Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by Phaedor » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 1:10 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #39

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…

> 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.

Something like this exists in the Amazon Fund. Unfortunately it seems like it has broken down lately:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-environment-norway...

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

#72

Post by 271828182846 » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 1:11 PM UTC

InfiniteRand wrote: post #66

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…

I think the model of paying locals to preserve the land makes sense because of these concerns, of course you need to guarantee that some politician doesn't just pocket it all.

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.

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

#73

Post by titzer » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 1:13 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #39

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…

> 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 economic incentives that got that ball rolling downhill in the first place. But yeah, I guess we'll find a way to throw globalism and money at a problem created by globalism and money.

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

#74

Post by meragrin_ » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 1:14 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #54

plater wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But for people who do fly, flying represents 50% or more of their footprint.

Try thinking about solving the big problem rather than 7 billion little problems. You are worrying about subtracting 0.000000000001 from the 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 Telling people not to fly isn’t a solution [update] Anyway, I see my comment isn’t understood again. Enjoy another decade of incredible emissions. I’m sure sooner or later people will finally get it. Those windmills are still coming!!!

What is the solution for the big problem?

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

#75

Post by lucian1900 » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

saiya-jin wrote: post #59

ricardobeat wrote: post #48

You can thank the current right-wing government for letting deforestation get completely out of control, just after the country had finally got it down to okay-ish levels around 2012-2016. They’ve been systematically reducing funding, relaxing laws and enforcement, and pushing international preservation fund backers away. The rate at which things have degraded is insane. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/12…

I wouldn't claim Bolsonaro is right wing, he is just an arrogant corrupt scumbag who got to power. Unfortunately the world has seen quite a few of those recently, and the results are dire to say at least.

He still praises the fascist dictatorship, he’s about as far right as one can get.

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

#76

Post by selimthegrim » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 1:16 PM UTC

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…

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

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

#77

Post by titzer » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 1:17 PM UTC

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…

> Carbon dioxide is good for trees.

Literally the first hit on Google for this phrase is exactly about this [1].

[1] https://theconversation.com/yes-more-carbon-dioxide-in-the-a...

You're repeating easily debunked denialist talking points and claiming insight when people have studied this problem for decades and discovered that no, on balance, abrupt changes in CO2 are not good for our biosphere.

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

#78

Post by melling » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 1:21 PM UTC

sveme wrote: post #55

melling wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people still think the solution is for everyone to reduce their individual carbon emissions? “If we all just conserve enough…” Flying, for example, emits 2% of global emissions. That’s 100,000 flights a day, every day. We’ve just spent over 2 decades generating at least 40% of our electricity with coal. The carbon footprint of that was incredible. While we’ve been waiting for solar and wind to replace it…

Everything has to happen simultaneously. Carbon emission reduction on a personal, community, city, state, country, supranational entity, global level. We simply cannot continue to wait for other, more emission-intensive actors, to act first.

Yes, 25 years after the Kyoto protocol a lot more impossible things need to happen “at once”

https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by...

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

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

#79

Post by bromuro » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 1:26 PM UTC

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 the problem shouldn’t be justified by poverty - which is a consequence - but by wrong / missing education.

Private companies and governments push a narrative to exploit the land, promising quick money at the expenses of the forests and the future of the local communities. People are easy to deceive here, they really don’t know, they are busy with bigger daily problems (as violence and bullying).

Anecdote - My neighbor followed this idea with his chacra: he deforested 5 hectares and put all cacao. With the pesticides they had to put, the plants weakened soon and a plague affected the crop so bad, that after five years he lost all the plants. Now the land has been abandoned, and my friend is poorer than before. Chemical companies finally developed a new pesticide against that bug, and started selling again to everyone at cheap prices. Sadly he has not the money to pay some “peones” to help restoring the cacao plants.

On the other side, when there’s a forst to clear everyone from the village goes to slash and burn, destroy, kill and catch any living thing in between.

Sometimes I think this violent attitude against the forest started during with the colonial times, were the imposed religion thought the people that nature is meant to be submitted and exploited by the mankind.

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

#80

Post by maCDzP » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 1:28 PM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #24

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.