. But in return, I offer the counter-argument: When you double count like this, you are implicitly assuming deforestation ALLOWED the polluting business to occupy the new land, and they wouldn't have polluted to the same degree elsewhere (because it wasn't available, wasn't as profitable, or something else). A totally reasonable claim! I could explore it further. But IMO one should make this claim in good faith, make it clear what you're proposing, not engage in this kind of statistical sleight of hand. I am totally opposed to deforesting the Amazon. But I'm sick of political participants that think it's OK to lie to people, simply because the implications of the lie favor some greater truth.
xyst 5y ago
Why hasn’t the international community seized control over the Amazon rain forest? Clearly Bolsonaro and the Brazilian government doesn’t give two shits.
- mc32 5y ago
  You’re proposing invading a sovereign country and seizing their natural resources?
  - ta988 5y ago
    Sounds like it, before it was for oil and fertile lands. Now we will see it for water and CO2.
  - dopidopHN 5y ago
    That would be a novel idea.
  - axlee 5y ago
    Preventing them from fucking it up for pennies. A planet is worth more than whatever they can get from cutting down those trees. I believe in property rights, but fuck property rights when externalities are so huge that they can put the whole world in a dire situation. Property and sovereignty are a man-made concept, they can be undone as quickly as they were done. What matters is that the planet lives.
    - stale2002 5y ago
      But wouldn't it be less destructive to simply pay Brazil a large amount of money for that? A war would probably just damage the forest anyway.
      - ttyprintk 5y ago
        I wonder if we’ll cross a line and realize that Brazil’s leaders were proving their deliberation that military action would result in government-ordered destruction.
andreshb 5y ago
Activities like extensive logging for cattle ranching are driven by economic returns, global agreements and policy is not enough. There has to be a competing economic alternative that makes it more profitable to preserve rather than destroy the rainforest.
- xkcd-sucks 5y ago
  If only aliens would show up and pay us for samples of unique living things
- xyzwave 5y ago
  Well the Amazon is often referred to as “the world's largest medicine cabinet”, so there’s that.
marmot777 5y ago
Sadly, the Amazon basin has been on fire for decades. It’s destruction will be one of humanity’s biggest regrets.
- dfilppi 5y ago
  Or at least the Brazilians, who are actually responsible
  - spicyramen 5y ago
    Corruption
  - syops 5y ago
    Would you also blame those who buy lumber and crops from the Amazon? Capitalism's great problem is not accounting for negative externalities. I would include the consumers who drive the demand for Amazon products among the people that deserve blame (myself included in this).
    - marmot777 5y ago
      The soil isn’t good. It’s all bio mass so they burn, grow or graze and move on. It’s slash and burn.
zests 5y ago
My pet peeve is people asserting that rainforests are a carbon sinks. Mature rainforests are carbon neutral. The rainforests are carbon banks -- not sinks. This article is simply saying that the Amazon Rainforest is shrinking but it's using a lot of words for dramatic effect. I'd always expect a shrinking forest to emit carbon and an expanding forest to absorb it.
xyzwave 5y ago
Lot of comments here suggesting that lack of economic utility is to blame for the Amazon’s deforestation. While maybe true on an immediate basis, this overlooks the fact that 1/4 of all western medicines are derived from rainforest plants. Moreover, of the 3000 plants the US National Cancer Institute has found to be active against cancer cells, almost 3/4 come from tropical rainforests [1]. I don’t even think we can begin to quantify the losses we’re suffering as the Amazon is depleted. But I’m damn near certain the economic utility of logging and cattle ranching pale in comparison to the valuation of the drugs we’ve yet to discover in these forests. 1. http://www.earthtimes.org/encyclopaedia/environmental-issues/rainforests/ http://www.earthtimes.org/encyclopaedia/environmental-issues...

86 points by aracena 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

airstrike 5y ago

Feels like the bigger tragedy is what deforestation does to the rainforest's biodiversity

totesraunch 5y ago
There have been multiple mass extinctions in the past. Humans are just causing/accelerating the next one. It is sad though but at this point earth as we know it is doomed--all so the ultra-rich can hoard money, and for what?
- Dma54rhs 5y ago
  That is why there has to be a tax for the whole population of America and for other rich nations. These people are top of top considering the world population, there's no other way around to say poor nations should stop their economic development.

anthuswilliams 5y ago

What the article is saying here is, --ignoring the rest of the Amazon (A), if you take the amount of CO2 what would have been sequestered if the forest had been left alone (B) and then add it to the amount of CO2 emitted by whatever business interests thereafter occupied the land (C) you get a large number of greenhouse gases! Such that, when you subtract that from the amount of CO2 the Amazon would have absorbed if not for A, you get a negative number.-- They're double counting the deforestation. There's nothing else to see here.

