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posted by martyb on Wednesday August 28 2019, @04:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the fiddling-while-the-Amazon-burns dept.

Brazil Says It Will Reject Millions in Amazon Aid Pledged at G7

Hours after leaders of some of the world's wealthiest countries pledged more than $22 million to help combat fires in the Amazon rainforest, Brazil's government angrily rejected the offer, in effect telling the other nations to mind their own business — only to later lay out potential terms for the aid's acceptance.

President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil expressed his ire in a series of Twitter posts on Monday, and specifically criticized and taunted President Emmanuel Macron of France, who had announced the aid package at the Group of 7 summit meeting. Their comments extended a verbal feud between the two leaders.

But early the next day, Mr. Bolsonaro offered possible terms for the acceptance of the aid package when he spoke to reporters in the capital, Brasília.

He said that if Mr. Macron withdrew "insults made to my person," and what Mr. Bolsonaro interpreted as insinuations that Brazil does not have sovereignty over the Amazon, he would reconsider.

[...][Mr. Bolsonaro later rejected the aid package offered by Group of 7 nations, citing Mr. Macron's remarks.]


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @08:25AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @08:25AM (#886700)

    What a load of horse shit. Welcome to the new reality, where trees and other plants don't actually convert CO2 to O2, they just use as much as they make. And where farms, which are pretty much carbon neutral, have the same scope and scale of plant live per square foot, as a forest.

    From the Forbes article:

    I was curious to hear what one of the world’s leading Amazon forest experts, Dan Nepstad, had to say about the “lungs” claim.

    “It’s bullshit,” he said. “There’s no science behind that. The Amazon produces a lot of oxygen but it uses the same amount of oxygen through respiration so it’s a wash.”

    Plants use respiration to convert nutrients from the soil into energy. They use photosynthesis to convert light into chemical energy, which can later be used in respiration.

    What about The New York Times claim that “If enough rain forest is lost and can’t be restored, the area will become savanna, which doesn’t store as much carbon, meaning a reduction in the planet’s ‘lung capacity’”?

    Also not true, said Nepstad, who was a lead author of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. “The Amazon produces a lot of oxygen, but so do soy farms and [cattle] pastures.”

    Oh yeah, this Forbes article is chocked full of wondrous info like this.

    The Amazon isn't just about trees and O2 production. It's about massive amounts of water being pulled up from under ground, and evaporating into the air from the leaves of trees. It's about the entire weather cycle which follows, which most certainly DOES create a different local environment, one which supports vines, moss, and many other photosynthesizing plants. It goes further than just the core of the Amazon too.

    Try planting a tree in the middle of a grassy field. Does the suddenly give rise to all of that? No, it takes MANY trees to modify the local environment.

    Forbes is Conservative, and in the US that currently means "All things conservation are silly and pointless". I really with the US could get another 2 or 3 parties, so its political leanings wouldn't be so radicalized on the left and right of the spectrum.

    Right now, they have two parties.. and those parties pick lines. Then all those party loyalists run around screaming around those party lines, without even remotely caring about reality, because to them? "They" are going to "destroy" the country, so "anything goes".

    Left or right in the US, they'll all insanely toxic. Sad, really.

    Man, trees don't put out net O2 now. What a ROTFL! Next on the reality changes channel, burning coal doesn't matter, we're just returning CO2 that used to be in the air!

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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday August 28 2019, @09:47AM

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Wednesday August 28 2019, @09:47AM (#886716) Journal

    Yeah, we should reforest chunks of Europe. And Africa, and we should definitely stop burning the Amazon. Apparently a trillion trees could make a huge difference:
    https://phys.org/news/2019-07-climate-trillion-trees.html [phys.org]

    And I have the perfect place for the first half million or so (numbers from quick googling):
    - Apparently Donald Trump owns 16 golf courses around the world.
    - An average golf course is 74 acres.
    - You can plant at least 400 - 500 trees per acre. Let's say 450.

    16 * 74 * 450 = 532800 trees. Well, it's a start.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @01:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @01:21PM (#886764)

    I wish there was a way to complain to a journalistic body that a print publication like Forbes is emitting misinformation and out right lies like this. I read some of that piece too and it is bursting with wrong arguments and bad data.

    One snippet was that there are legitimate reasons for burning, including pest control. At a glance it seems like it's a good "oh maybe the fires aren't so bad" but in the context of an 80% year over year increase, and a lack of a massive wave of a new pest (the Amazon doesn't have locust years), it actually means the increase is WORSE, because if say 10,000 human-caused pest control fires happen every year, then last year's 20,000 fires included ~10,000 set to expand agriculture, and this year's 40,000 include ~30,000, for a projected 3x deorestation rate due to fire, not a 2x from the simple 20k to 40k.

    And the rest of it is full of lying statistics like that, whether false in premise or in logic or in implication. Disgusting. Not fit to be called journalism, it's first-order propaganda.

  • (Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:10PM (2 children)

    by Coward, Anonymous (7017) on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:10PM (#886791) Journal

    So if the Amazon really produces net O2 from CO2, where is that carbon going? Is the soil just getting thicker? Forbes does quote a supposed IPCC lead author for the claim that there is no net O2 production. What's your source, common sense?

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @06:44PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @06:44PM (#886929)

      ... it goes into the trees.

      You know, as they grow.

      You know, as a carbon based life form.

      • (Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Wednesday August 28 2019, @09:46PM

        by Coward, Anonymous (7017) on Wednesday August 28 2019, @09:46PM (#886993) Journal

        The forest has reached equilibrium. New trees grow and absorb carbon. Old ones die, decay, and emit CO2. Do you not understand that these terms could cancel? The IPCC expert scientist says there is no net absorbtion.