Over the last several years researchers have said that the Amazon is on the verge of transforming from a crucial storehouse for heat-trapping gasses to a source of them, a dangerous shift that could destabilize the atmosphere of the planet.
Now, after years of painstaking and inventive research, they have definitively measured that shift.
In a study published Wednesday in Nature, a team of researchers led by scientists from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research, reported results from measuring carbon concentrations in columns of air above the Amazon. They found that the massive continental-size swath of tropical forest is releasing more carbon dioxide than it accumulates or stores, thanks to deforestation and fires.
“There is no doubt that the Amazon is a source,” said Luciana Gatti, the lead author of the study.
Journal Reference:
Luciana V. Gatti, Luana S. Basso, John B. Miller, et al. Amazonia as a carbon source linked to deforestation and climate change, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03629-6)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @05:04PM (7 children)
Ha ha what now?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @05:08PM (5 children)
Breed some dinosaurs to eat all the trees, then bury the dinosaurs. Worked last time.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Immerman on Sunday July 18 2021, @07:02PM (4 children)
Not quite - last time there were 80 million years of tree growth where *nothing* could eat them, not even rot, so the trees just got buried instead.
Eventually rot evolved the ability to digest wood - but for roughly 320x as long as humanity has existed, woody plants thrived without anything that could eat their stems, and all that massive amount of biomass did nothing but suck carbon out of the atmosphere. And now we're working hard to put it all back in a tiny fraction of the time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @07:12PM
Why do you hate America, bro?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19 2021, @11:10AM (2 children)
How is this informative?? Plain fucking wrong. Fungus (your 'rot') exists longer than the trees.
Ever heard of bogs? Notice how they work today, unless you go ahead and destroy them.
It's like education doesn't exist anymore
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday July 19 2021, @01:24PM
Yes, rot existed longer than trees - but for a *very* long time after wood first evolved, rot couldn't digest it. The same newly-evolved stabilizing molecule that made plant material strong and woody (lignin I think?) also prevented rot, and anything else, from being able to digest it.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday July 19 2021, @01:34PM
And yes, there are other ways to prevent rot under very particular circumstances - even just rapidly and permanently submerging it can preserve it for centuries. There's whole companies dedicated to logging the old forests that were submerged under artificial lakes.
But they weren't necessary during that roughly 80 million year window when wood everywhere on Earth failed to decompose because nothing could eat it, and just got slowly buried under ever more dust and biomass instead, with the heat and pressure eventually turning it into coal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @07:33PM
I don't know. We need to completely reevaluate where Oxygen comes from, it might very well be magic performed by president Bolsonaro.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Sunday July 18 2021, @05:17PM (1 child)
Essentially all of the organic material in a rainforest is always in use. There is no build-up in the soil - that's a specialty of temperate forests. That's why the slash-and-burn farmers always have to move on: the soil is fundamentally pretty poor.
Slash-and-burn releases CO2, the rainforest is neutral, so the overall negative balance isn't really a surprise.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fakefuck39 on Monday July 19 2021, @12:48AM
Umm no. Naturally the forest has been expanding, meaning the CO2 is stored in new trees. Now the forest is shrinking, as more burns than grows, so that CO2 is released back.
The article is also misleading. The deforested parts are what are releasing the CO2. If you look at the footprint of just where the trees are, it's not releasing CO2.
Global warming is another reason. Photosynthesis for those trees works best under 28C, after which it falls off exponentially. The temp is higher, so the method of producing oxygen is no longer as effective. This is called the CO2 fertilization effect.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-worlds-intact-tropical-forests-reached-peak-carbon-uptake-in-1990s [carbonbrief.org]
Until very recently, where the daily temp has climbed above the CO2 fertilization threshold, the forest soaked up Double the CO2 it released.
https://www.wri.org/insights/forests-absorb-twice-much-carbon-they-emit-each-year [wri.org]
One of the reasons si that what you said is false. Forests store biomass below ground. Here's a chart of just how much.
https://farm1.staticflickr.com/601/31550389533_6de26fee78_b.jpg [staticflickr.com]
>slash-and-burn farmers always have to move on
...while farming uses up all the nutrients in the soil, and undisturbed forest does not. It grows the topsoil, and keeps storing carbon below ground. What you did here is a strawman, saying the forest is a farm. It's not, and you're completely wrong.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @05:47PM (7 children)
More and more of the Amazon is burnt down, to make room for farming and ranching. The Amazon is also mined, perhaps less heavily than America, Asia, and Africa, but it is mined. https://www.thedialogue.org/analysis/energy-and-mining-in-the-amazon/ [thedialogue.org] Then, you have the hydroelectric dams, which are known to increase carbon emissions, and at the same time, reduce carbon storage capacity.
