The Amazon Is Not the 'Lungs of the World' | Hacker News Reader

The Amazon Is Not the 'Lungs of the World'

forbes.com

35 pointsdsr1227 comments

I think there is too much simplistic analysis of the Amazon's net CO2 contribution in the popular press which is besides the point here. Destroying a vast amount of the world's ecosystem is a really bad idea for many reasons besides climate change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rainforest#Biodiversity

https://www.conservation.org/blog/why-is-biodiversity-import...

>And while fires in Brazil have increased, there is no evidence that Amazon forest fires have.

i see. let's read on.

>What increased by 7% in 2019 are the fires of dry scrub and trees cut down for cattle ranching as a strategy to gain ownership of land.

so it appears that fires in the Amazon have indeed increased as a result of intentional deforestation efforts using fire. this undermines the author's prior statement.

>Against the picture painted of an Amazon forest on the verge of disappearing, a full 80% remains standing.

put differently, we've lost 20% of it. we should be battling as fiercely as possible to prevent any further losses and doing whatever we can to reseed the areas which can be recovered.

i'm not a fan of this kind of "debunkery" because it's counterproductive and doesn't debunk much of anything. this crisis is real, whether or not the media has cared about it in prior years. our planet is dying because of our actions. the details are less relevant than the big picture.

finally, i suggest that you look at the titles of the author's other published articles. he appears to be repeatedly arguing heavily in favor for nuclear power while often trying to undermine the prospect of renewable energy sources. i am pro-nuclear power, and agree that many renewables are imperfect. but consider that he has an agenda of some sort which makes him vastly less trustworthy regarding these matters of climate change, because his agenda is in favor of a specific industry (nuclear power) rather than the planet.

How does him arguing for nuclear power over renewables makes him less trustworthy? You completely lost me there. Sounds like you're just trying to find something to attack his motives.

The author has another article with the following headline:

"Republicans Can Own The Libs on Climate Change By Defending Nuclear Plants On The Brink"

That's troll language. This guy is not a legit journalist.

That raises the question who in today’s media doesn’t get involved in trolling or clickbait headlines anymore?

This is a low brow ad-hominim attack.

The article he has written is worth discussing, and by dismissing it out of hand because of your politics you are adding to the problem.

We're supposed to be intelligent people on HN. Let's discuss ideas, not who or who not might be trolls. A "troll" who has genuine and substantiative ideas backed by facts aren't trolls IMO, so by focussing on the content the trolls get weeded out anyway.

While I appreciate your sentiment and in principle agree with you, I have a hard time arguing points of people who do not argue in good faith. And it does seem like the author is trying to persuade more than he is trying to make a logical and/or correct point.

He didn't dismiss the article out of hand. He debunked its points and then pointed out that the author seems to have an unstated agenda.

It was amazing how fast "the Amazon is burning" news meme spread everywhere. It seemed like everyone I knew was fired up and outraged about it, posting about it, arguing about it, seemingly out of nowhere. It is honestly disturbing to see everyone collectively pivot on a dime to a new cause.

And I would bet most of them have no idea of its connection to the massive EU-Mercosur trade deal that is only just now coming to the forefront after 20 years.

Let’s not forget French farmers were until recently protesting the trade deal.

The whole article is based on one supposed expert (Nepstad) calling out the supposed "bullshit" reporting and political activism, but he himself sounds like a political activist who at the end of the article is asking for 2M$ for his own conservation network.

I'm getting a bit of a bullshit vs bullshit impression.

>The Amazon produces a lot of oxygen, but so do soy farms and [cattle] pastures.

Could someone explain this quote from the article to me? I don't understand how a cattle pasture would produce as much oxygen as a rainforest.

I also don't understand the part about all the oxygen produced being used up due to respiration, surely that means that the world's forests would produce no oxygen for animals to breathe? That seems to completely oppose everything else I've ever seen about the oxygen trees produce.

Sadly, it takes a week after an internet outrage storm until serious journalists get the fact check article finished.

I saw on the NYT they had a nice info graphic[1]; the fires this year are on par with previous years and some other years have been worse. Additionally this is mostly seasonal agricultural burning that happens in most tropical places.

So it’s obviously mostly due to scaremongering and outrage culture. And a few people will be happy people become concerned but the great majority will chalk this up to “crying wolf” and will take future serious issues with a grain of salt.

It basically preaching to a choir which feels good but does nothing to further a cause (slow deforestation, and eventually reverse it).

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/24/world/america...

Do you by chance have a link to the NYT article that you could share?

Sure, right here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/24/world/america...

"Half of the Amazon is protected against deforestation under federal law."

For now.

The point is we should be RE-foresting the planet, not DE-foresting at all, regardless of whether more or less rapaciously than previous years.

I thought that people like Macron have staff that could fact check whatever he's going to share. It's not that it changes the message, but mistakes like this could be used by someone to undermine his claim.

Macron's stance seems just a way to appease the hard left. It doesn't really matter if his declarations are scientifically correct or not.

It is the most appealing course for him. He literally doesn't have to take any action, but to shout out some sentences raising awareness of Brazil and putting the blame on their hard right president, and, voilá, free points next to the French hard-left electorate (which he really needs at the present, after the continued demonstrations from the yellow vests).

Something similar already happened with Merkel (although that time, it wasn't just lip service, there were policies and effort to be made). Merkel was hated by the hard-left in Europe, after the way she managed the crisis, and the huge social issues the policies she forced, created when they were imposed to Southern Europe. Suddenly, she became a defender of basically unchecked migration, and the hard-left completely stop doing her opposition and even supporting her.

This post overtly political and Hacker News does not approve of that.

"And yet the photos weren’t actually of the fires and many weren’t even of the Amazon. The photo Ronaldo shared was taken in southern Brazil, far from the Amazon, in 2013. The photo that DiCaprio and Macron shared is over 20 years old. The photo Madonna and Smith shared is over 30. Some celebrities shared photos from Montana, India, and Sweden."

I wish people that (rightfully) blamed and made fun of Trump for spreading BS on tweeter would be as fierce with the other side of the political landscape.

And the worst part is this negligence _undermines_ a generally good cause.

Why do they knowingly do this? Do they think they won’t be found out?

That's absolutely my opinion with the way the media (and some celebrities) are surfing on the climate issues nowadays.

They're causing so much anxiety and fear on the subject, that if by any chance climate warming or amazon fires or anything isn't as catastrophic as they say, then the whole environment field is going to be trashed as a fake by the general audience.

> Why do they knowingly do this? Do they think they won’t be found out?

In the attention economy, it doesn't matter. Get found out? More attention, more clicks, more likes, more ads, more money.

On a side note, reading 19th century novels about the press makes you realize « attention economy » is what press is about right from the very first days.

Maybe its a little different when some celebrity does it, and when the potus does it? Don't we have even a tiny bit higher bar? Or are we just captitulating, admitting we just have a celebrity dope for president, and you have to excuse him for every wrong thing he does?

On the other hand, the impact this forest fire tweet serie had was greater than most of trump's tweet, which pretty much everyone ignores today. It forced Bolsonaro to mobilize the army and almost caused an international agreement between Brazil and Europe to fail.

Not to mention that the list also includes Macron, which used the emotion caused by those pictures to influence the G7 summit that took place right at the same time.

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