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Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

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101–110 of 141 posts

Re: Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

#101
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even NASA concedes that the last 20 years has seen the planet become greener. Humans planting trees for reforestation have almost nothing to do with that trend. People are trying to claim credit for things they have nothing to do with. The surface area of the earth is absolutely massive. Humans likely occupy less than 2% of it. Even if all humanity was mobilozed to planting trees 24/7 with the most advanced machines…

> Even NASA concedes that the last 20 years has seen the planet become greener. Humans planting trees for reforestation have almost nothing to do with that trend. Are you sure, from nasa.gov itself: > which is thought to be due to intensive agriculture to feed growing populations and ambitious tree-planting programs https://www.nasa.gov/feature/greening-of-the-earth-mitigates... > Birds do more for nature using only…

This response is intellectually dishonest.

This article from NASA makes it absolutely clear that it's not human tree planting which has caused the greening:

>> From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...

The second point is just as dishonest. The number of different species of birds does not affect forestation. It's mostly about the number of specimens. The variety of species doesn't matter much since many different bird species exhibit the same behaviors. Many different species of birds eat fruits and seeds. Many birds carry twigs and sprouts long distances to use to build their nests. Birds are like forest planting drones which work 24/7 and can replicate themselves.

Re: Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

#103
post #80

Why should it ever have been a carbon sink? I thought forests were neutral as they release carbon when old growth decomposes?

If they were neutral we wouldn’t have fossil fuels. Oil, coal and peat are made of old forests, wetlands and what not.

It's worth mentioning that carbon deposits are not made uniformly, and in fact certain geological periods are known for having large deposits of carbon while others have almost none.

Re: Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

#105

Carbon dioxide is good for trees. This will continue the planetary greening which has been occurring over the past few decades thanks to human activity. Trees are very good at adapting to and compensating for additional carbon dioxide. I look forward to further decentralization of forests and an overall greener planet. BTW, the science behind planetary greening is that higher carbon dioxide helps plants to be more wa…

> I look forward to further decentralization of forests

This sounds like something that you would read in a whitepaper for TreeCoin

Re: Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

#106

Carbon dioxide is good for trees. This will continue the planetary greening which has been occurring over the past few decades thanks to human activity. Trees are very good at adapting to and compensating for additional carbon dioxide. I look forward to further decentralization of forests and an overall greener planet. BTW, the science behind planetary greening is that higher carbon dioxide helps plants to be more wa…

> "Evolution is cleverer than you are" - Leslie Orgel Evolution also works at longer timescales than we do. Sure we may end up with 60 foot ferns again 10k years from now as plant life rebounds in the carbon rich atmosphere, but that doesn't help your grandkids.

This is nonsense. Evolution can radically change a species in just one generation if the selective pressures are strong enough.

For example, if the world governments sterilized every human on the planet except dwarves, in just 1 generation the average human would be half as tall. With strong selective pressure, 1 generation is all it takes for the species to change radically. Evolution doesn't care about your timelines. Again, it's cleverer than you are.

Re: Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

#107
post #73
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s an interesting thought experiment as to what it would take for the world to force protection with an external military force (e.g. this might be the only solution, but the chances of it happening are zero). Brazil would never tolerate that, nor should they. On the other hand if you want to buy huge tracts of the Amazon and pay private security forces to protect it, that's doable. Better though would be to make…

> Better though would be to make it in Brazil's interest to protect the Amazon. We all benefit from it being intact, so we should all chip in to create an economic incentive for the county of Brazil to maintain it. It's really a sad little pretzel of hell that we (supposedly) need to create economic incentives for every human on Earth to not squander their local resources for short term gain when it is in fact econom…

I agree it's unfortunate. I don't know of any alternatives to globalism and capitalism that aren't worse though.

But it's important to recognize where capitalism fails (tragedy of the commons situations, negative externalities) and address those.

Re: Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

#108
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s an interesting thought experiment as to what it would take for the world to force protection with an external military force (e.g. this might be the only solution, but the chances of it happening are zero). Brazil would never tolerate that, nor should they. On the other hand if you want to buy huge tracts of the Amazon and pay private security forces to protect it, that's doable. Better though would be to make…

Someone above stated they were just near the Amazon, they saw someone's privately owned lot got invaded with bulldozers. I'm not sure if private ownership is the answer, the Amazon is extremely huge.

Its not enough to own it, you have to actually have armed security on the ground to protect it. People are killed in Brazil trying to defend the forest from illegal logging and clearing.

I think the state should take on that role, but there needs to be a strong inventive for them to want to protect it.

Re: Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

#110
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were neutral we wouldn’t have fossil fuels. Oil, coal and peat are made of old forests, wetlands and what not.

It's worth mentioning that carbon deposits are not made uniformly, and in fact certain geological periods are known for having large deposits of carbon while others have almost none.

True - I generalized too much.
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