The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs • Hacker News Board

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#141

Post by ehvatum » Tue, Sep 10, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

throwaway5752 wrote: post #40

BurningFrog wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This type of articles is the last thing we need right now We always need the truth. If your agenda can't handle the truth, it's maybe not that great to begin with.

It might make you feel good to write that, but there are much bigger lies being told. For example, tons of people believe that CO2 released by human activity does not cause global warming, and tons of people are promoting that idea. Arguing over just how much photosynthesis the Amazon is responsible for seems like a stupid article in light of that. Perhaps we can be selective over what we argue about and what we pay…

there are much bigger lies being told

This is always true, for everything. Scientific method must be applied consistently. The instant agenda enters into the picture and dictates what truths are lies because bigger lies exist, all is lost.

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#142

Post by reb » Tue, Sep 10, 2019, 7:50 PM UTC

tempguy9999 wrote: post #124

reb wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the scale of our folly of consumerism and over-consumption Consumerism, over-consumption, and the economic growth these behaviors drive are impossible to eliminate without crippling the global economy. But I think there actually is a way to have our unlimited cake without toasting the planet, it just requires us to divorce the concept of value from physical items (or increase the fidelity, and thus value, of digita…

> Consumerism, over-consumption, and the economic growth these behaviors drive are impossible to eliminate without crippling the global economy. Then let's ask the question. What are the medium (5-20) years and long (100 years) consequences of such crippling in your view? I am not an economist so any insight from an expert would be good.

Near term, the radical contraction or failure of most businesses that directly or indirectly depend on consumerism and over-consumption as the prevailing social behavior. In America, that's a lot of businesses. In China, that's a lot of businesses. And much of the world effectively serves consumerism in these large nations.

Long term... depends? Maybe people figure out a different mechanic to drive growth and re-orient. Maybe people abandon growth as a goal and shift toward a steady-state model (this would be interesting, but would have big global power implications unless every nation signs on). Maybe people suffer for a bit before rediscovering how powerful consumerism is as an economic engine and get back into it for a while until the costs start catching up to them again.

As the foremost expert on "my view", you can depend on these predictions to capture with total accuracy what I believe to be the crippling consequences mentioned earlier.

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#143

Post by strainer » Tue, Sep 10, 2019, 10:58 PM UTC

ehvatum wrote: post #139

strainer wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But its not a falsehood to call the Amazon "lungs of the Earth" - its an illustration of the fact that the Amazon, until perhaps recently has been the "largest residual terrestrial carbon sink on the planet"[1] The article opens with this headline which is false: "Humans could burn every living thing on the planet and still not dent its oxygen supply." If every living thing was burnt, the planet would cease to resupp…

If every living thing was burnt, the planet would cease to resupply oxygen and most of the free oxygen reserves in the atmosphere and oceans would be consumed through geological processes Over what timescale? If you burned every speck of organic matter on the planet, and then you came back in 10,000 years, how much O2 would be in the atmosphere? The article under discussion seems to suggest about 20%.

I dont know if it would take ten thousand years or ten billion years for all the free oxygen in atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere to be depleted. But all of it is here and maintained by the sum total of interconnected living things and it would all go without it.

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#144

Post by imhelpingu » Wed, Sep 11, 2019, 12:19 AM UTC

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…

In terms of giving people a reason for skepticism, simply telling the truth (for once) is a drop in the pan compared to all the bald-faced, dishonest, say-anything "activism" performed by various groups (e.g. the entire neoliberal media establishment) pertaining to global warming. I think climate change is a serious issue and a threat to the species, just by the way.

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#145

Post by leephillips » Wed, Sep 11, 2019, 1:18 AM UTC

astine wrote: post #110

leephillips wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article does not explain why losing the Amazon would have an large effect on global climate, it just makes this assertion. Why would it?

Because of the sequestration of carbon in the forest. If you burn the forest down, all of the carbon in the forest is released into the atmosphere in the form of smoke.

I was thinking it must be that, but I was too lazy to try to quantify it. Thank you.

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#146

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Sep 11, 2019, 1:26 AM UTC

obelos wrote: post #129

wutbrodo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, this is a thoughtful response. That being said, the argument you're linking to, while quite sound, doesn't disagree with me. It's saying that, when rebutting concerted propaganda, simply making the truth available in an undirected manner and hoping people will find it isn't enough: you have to make an effort to get it to the right places at the right time. There's no endorsement therein of suppressing or f…

I don't disagree with this, and I'm not advocating for creating or perpetuating “noble lies.” But look at the framing of the OP article. It is the perfect example of the squirt gun of truth. The headline refutes a metaphorical statement, not a factual claim. There are ways one could counter particulars or improve the quality of the metaphor without altogether tossing it in the bin. Saying the Amazon rain forest is th…

> Saying the Amazon rain forest is the Earth's lungs has lots of metaphorical applicability. It speaks to people's intuition about how forests cycle water around the planet as a quasi-respiration organs, very much like gas- and water-exchanging lungs. And with similar importance to the “organism” of Earth's biosphere.

