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Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

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

#111

Post by throwaway894345 »

DennisP wrote: post #21
nine_k wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in the U.S. and drive a car and eat meat, you are very unlikely eating illegally-raised Brazilian beef, or consuming illegally-mined Brazilian gold. Most likely, you eat U.S.-raised beef and burn gasoline from oil that comes from the U.S. or Middle East. Surely you are adding to the global warming, but it has nothing to do with Amazonian forest being illegally cut. In Brazil, most if not all cars run on e…

You make it sound like Brazilian beef is some little boutique thing. We don't eat much of it in the US because we are a giant beef producer ourselves, but Brazil is the world's largest beef exporter, by a significant margin. https://www.statista.com/chart/19122/biggest-exporters-of-be...

The parent seemed to be pretty clearly focusing on the US. I don’t think the idea was that the US experience extrapolates to allot most countries.

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

#112

Post by throwaway894345 »

tarsinge wrote: post #51
nine_k wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in the U.S. and drive a car and eat meat, you are very unlikely eating illegally-raised Brazilian beef, or consuming illegally-mined Brazilian gold. Most likely, you eat U.S.-raised beef and burn gasoline from oil that comes from the U.S. or Middle East. Surely you are adding to the global warming, but it has nothing to do with Amazonian forest being illegally cut. In Brazil, most if not all cars run on e…

The issue is not exported beef, it's exported soy to feed the beef in the US and in Europe.

The US also produces a huge amount of soy and corn. Do we really import that much Brazilian soy?

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

#113

Post by throwaway894345 »

selimthegrim wrote: post #76
nine_k wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in the U.S. and drive a car and eat meat, you are very unlikely eating illegally-raised Brazilian beef, or consuming illegally-mined Brazilian gold. Most likely, you eat U.S.-raised beef and burn gasoline from oil that comes from the U.S. or Middle East. Surely you are adding to the global warming, but it has nothing to do with Amazonian forest being illegally cut. In Brazil, most if not all cars run on e…

You can find cheap canned Brazilian corned beef at Walmart or pretty much any US dollar store.

That doesn’t seem to refute the idea that American consumption of Brazilian beef is trivial/niche. What share of Brazilian beef supply ends up on Wal-Mart shelves as corned beef?

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

#114

Post by praptak »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56
praptak wrote: post #30

The headline is unnecessarily sensationalist. A mature forest is never a carbon sink. Trees can only store so much carbon before there is no more room for them to grow. Obviously, burning a forest is still bad from the CO2-in-atmosphere point of view. Not because you have destroyed a carbon sink but because you released carbon from an existing carbon reservoir.

> mature forest is never a carbon sink Not never [1]. But never ca. 300 m.y.a. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mushroom-evolutio...

This hypothesis is being contested: https://www.pnas.org/content/113/9/2442

Although yes, if the old trees don't decompose (for whatever reason), then the forest becomes in fact a carbon sink.

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

#115

Post by yodelshady »

danparsonson wrote: post #34
yodelshady wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contract killers are responding to demand, but we don't let them legally practice their trade.

So people who hire contract killers are not to blame? I don't understand this argument - saying "it's not our fault the cattle/hardwood logging/mining companies cut down the Amazon" is nonsense, that's been widely known about for decades and we (collectively) just bought more and more of this stuff. It's their fault and ours.

Blame whoever you like. If we agree an activity is harmful, we usually pass laws to stop people doing it.

Other options can be applied, but only really if we don't agree, usually due to personal choice being relevant (some drugs, prostitution, seatbelts and helmets) or non-linear effects in both the utility and externalities (most pollution). Or both (cigarettes, alcohol, sugar).

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

#117

Post by mnowicki »

pantalaimon wrote: post #98
271828182846 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally makes sense. Maintaining the Amazon forest versus captializing off it financially by destroying it is an actual service to the world. Virtually a product! The product is a service turning CO2 into O2.

Amazon should just buy the Amazon.

Instructions unclear, now the largest e-commerce website is owned by some trees

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

#118

Post by danparsonson »

bjourne wrote: post #70
danparsonson wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So people who hire contract killers are not to blame? I don't understand this argument - saying "it's not our fault the cattle/hardwood logging/mining companies cut down the Amazon" is nonsense, that's been widely known about for decades and we (collectively) just bought more and more of this stuff. It's their fault and ours.

If buying makes you an accomplice, wouldn't buying, say, Chinese or Israeli goods make you an accomplice to those regimes' human rights abuses? How far do you think customer responsibility goes?

If the production of those goods entails human rights abuses then yes, that's an analogous situation and buying those goods signals tacit acceptance of those crimes. I think applying that to buying anything (for example) Chinese-made is a bit more of a grey area (not to mention almost impossible to avoid now) but I personally try not to because a proportion of any money going in that direction ends up in the hands of the Chinese government.

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

#119

Post by butMuhCulture »

bromuro wrote: post #79
travisjungroth wrote: post #6

I spent the last 10 days in a hut on the edge of the Amazon and am in a hotel in Lima, waiting for my flight out of Peru. Seeing this story, I thought I'd add one brief first hand account. The jungle was noticeably cut down since I had last been there 7 months ago. What had been just a hiking trail to our camp had been widened to the size of a road by all the tree clearing. The trees are pretty thin and not the best…

They put a road, start building the techo propio and extend chakras… and the forest is gone, hectare after hectares. With a new road , people get a promise for a job for some years - so they are happy - yet they won’t be any richer: it is just a way to survive a bit longer. Roads are sort of a scam, financed by government, chinese constructors and chemical companies. I live in the upper Amazon in Peru and I believe t…

You need to read some Paulo Freire.

Sometimes I think the violent attitude towards the planet… you picked the wrong scale.

I’d rather the technologically rich and educated take a sober look at their educated destruction of the planet rather than think they have THE philosophy to teach indigenous peoples.

This is just getting absurd. Rich countries concern themselves with the fiscal cost versus the real cost. But let’s ignore that discourse to ponder the poor education of the natives, making them oblivious savages.

I don’t really know about “civilized society” these days. Seems just as entitled to living in an epistemology that’s completely decoupled from reality, and believing it’s their universal duty to boast globally how unhinged they are. Sounds pretty colonial still. Missionary like. Literally less violent to each other today, but just as driven to bring on the end times through mindless consumption. Witness me; like and subscribe!

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

#120

Post by danparsonson »

pessimizer wrote: post #96
danparsonson wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and (in countries with functioning democracies) public policy responds to pressure from the public. It doesn't tend to change in the face of public apathy.

And in countries with functioning mass media systems, the public responds to pressure from the tv.

Indeed; isn't life wonderful. We can still choose to ignore the noise, or treat it with skepticism, do our own investigation etc. We're not forced to listen. But yeah, sure, the media also share some of the blame - they're people too. These are problems of humanity's making.
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