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Does the Amazon provide 20% of our oxygen?

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Re: Does the Amazon provide 20% of our oxygen?

#31

Post by Retric »

bad_user wrote: post #28
wcunning wrote: post #3

The basic gist of the article is found about 1/2 way in: "First, the phytoplankton in the oceans also photosynthesise [...] Therefore in terms of TOTAL global photosynthesis, photosynthesis in the Amazon contributes around 9%. [...] Second, a bigger point that is often missed is that the Amazon consumes about as much oxygen as it produces." This reminds me, as we should all be reminded on a regular basis, the bulk of…

Netflix has a pretty cool series called "One Strange Rock". You should watch it, they explain the Amazon's role well in one episode. First of all oxygen is constant. Oxygen is currently not the problem. And it's a good thing that it's constant because we don't want more of it either. The problem with Amazon is that on Earth it's all interconnected and while there's plenty of room for failure, there is a tipping point…

There is no single tipping point. There are a vast number of different tipping points with different outcomes.

Re: Does the Amazon provide 20% of our oxygen?

#32

Post by sp332 »

povertyworld wrote: post #15

I haven't been following this specific news story, but I remember from my environmental sociology class that fire prevention in forests eventually leads to unnatural states that are then prone to massive uncontainable fires. Have they been suppressing natural fire in this region for too long? If this fire is naturally burning, then isn't the best response to let it run its course unless human lives are threatened?

These are fires for agricultural land. They're much smaller than natural forest fires but many of them are set at once at the beginning of the season, so it's still a lot of forest on fire.

Re: Does the Amazon provide 20% of our oxygen?

#33

Post by majos »

wcunning wrote: post #3

The basic gist of the article is found about 1/2 way in: "First, the phytoplankton in the oceans also photosynthesise [...] Therefore in terms of TOTAL global photosynthesis, photosynthesis in the Amazon contributes around 9%. [...] Second, a bigger point that is often missed is that the Amazon consumes about as much oxygen as it produces." This reminds me, as we should all be reminded on a regular basis, the bulk of…

I don't quite get the claim behind the Gell-Mann effect. It assumes that because journalism about physics is inaccurate and oversimplified, journalism about everything else is too.

But why should this be? Physics, and similar hard sciences, are deep and complex fields. There's plenty of math, jargon, and a long literature. Of course inaccurate simplifications happen when writing about it for a popular audience. Add in the weird incentives of mass media and the lack of scientific expertise among most journalists, and it makes sense that popular physics news is not so accurate.

In contrast, other newspaper topics like politics, sports, business, etc. are often literal reporting of what people do. I'm not saying any of these areas is necessarily simple, but they are at the root level about human actors, not abstract quantities that most people have 0 intuition for. So I expect that it's actually easier to do good reporting on those topics.

Re: Does the Amazon provide 20% of our oxygen?

#34

Post by gus_massa »

palisade wrote: post #10

More importantly as the planet's "lungs" the Amazon filters a great quantity of carbon dioxide from the air.

No, with some minor simplifications, the plants amount of CO2 that the pants absorb is proportional to the amount of O2 they produce. So

Does the Amazon provide 20% of our oxygen?

is equivalent to

Does the Amazon remove 20% of our waste carbon dioxide?

The main part of the "lungs" of the planet is the phytoplankton in the sea.

Re: Does the Amazon provide 20% of our oxygen?

#35

Post by cm2187 »

marvin wrote: post #22
cm2187 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But doesn't it regrow from the hashes?

From the ashes? Not if it's turned into a ranch! And I'm not qualified to answer what happens when you burn down an entire millenia-old ecosystem. Seems plausible that it might not go straight back to its old self in a human-relevant timeframe.

Well my question is rather if it becomes a growing forest again, ie capturing co2.

Re: Does the Amazon provide 20% of our oxygen?

