The Amazon Rainforest Now Emits More Greenhouse Gases Than It Absorbs | Hacker News Reader

The Amazon Rainforest Now Emits More Greenhouse Gases Than It Absorbs

smithsonianmag.com

86 pointsaracena46 comments

What the article is saying here is, --ignoring the rest of the Amazon (A), if you take the amount of CO2 what would have been sequestered if the forest had been left alone (B) and then add it to the amount of CO2 emitted by whatever business interests thereafter occupied the land (C) you get a large number of greenhouse gases! Such that, when you subtract that from the amount of CO2 the Amazon would have absorbed if not for A, you get a negative number.--

They're double counting the deforestation. There's nothing else to see here.

That doesn't look like double-counting the effects of the deforestation, just breaking it down into two segments: the difference between leaving the forest in place vs. cutting it down, and then the difference between leaving the now-bare land idle vs. using it for industry.

No. Double counting is an effect of ascribing the emissions.

When you ascribe the effects to the Amazon, you combine the two. As a simple exercise, imagine that the deforested land had been left fallow, and the CO2 emitting business had set up shop at a different plot of land. You wouldn't ascribe the CO2 emitted by the business to the Amazon, and therefore, when you DO ascribe it to the Amazon, you are double-counting the effect.

None of this is to say that it's okay to deforest the Amazon. I just hate it when people lie with numbers for the sake of a catchy headline.

> As a simple exercise, imagine that the deforested land had been left fallow, and the CO2 emitting business had set up shop at a different plot of land. You wouldn't ascribe the CO2 emitted by the business to the Amazon, and therefore, when you DO ascribe it to the Amazon, you are double-counting the effect.

Here you're assuming all the same industrial activity would have happened, just elsewhere. But that seems like an unfounded assumption that ignores how deforesting the Amazon opens up new cheap land to enable more industrial activity with lower costs than would otherwise be the case.

Land is finite and not cheap. Pretending that eg. new farming would have simply happened in the same way and quantity elsewhere had the Amazon been protected is a more egregious lie than trying to include economic activity in the net greenhouse effect of the whole Amazon.

That's fair. But in return, I offer the counter-argument:

When you double count like this, you are implicitly assuming deforestation ALLOWED the polluting business to occupy the new land, and they wouldn't have polluted to the same degree elsewhere (because it wasn't available, wasn't as profitable, or something else).

A totally reasonable claim! I could explore it further. But IMO one should make this claim in good faith, make it clear what you're proposing, not engage in this kind of statistical sleight of hand.

I am totally opposed to deforesting the Amazon. But I'm sick of political participants that think it's OK to lie to people, simply because the implications of the lie favor some greater truth.

> A totally reasonable claim! I could explore it further. But IMO one should make this claim in good faith, make it clear what you're proposing, not engage in this kind of statistical sleight of hand.

There's absolutely no sleight of hand involved in suggesting that farming on former rainforest land is a consequence of allowing deforestation, and that the climate consequences of that farming are thus also consequences of that deforestation.

Given that enabling such farming is usually the economic driver for performing the deforestation, it's ridiculous to suggest that anyone should consider the deforestation process itself and the subsequent polluting land use as having separate causes that make the latter somehow not count as part of the Amazon's climate impact.

And even if you do honestly feel like the direct effects of the deforestation should be considered as unrelated to the effects of the subsequent land use, it is still quite incorrect for you to refer to this as double-counting. There are two different quantities being lumped together (because they are almost inextricably related), and there's no overlap in the climate effects accounted for under those two categories. It's not double-counting; it's just counting some quantities you'd prefer to sweep under the rug.

Oh please. The headline is garbage - don't you see that?

? the paragraph you quoted does not say that.

Sorry, I should have realized the punctuation would be interpreted this way, but I didn't. I didn't intend it as a literal quote of the article, rather a paraphrase of its claims.

My pet peeve is people asserting that rainforests are a carbon sinks. Mature rainforests are carbon neutral. The rainforests are carbon banks -- not sinks. This article is simply saying that the Amazon Rainforest is shrinking but it's using a lot of words for dramatic effect. I'd always expect a shrinking forest to emit carbon and an expanding forest to absorb it.

Feels like the bigger tragedy is what deforestation does to the rainforest's biodiversity

There have been multiple mass extinctions in the past. Humans are just causing/accelerating the next one.

It is sad though but at this point earth as we know it is doomed--all so the ultra-rich can hoard money, and for what?

That is why there has to be a tax for the whole population of America and for other rich nations. These people are top of top considering the world population, there's no other way around to say poor nations should stop their economic development.

Lot of comments here suggesting that lack of economic utility is to blame for the Amazon’s deforestation. While maybe true on an immediate basis, this overlooks the fact that 1/4 of all western medicines are derived from rainforest plants. Moreover, of the 3000 plants the US National Cancer Institute has found to be active against cancer cells, almost 3/4 come from tropical rainforests [1].

