After 40 Yrs. In Amazon, Thomas Lovejoy Muses On Forest's End - WP

[hatrack]

EDIT

What got me thinking about the recondite life rhythms of the planet, and not the 24-hour news cycle, was a recent conversation with a scientist named Thomas E. Lovejoy, who heads the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. When I first met Lovejoy nearly 20 years ago, he was trying to get journalists like me to pay attention to the changes in the climate and biological diversity of the Amazon. He is still trying, but he's beginning to wonder if it's too late. Lovejoy fears that changes in the Amazon's ecosystem may be irreversible. Scientists reported last month that there is an Amazonian drought apparently caused by new patterns in Atlantic currents that, in turn, are similar to projected climate change. With less rainfall, the tropical forests are beginning to dry out. They burn more easily, and, in the continuous feedback loops of their ecosystem, these drier forests return less moisture to the atmosphere, which means even less rain. When the forest trees are deprived of rain, their mortality can increase by a factor of six, and similar devastation affects other species, too.

"When do you wreck it as a system?" Lovejoy wonders. "It's like going up to the edge of a cliff, not really knowing where it is. Common sense says you shouldn't discover where the edge is by passing over it, but that's what we're doing with deforestation and climate change."

Lovejoy first went to the Amazon 40 years ago as a young scientist of 23. It was a boundless wilderness, the size of the continental United States, but at that time it had just 2 million people and one main road. He has returned more than a hundred times, assembling over the years a mental time-lapse photograph of how this forest primeval has been affected by man. The population has increased tenfold, and the wilderness is now laced with roads, new settlements and economic progress. The forest itself, impossibly rich and lush when Lovejoy first saw it, is changing.

EDIT

The best reporting of the non-news of climate change has come from Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker. Her three-part series last spring lucidly explained the harbingers of potential disaster: a shrinking of Arctic sea ice by 250 million acres since 1979; a thawing of the permafrost for what appears to be the first time in 120,000 years; a steady warming of Earth's surface temperature; changes in rainfall patterns that could presage severe droughts of the sort that destroyed ancient civilizations. This month she published a new piece, "Butterfly Lessons," that looked at how these delicate creatures are moving into new habitats as the planet warms. Her real point was that all life, from microorganisms to human beings, will have to adapt, and in ways that could be dangerous and destabilizing. So many of the things that pass for news don't matter in any ultimate sense. But if people such as Lovejoy and Kolbert are right, we are all but ignoring the biggest story in the history of humankind.

EDIT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/17/AR2006011700895.html

[htuttle]

1. It's going to turn into a desert at this rate

Tropical rainforests have notoriously infertile soil. It's counter-intuitive, given the apparent abundance of life in a rainforest, but almost all the nutrients are held above the soil, in the organic 'carpeting' on the forest floor. Underneath all the detritus is mostly the equivalent of sand.

So when it's gone, it's gone. It's unlikely to grow back by itself.

[hatrack]

3. Nothing but laterite - nasty rocky hardpan once the cover is gone

Scrub may flourish briefly, but not for long.

[OKthatsIT]

2. oh god/dess help us

I've been watching this very closely, too. The ocean currents, thermal anomoly of the coast of brasil, loggers raping the forests unchecked...

A poor Brasil was stuck with DEBT, created by criminal American Banking agents.

[toymachines]

4. Must be gods plan.

:thumbsdown: and one fucked up god.
now substitute man for god, and you have reality.

[sasha031]

5. I cry for the loss of our beautiful planet

to the free markets :sarcasm:

[wordpix2]

13. me, too

[Tellurian]

6. Republican have told themselves the "END of Days" are upon us...

So, what do they really care. Their prophesy fulfilled.
There is nothing you can do to chang their philosophy.
That is why they care little for the killing of whats left of the planet.
and the making of as much money as they can while the earth still lives.

Unfortunately, those of us do not share their philosophy are trapped within the sphere of their selective government. A government bound by principles devoid of logic, indifferent to scientific data, but worst of all, terminally radical in thieir approach, leaving whats left of mankind, hostages to their erroneous thinking. For if you do not agree with their delusional thinking daring to stand up for logic and science; you will be summarily crushed like a blade of grass falling under the weedwacker.

[KoKo]

7. I remember a time when Television would do documentary Specials on

this kind of issue with the environment. Sadly those days left when the Dot Com Boom and Corporate Media took over.

This is an issue being buried for lack of funds for anyone to produce documantaries that could enlighten the average American viewer.

But then, I grew up on Jaques Cousteau and Wild Kingdom stuff and devoured anything else I could find when the Networks used to have shows regularly scheduled for young viewers that weren't he hyped entertainment of today's "Animal Planet." I hear National Geographic tries...but I don't have them as part of my cable package and theirs been some complaint they've turned more to the Right since Bush took over. They fired Peter Arnett who was hosting some of their shows.

I wonder if any real shows documenting what's happend to the RainForest and other areas of the world because of Globalization would even be allowed to show in today's Media world that's all Bush Propaganda all the time.