Let's not blame the Amazon forest for carbon emissions. Let's instead blame man for all the things he does to disrupt carbon storage.
The most preposterous conclusion we could make, is to assume the rain forest is a major source of carbon emissions, so we must finish chopping down the forest. How 'bout we just help the forest to heal from the damage we have already caused?
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by HammeredGlass on Sunday July 18 2021, @06:58PM (6 children)
Those South American countries that contain the entirety of the Amazon rainforest are the only ones who have a right to say what happens to it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @08:24PM
We haz the nukez, fool. We haz the rightz!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @08:28PM (4 children)
Yeah, we'll give 'em that "right" when they can contain all the CO2 and other contaminates inside their borders. Otherwise we have the power and the obligation to invade and put a stop to it. The planet is more important than Brazil
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Sunday July 18 2021, @10:17PM (1 child)
I hope you don't think that the US would do a better job - that's laughable.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @10:25PM
If the Amazon had been in the US, it would probably already be gone by now. That still doesn't mean we should just allow Brazil and other countries to destroy the remainder of the Amazon.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @11:34PM (1 child)
You DO realise that the Amazon that is being cut down is revealing deserted cities, roads, earthworks, megalithic sites, remnants of large-scale farming etc, and was home to an estimated 100 million people?
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27945-myth-of-pristine-amazon-rainforest-busted-as-old-cities-reappear/ [newscientist.com]
https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/uncovering-the-amazons-real-lost-cities-2/ [sciencefriday.com]
https://rainforests.mongabay.com/external/amazon_cities_before_columbus.html [mongabay.com]
I assume you DO know that much of the forest was domesticated (ie. farmed) for thousands of years:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2015.0813 [royalsocietypublishing.org]
http://www2.nau.edu/~alcoze/for398/class/pristinemyth.html [nau.edu]
https://phys.org/pdf426784123.pdf [phys.org]
...including the soil underneath, which is man made (fertiliser for crops):
https://jwafs.mit.edu/news/2019/digging-deep-investigating-manmade-black-soil-amazon [mit.edu]
https://returntonow.net/2018/08/01/the-amazon-is-a-man-made-food-forest-researchers-discover/ [returntonow.net]
https://www.academia.edu/39224727/Lifetimes_of_human_occupations_in_Amazonia_Rapp_Py_Daniel_and_Moraes [academia.edu]
In fact, the area was highly urbanised until the last time you northerners invaded us:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lost-amazon-cities/ [scientificamerican.com]
https://www.academia.edu/36760667/Lost_cities_of_the_Amazon [academia.edu]
Curiously, exactly the opposite of the east coast of the US, Chicago/Toronto, London, Paris, Moscow, Berlin, Beijing, Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo, Bangkok, Dehli...which were forest, and are now concrete.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19 2021, @02:16PM
i beg to differ. bangkok is a swamp and some still consider it one, with big human looking lizard people behind the scenes (btw, they are not naturally green, but the money hoard they sleep in rubs off). :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @05:55PM
Just have to wait a year... that is if they don't cancel the election
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/brazils-bolsonaro-warns-2022-vote-will-be-clean-or-canceled/2021/07/08/13a5b61a-e021-11eb-a27f-8b294930e95b_story.html [washingtonpost.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday July 18 2021, @06:11PM
No more air samples will be permitted.
It will not interfere with business. All is lost
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @06:36PM (9 children)
The planes themselves are emitting CO2, which proves that AGW research is killing the planet.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @06:55PM (8 children)
The only solution is to ignore it.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Socrastotle on Sunday July 18 2021, @07:27PM (7 children)
Sometimes trying to solve something, when a solution is ultimately intractable (with the sort of means you're pursuing) is worse than doing nothing.
COVID was a demonstration of the effects of shutting down the world economy. We drove dramatically less than ever before, international shipping stalled out, international airflight was down to negligible levels. And much more. And the net result? About a 5% decline in emissions. Keep in mind this is not a permanent annual 5% decline, but just a one-off year over year 5% decline. If we don't do everything we did last year (and then some thanks to development, population growth, etc) then we'll completely relinquish that 5%. You're just not going to make progress on climate change with social changes. All you end up doing is creating a dystopia with an ever more divided population, while empowering every single charlatan who can use language or persuasion furthering "the cause" to empower and/or enrich themselves.
