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The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#81

Post by rootusrootus »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #44
keawade wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article does not promote deforestation. > Losing the Amazon, beyond representing a planetary historic tragedy beyond measure, would also make meeting the ambitious climate goals of the Paris Agreement all but impossible. It discusses a misconception that has been propogated lately. > The Amazon is a vast, ineffable, vital, living wonder. It does not, however, supply the planet with 20 percent of its oxygen. > As…

Characterizing 6% of the oxygen supply as “more or less zero” (as the author does) seems to signal approval of deforestation to me.

Where did you get that? I think you misread that paragraph from the article. The author did not equate 6% to zero.

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#82

Post by sp332 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #21
chisleu wrote: post #12

This is a great point. An important aspect of this is that most of the Amazon's deforestation is land owners developing their land and adding to the agricultural sectors of South America. If we want to stop them, we need to stop the excessive consumption of these goods. This doesn't just mean stopping over eating, it means changing what you eat and paying more for goods sourced locally. Unfortunately, that means from…

From what I've read most of the agricultural production in Brazil goes directly or indirectly towards beef and biofuel. So cutting down on beef consumption seems like a great step. I personally have cut down my meat consumption dramatically, but how can we move that further as not only a society, but a species? If I stop eating beef, but nobody else does, nothing is won. If the US cuts down on beef consumption, other…

America banned beef imports from Brazil a couple of years ago. Leather could still come from Brazilian cattle though.

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#83

Post by partialrecall »

jstummbillig wrote: post #78
partialrecall wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adherence to the truth is more important than adherence to a narrative. Promoting a good cause by allowing falsehoods to spread may seem helpful in the short term, but in doing so you're building a house on a foundation of sand. When you promote trivial falsehoods instead of calling them out, you allow your opposition to be the one who calls out those falsehoods, and thus undermine your cause. When somebody on your s…

This is incredibly naive in a reality, where the POTUS can contradict himself on social media – with traceable evidence dating back often not more than a week – and absolutely nothing coming of it. Right now, when it comes to public opinion and action, volume clearly beats a good signal/noise ratio. This is not an isolated issue, this happens all around the globe. Populism is on the rise. Simple beats true. Yes, you…

Fighting lies with more lies is short term thinking. You will ultimately erode the public's ability to recognize the truth at all. When the truth can no longer work for you because you've either divorced yourself from it or rendered the public unable to recognize it, then what do you have left?

Nothing matters more than the truth.

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#84

Post by Leader2light »

vfc1 wrote: post #20

It might be that burning down every living tree would not make a dent in the oxygen supply, but having the earth temperature go up 5 degrees would kill most phytoplankton, and that would end the oxygen supply (eventually). This type of articles is the last thing we need right now, it all piles up on the narrative that the consequences of climate change are really not that bad and there is no real urgency in doing any…

We are long past peaceful solutions. The only real solution is to kill 80% or more of the human race.

Dumbass Bill Gates should be spending his money on creating viruses, not preventing them. He had some bullshit answer about how that is not true, just give it a few more decades and reality will hit home.

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#85

Post by icebraining »

Carioca wrote: post #72
input_sh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...but how can we move that further as not only a society, but a species? The answer is simple, the execution is hard and will piss a lot of people off: start treating red meat as a luxury item, and slowly introduce taxes on top of its price, like we do for alcohol and tobacco. Nothing drastic of course, just a few cents extra every half a year or so to make people reconsider their eating habits again and again. Bu…

There are other measures that could help, like actually policing the region and promoting economic alternatives for local population. Sadly, the currently Brazilian government decided to stop both of them

I dislike the Brazilian government, but the rest of the world shouldn't wash their hands of the problem either. If the Amazon is important to the whole world, the whole world should be giving that government a damn good deal to convince it to prevent deforestation.

As an European, I was quite disgusted by the reactions of the "EU leaders".

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#86

Post by throwaway5752 »

leetcrew wrote: post #66
throwaway5752 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, lying is bad and for whatever critiques you can have of my point, it's not whataboutism. You can say it's cynical, but I believe people lie all the time and I should be economical with my precious time when arguing on the internet. But if you think the categorization of the Amazon as the Earth's lungs is above that criteria for you, then I will not stop you even though I will think it's ridiculous.

arguments of the form "this is bad, but there are much worse incidences of {bad thing} we should be talking about instead" are whataboutism. you are arguing for an exception because you've run into an issue where you find yourself on the opposite side. it's one thing to decide not to spend your mental energy on a small deceit/inaccuracy. you are actively trying to shut down the discussion.

