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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?

#71

Post by DenisM »

A few comments are saying that forests capture a lot of CO2.

But how could that be? If a forest doesn't change over thousands of years it cannot be accumulating carbon in any significant quantity. Or else where would that material go?

The Amazon trees are about as tall and wide today as they were 10,000 years ago, and only so many of them fit on a given area. If the amount of vegetation remains the same the only way for a forest to capture carbon would be to accumulate an ever-increasing layer of it under the forest floor. That would be a lot of combustible material accumulated over millions of years that Amazon was around, and I'm pretty sure it isn't there (otherwise certain people would be mining it already).

Amazon is not scrubbing carbon out of the air, and neither does any other forest of static size. The carbon has to go into the ground to remain sequestered.

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

#72

Post by darkerside »

ramphastidae wrote: post #68
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this brought up a lot. Can you name a drug that has actually passed all the safety and efficacy trials that has been developed from something in the Amazon?

Quinine for one. There are many more if you are willing to do five minutes of research: https://www.conservation.org/blog/5-rainforest-species-that-...

It's 5 minutes of research if you know what you're looking for. It can be much more if you don't, and you don't know when and where to stop.

BTW, that's kind of the entire point of a site like HN. Experts from different fields (and hobbyists and laypersons) get together and exchange knowledge. Sorry to go on about this, but I've been seeing too many responses saying to go Google things.

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

#73

Post by sp332 »

jamesdmiller wrote: post #55
m0zg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I googled some and it looks like Amazon rainforest alone removes about a quarter of fossil fuel CO2 from the atmosphere. That's more than I thought it'd be. And it looks like it could sequester much more if there was more phosphorus in the soil.

Where do they put it? Wouldn't this require the total biomass of the rainforest to be continually increasing?

Old growth forests are not carbon-neutral. Models had to be adjusted after this study in 2008: https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Global-Warming/2008/09...

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

#74

Post by justanothernoob »

DenisM wrote: post #71

A few comments are saying that forests capture a lot of CO2. But how could that be? If a forest doesn't change over thousands of years it cannot be accumulating carbon in any significant quantity. Or else where would that material go? The Amazon trees are about as tall and wide today as they were 10,000 years ago, and only so many of them fit on a given area. If the amount of vegetation remains the same the only way…

You aren't accounting for the trees being living, growing beings. Asking how they capture CO2 is kind of like asking how we grab oxygen- it's in the air, we use it to fuel our growth and stay alive, and then it's CO2 when it leaves our bodies. It's the reverse for trees, I don't know if any significant amount of solid carbon would need to accumulate, as it forms the wood and the varies trees that grow and die.

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

#75

Post by majos »

xmprt wrote: post #39
majos wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 repor…

Maybe my original point was vague: I'm arguing that the "what" is simpler when human actors are involved. Person x said this, did this, accomplished that. The story is for the most part straightforward and understandable. And a lot of the reporting in these areas is just "what".

But people don't even have a good handle on the "what" of a lot of science (what are these new particles? what is p vs np?) which is why we get all these analogical half understandings.

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

#76

Post by mehrdadn »

darkerside wrote: post #72
ramphastidae wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quinine for one. There are many more if you are willing to do five minutes of research: https://www.conservation.org/blog/5-rainforest-species-that-...

It's 5 minutes of research if you know what you're looking for. It can be much more if you don't, and you don't know when and where to stop. BTW, that's kind of the entire point of a site like HN. Experts from different fields (and hobbyists and laypersons) get together and exchange knowledge. Sorry to go on about this, but I've been seeing too many responses saying to go Google things.

> It's 5 minutes of research if you know what you're looking for. It can be much more if you don't, and you don't know when and where to stop.

I know nothing about the topic, but literally just Googled Drugs from the Amazon [1], and the very first example of the very first search result I came across was Quinine. [2]

[1] https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&q=drugs+from+the+ama...

[2] https://www.adventure-life.com/amazon/articles/medicinal-tre...

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

#77

Post by topmonk »

darkerside wrote: post #72
ramphastidae wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quinine for one. There are many more if you are willing to do five minutes of research: https://www.conservation.org/blog/5-rainforest-species-that-...

It's 5 minutes of research if you know what you're looking for. It can be much more if you don't, and you don't know when and where to stop. BTW, that's kind of the entire point of a site like HN. Experts from different fields (and hobbyists and laypersons) get together and exchange knowledge. Sorry to go on about this, but I've been seeing too many responses saying to go Google things.

Just type into google "drugs developed from amazon forest" and the results appear above the search results right in an answer box.

No need to wag your finger.

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

#78

Post by sambal »

pvaldes wrote: post #56
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?

> Have they been suppressing natural fire in this region for too long? This is confusing for many people, I know. Ecosystems tend to increase its complexity with time. From lava field to savanna to forests. This is how it works. Life fills the gaps. If untouched, forests aim for the higher state of organisation possible, the so called "climax": A big forest, with huge old trees. Plants accumulate water, big plants ac…

I’d love to read more on this humid forest climax narrative from any credible sources, it sounds interesting and I don’t know anything about this sort of thing really, but at the same time it’s tripping my “just-so” sensors something heavy!

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

#79

Post by wcunning »

majos wrote: post #75
xmprt wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 repor…

Maybe my original point was vague: I'm arguing that the "what" is simpler when human actors are involved. Person x said this, did this, accomplished that. The story is for the most part straightforward and understandable. And a lot of the reporting in these areas is just "what". But people don't even have a good handle on the "what" of a lot of science (what are these new particles? what is p vs np?) which is why we…

I think the bigger question in a lot of human centric things is the "why" -- why did that head of state say that thing? Why does this company avoid that regulation? Why do people complain when this tax credit goes away? It's not reasonable to stop with the "what" in many situations. Or alternatively, the comparison to physics should be an article saying that the what is the spin of a single electron in an experiment, even though the experiment is about gravity -- missing the point entirely.

And backtracking slightly to my grandparent comment, Gell-Mann was coined by Michael Creighton who in the same quote compared Murray Gell-Mann's knowledge of physics to Creighton's knowledge of show business. The "what you know well enough to spot errors" can be anything as can the "what you blindly trust the reporter on out of your own ignorance."

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

#80

Post by doubleunplussed »

gamblor956 wrote: post #61
liability wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 na…

That is extremely unusual since besides generally require release forms from people in the pictures they run.

There's a saying for this. Something about a sweet summer child.
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