Parts of the Amazon Rainforest Now Releasing More Carbon Than They Absorbs (npr.org) 57
Long-time Slashdot reader phalse phace quotes NPR: Portions of the Amazon rainforest are now releasing more carbon dioxide than they absorb, disrupting an important balancing act that signals a worsening of the climate crisis, according to a new study.
Findings from the nearly decade-long research project, published Wednesday in the journal Nature , suggest that deforestation and fire, among other factors, have dramatically undercut the Amazon's ability to absorb heat-trapping carbon emissions from the atmosphere.
Researchers who routinely tested the atmosphere at four areas in Amazonia twice a month over a nine-year period found that not only are carbon emissions higher in the eastern areas of the rainforest than in the western areas, but that the southeastern area is putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than it absorbs. The eastern Amazon is a hotspot of deforestation to facilitate logging and agriculture, including cattle ranches.
In addition to deforestation and fires, the study says the rise in emissions from the Amazon has been accelerated by warming temperatures and "moisture stress" during the dry season. The eastern areas have less moisture than the west during already-difficult dry periods, which now have become drier and have lasted longer due to climate change.
Findings from the nearly decade-long research project, published Wednesday in the journal Nature , suggest that deforestation and fire, among other factors, have dramatically undercut the Amazon's ability to absorb heat-trapping carbon emissions from the atmosphere.
Researchers who routinely tested the atmosphere at four areas in Amazonia twice a month over a nine-year period found that not only are carbon emissions higher in the eastern areas of the rainforest than in the western areas, but that the southeastern area is putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than it absorbs. The eastern Amazon is a hotspot of deforestation to facilitate logging and agriculture, including cattle ranches.
In addition to deforestation and fires, the study says the rise in emissions from the Amazon has been accelerated by warming temperatures and "moisture stress" during the dry season. The eastern areas have less moisture than the west during already-difficult dry periods, which now have become drier and have lasted longer due to climate change.
Going down. (Score:4, Insightful)
For when the slippy slope comes to a continent.
Re: Going down? Burn it down instead (Score:2)
Re: Going down? Burn it down instead (Score:2)
Re: Going down? Burn it down instead (Score:1)
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Or perhaps you are a racist who wants people in hotter climates and island nations (both predominantly minorities) to die of drought or having rising sea levels take their homes?
You do realize that in the "island nations,' the people there aren't minorities. I assume by "minority" you are talking about non-whites? A 2019 study determined that about 10% of the world's 7.7 billion people are white. Another source showed about 16.5% of the world's population is white. Maybe "minority" doesn't mean what you think it means.
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I can understand why some people don't like capitalism. When under-advantaged, the requirement to earn one's keep is burdensome.
But history has shown us what becomes of communism. History has shown us that it is far less sustainable, and results in far more poverty and income disparity, than capitalism.
It is true that history has also shown us that extremes are a complete boat of fail. Completely unregulated capitalism leads to monopolism and straight-up oligarchy. And that is awful. Government regulat
Re: Going down? Burn it down instead (Score:5, Interesting)
I do agree with your sentiments but at the same time there is no reason to throw out the ideas behind socialism because of the actions of these countries in the past. Socialism is an idea that has had terrible marketing for over a century, a large part due to cold war propaganda and those sentiments are hard to get over. Terminology is incredibly messy as well, "communism" is not something you can "enact", it is a state of being a country achieves through other measures. You cannot just flip the communism switch and things happen. Socialism is an economic system that really only proposed two main things: Worker control of the means of production and de-commodification. Those are both ideals that can have positive outcomes for a large amounts of people as well as being things that are able to be enacted quite gradually and importantly democratically.
Russia and China are societies that both had revolutions that came out of centuries of monarchist rule. There is a cultural momentum behind that form of government that made it very easy for authoritarian tendencies to take hold once the revolution takes place. Also the hard part of revolution is the fact that the leaders of said revolution are good at one thing and usually pretty dogshit at others. Lenin and Mao have some very insightful ideas and were able to do the job of revolution but their actual governance were pretty unquestionably bad and set the stage for autocracy to easily take hold of societies that were primed to accept it.
Marx himself saw capitalism as an important thing that has had very positive outcomes in a lot of ways and what he talked about is socialism being the next step for an economy when capitalism has reached it's end pint and starts causing more harm than it fixes. He also was an economist and did not really delve into government all that much. One has to imagine some of the ideas of socialism under a democratic system can be something far different that under an autocratic regime and we see some of that in western European countries.
The main ways we can enact the smarter parts of socialism today are pretty simple: better and stronger union participation and better social safety programs with de-commodification of healthcare, utilities and housing. That doesn't mean violent nationalization of those industries, only we accept them as vital parts of peoples lives and wellbeing and they should be regulated for that purpose and not what gains the maximum profit.
