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.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday August 28 2019, @04:45AM (5 children)
Alternatives:
France's Macron hits back at Brazil's Bolsonaro over 'disrespectful' post about his wife [abc.net.au]
Amazon fire aid rejected until Emmanuel Macron takes back 'insults', Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro says [abc.net.au]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 28 2019, @06:10PM (4 children)
Why are the fascists always such whiny little thin-skinned bitches?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 28 2019, @08:00PM (3 children)
Is that a tricky question? I don't know the answer.
I don't block Javascript and use incognito browsing. As such, NYT only displays "Either you accept ads or you pay" - which is fine by me, their right. If I need the story, I can get it from other places; and so I did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 28 2019, @08:24PM
I was talking about Bolsonaro...
But, I think Thexalon convinced me of his hypothesis below. Bolsanaro likes the fire and he's just pretending to be a whiny little bitch like Trump.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @02:26AM (1 child)
You haven't thought about blocking javascript then?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 29 2019, @02:44AM
I can't afford to block javascript.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday August 28 2019, @05:16AM (3 children)
Oh, wow. The G7 nations, with a combined GDP of over $33T, offers a help amounting to $500/amazon-burning-fire.
Great help, guys, really shows your magnanimous character and interest in "the lung of the planet".
I wonder what interest rate they have in mind?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @05:18AM
Objectifying the subjective are we? Disgusting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @11:08AM
It's mostly about politics than actual help or the environment. For example Brazil's deforestation rate has been similar to Indonesia and higher than Malaysia ( https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ag.lnd.frst.zs?most_recent_value_desc=true [worldbank.org] ) but calls for soybean oil boycotts are far far lower than palm oil boycotts despite the fact that you'd need less deforestation per litre/ton of palm oil than for soybean oil[1] .
But of course they can't call for boycotts of soybean oil since their Boss across the Atlantic needs to sell lots of soybean oil and now can't sell as much to China due to some trade war that someone started...
[1] http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html [journeytoforever.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_biofuel_crop_yields [wikipedia.org]
If you want omega 3 then flaxseed is better than palm oil but see this though: https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/why-not-flaxseed-oil [harvard.edu]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @11:28AM
This is a political move of Macron and the west to pander their own citizens with a we're doing something for the environment.
40Million is laughable nothing, I mean to get $40
M at the G7 summit Macron probably asked:
"Hey, does anyone have some change left in his pocket?"
Others: "Yeah, I have some, me to."
Macron: "Alright, take the smallest coin from that change and lets throw it at Brazil"
Now, if they want to take a more serious approach, you can create/set in motion new Paris/Kyoto style accords that provide an economic incentive to keep forest/rainforest etc. around, and to try and revert deserts etc.
Also, you can try and roll back the extensive reduction in green/forests in Western Europe and the US. I think Brazil would happily donate $10M to convert Wall street back into a dense forest, or London, Paris, ...
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Wednesday August 28 2019, @05:37AM (12 children)
That is a good retort:
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @06:07AM (11 children)
Not really a retort making sense, except if targeting the clueless.
The problem with the Amazon is that reforestation of anything burned down is hard to near impossible.
And due to climate even planting a huge number of trees in Europe will not be able to compensate for.
I don't know if the Brazilian president is so clueless about his own country that he really doesn't understand why people are angry or if he just likes to pretend being stupid to avoid facts that don't fit his agenda.
But sure, more could likely be done in Europe. Fighting large forest fires has a funding issue there as well as last summer showed.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Coward, Anonymous on Wednesday August 28 2019, @06:17AM (10 children)
How many European trees are needed to compensate for the burned Amazon? But I'm the clueless one? Europe won't do it because they're using the land for agriculture, an opportunity they are comfortable denying Brazilians.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @07:38AM (7 children)
A few points to add:
1) Scientists already said that the "lungs of Earth" is a bit of bad choice of nick naming the Amazon. CO2 accumulation is pretty limited on the global scale for the Amazon. As a forest grows older the CO2 uptake and output (plants also produce CO2) cancel each other mostly out. The Amazon is old. The reason it should be protected is because of the vast amount of biodiversity there.
