Science Amazon is burning

Discussion in 'Blazers OT Forum' started by SlyPokerDog, Aug 20, 2019.

  1. SlyPokerDog

    SlyPokerDog Woof! Staff Member Administrator

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    Amazon fires: Brazilian rainforest burning at record rate, space agency warns

    Brazil's Amazon rainforest has seen a record number of fires this year, according to new data from the country's space research agency.

    The National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) said its satellite data showed an 83% increase on the same period in 2018.

    It comes weeks after President Jair Bolsonaro fired the head of the agency amid rows over its deforestation data.

    Smoke from the fires caused a blackout in the city of Sao Paulo on Monday.

    The daytime blackout, which lasted for about an hour, came after strong winds brought in smoke from forest fires burning in the states of Amazonas and Rondonia, more than 2,700km (1,700 miles) away.

    Conservationists have blamed Mr Bolsonaro, saying he has encouraged loggers and farmers to clear the land.

    Why are there fires in the Amazon?
    Inpe said it had detected more than 72,000 fires between January and August - the highest number since records began in 2013. It said it had observed more than 9,500 forest fires since Thursday, mostly in the Amazon region.

    The satellite images showed Brazil's most northern state, Roraima, covered in dark smoke, while neighbouring Amazonas declared an emergency over the fires.

    Wildfires often occur in the dry season in Brazil but they are also deliberately started in efforts to illegally deforest land for cattle ranching.

    Mr Bolsonaro brushed off the latest data, saying it was the "season of the queimada", when farmers use fire to clear land. "I used to be called Captain Chainsaw. Now I am Nero, setting the Amazon aflame," he was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying.

     
  2. SlyPokerDog

    SlyPokerDog Woof! Staff Member Administrator

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    Deathwatch for the Amazon
    Brazil has the power to save Earth’s greatest forest—or destroy it

    Although its cradle is the sparsely wooded savannah, humankind has long looked to forests for food, fuel, timber and sublime inspiration. Still a livelihood for 1.5bn people, forests maintain local and regional ecosystems and, for the other 6.2bn, provide a—fragile and creaking—buffer against climate change. Now droughts, wildfires and other human-induced changes are compounding the damage from chainsaws. In the tropics, which contain half of the world’s forest biomass, tree-cover loss has accelerated by two-thirds since 2015; if it were a country, the shrinkage would make the tropical rainforest the world’s third-biggest carbon-dioxide emitter, after China and America.

    Nowhere are the stakes higher than in the Amazon basin—and not just because it contains 40% of Earth’s rainforests and harbours 10-15% of the world’s terrestrial species. South America’s natural wonder may be perilously close to the tipping-point beyond which its gradual transformation into something closer to steppe cannot be stopped or reversed, even if people lay down their axes. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, is hastening the process—in the name, he claims, of development. The ecological collapse his policies may precipitate would be felt most acutely within his country’s borders, which encircle 80% of the basin—but would go far beyond them, too. It must be averted.

    https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/08/01/deathwatch-for-the-amazon
     
  3. SlyPokerDog

    SlyPokerDog Woof! Staff Member Administrator

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    Amazon Deforestation Shot Up by 278% Last Month, Satellite Data Show

    Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest increased by 278% in July 2019 compared with July 2018, resulting in the destruction of 870 square miles (2,253 square kilometers) of vegetation, new satellite data from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) show.

    That’s an area about twice the size of the city of Los Angeles. And, while the forest still spans some 2.1 million square miles (5.5 million square km — just a little bit bigger than Mexico), the spike in tree loss is part of a dangerous trend. According to the Associated Press, this is the single biggest surge in rainforest destruction since INPE began monitoring deforestation with its current methodology in 2014.

    These data come courtesy of INPE's satellite monitoring program, DETER (Detection of Deforestation in Real Time), which launched in 2004 to help INPE scientists detect and prevent illegal deforestation in the Amazon. The release falls in the midst of an ongoing feud between INPE scientists and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a climate change skeptic who vowed on the campaign trail to open more of the Amazon to various mining, logging and agricultural interests, despite environmental protections on the land.

    On Friday (Aug. 2), Bolsonaro fired then-head of INPE, Ricardo Galvão, after the agency posted satellite data showing an 88% deforestation increase in June 2019 compared with June 2018. Bolsonaro called the data "a lie" and accused Galvão of serving "some NGO" (nongovernmental organization). The president's administration also announced that the government would hire a private company to take over Amazon deforestation monitoring.