I've always heard the metaphor accompanied tightly by the claim that it's a significant fraction of the Earth's oxygen production, and denying the metaphor seemed to me to imply nothing further than the refutation of this fact, particularly in light of the first paragraph's strong claims that avoiding deforestation is important. I just don't see why it's critical that he emphasize that point in the firm of holding up the existing metaphor. I read the article (and I think the author intended it) as a pretty classic popular-science case of "here's a common misconception", and as shallow as that may be, it has value.

At any rate, it ounds like we're on roughly the same page overall, and our remaining differences are starting to inch towards pedantry. Thanks for the conversation!

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#147

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Sep 11, 2019, 1:42 AM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #117

wutbrodo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been really interesting to me to see how the concept that lying in support of your preferred narrative is the correct way to engage publicly with a problem has evolved over the last few years. It seems like only a few years ago that people who admitted to this strategy were roundly condemned. Now, it's a completely normal view to go out of your way to openly endorse lying about eg science as a moral course of ac…

> It's been really interesting to me to see how the concept that lying in support of your preferred narrative is the correct way to engage publicly with a problem has evolved over the last few years. It seems like only a few years ago that people who admitted to this strategy were roundly condemned. I often think of the election of Donald Trump in this sense...in a way, he is showing us crystal clear how our politica…

> And rather than the left being shocked into a higher state of consciousness and considering they may need to rethink their overall political strategy, instead it seems they've essentially decided to double down with more of the same theater.

Every time I think I've found the first mover, there's a justification that goes further back. I'm a solid left-liberal, represented most closely by Obama, who discovered through the left's increasing embrace of dishonesty/bigotry/other dirty tactics that his liberal identity was more important than his leftist one. This was years and years before Trump ever entered the scene, and I know people on the right who consider Trump almost as much of a monster as I do, but also consider him to be a necessary fight-fire-with-fire evil against the left's dirty tricks.

And of course, many leftists who embraced illiberalism in that period can reasonably point to something that GWB did as their justification for further weakening norms. And so on and so on ad infinitum.

Anybody with a brain and a history book understands that that's a positive feedback loop that's caused untold amounts of suffering over the course of history, and the social technologies we call liberalism smooth out the tendencies of this cycle to escalate and sublimate the "kill everyone you disagree with" impulses of most of history into progressively gentler forms of resolving conflicting ideas of how the world should be, while still allowing for progress.

That isn't to say that norms and institutions are always sacrosanct and that sharp breaks are never a good idea, but thinking that this started with Trump betrays a misunderstanding of the way these things work and why liberalism exists in the first place.

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#148

Post by CodeWriter23 » Wed, Sep 11, 2019, 2:28 AM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #87

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bei…

The article is a classic mixed message propaganda. Too much “is it really THAT bad though?” mixed in with the mainstream opinion that it’s really bad. This is how consent is engineered. Not surprised at all that people fall for it though.

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#149

Post by zamfi » Wed, Sep 11, 2019, 2:33 AM UTC

Xixi wrote: post #113

partialrecall wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: 6CO2 + 6H2O → C6H12O6 + 6O2 In English: 6 carbon dioxide molecules and 6 water molecules become 1 glucose molecule and 6 dioxygen molecules. So for each CO2 molecule in, there is one O2 molecule out. Now it's entirely possible that some of the O in O2 comes from the H2O molecules. At most half of it if I know how to count up to twelve. Edited for clarity.

> At most half of it if I know how to count up to twelve.

I thought so too, and this would be true if the reaction happened exactly as the equation describes.

But it turns out there are a bunch of intermediate steps.

The first set is pure hydrolysis:

2H2O + light + depleted energy carriers -> 2O2 + 2H(+) + filled energy carriers (that include 2H)

That oxygen is excreted and ends up in the atmosphere. Then, there’s the transpiration process that takes in CO2 and makes sugar and water again:

3CO2 + filled energy carriers (that include 6H total) + 6H(+) -> C3H6O3 + depleted energy carriers + 3H2O

So really what happens is this:

6CO2 + 12H2O -> C6H12O6 + 6O2 + 6H2O

All the O2 output comes from the 12 H2O input. The 6 H2O output are recreated with half the H from the input 12 H2O but oxygen from from half the 6CO2 input, while the other half of the CO2, combined with 12 H from the 12 H2O input, make the sugar.

Fascinating stuff.

One upshot: all that crap about the water molecules being the same molecules the dinosaurs swam is crap. Any water that’s been through photosynthesis is reconstituted on the molecular level!

Re: The Amazon Is Not the Earth’s Lungs

#150

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Sep 11, 2019, 5:00 AM UTC

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #148

wutbrodo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bei…

The article is a classic mixed message propaganda. Too much “is it really THAT bad though?” mixed in with the mainstream opinion that it’s really bad. This is how consent is engineered. Not surprised at all that people fall for it though.

There are multiple paragraphs of the strongest possible language describing how horrible deforestation would be. I've looked through the entire article and can't find a single thing that would be considered "is it that bad", beyond the basic factual claim the article is premised on. Is there any way that your claim is falsifiable at all? Ie, what would an article debunking the "20% of oxygen" myth look like without being "mixed message propaganda engineering consent". The author clearly went to some pretty great lengths to head off the frothing paranoia that he knew people would bring to the issue, and it's not clear to me what else he could have done.