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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

#31

Post by thotypous »

ArnoVW wrote: post #7
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #2

* Consumers eating JBS beef and consumers buying exotic wood and consumers buying gold from illegal mining have flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source. This collective blamming becomes tiring when the actions are self-contained in a small group of people.

I could be wrong, but I belief that the issue is bigger than that. If you live in the US and drive a car or eat meat, you are likely to be co-responsible. Soy culture is used to create a cheap protein feedstock for the meat industry. Modern car fuel contains ethanol (10% in the EU). The ethanol is produced by having micro organisms convert biomass. The idea being that you use the short carbon cycle (already in the ec…

> Modern car fuel contains ethanol (10% in the EU).

Here at Brazil, ethanol is produced from sugarcane. And sugarcane farming is actually illegal in the Amazon. The President tried to make it legal, but fortunately his decree was suspended by the Judiciary [1].

I don't doubt there may exist a few illegal sugarcane farms in the Amazon, but given how huge sugarcane farming is in southeastern Brazil, I don't think any Amazon sugarcane would significantly contribute to Brazilian ethanol production.

> Soy culture is used to create a cheap protein feedstock for the meat industry.

Soy is more of an issue for Amazon than sugarcane. But, just as you said, it is used to feed cattle, and the main issue resides in the cattle. Cattleman in Amazon usually adopt the extensive breeding system, so lots of area are required to breed cattle.

[1] https://www.conjur.com.br/2020-abr-21/juiza-suspende-decreto...

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

#32

Post by mensetmanusman »

I have seen interactive data representations over time using NASA satellite databases: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147075/a-new-tool-f...

It was amazing seeing the effect of political action on the satellite data: e.g. areas that were deemed okay (or not) to cut down were almost immediately protected (with lit borders to stop law-breakers) or destroyed.

If Brazil becomes a failed state, of course the Amazon will be destroyed. We know this due to the millions of examples of the ‘tragedy of the commons’.

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).

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

#33

Post by matheusmoreira »

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…

> Why? Because a foreigner in a big city has a piece of paper? Because some countries that exploited their own resources and launched themselves into modernity say you can't do the same?

Yeah, you pretty much summed it up. If you're some huge land owner but you're not actually using the land for anything useful, people will notice and they will occupy it.

In my country there are lots of these rich land owners. People whose lands stretch beyond the horizon. In many cases they don't even use it for anything. It's like unused memory that never gets garbage collected, a memory leak. Agrarian reform could redistribute this land but the powerful do not want to lose their domains. So people will just move into the land and start living there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landless_Workers%27_Movement

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

#34

Post by danparsonson »

yodelshady wrote: post #27
danparsonson wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That small group of people are responding to demand aren't they?

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.

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

#35

Post by zorked »

nine_k wrote: post #13
ArnoVW wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could be wrong, but I belief that the issue is bigger than that. If you live in the US and drive a car or eat meat, you are likely to be co-responsible. Soy culture is used to create a cheap protein feedstock for the meat industry. Modern car fuel contains ethanol (10% in the EU). The ethanol is produced by having micro organisms convert biomass. The idea being that you use the short carbon cycle (already in the ec…

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…

These are all commodities, the fact that you are being served by the closest producer does not mean that you are not generating demand that has to be compensated by someone else increasing their production. The world is connected together.

Also US-raised beef also occupies the area of destroyed forests. American beef didn't destroy the Amazon but it destroyed the environment anyway and is every bit as guilty of producing global warming.

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

#36

Post by danparsonson »

Valmar wrote: post #22
danparsonson wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That small group of people are responding to demand aren't they?

The thing is, they're still responsible for cutting down the Amazon. The "responding to demand" is a complete cop-out. Stop blaming the consumer for the actions of the greedy. I wouldn't be surprised if the consumer very often isn't even aware of the sources of the materials for a lot of the stuff they buy. And it doesn't help that the consumer is all too often worried about stuff that immediately affects them, leavi…

I didn't say they're not responsible too; my point is that none of us needs cheap beef or hardwood or gold (do we?) and it's widely known what these companies are doing, so we can't just shrug our shoulders and say "we didn't cut down the forest".

Agree about the plastic though, that stuff is almost impossible to avoid.

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

#38

Post by ArnoVW »

creamynebula wrote: post #25
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…

Pretty much all cars here run on gasoline.

Yes, but it is in fact a mixture of gasoline and ethanol. To quote the Wikipedia article:

Blends of E10 or less are used in more than 20 countries around the world, led by the United States, where ethanol represented 10% of the U.S. gasoline fuel supply in 2011.[1] Blends from E20 to E25 have been used in Brazil since the late 1970s. E85 is commonly used in the U.S. and Europe for flexible-fuel vehicles. Hydrous ethanol or E100 is used in Brazilian neat ethanol vehicles and flex-fuel light vehicles and hydrous E15 called hE15 for modern petrol cars in the Netherlands.[2]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ethanol_fuel_mixtures

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

#39

Post by eloff »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #32

I have seen interactive data representations over time using NASA satellite databases: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147075/a-new-tool-f... It was amazing seeing the effect of political action on the satellite data: e.g. areas that were deemed okay (or not) to cut down were almost immediately protected (with lit borders to stop law-breakers) or destroyed. If Brazil becomes a failed state, of course the Ama…

> 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 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.

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

#40

Post by bouncycastle »

redpiller wrote: post #9

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…

CO2 may be good for plants, but plants cannot grow if the temperature gets too hot or their soil gets flooded by sea water.
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