#36

Post by liability »

majos wrote: post #33
wcunning wrote: post #3

The basic gist of the article is found about 1/2 way in: "First, the phytoplankton in the oceans also photosynthesise [...] Therefore in terms of TOTAL global photosynthesis, photosynthesis in the Amazon contributes around 9%. [...] Second, a bigger point that is often missed is that the Amazon consumes about as much oxygen as it produces." This reminds me, as we should all be reminded on a regular basis, the bulk of…

I don't quite get the claim behind the Gell-Mann effect. It assumes that because journalism about physics is inaccurate and oversimplified, journalism about everything else is too. But why should this be? Physics, and similar hard sciences, are deep and complex fields. There's plenty of math, jargon, and a long literature. Of course inaccurate simplifications happen when writing about it for a popular audience. Add i…

> In contrast, other newspaper topics like politics, sports, business, etc. are often literal reporting of what people do.

I was once in a local paper for my participation in a sports team. Well, my picture was. The name given to me in the article and caption was fabricated. Such a name didn't even belong to anybody else in my school, let alone on the same team!

I assume the 'reporter' was too drunk to remember my name and too embarassed to ask somebody, so he just made one up.

Re: Does the Amazon provide 20% of our oxygen?

#37

Post by seppin »

dev_dull wrote: post #12
tcgv wrote: post #6

This subject has been treated so irresponsibly these past few days that not only people are making inaccurate statements such as "the Amazon provides 20% of our oxygen", but also high profile people such as Emmanuel Macron (France's President) and Cristiano Ronaldo (World famous soccer player) are sharing false information and photos[1] [1] http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=pt&tl=en&u=http...

It’s almost like these people are more interested in pushing a narrative and not the facts?

It's almost as if these specific details are wrong but the greater trend is happening, so why fixate on it?

Re: Does the Amazon provide 20% of our oxygen?

#38

Post by alacombe »

Bjartr wrote: post #23
dev_dull wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re being downvoted, but it clearly is a political move. The fires aren’t even outside of the average and already countries are applying political pressure on the president. When the facts are detached from the narrative, it’s usually a political story.

I heard the fires were up by 87% from last year, no matter the base rate, nearly double seems to qualify as "outside the average"

Not according to NASA... https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145464/fires-in-bra...

Re: Does the Amazon provide 20% of our oxygen?

#39

Post by xmprt »

majos wrote: post #33
wcunning wrote: post #3

The basic gist of the article is found about 1/2 way in: "First, the phytoplankton in the oceans also photosynthesise [...] Therefore in terms of TOTAL global photosynthesis, photosynthesis in the Amazon contributes around 9%. [...] Second, a bigger point that is often missed is that the Amazon consumes about as much oxygen as it produces." This reminds me, as we should all be reminded on a regular basis, the bulk of…

I don't quite get the claim behind the Gell-Mann effect. It assumes that because journalism about physics is inaccurate and oversimplified, journalism about everything else is too. But why should this be? Physics, and similar hard sciences, are deep and complex fields. There's plenty of math, jargon, and a long literature. Of course inaccurate simplifications happen when writing about it for a popular audience. Add i…

Your comment illustrates the point even more in my opinion. You understand more about physics than politics, sports, and business, and so you're able to see how journalists can get it wrong. However, if you actually dived into the world of sports and similar fields about "human actors" there's a lot of interpersonal relations and complexity that can't be described in a 500 word article. If journalists were just reporting about the "what" then physics would be just like reporting sports scores if you just copy the result. When you try to explain the "how" and "why" then all the complexity that you described about physics applies to sports.

Re: Does the Amazon provide 20% of our oxygen?

#40

Post by skosch »

dev_dull wrote: post #11
molteanu wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just another political play to oust Bolsonaro, the Brazil's president, from power. There have already been EU voices pushing for sanctions against Brazil and the Amazon fires are on the G7 agenda which brings a lot of negative press against the political body in Brazil. All the while central Africa is also ravaged by fires but you don't hear that in the news. Like most of what you hear in the big press, it co…

You’re being downvoted, but it clearly is a political move. The fires aren’t even outside of the average and already countries are applying political pressure on the president. When the facts are detached from the narrative, it’s usually a political story.

False. The 2019 fires are way outside of the average: http://www.globalfiredata.org/forecast.html

Also, what you call average is only the average over the past few years, which means: illegal loggers and ranchers burning the forest on purpose.

The true long-term average is a healthy forest with very few fires.

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