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You really are just a bad NPC working down a dialogue tree.
Did you stub your toe on some communism today?
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Are you another sock puppet? He didn't call out shit with any words. He literally did the "We should improve society somewhat" [thenib.com] meme (and you did it again!) and that was it.
And if you've seen it "dozens of times" you should be able to refute any of it pretty easily.
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Oh and I resent that assertion sir. I am a red blooded, full throated freedom loving American citizen and my critiques of our economic problems and desire to see this country do better for it's people makes me more American that any of your performative patriotic corporate boot licking.
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I am trying to understand your word usage. Wikipedia says that communism is a specific form of socialism, which is the sense in which I was using it. And it [wikipedia.org] says that socialism is "a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production." The entire wikipedia article on socialism only mentions decommodification once, and that is in a quote describing something called "high socialism." The reference cited is to a very wordy PDF that doesn't even use the phrase
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Hey that i understandable, this stuff gets very in the weeds, and there's nothing socialists like more than complaining about socialists. It's a real case of "damn socialists, they ruined socialism"
Decommodification as I understand it is removing profit motives out of certain industries. Things like housing and healthcare should not be at the whims of market forces and profit motives as we accept them as necessary things people need to live fulfilling lives. Japan actually has a pretty good example of pa
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Ok that helps.
As I understand, in Japan they are deliberately trying to encourage people to breed by lowering the cost of raising a family, the most significant part of that being one's house. So they just built a whole heaping lot of houses. Market forces then naturally pulled the value of those houses down. That should make them affordable, but it also makes them terrible investments. As it said in your quote, "fast depreciation of housing value". So when you buy a house in Japan, you expect it will
Re: Going down? Burn it down instead (Score:4, Interesting)
True in regards to japan and I think they have the better idea of de-coupling the idea of housing with "investment". I think the practice of looking at home ownership as a profit center leads to some bad outcomes, such as pricing many people out of the market for housing, a focus on land lording and rent seeking, recently we are seeing large firms buy up large amounts of housing off the market for profit flipping as well as just a bad financial situation for may whose equity is tied up into a house which as we saw in 2008 can crater because housing is subject to the same market forces as stocks. While increasing the supply of housing is definitely a move we should take with both public and private initiatives, these negative outcomes should be reduced. Whether you want to call that policy "socialist" or not is for me, semantics and a case of "who cares", good policy is good policy, call it whatever you want. America already engages in many policies one could call "socialist" we just don't use the word.
With regards to co-ops there is a lot of diverging opinions, there is no real instruction manual and the times are a quite different from when the authors of most works opined on the subject. There's a lot of "devil in the details" type stuff that can be adapted. That said the main thrust of the idea is that workers are the ones that add value to production and therefore they should have a share of the profits. That and also it's democracy for the workplace. We like democracy in our government, so why do we tolerate autocracy in the place we spend 1/3 of our lives? Workers should not only have a share of profits but a say in how their business operates and how the hierarchy of the operation takes place. We have all seen the trope of the owners no-good son who takes over the company despite never really contributing.
In regards to shares of the company, lot's of opinions. None are really "equal share for everyone" but many would say some amount of seniority can affect things and also just the mere fact that the workers can decide for themselves how they want it to work and how new employees should be able to partake in the shares.
Part of the issue is there is some amount of data on cooperatives but not as much as we would like. That said some of the data does bode well. Cooperatives tend to be as productive as private firms, are more resilient to price shocks, they also seem to weather financial downturns much better than private firms as there are many examples of co-ops deciding to lower salaries for everyone to weather the storm.
The issue of "everyone demands the highest salary" also does not seem to be an issue as much because workers know they have a stake in the company which changes the attitude around salaries. Partaking in profits also helps but people who are in such systems are usually paid fairly and the fact they have a say changes perspectives as opposed to a private firm where ones salary is the only part of the arrangement. Also salaries are more flattened out with the highest paid worker usually somewhere in the 2-5x more than the lowest as opposed to private firms where the disparity can be 20, 50, or 100x more (i think with CEO's today it's closer to 300x). There are some larger examples out there like Desjardins Group in Montreal, or Mondragon in Spain, which are flavors of different types of systems, with their fans and detractors.
Most people want to contribute, want to work, especially when their basic needs are taken care of. In the entitlement system you describe (which I am in no ways opposed to) I can make the same argument but with the studies we have seen from UBI tests, social safety nets in Western Europe, even the welfare system here is that when people are healthy and not in poverty they will contribute and the notion of the lazy "welfare queen" who only mooches off the dole isn't really as common as people think. It's the conditions of poverty that are a real drag on the nations productivity. It's the largest contributor to crime, health p
Re: Going down? Burn it down instead (Score:1)
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Not without government funding. Where does the profit from carbon capture come from?
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Release quotas/permits would be enacted by the government.