Technological solutions, by contrast, do exist and are viable. People seem to not have understood the relevance of the recently publicized [bbc.com] Scottish CO2 capture experiment. That facility is only a proof of concept, yet even at just it's scale, if you deployed one of those factories every 5000 square kilometers, net human emissions would be zero. Scale it up and you can ultimately negate our emissions with far fewer large factories. Capturing CO2 is not an especially complex process. All that factory is, is basically a giant vacuum to suck in air that then performs the relatively simple chemical process to extract the CO2.
The idea is in no way revolutionary. The basic scientific principles and ideas are simple, and various researchers have demonstrated a wide array of different capture ideas with no reason to expect it to be in any way whatsoever insurmountable. And the cool thing about CO2 capture is that, if desired, you can even *reverse* human emissions by producing net negative emissions. The one and only thing that's missing is the economic will. So it's weird, we see these politicians so happy to claim that the "Real cost" of CO2 emissions are in the trillions of dollars, yet remiss to spend even a tiny fraction of that to actually solve the problem. It's almost as if they don't particularly care about solving the problem, except by promoting solutions that would empower themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @08:07PM (1 child)
You need to find a way for Al Gore to make some money off this Scottish CO2 thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @08:29PM
Al is out of luck. His distant cousin, Magnus MacGore has the market sewed up.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @09:43PM
C'mon now, you say that like it's a bug rather than a feature.
As for the carbon-capture plants, the one thing missing from the article you linked is any mention of the power required to operate the plant, and what percentage of the plant's capability is spend canceling the increased carbon from generating that power.
The engineer in me says it doesn't much matter (as long as it's less than 100%), since an ongoing power sink that can be increased or decreased at will is beneficial on its own -- that lets us scale up efficient base generation and solar/wind, and use an overbuilt array of carbon plants as virtual storage, spinning them up during power surpluses, and down during deficits, so long as the longterm average carbon extraction is what it needs to be.
But the student of reality says any such scheme will eventually end up with someone figuring out how to get away with running the carbon plants less and less to make up for inadequate generation.
If you're serious about it, you probably need a regulatory structure where a company cannot sell electricity from a carbon-emitting power plant unless they are simultaneously operating carbon plants extracting the power plant's carbon output (with a multiplier to account for untracked carbon emissions and/or reversing historical emissions). If one of your carbon plants shut down, and you can't spin up another to compensate, you have to reduce your power generation proportionally and take it up the wallet until you fix it.
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Monday July 19 2021, @05:16AM
It's been a dystopia for quite a while. The industrial facilities and power plants are what's dumping the vast majority of the CO2. The basic equipment we use to create modern society. I suspect we will need equally massive processes to pull any significant amount of CO2 out of the atmosphere. Things will have to get much worse before we implement large scale carbon sinks. It's just not profitable.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday July 19 2021, @11:53AM (1 child)
Wolfram, what is the area of Earth divided by 5000 km2?
102013
That's quite a lot really.
One job constant is that good employers have low turnover, so opportunities to join good employers are relatively rare.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Monday July 19 2021, @01:35PM
I was referring to land area. You could probably set these up in the Pacific, but maintenance might be tricky. It's about 30k in total.
The reason I think 1 per 5000km^2 is informative is because 30,000 sounds like a large number until you realize how incredibly sparse it is relative to the land area of the world. And this is at a proof of concept type scale.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19 2021, @02:26PM
hahaha, a 5% decline. i wonder which outfit measured that... or was it more along the line of: 5% less of burnable carbon was SOLD. anything "off the book" would not factor in.
you see we cannot realistically directly measue carbon pollution; it's just PR marketted that way. what we mist certainly are keeping very very precise tabs on is how much was sold BEFORE it was burned (once and once only).
so good luck sticking a co2 measuring IOT in every tailpipe on the planet.
btw, "limit carbon pollution" really means "we are limiting what you can sell to burn". in other words, we are suggesting very very strongly for you to hord it for an expanded guaranteed market dependancy on you (which we will guarantee to you by also using the word " energy usage limitation and conviniently totally ignoring and not supporting alternative energy sourced).
(Score: 3, Informative) by RamiK on Sunday July 18 2021, @09:50PM
Worth noting pulling off this wonder of click-bait shilling required the collaboration of both author and editor so Inside Climate News [insideclimatenews.org]'s readers will likely be better off getting their news from elsewhere.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Monday July 19 2021, @04:55AM
As Ramik just pointed out, they are burning huge swaths of the Amazon to use as farmland. It's the whole 'jungle on fire' issue that's spitting CO2
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19 2021, @04:57AM (1 child)
Maybe nuke it from the orbit is the best course of action? At this point?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19 2021, @02:29PM
we could also strongly encourage the belief that eating cave bats is a super tasty idea :)