2) The approach mentioned by Brazil (building a forrest in Europe), could actually have a larger influes on CO2 uptake if one would take (1) in consideration.
3) European agriculture is to a large extend subsidized. It also produces much more than it needs. Converting agricultural soil to forrest might also benefit agriculture on the long term (especially in combination to agroforestry by switching agricultural plots with forrest and vice versaevery few decades).
As a biologist (but also from an economical perspective) it seems more useful to use the money in Europe (or the US) than in some country that has it's mind already set to not wanting any help.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @07:52AM (6 children)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/08/26/why-everything-they-say-about-the-amazon-including-that-its-the-lungs-of-the-world-is-wrong/ [forbes.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @08:25AM (5 children)
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:
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!
(Score: 5, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday August 28 2019, @09:47AM
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
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)
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)
... 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
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:24PM (1 child)
To my knowledge, Brazil has more than enough farmland to support itself, so this would be all about export to start with, so I am not sure the outrage at denying them that opportunity is quite justified.
A lot of agricultural use in Europe is certainly bad in every aspect, and that is a quite justified criticism.
However forests in Europe - in contrast to the Amazon - are not generally a place of huge diversity.
A lot of moors, fields etc.actually have far better biodiversity than forests here (especially the traditional beech tree forests that used to cover huge parts of Europe, which essentially kill EVERYTHING else that wants to grow near or under them).
They also, according to some studies, do in fact capture more CO2 than forests (yes, I have no link, sorry).
Your criticism that I don't have exact numbers is well justified, however at least that the Amazon is a very different thing from a forest in Europe I'd hope is not under dispute, nor that European forests won't help the indigenous people in the Amazon.
Apart from that, even if was indeed all imperialism, insults etc: Brazil earns a lot of money by selling beef to people. Many of those people care about the Amazon. The beef is a major reason for the Amazon being under threat. So whether it's fair or not Brazil most likely will have to make a choice between (at least publicly) protecting the Amazon or give up on exporting a lot of its beef.
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Wednesday August 28 2019, @10:15PM
I'm not outraged, just pointing out European hypocrisy, which was the point of the original reforestation quote. On their way to achieving their current standard of living, Europeans cut down most of their forests. And they are buying a lot of chopped up wood to burn in power plants.
I support green forests and biodiversity, but wouldn't deny some poor Brazilians the right to improve their lot. Of course indigenous rights also should be respected.
Presumably, both sides drove a hard bargain for this free trade agreement. The thing that seems to have changed now is EU demands. We'll see if the EU can make them stick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @06:12AM (2 children)
if it was the plot of an Alfred Hitchcock thing, or Vonnegut or PKD, yeah all the trees are gone then what happens? Could be cool right, that is to postulate, that would be fun. I mean not actually getting rid of trees - just thinking of what it would be like.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @06:15AM (1 child)
Just as an example you could have a cool hide out fort, but it would be on the ground, so a play house not a tree house - but actually, almost easier to have fun with because no ladder to get in etc, you could probably get a TV and Nintendo (tm) in there easier.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @06:53AM
Play cave. Cave world. Cave story.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Wednesday August 28 2019, @07:09AM
thesesystemsarefailing.net
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:27PM
Bolsanaro was elected on a plan of exploiting more of the Amazon for financial gain. And the first step to exploiting patches of Amazon is to burn it down and murder or drive off the indigenous people who are currently living there (also explicitly part of his platform during the election).
That's why he rejected the G-7's offer of aid. These aren't natural disasters, they're intentional efforts to rob natives so rich companies led by white people (racism is not just an American thing) can get a bunch of cheap natural resources. And the aid offer did help expose that, but Bolsanaro doesn't care how it looks, he's not planning on allowing further elections.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.