    In a statement announcing his termination, Galvão defended INPE's work and called the president's decision "an embarrassment." It is not, however, a surprise. Bolsonaro's attack on INPE follows seven months of policy decisions that weaken environmental legislation and science agencies while empowering business interests, the AP reported.

    As the largest remaining rainforest on Earth, the Amazon is also one of the planet's single largest carbon offsets, absorbing as much as 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year (as its trees use it for photosynthesis) and releasing roughly 20% of Earth's oxygen. Protecting the Amazon and other rainforests is one of the most cost-effective ways to combat the ongoing climate crisis, according to Amazonconservation.org.

    https://www.livescience.com/66120-amazon-rainforest-deforestation-bolsonaro.html
     
  4. EL PRESIDENTE

    EL PRESIDENTE Username Retired in Honor of Lanny.

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    Dont Brazilians shit on the beach? That causes a lot of global warming which causes the Amazon to burn
     
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  5. SlyPokerDog

    SlyPokerDog Woof! Staff Member Administrator

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  6. TorturedBlazerFan

    TorturedBlazerFan Well-Known Member

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    I have mixed thoughts on this, some of them helps me know Im a bad person.

    First that sounds dangerous for the human population of earth. It seems like a “bad” thing to do.

    Secondly, they’re a sovereign country, trying to make money (like everyone else), using the natural resources they have for their benefit, or at least to the presidents benefit. Im not sure how comfortable I am with other countries, or groups telling them what to do with their land. Even if, I “think”, what they’re doing is a crappy thing to do.

    Third (cause I wanted to count to 3), Im not knowledgeable enough on Brazil’s politics to know much about this guy.
     
  7. barfo

    barfo triggered obsessive commie pinko Staff Member Global Moderator

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    This explains why my package didn't arrive today.

    barfo
     
  8. Lanny

    Lanny Original Season Ticket Holder "Mr. Big Shot"

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    A city of over 12 Million people was blacked out?
     
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  9. Chris Craig

    Chris Craig (Blazersland) I'm Your Huckleberry Staff Member Global Moderator Moderator

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    All smoke and no mirrors
     
  10. Chris Craig

    Chris Craig (Blazersland) I'm Your Huckleberry Staff Member Global Moderator Moderator

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    If the Amazon goes we won't be far behind
     
  11. MARIS61

    MARIS61 Real American

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    Amazon fires are not exactly burning 'Earth's lungs,' experts say

    By Christopher Carbone | Fox News

    The Earth's lungs are on fire. They're burning up.

    Some version of that has been said by politicians, journalists, celebrities and members of the public since the destructive blazes began to engulf Brazil's rainforest more than three weeks ago.

    Almost all the oxygen in the air is produced by plants through photosynthesis, and since a large amount of photosynthesis happens in places like the Brazilian rainforest, that claim has gained traction.

    Although the fires pose a danger to the massively biodiverse area, some experts are now offering another view, saying they do not threaten the planet's oxygen supply.

    According to Scott Denning, professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, most of the oxygen that gets produced by photosynthesis each year is consumed by fires and living organisms, with trees shedding dead leaves and twigs that in turn end up feeding insects and microbes.

    "Forest plants produce lots of oxygen, and forest microbes consume a lot of oxygen. As a result, net production of oxygen by forests — and indeed, all land plants — is very close to zero," Denning explained on Tuesday in a Scientific American essay.

    Shanan Peters, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, imagined what would happen if we burned every forest, blade of grass, bacteria and bird on Earth -- basically everything except humans -- in a presentation slide at a scientific convention in June.

    After such a catastrophic scenario, the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere dropped from 20.9 percent to 20.4 percent, acording to The Atlantic.

    “Virtually no change,” Peters said. “Generations of humans would live out their lives, breathing the air around them, probably struggling to find food, but not worried about their next breath.”


    As Denning notes in his essay, tiny phytoplankton in the ocean generate half of the oxygen produced worldwide.

    "The fact that this upsurge in deforestation threatens some of the most biodiverse and carbon-rich landscapes on Earth is reason enough to oppose it," Denning concludes.
     

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