In August alone, loggers and farm interests leveled 300 square miles of Amazon rainforest, the Brazilian government reports (via AP).
That's a land mass larger than greater Chicago -- taken out in the span of a single month. It also represents a leap of 228 percent over August 2007's destruction.
Two observations:
1) Higher soy prices accelerate Amazon clearance (see Searchinger, et al, "Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land-Use Change" [PDF].) And soy prices have been pushed up by U.S. and European biofuel mandates.
2) The Amazon rainforest anchors global climate stability by storing vast amounts of carbon; destroying it releases carbon and accelerates climate change. In an article in The New York Review of Books last year, Duke ecologist John Terborgh explains why piecemeal deforestation leads to feedback loops that could eventually destroy the rainforest wholesale. In the Amazon region, writes Terborgh,
[l]and clearing and the transformation of the landscape by fire act synergistically to alter the local microclimate and hydrological cycle. Much of the solar energy that falls on a natural forest is dissipated high in the tree canopy through "transpiration," the evaporation of water transmitted from the soil through the roots, stems, and foliage of plants, a process that consumes solar energy and cools the environment. When the forest is largely cut down, less solar energy is intercepted by foliage and more reaches the ground where it is absorbed and heats the surface to stifling temperatures. Reducing the vegetation that covers the ground alters the hydrologic cycle as less moisture is returned to the atmosphere through transpiration and more flows directly into streams and rivers, accelerating erosion.
As the agricultural frontier extends northward into the Amazon region, climate scientists fear that a "tipping point" will be reached at some as yet unknown level of deforestation. The argument runs like this. Nearly all the water that falls as rain in the Amazon derives from the Atlantic Ocean, where it evaporates and is carried onto land by easterly trade winds. The isotopic content of evaporated seawater possesses a distinctive character or "signature" that is altered when rainwater is transpired through the leaves of trees and plants. (The ratios of isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen change with evaporation and transpiration because the heavier isotopes do not evaporate as readily as their lighter counterparts.) The Brazilian atmospheric scientist Eneas Salati showed many years ago that the signature of rainwater varies systematically from east to west across the Amazon basin in a way consistent with the idea that much of the water originally derived from the ocean off the eastern coast is recycled through plants in passing over the Amazon basin. Salati estimated that three quarters of the rainwater falling in western Amazonia is recycled water. When deforestation reduces the amount of rain that is recycled to the atmosphere via transpiration, there will be less water available to fall as rain in the downwind direction, that is, to the west.
Concern that the crucial recycling mechanism will be disrupted by deforestation in the eastern Amazon is widespread in the scientific community. Most climate models agree in indicating a tipping point beyond which parts of the Amazon will become significantly drier. Less rain implies longer, more severe droughts and increased incidence of fire. Carlos Nobre, Brazil's most distinguished climate scientist, talks of the "savanaization" of the Amazon region, i.e., its reduction to grasslands. A major alteration of the Amazon's hydrological cycle could have global consequences, but current climate models disagree about what the consequences would be.
How industry pressures and competing national agendas dim prospects for a climate treaty
Gucci Group commits to saving Indonesia’s rainforests
Corn-based meat and ethanol: burning the planet to a crisp
Comments
View as Flat
amazingdrx Posted 12:09 am
01 Oct 2008
The whole world was moving towards more meat eating and gas guzzling. And that is powered by grain, both meat production and biofuel substitute for oil based gas guzzling.
What is this energy inflation related economic slow down doing to these aspirations? Will gas guzzling and meat eating in fast growth countries (China, Brazil, Korea, India, Russia...) overcome the failing consumer nation's (US, Europe...) economy's ability to shift away from meat eating and gas guzzling?
That would not be good. But as we the consuming nations slow down, will the producer nations slow too? Now that is the case.
But what will happen as producer nations become prosperous enough to become consumer nations? They will feed on their own global economy. We will be inconsequential, just as the UK used to control world trade in its empire days, and now is only a minor part of consumption.
We will be bypassed in the global trade system.
Unless we become producers again. Scandanavian and European countries are shifting to production of devices for a new energy economy, taking a progressive leap to power that change.
Healthcare and education free for all makes for a workforce with the skills and values to acomplish this change to reneweable revolution. We are in a war to save the planet now. If the mass of humanity follows the fossil fuel, gas guzzling, meat eating path. We all lose.
There is a slim chance for leadership on this left. But the guy who wants to do it favors biodiesel? It's going to be tough to turn this around.
We have to convince the new government that 90% renewable electric transportation and a 90% (on average) veggie diet is the plan to regain our place of positive influence by example in this global economic system. Invent and manufacture the devices to do this (and see the amazon reduced to a national forest or two here and there), or go the way of the UK. That's the choice we face.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 12:23 am
01 Oct 2008
I meant:
Invent and manufacture the devices to do this, or go the way of the UK (and see the Amazon reduced to a national forest or two, here and there).
As we see with our forests and prairies and wetlands here in the agribizz developed and devestated US ecosystem. Only a few remnants of nature left.
They are following our example. We need to turn that example around, consumers demanding solar panels and plugin hybrids will force the producer countries to catch up and build them too. Interrupting their fossil fuelishness.
The colonial corporate emprists like darth cheney want to stall the renewable energy revolution, it would weaken their oily grip on their guns. Would the military industrial complex end up in a nursing home? A fitting end for them, if only we could mass produce renewable energy buildout.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
Permalink
RDMiller Posted 12:28 am
01 Oct 2008
I don't believe Obama means "biodiesel" in the traditional sense you and others think of it when he uses that term in his campaigning. He means (primarily) cellulosic ethanol. It's just that that term is a mouthful and one the majority of folks have never heard of. He is apparently in favor of increasing the availability of home-grown biodiesel, but even with this, my understanding is that he insists it come from sustainable sources only.
Richard
Permalink
Jonas Posted 12:46 am
01 Oct 2008
Therefor the Searchinger article cannot be used as a basis for tieing deforestation to biofuel production.
The best thing to end the discussion about this is simply to forbid the use of soybeans for biodiesel (and palm oil and all other crops that directly drive deforestation as well) here in Europe or the US.
Better still would be to phase out liquid biofuels altogether, because there are far better ways to use a given piece of land.
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 12:50 am
01 Oct 2008
This week Brazil will release a plan to reduce net forest clearing to zero by 2015. The plan is expected to rely heavily on the conversion of natural forest to industrial forest plantations to meet its goal.
http://photos.mongabay.com/08/0930deforestation.jpg
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
Jonas Posted 12:59 am
01 Oct 2008
Remember, Europe and the US deforested over 90% of their forests, which allowed them to enter the era of modernity.
Is there a way to leapfrog deforestation-based modernity?
We know that ideas like paying forest-rich countries carbon credits to preserve their forests won't work. We also know that very few people in the West (and now the East) are willing to change their consumer behavior, which relies heavily on products sourced from land that was once forest. And we know that the desire of forest-rich nations to join modernity is extremely strong.
So what would your suggestion to Brazilian society be?
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 1:03 am
01 Oct 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 1:03 am
01 Oct 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 1:09 am
01 Oct 2008
Let's hope so. Read Hot, Flat, and Crowded.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink