The guardian has a better take on the story: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/23/amazon-f...
So looks like it's been worse only 9 years ago and in some stupid articles I read that we lost 20% of Amazon in the last month or so... Amazon apparently has "fire season" every year when fire blasts there for months.
I feel like someone is trying to set up Bolsonaro or maybe the histeria is accidental because this years "fire season" in Amazon is "dry season" for media?
The charts does not look so bad this year, but I suppose 99% people have no idea Amazon burns every year:
https://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145498/uptick-i...
I mean it's really good we're finally opening our eyes (it might be too late though), but I feel like we're being manipulated big time.
I suspect though that the attention that the press is giving to this year's fires, which are catastrophic and need attention, has something to do with the fact that Brasil is about to sign a historic trade agreement with the EU and this is being used to politically pressure Brasil into stopping the increasing deforestation.
Which I'm all for it, I get it that it's politics and that's how it works, I just don't like the manipulation.
I agree it's necessary to force Brasil's hand to take some immediate action, but I just don't like these tactics. What else is in the news for similar type of reasons?
It's scary how much he could damage the world by flattening the Amazon
There are many other serious environmental concerns at stake, but not oxygen loss.
Hail Globalization!
>The fires have been releasing a large amount of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of 228 megatonnes so far this year, according to Cams, the highest since 2010.
In units the Americans would be familiar with, that would be roughly 461,608,800,000 pounds of carbon dioxide. (1 tonne = ~2024.6 pounds, according to Wikipedia[0]).
[1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&geo=...
[2] https://www.woodtv.com/news/international/sharp-increase-in-...
From your description, that seems like an understatement. If you cherry pick starting points to make s graph look dramatic and leave out crucial context so that readers will assume the worse, that’s not just “not great” it’s flat out fraudulent, manipulative propaganda.
State of emergency in the largest state of Brasil
75.000 wildfires in 8 months, double as in the last year
200 millions of tonnes of CO2 released, actively boycotting any chance of fixing climate of the planet
Deforestation accelerated in a 278%, actively increasing the six extinction rate
But, but... this is happening since the last decades also!, so, oki doki. All is fine like soy ice cream. Not Bolsonarson fault.
Are they in disagreement, or are they measuring different things, so aren't disagreeing? Or is something else going on? I'm kinda lost
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-politics/brazils-b...
He is basically the encyclopaedia image of corruption.
Brazil used to have an autonomous satellite monitoring system (Prodes and Deter) which Bolsonaro is actively working to dismantle, along with the environmental protection agency Ibama. There are many valid reasons to blame Bolsonaro for what is happening.
- How large, proportionally, is the burned region? How long would it theoretically take for the whole thing to burn down at this rate?
- How large, proportionally is the burned region in Siberia? How long has the Siberian fire been burning, how long would it take for everything to burn down, etc.
- I've seen the 20% of the worlds oxygen stat a bunch. But how significant is this fire in affecting that? Wouldn't we expect the Siberian fire to have a larger effect because it covers a thousand times more area?
- Can anyone explain the tipping-point business? How can a series of local fires cause a global collapse? Especially considering that this is neither the first nor the biggest fire?
- Do these fires burn themselves out? How do they end?
In short beyond a certain point the local climate becomes unsuited to the flora, further encouraging deforestation and changing the climate, which becomes more prone to drought. Meanwhile the evaporative cooling from the shrinking expanse of trees declines, changing the climate and encouraging drought. It becomes a reinforcing effect.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2019/08/23/as-the...
As the professor states in his tweets, there are legitimate reasons to avoid deforestation ("for climate, for biodiversity, for indigenous communities"). Oxygen supply is not one of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_savannas_of_Nort... seems to suggest that specifically burned areas of rainforest turn into savannah. But a lack of fire will cause a reversion to rainforest.
In terms of the area affected by fire, more burned in Portugal in 2018, which is a very small compared with Amazon size.
The law in Brasil is not like in other places. You think someone will stop a big landowner from getting more land after it’s been deforested? The new President has gutted the environmental agencies so nothing will or can be done.
Here’s an article on rolling stone with some more detail: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/brazilia...
Notice how the local government office is under armed protection. This is to protect them from the big landowners. This is not unusual in Brasil. Please do more research
We are at 20% deforestation now.
https://phys.org/news/2018-03-amazon-deforestation.html
The forest fires stem from previous deforestation, so destruction is cumulative, exponential.
Past the tipping point the rainforest dies.
To quote the Expanse, this is the cascade, (and we are nearing the point where) this station is already dead.
That's just wrong. The fires can actually make the forest stronger next year[1]. This is part of the cycle of nature. Have you been to the Amazon? Pretty much every inch of it has burned in the past, but after a year or so, you could barely tell, as in the wet season, the plants grow a lot faster than most people who are not from the region can even imagine.
[1] http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0001...
While there is a natural role for fire in forests this is unsustainable and close to a tipping point of unrecoverable.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145464/fires-in-bra...
>As of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years.
You certainly can't do much against the fires once they have broken out at such a vast scale. But with something as recurring and hence predictable as the Amazon wildfires, you can at least try to reduce spread and contain the damage. Also, I'm sure a lot of the fires are intentionally started as a quick way of deforesting and clearing land for farmland and cattle.
You seem to argue that the fires are purely an act of God and there is nothing humanity can do, which just seems a little ridiculous given that Bolsonaro is dismantling established environmental protection policies to make way for more farming etc.
There is a lot of evidence that human activity is significantly contributing to the wildfires [1].
[1]: https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/fires-amazon-rainforest-...
There are decens of different species of trees, giving fruits, supporting bromeliads, hundreds of orchids, arboreal frogs, monkeys, sloths, macrobats, snails, spiders, scorpions, thousands of different insects, snakes, hundred of birds, raptors, lizards, thousands of different fishes also in the flooded soil ... You will never find that in a taiga's pine. Taiga is a frozen void desert for many months of the year (and has been devoid of most of this former macrofauna yet).
Is not always about politics.
Macron says nothing about "biodiversity", he is talking about oxygen. And forest in Siberia makes the same oxygen (maybe just with small scent of vodka). So in this case is just politics.
This paper suggests quite the opposite. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209592731...
But it will have some impact on CO2 right?
https://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/rio-politics/national...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: we've had to ask you multiple times not to do political flamewar on HN. Please don't use this site for political battle, even if other commenters are wrong or annoying. It destroys the intellectual curiosity that HN exists for.