Our kids need to be educated about this. Or, we will lose a whole generation who even knows what's going on with their dying planet. :-(

[blindpig]

8. If it's not on TV it must not be important.

What that says about Americans is sad and scary. If our species is determined to qualify for a Darwin Award well and good, we probably deserve it. Taking down the rest of the biosphere with us, that breaks my heart.

NPR is no better than TV. Used to be chock full of environmental reports, several environmental shows, but now there's virtually nothing. Goddamn Newt and his contract on America.

[KoKo]

10. I know...the origanal FCC Regs over Programming for Children/Gutted...

There's nothing left of it...but "THE LEFT," which believes in Armaggedon Programming...according to the "Old Testament" which covers up what the Global Corporatists are doing to our kids and the rest of us.

FAUX/INFO/ENVIRO/TAINMENT....:puke:

I'm glad I didn't grow up NOW...in either Bush I, II or Clinton's America!

I had the "Salad Days." ...but when those of us who had "better" are gone...what will remain. :scared:

[Peace Patriot]

9. I think there are two stories that qualify as "the biggest stories in the

history of mankind."

The first is global warming.

And the second is election fraud in the United States, by the Bush junta, using Bushite corporations, Diebold and ES&S--the electronc voting companies who now control our election system with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, and virtually no audit/recount controls--in order to manufacture a phony endorsement for waging war over the last oil reserves, instead of responding to the will of the people who want strong environmental regulation and protection (way up in the 80% to 90% range in opinion polls).

As the U.S. goes, so goes the planet.

----------------------

There is a third suppressed "biggest story," and it is the collusion of big enviro groups like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, in the Forest Stewardship Council. The FSC gives a sort of "green label" to logging operations, after a SECRET, PROPRIETARY review process, conducted by private consultants who are paid directly by the logging company. The rules for this "certification" process are extremely lax. The timber industry has basically taken over this group--the FSC (of which groups like Greenpeace are a member)--and has turned it to the purpose of very large-scale, industrial logging concerns, who do massive clear-cutting, use poisonous pesticides, and are logging ancient and virgin forests, and killing off endangered species--all permitted under the FSC's extremely lax guidelines, with virtually no appeal possible.

One such FSC-certified logging company--Swiss-based Precious Woods Amazon--is right now targeting virgin hardwoods in the Amazon, has put in extensive news roads, has doubled its rate of logging, and is pushing the local economy away from diversification, and back toward the mono-economy of forest destruction. The FSC is "certifying" such operations all over the world--against vociferous opposition by local groups and indigenous peoples, which gets entirely muffled by the Big Greens' clout. Industry is thus given a "green gloss" to go after the very last of the world's forests.

Any members of Greenpeace, Sierra Club or other big green groups who support this disastrous FSC "certifcation" program, should object within your groups, and demand that your group withdraw from the FSC.

Greenpeace does a lot of good, in general, and they THINK they are doing some good within the FSC. But they are absolutely wrong on the FSC. They got sucked in. Industry took it over (with the World Wildlife Fund--tied to the World Bank--in collusion). Now they should get out.

The only solution is that the world MUST STOP USING WOOD PRODUCTS. Period. There IS no other alternative. And the biggest and best of our green groups should be saying this. We have GOT to stop using wood. There IS no way to "sustainably log" the world's few remaining forests. And what the FSC is "certifying" is horrendous. Consumers need to know. Citizens need to know. We MUST find alternatives wood. Or we die, and all life on earth with us--as the "lungs of our planet," the forests, disappear. That is the choice.

The U.S. corporate news monopolies are lying about this, as they lie about everything else. We need to, a) restore our right to vote, by throwing Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW, and re-establishing our sovereignty as a people; b) get on an accelerated program to save our planet; and c) bust the corporate news monopolies and the war profiteers.

See:

FSC is misleading consumers
http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/64/FSC.html

Don't Buy It: Forest Stewardship Council's Green Timber Labels 'Flawed'
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org
http://forests.org/archived_site/today/recent/2002/agrcampa.htm

Trading in Credibility: Myth & Reality of the FSC (there is a section on Precious Woods Amazon)
http://rainforestfoundationuk.org/s-Search?searchstring=trading+in+credibility

Reform of the Forest Stewardship Council
http://rainforestfoundationuk.org/s-Reform%20of%20the%20Forest%20Stewardship%20Council

Timber Certification Tainted, Forest Group Alleges
http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=17849

For info on FSC activities in northern California (and some in connection with Precious Woods Amazon), see:
The Forest Stewardship Council strikes again!
www.gapsucks.org

-----

(Note: Most of these reports are 2002-ish. Unfortunately, all efforts to reform the FSC have failed, due mostly to the collusion (big financial interests) of the World Wildlife Fund. The FSC is even worse today. The world's forests are one of our bulwarks against global warming and climate disruption, and other kinds of pollution. 80% of the world's forests have been destroyed or severely damaged and depleted over the last 100 years. 80%! And NOW they start talking about "green logging"--with massive clear-cutting and pesticide use, no less. Give me a break.)

[barb162]

11. A lot of humans and other life will die. Probably most of us

global warming, the oil crisis, overpopulation... it's all coming together

[Name removed]

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