wtallis 5y ago
That doesn't look like double-counting the effects of the deforestation, just breaking it down into two segments: the difference between leaving the forest in place vs. cutting it down, and then the difference between leaving the now-bare land idle vs. using it for industry.
- anthuswilliams 5y ago
  No. Double counting is an effect of ascribing the emissions. When you ascribe the effects to the Amazon, you combine the two. As a simple exercise, imagine that the deforested land had been left fallow, and the CO2 emitting business had set up shop at a different plot of land. You wouldn't ascribe the CO2 emitted by the business to the Amazon, and therefore, when you DO ascribe it to the Amazon, you are double-counting the effect. None of this is to say that it's okay to deforest the Amazon. I just hate it when people lie with numbers for the sake of a catchy headline.
  - wtallis 5y ago
    > As a simple exercise, imagine that the deforested land had been left fallow, and the CO2 emitting business had set up shop at a different plot of land. You wouldn't ascribe the CO2 emitted by the business to the Amazon, and therefore, when you DO ascribe it to the Amazon, you are double-counting the effect. Here you're assuming all the same industrial activity would have happened, just elsewhere. But that seems like an unfounded assumption that ignores how deforesting the Amazon opens up new cheap land to enable more industrial activity with lower costs than would otherwise be the case. Land is finite and not cheap. Pretending that eg. new farming would have simply happened in the same way and quantity elsewhere had the Amazon been protected is a more egregious lie than trying to include economic activity in the net greenhouse effect of the whole Amazon.
    - anthuswilliams 5y ago
      That's fair. But in return, I offer the counter-argument: When you double count like this, you are implicitly assuming deforestation ALLOWED the polluting business to occupy the new land, and they wouldn't have polluted to the same degree elsewhere (because it wasn't available, wasn't as profitable, or something else). A totally reasonable claim! I could explore it further. But IMO one should make this claim in good faith, make it clear what you're proposing, not engage in this kind of statistical sleight of hand. I am totally opposed to deforesting the Amazon. But I'm sick of political participants that think it's OK to lie to people, simply because the implications of the lie favor some greater truth.

xyst 5y ago

Why hasn’t the international community seized control over the Amazon rain forest? Clearly Bolsonaro and the Brazilian government doesn’t give two shits.

mc32 5y ago
You’re proposing invading a sovereign country and seizing their natural resources?
- ta988 5y ago
  Sounds like it, before it was for oil and fertile lands. Now we will see it for water and CO2.
- dopidopHN 5y ago
  That would be a novel idea.
- axlee 5y ago
  Preventing them from fucking it up for pennies. A planet is worth more than whatever they can get from cutting down those trees. I believe in property rights, but fuck property rights when externalities are so huge that they can put the whole world in a dire situation. Property and sovereignty are a man-made concept, they can be undone as quickly as they were done. What matters is that the planet lives.
  - stale2002 5y ago
    But wouldn't it be less destructive to simply pay Brazil a large amount of money for that? A war would probably just damage the forest anyway.
    - ttyprintk 5y ago
      I wonder if we’ll cross a line and realize that Brazil’s leaders were proving their deliberation that military action would result in government-ordered destruction.

andreshb 5y ago

Activities like extensive logging for cattle ranching are driven by economic returns, global agreements and policy is not enough. There has to be a competing economic alternative that makes it more profitable to preserve rather than destroy the rainforest.

xkcd-sucks 5y ago
If only aliens would show up and pay us for samples of unique living things
xyzwave 5y ago
Well the Amazon is often referred to as “the world's largest medicine cabinet”, so there’s that.

marmot777 5y ago

Sadly, the Amazon basin has been on fire for decades. It’s destruction will be one of humanity’s biggest regrets.

dfilppi 5y ago
Or at least the Brazilians, who are actually responsible
- spicyramen 5y ago
  Corruption
- syops 5y ago
  Would you also blame those who buy lumber and crops from the Amazon? Capitalism's great problem is not accounting for negative externalities. I would include the consumers who drive the demand for Amazon products among the people that deserve blame (myself included in this).
  - marmot777 5y ago
    The soil isn’t good. It’s all bio mass so they burn, grow or graze and move on. It’s slash and burn.

zests 5y ago

My pet peeve is people asserting that rainforests are a carbon sinks. Mature rainforests are carbon neutral. The rainforests are carbon banks -- not sinks. This article is simply saying that the Amazon Rainforest is shrinking but it's using a lot of words for dramatic effect. I'd always expect a shrinking forest to emit carbon and an expanding forest to absorb it.

xyzwave 5y ago

Lot of comments here suggesting that lack of economic utility is to blame for the Amazon’s deforestation. While maybe true on an immediate basis, this overlooks the fact that 1/4 of all western medicines are derived from rainforest plants. Moreover, of the 3000 plants the US National Cancer Institute has found to be active against cancer cells, almost 3/4 come from tropical rainforests [1]. I don’t even think we can begin to quantify the losses we’re suffering as the Amazon is depleted. But I’m damn near certain the economic utility of logging and cattle ranching pale in comparison to the valuation of the drugs we’ve yet to discover in these forests. 1. http://www.earthtimes.org/encyclopaedia/environmental-issues/rainforests/ http://www.earthtimes.org/encyclopaedia/environmental-issues...