No, I actually don't give a crap. This meta discussion aside, I actually know that my time on this planet is finite and as a result my attention is finite. Whether of not the Amazon is the Earth's lungs is a pedantic point. If it is or not, it doesn't change my stance on preserving it. So, while the article is true, I can safely ignore it because it is not meaningful. Not sure how much you know about agriculture and the Fischer-Tropsch process, but the Amazon soil is not particularly fertile and requires a bunch of nitrogen fertilizer which in turn is generally produced by fracking. Further, a bunch of that soy goes towards feeding cows. So burning the Amazon down is mostly pointless and contributes to furthering the global warming crisis in several important ways. It's important I don't lose sight getting engaged in a pedantic argument over trivial details. You see the same dynamic in gun control debates when someone re-polarizes a discussion by turning it towards a misidentification of a particular gun or whether "assault rifle" is a valid categorization of guns. Polarizing the discussion is the point, so I choose to ignore true points that are used to distract people from more meaningful conclusions. It's a very basic and easy technique to resist disinformation.

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#87

Post by wutbrodo »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #44
keawade wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article does not promote deforestation. > Losing the Amazon, beyond representing a planetary historic tragedy beyond measure, would also make meeting the ambitious climate goals of the Paris Agreement all but impossible. It discusses a misconception that has been propogated lately. > The Amazon is a vast, ineffable, vital, living wonder. It does not, however, supply the planet with 20 percent of its oxygen. > As…

Characterizing 6% of the oxygen supply as “more or less zero” (as the author does) seems to signal approval of deforestation to me.

Let's leave aside how ludicrous it is to ignore the author's half-paragraph of passionate description of deforestation as tragedy and read the tea leaves to determine he's a deforestation fan, and ignore how absurd it is to criticize a factual claim on the basis that it hurts or helps a narrative: you're not even reading the article's claims correctly.

> The Amazon produces about 6 percent of the oxygen currently being made by photosynthetic organisms alive on the planet today. But surprisingly, this is not where most of our oxygen comes from. In fact, from a broader Earth-system perspective, in which the biosphere not only creates but also consumes free oxygen, the Amazon’s contribution to our planet’s unusual abundance of the stuff is more or less zero.

The Amazon produces 6% of oxygen produces by photosynthetic organisms. The proportion of total oxygen produced by these organisms (let's call it P) is relatively small enough that the Amazon's contribution, 0.06*P, ends up being negligible.

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#88

Post by leetcrew »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #86
leetcrew wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

arguments of the form "this is bad, but there are much worse incidences of {bad thing} we should be talking about instead" are whataboutism. you are arguing for an exception because you've run into an issue where you find yourself on the opposite side. it's one thing to decide not to spend your mental energy on a small deceit/inaccuracy. you are actively trying to shut down the discussion.

No, I actually don't give a crap. This meta discussion aside, I actually know that my time on this planet is finite and as a result my attention is finite. Whether of not the Amazon is the Earth's lungs is a pedantic point. If it is or not, it doesn't change my stance on preserving it. So, while the article is true, I can safely ignore it because it is not meaningful. Not sure how much you know about agriculture and…

> Polarizing the discussion is the point, so I choose to ignore true points that are used to distract people from more meaningful conclusions. It's a very basic and easy technique to resist disinformation.

I'm honestly kind of shocked to see someone admit that this is their intention in so few words.

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#89

Post by ptah »

input_sh wrote: post #28
ajmurmann wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read most of the agricultural production in Brazil goes directly or indirectly towards beef and biofuel. So cutting down on beef consumption seems like a great step. I personally have cut down my meat consumption dramatically, but how can we move that further as not only a society, but a species? If I stop eating beef, but nobody else does, nothing is won. If the US cuts down on beef consumption, other…

> ...but how can we move that further as not only a society, but a species? The answer is simple, the execution is hard and will piss a lot of people off: start treating red meat as a luxury item, and slowly introduce taxes on top of its price, like we do for alcohol and tobacco. Nothing drastic of course, just a few cents extra every half a year or so to make people reconsider their eating habits again and again. Bu…

you don't have to tax beef. merely remove the subsidies given to it's producers and let the free market cut down the consumption

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#90

Post by zamfi »

partialrecall wrote: post #33
mikepurvis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Released as waste via photosynthesis when it breaks apart CO2 in order to use the carbon to build plant matter?

If I recall my bio class right, the oxygen in the CO2 goes into the production of carbohydrates. The oxygen released as waste comes from split water molecules (photosynthesis requires both CO2 and H20.)

Photosynthesis releases as many O2 molecules as it takes in CO2 molecules. It also uses water and produces sugar.

I’m not sure if the released oxygen comes from the water or the carbon dioxide but it doesn’t much matter!

Edit: looks like it comes from the water. Cool!

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