I don’t even think we can begin to quantify the losses we’re suffering as the Amazon is depleted. But I’m damn near certain the economic utility of logging and cattle ranching pale in comparison to the valuation of the drugs we’ve yet to discover in these forests.

1. http://www.earthtimes.org/encyclopaedia/environmental-issues...

Activities like extensive logging for cattle ranching are driven by economic returns, global agreements and policy is not enough. There has to be a competing economic alternative that makes it more profitable to preserve rather than destroy the rainforest.

Well the Amazon is often referred to as “the world's largest medicine cabinet”, so there’s that.

If only aliens would show up and pay us for samples of unique living things

Sadly, the Amazon basin has been on fire for decades. It’s destruction will be one of humanity’s biggest regrets.

Or at least the Brazilians, who are actually responsible

Corruption

Would you also blame those who buy lumber and crops from the Amazon? Capitalism's great problem is not accounting for negative externalities. I would include the consumers who drive the demand for Amazon products among the people that deserve blame (myself included in this).

The soil isn’t good. It’s all bio mass so they burn, grow or graze and move on. It’s slash and burn.

Why hasn’t the international community seized control over the Amazon rain forest? Clearly Bolsonaro and the Brazilian government doesn’t give two shits.

You’re proposing invading a sovereign country and seizing their natural resources?

Preventing them from fucking it up for pennies. A planet is worth more than whatever they can get from cutting down those trees. I believe in property rights, but fuck property rights when externalities are so huge that they can put the whole world in a dire situation. Property and sovereignty are a man-made concept, they can be undone as quickly as they were done. What matters is that the planet lives.

But wouldn't it be less destructive to simply pay Brazil a large amount of money for that?

A war would probably just damage the forest anyway.

I wonder if we’ll cross a line and realize that Brazil’s leaders were proving their deliberation that military action would result in government-ordered destruction.

Is it truly “theirs” when the entire world depends on it? They are squandering it by giving it away to global corporations like JBS (massive meat corporation that extends beyond Brazil and has bought up a shit ton of large meat processing plants/farms across the globe including the US).

Also, the native people that live in the Amazon are at threat too, but nobody is listening to them. They do not have the resources to standup to the Brazilian government that continues to ignore them and continues to give away their land to corporate interests.

If the rest of the world depends on it, then that sounds like a great reason for the rest of the world to pay a large sum of money to Brazil, in exchange for it's services.

That would certainly be cheaper than a war, which would probably just cause a large amount of damage to the forest anyway.

How about the global community paying Brazil to keep it untouched.

Yes it is theirs even if the world depends on it.

Summarized: Yes

The rest of the world burned its own forests. Let Brazil burn its in peace.

Or pay to keep it. I don't care, but this neo-colonialism infuriates L. Americans who witness a steady stream of Western countries come in and destroy their environment

Sounds like it, before it was for oil and fertile lands. Now we will see it for water and CO2.

That would be a novel idea.

Echoing whats been said, even discounting the moral implications, needless deaths, and international bad blood that would come out of it, wars are extremely expensive.

It would be far cheaper for everyone to just write a regular check to Brazil that has a big enough number on it that they can't refuse. If the cost is split between several countries, it will probably be kind of negligible in the grand scheme of things, Brazil may be better off (well, if corruption doesn't blow up all the money), and the Amazon won't be destroyed as quickly.

The only catch is ensuring destruction doesn't keep going & that Brazil keeps its end of the bargain, which would require oversight, and that's easier said than done.

Oversight of this should be relatively easy, no need to even have on-site visits... satellite imaging would be perfectly enough to monitor any deforestation happening.

Because violating a country’s sovereignty tends to be taken very poorly, and a reckless president might respond with a very ill-thought out military act.

Brazil is suffering severely and they need carrots right now, not sticks.

Are you asking why the "international community" doesn't wage war and take over the rain forest?

Tragedy of the commons. There is nothing more than wood that can be exploited from the Amazon, so nobody steps in. But if that jungle were to disappear, humanity would be in grave danger. But there would be no profit to made, so nobody acts.

Invading a foreign country to prevent them from fucking up the planet is definitely a new thing in the international diplomacy book, but it will happen more and more.

Nothing more than wood?

There are likely billions, if not trillions, of dollars worth of undiscovered pharmaceuticals in the Amazon still today.

Not that economic utility is needed to justify conservation, but nothing more than wood could not be further from the truth.

We would probably need to eliminate nations altogether to make this happen, i.e. a global nation/government.

Yep so we're basically doomed because that will never happen, too many countries have nukes that keep other countries from being that "well I'm going to have to take over now" country

There is non insignificant number of people who live there so any attempts to grab it would lead to war.

While the world is at it, should they add China and the US to the list of countries to invade for good of the environment?

The international community?

Let me guess: the US with a Democratic president + some meaningless European countries. All waving the flag of self-righteousness while they sign exploitative contracts to “rebuild” the country they bombed.

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