LAT: Brazilian Rain Forest Myth Goes Up in Smoke

[DeepModem Mom]

Los Angeles Times:
Rain Forest Myth Goes Up in Smoke Over the Amazon
By Henry Chu, Times Staff Writer


REMANSO TALISMA, Brazil — The death of a myth begins with stinging eyes and heaving chests here on the edge of the Amazon rain forest.

Every year, fire envelops the jungle, throwing up inky billows of smoke that blot out the sun. Animals flee. Residents for miles around cry and wheeze, while the weak and unlucky develop serious respiratory problems.

When the burning season strikes, life and health in the Amazon falter, and color drains out of the riotous green landscape as great swaths of majestic trees, creeping vines, delicate bromeliads and hardy ferns are reduced to blackened stubble.

But more than just the land, these annual blazes also lay waste to a cherished notion that has roosted in the popular mind for decades: the idea of the rain forest as the "lungs of the world."...(T)he jungle has consistently been likened to an enormous recycling plant that slurps up carbon dioxide and pumps out oxygen for us all to breathe, from Los Angeles to London to Lusaka....

***

Far from cleaning up the atmosphere, the Amazon is now a major source for pollution. Rampant burning and deforestation, mostly at the hands of illegal loggers and of ranchers, release hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the skies each year....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-amazon8jun08,0,6264257.story?coll=la-home-headlines


ON EDIT: The parenthetical words in the subject line were mine, not the LAT's. I have removed them. The article does not blame the rain forest: "Rampant burning and deforestation, MOSTLY AT THE HANDS OF ILLEGAL LOGGERS AND OF RANCHERS, release hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the skies each year."

[IChing]

1. The rain forest is not the polluter, the destruction of the rain forest is

the cause of the pollution, There is no myth, except spin.
I hate titles like this

[Warpy]

3. I echo that, the whole thing is SO misleading

The reason it's burning is because people are doing slash and burn agriculture. THAT is causing the pollution. Leave the forest to its own devices, fires will be small and rare.

Morons who write articles like this should have to visit the area and see WHY it's happening, breathe the choking smoke, and have to live their lives on what's left after the only 2 or 3 crops that can be grown on that infertile soil.

Assholes. Scumbags. LIARS.

[DeepModem Mom]

10. Please see post #9.

[DeepModem Mom]

9. The subject line words were mine; I've edited them out....

The Times is not blaming the forest. The article on the importance of the Amazon:

"Researchers are trying to determine what role the Amazon plays in keeping the region cool and relatively moist, which in turn has a hugely beneficial effect on agriculture — ironically, the same interests trying to cut down the forest.

The theory goes that the jungle's humidity, as much as water from the ocean, is instrumental in creating rain over both the Amazon River basin and other parts of South America, particularly western and southern Brazil, where much of this country's agricultural production is concentrated.

'If you took away the Amazon, you'd take away half of the rain that falls on Brazil,' Moutinho said. 'You can imagine the problems that would ensue.'

A shift in climate here could cause a ripple effect, disrupting weather patterns in Antarctica, the Eastern U.S. and even Western Europe, some scholars believe.

This is what worries ecologists about the continued destruction of the rain forest: not the supposed effect on the global air supply, but rather on the weather."

[tanyev]

15. There is some misleading spin in the article.

But more than just the land, these annual blazes also lay waste to a cherished notion that has roosted in the popular mind for decades: the idea of the rain forest as the "lungs of the world."...(T)he jungle has consistently been likened to an enormous recycling plant that slurps up carbon dioxide and pumps out oxygen for us all to breathe, from Los Angeles to London to Lusaka....

And the original title calls it a myth. A myth that the rain forest cleanses our atmosphere. Well, it used to. The fact that that has now been destroyed by man's actions doesn't make it a myth.

[IChing]

18. I agree that there is some spin in the article

and does not sound the alarm except further in the article.

[dissent1977]

22. I can't wait to hear Rush Limbaugh's take on this

The rainforest is killing us all folks. We have to chop it all down and replace it with a giant garbage incinerator or we are all going to die at the hands of these tree huggers.

[IChing]

2. dupe

[silvermachine]

4. This is really pissing me off....

...could the headline of this article be more at odds with the content???? Who is this asshole that wrote this anyway? I'm sure Dubya is on the phone looking to appoint him to head the EPA as I type this....

[DeepModem Mom]

11. I'm the asshole who wrote the subject line -- see post #9.

[silvermachine]

16. No No No....

Not calling you an asshole at all. PLEASE!:pals:
Just that the headline of the article is very at odds with the content. Though the piece does try to have it both ways...
But certainly not taking a shot at or being critical of you at all!

[DeepModem Mom]

17. I know -- just thought I had misled, and was funning you.

:)

[tanyev]

5. Evil rain forest.

Spontaneously igniting itself just to pollute the planet. Obviously the entire thing must be razed to solve the problem.

:crazy:

[silvermachine]

6. Killer trees ya know...

...git wit' tha program.:crazy:

[silvermachine]

8. Or did I mean pogrom...

EOM

[DeepModem Mom]

12. Please see post #9.

[Strawman]

7. I smell a John Stossel piece here n/t

[DeepModem Mom]

13. Please see post #9.

[Rex_Goodheart]

14. Holy cow...

What an unbelievably irresponsible headline.

How much do you care to bet that Rush Limbaugh will now be citing this article and saying that the Amazon's benefit to the planet is a myth?

The jackass who wrote this article can't see the forest for the trees, I'm afraid. So, the Amazon has no curative powers for the Earth's atmosphere because people are burning it down? Well, gee... this reporter wouldn't have any journalistic powers, either, if he were lit up in flames.

[nolabels]

19. I am guessing an EDITOR at the paper wrote the title of the article

Sounds like the reporter did his job, but they needed to spin it with the title of the story.
I would also guess the editor is rePUKElican :puke:

[cestpaspossible]

20. Does Winston Smith write for the LAT?

I don't know what you edited out, but the article itself is extremely deceptive, imho, clearly intended to discredit the notion of 'saving the rainforest' -- but the black-is-white rhetoric they use is mind-boggling.

[The_Casual_Observer]

21. Oh, then jesus supplies the unending supply of fresh air.

It isn't the trees after all.

[Igel]

23. Six hundred years ago, the Amazon rainforest

was hardly the "lungs of the world", in the sense most people understand the phrase. I thought it was a silly phrase the first time I heard it, and the sense in which it's true isn't how it was intended.

The rainforest was pretty much in equilibrium 600 years ago. The layer of organic material on the forest floor wasn't increasing. The amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the wood and other organic that rotted each year was roughly the same as the amount absorbed and sequested by the rainforest, as with most mature forests. In more recent times it's probably been quite effective at removing some of the additional sulfur and other pollutants we've added to the air. The rain that it helps produce through transpiration removes dust, and maintain the rainforest and the ecosystems around it.

The rainforest provided a lot of humidity, biodiversity, and the like, but it wasn't an infinite carbon sink. If allowed to regrow, it would function as a carbon sink, and sequester probably about as much carbon (etc.) as it originally had in the course of a couple of hundred years. Maybe a bit more, since an atmosphere richer in carbon dioxide will usually trigger a little richer growth.