Rain forest destruction
p2pnet OT news: Fact: Logging is destroying Brazil’s rainforests, and with it, the unique ecological systems they support.
But satellite imaging techniques show things are far worse than anyone had suspected, says a new study from the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Stanford, California.
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Traditional analysis has missed more than 50% of the damage, it says. Selective harvesting, cutting down only one or two tree species in an area, creates an additional 60 to 123% more damage than deforestation alone and its effects go beyond `local` damage, says a Science report, quoted in the Scientific American.
Selective loggings, result in 25 percent more greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere, it says.
The global warming hypothesis states that greenhouse gases are partly or wholly to blame for recent global warming.
“We discovered that annually an area about the size of Connecticut is disturbed this way,” the Guardian Unlimited has lead author professor Gregory Asner saying.
“Selective logging negatively impacts many plants and animals and increases erosion and fires. Additionally, up to 25% more carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere each year – above that from deforestation – from the decomposition [of plant material] that the loggers leave behind. Timber harvests are much more widespread than previously thought.”
Asner says a large mahogany tree is worth hundreds of dollars at the sawmill and, “People go in and remove just the merchantable species from the forest. Mahogany is the one everybody knows about, but in the Amazon there are at least 35 marketable hardwood species, and the damage that occurs from taking out just a few trees at a time is enormous.”
About 400m tonnes of carbon enter the atmosphere every year because of traditional deforestation in the Amazon, says the Guardian, adding that Asner estimates an additional 100m tonnes of carbon occurs through selective logging.
“Anthropogenic factors are acts by humans that change the environment and influence climate,” says the Wikipedia.
“The biggest factor of present concern is increases in CO2 levels due to emission from fossil fuel combustion, but other factors, including land use, ozone depletion, and deforestation also impact climate.”
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See:-
Scientific American – Selective Logging Fails to Sustain Rainforest, October 21, 2005
Guardian Unlimited – Amazon rainforest vanishing at twice rate of previous estimates, October 21, 2005
October 21st, 2005 at 1:30 pm
The cause is capitalism running rampant, without controls, or the purpose of making more money for the already rich.
Just as the rampant capitalist are destroying culture through the cartels and widespread lobbying and destructive copyright laws, they are also destroying the world’s ecology using the same methods.
The technique of the capitalist executives is simple: Buy the politicians and then you can do whatever is necessary to make the most money for the mostly indifferent (to the ecology and health) sucker shareholders while taking alon the way some of the money for yourself, the executive.
Much of the wood taken from forests is to make paper, which in turn is used to peddle consumer goods through advertisements. Let us stop buying newspapers and use only the Internet for our news. Of course this is just one way to reduce waste. There are so many more and all we need is to stop being sheep and not follow the directives of advertisements.
Hey, how about an anti ad campaign to difuse the rampant advertisement going on that promotes rampant consumerism and the depletion of resources of mostly poor countries?
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
October 21st, 2005 at 5:27 pm
people just dont care… plain and simple… they are going to completely remove all of the rain forest, for personal profit… and when its all gone, they’re gonna plung back into poverty, and everyone in the world is gonna softly morn the loss of the rain forest… and feel no more regret… until it starts effecting our earth (polution, air quality, ect)
Humans are doomed to die off, if we can’t start restraining ourselfs in these kinds of situations…
in my mind, the rainforest… as well as any other thing we are doing that hurts out planet… is way more than enough to start a war!
October 21st, 2005 at 5:48 pm
“Humans are doomed to die off…”
Maybe that’s true, and maybe it’s just okay.
Perhaps not fair to the other critters we take out with us, but once we’re gone life will take up the slack.
Here’s a little haiku on the subject.
we are like virus
attack infect mother earth
the earth will triumph
October 21st, 2005 at 11:27 pm
But who is really to blame? Consider what we industrialized Americans have done to our own homeland. We converted 90 percent of North America’s virgin forests into firewood, shingles, furniture, railroad ties, and paper. Other industrialized countries have done no better.
Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, and other tropical countries with rainforests are often branded as “environmental villains” of the world, mainly because of their reported levels of destruction of their rainforests. But despite the levels of deforestation, up to 60 percent of their territory is still covered by natural tropical forests. In fact, today, much of the pressures on their remaining rainforests comes from servicing the needs and markets for wood products in industrialized countries that have already depleted their own natural resources. Industrial countries would not be buying rainforest hardwoods and timber had we not cut down our own trees long ago.
I lived in Malaysia for 2 1/2 years and my partner there was a former logger. His family had been in the logging business for 3 generations.
They look at their country and realize they laid the path for the major north south highway with their logging roads 50 years ago, the same with approximately half the highways in Malaysia. They are a developing country and they feel they have the right and duty to their citizens to develop their country to the benefit of the citizens as our country did. Its a delicate balance, and the people of Brazil, know better than we the needs of their country. They tend to get miffed when its pointed out to them, they will point out that their country is 60-70% still forested, whereas ours is somewhere around 35%. Who are we to tell them what to do. Its that attitude that gets the US in trouble in the rest of the world. “Do as I say, not as I do.”