The market to sell carbon, or carbon credits would be enacted by the government.
PR is nice but it does not generate profits.
Carbon is abundant and cheap already, there's no money to be made from capturing it unless the government creates one. That or some technology to turn captured carbon into useful hydrocarbon fuels, which probably would have to be kickstarted by a government program (Thus the calls for a "Manhattan Project" program for carbon ca
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More than they absorbsâ½ (Score:5, Funny)
Is our children learning?
Re: More than they absorbsâ½ (Score:1)
much learning they did have. absorbs all important and must insist you take conclusion seriously.
Re:More than they absorbsâ½ (Score:4, Informative)
Not my fault [imgur.com]
EditorDavid changed it.
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Re: More than they absorbsâ½ (Score:2)
Nah. It was an interrobang, something that Slashdot's encoding apparently doesn't support (in the forum output; it works fine in the text field where you enter your title). Looks like a superimposed ? and !.
Will it work here?
â½
Re:More than they absorbs (Score:2)
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"Me fail English? That's unpossible!"
If you want to be taken seriously (Score:2, Interesting)
If you want to be taken seriously - check your grammar, at least in the title.
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Bad grammar does not make the issue any less serious, though it doesn't matter much any more, the Amazon is lost. Business before pleasure
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If you want to be taken seriously - check your grammar, at least in the title.
Don't blame me. EditorDavid changed it.
My title was "Parts Of Amazon Rainforest Now Releasing More Carbon Than It Absorbs"
proof [imgur.com]
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So foresty. Much carbon. Very rain. Wow!
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the Amazon Forest belongs to Brazil
So does all the contamination. Make sure to keep it inside the border, or all bets are off
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So you're saying that we need to invade Brazil to save the rainforest. Can do! Get the military on the phone.
Nope. I said send lawyers, accountants, and money. Buy the forest. Make it yours. When it is yours then you can dictate what is done with it. To keep it yours means paying the government enough money that the Brazilian military works in part for your interests. As a landowner and taxpayer in Brazil your interests will carry influence. Even better would be to become a citizen in Brazil and vote.
You will in a way need to send in an army, but the weapons they carry should be piles of currency. Fire mon
On the plus side Brazil has an election soon (Score:4, Interesting)
And early polling looks to show Lula Da Silva will trounce Bolsanaro which will be a welcome change to the politics of a globally important country. Lula also is now coming out against deforestation as well
“Even Lula is saying deforestation in the Amazon can no longer be supported by any Brazilian government. He never said this before,” said Astrini. “It is now clear that a solution for the Amazon can only be possible if we change government. There is no hope if Bolsonaro is re-elected president. It is either the Amazon or Bolsonaro. There is no space for both.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
The world should also really come to a consensus and enact some sort of policy that can protect the Amazon and give poor Brazilians an option for economic growth that doesn't end up with them clear cutting the forest.
Re:On the plus side Brazil has an election soon (Score:5, Informative)
give poor Brazilians an option for economic growth that doesn't end up with them clear cutting the forest.
It's ranchers, miners, and loggers who are clear cutting the forest, not relatively poor Brazilians. The poor people are killed protecting the forest [wikipedia.org].
Re:On the plus side Brazil has an election soon (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure but we have to accept that a lot of that is also because a relatively poor country is looking to industrialize and grow it's economy and it's people are looking for ways to move out of poverty and we as the world should not deny them that and right now they really see their best option as exploitation of their natural resources. It's not really fair for other societies to have done that and reap the rewards and yet we tell Brazilians they cannot, but at the same time their natural resource is that forest and it has global implications. While wealthy industrialists are definitely behind all that it's supported by many of the Brazilian people for those reasons.
I am basically saying I am not opposed to some sort of stipend or fund to help Brazil and other South American countries continue to industrialize without razing their countryside. I think it's a fair thing to do and under a new government I think it can be done in a somewhat responsible matter. They are just in a unique global position.
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If we could give a stipend to the country per acre of rainforest, that would be great. We could do the same to Congo maybe.
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For sure Congo would be an excellent candidate as well. If we could help them humanely and environmentally do cobalt extraction and have the Congolese people benefit from it's sale it would be a real win-win overall.
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In a fair and just world, there would be armed men standing shoulder to shoulder saying "Cut a tree, we kill you where you stand."
Worthy of South Park episode... (Score:2)
South Park had an episode about the rainforest, and how so many persons are killed...this news report has the veneer of the same idea.
JoskK.
Where is the graph, where is the plot (Score:2)
Map the entire Amazon basin and the world or your hypothesis is based on measuring the presence or absence of a pile of dust in a wind storm.
I see (Score:3)
If you take a square mile of Amazon forest, raze it down, put concrete and oil-palms on it, it absorbs no longer 'as much' CO2?
And they went to university?
That big house where people go to learn shit?