Amazon Myth Goes Up in Smoke
Kudos to LAT’s Henry Chu for his “Rain Forest Myth Goes Up in Smoke” from which we borrowed liberally below.
Want to be like Madonna and Sting? Okay, probably not. But I’m sure you all remember when being “carbon neutral” was a fashionable cause. During those heady days the Amazon rain forest was described as an enormous recycling plant that chewed up carbon dioxide and pumped out oxygen for all the world. The Amazon allows us to breath, sing and love, we were told. Too bad nobody bothered to check if this was actually true. It turns out it’s not.
Brazil now ranks as one of the world’s leading producers of greenhouse gases thanks in a large part to the Amazon rain forest. Somehow I have a tough time picturing the Dixie Chicks protesting Brazil’s Amazon-living denizens for their greenhouse emissions. And if they don’t, no one will. This is because of a little loophole in the loopy Kyoto Protocol that doesn’t require Brazil to reduce its greenhouse emissions.So one of the major causes of greenhouse gases emissions is completely unaddressed in the very international agreement addressing the problem. That’s some oversight.
The vast majority of Brazil’s Amazon emissions come from deforestation, a problem with few easy solutions. However even without the massive burning associated with deforestation, the popular conception of the Amazon as a giant oxygen factory is misguided because the vast majority of the oxygen that the forest generates is consumed in the decomposition of organic matter.
I know that science and economics have no place in the global warming debate since the environment in this context is really just a proxy against globalization, corporate greed, capitalism, U.S. hegemony, and other perceived evils.That said, the facts should at least be sort of right.
Readers might also be interested in our previous global warming posting: “Sure It’s a Flawed Analysis But Isn’t It a Pretty Graphic? or Peer Review Takes a Holiday”
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