Posted on 07/24/2006 4:44:22 AM PDT by voletti
LAHORE: The vast Amazon rainforest is on the verge of being turned into desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world’s climate, alarming research suggests.
And the process, which would be irreversible, could begin as early as next year.
Geoffrey Lean and Fred Pearce, writing for The Independent on Sunday, quote studies conducted by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre in Amazonia as concluding that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down.
“Scientists say that this would spread drought into the northern hemisphere, including Britain, and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences, spinning out of control, a process that might end in the world becoming uninhabitable,” Lean and Pearce report.
The news comes amidst a heat wave in Britain and much of Europe and the United States. It is also in the wake of a warning by an international group of experts that the forest is reaching a “tipping point” that would lead to its total destruction, the Independent reports. Lean and Pearce say that the research has taken even the scientists conducting it by surprise.
“When Dr Dan Nepstead started the experiment in 2002 – by covering a chunk of rainforest the size of a football pitch with plastic panels to see how it would cope without rain – he surrounded it with sophisticated sensors, expecting to record only minor changes,” The Independent reports.
“The trees managed the first year of drought without difficulty. In the second year, they sunk their roots deeper to find moisture, but survived. But in year three, they started dying. Beginning with the tallest the trees started to come crashing down, exposing the forest floor to the drying sun.
By the end of the year the trees had released more than two-thirds of the carbon dioxide they have stored during their lives, helping to act as a break on global warming. Instead they began accelerating the climate change.”
Lean and Pearce report that the Amazon was entering its second successive year of drought, and could start dying as early as next year. It contains 90 billion tonnes of carbon, enough to increase the rate of global warming by 50 percent.
“Dr Nepstead expects ‘mega-fires’ rapidly to sweep across the drying jungle. With the trees gone, the soil will bake in the sun and the rainforest could become desert,” The Independent reports.
“Dr Deborah Clark from the University of Missouri, one of the world’s top forest ecologists, says the research shows that ‘the lock has broken’ on the Amazon ecosystem. She adds: the Amazon is ‘headed in a terrible direction’.”
Oh boy.
Oh, puh-leeze......
SMUG ALERT! MANBEARPIG ALERT!
good for the Amazon. who gives a capibara's @ss.
Now this is bad science ...
"“When Dr Dan Nepstead started the experiment in 2002 – by covering a chunk of rainforest the size of a football pitch with plastic panels to see how it would cope without rain – he surrounded it with sophisticated sensors, expecting to record only minor changes,” The Independent reports.
“The trees managed the first year of drought without difficulty. In the second year, they sunk their roots deeper to find moisture, but survived. But in year three, they started dying. Beginning with the tallest the trees started to come crashing down, exposing the forest floor to the drying sun.
By the end of the year the trees had released more than two-thirds of the carbon dioxide they have stored during their lives, helping to act as a break on global warming. Instead they began accelerating the climate change.”
Here here!
Alas, there are an awful lot of fiddle players out there on the world stage.
The Independent on Sunday, quote studies conducted by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre in Amazonia as concluding that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down.
I always though it ironic that the "back to nature" Bugs and Bunny crowd whose goal is to eliminate big business as a concept, would use the words, "bluechip" to endow a cited source with respectability and with the cachet of competence.
It didn't work in this case..
If the Amazon is destined for deserttification, neither the insane nor the competent can prevent it. Whenever it happens.
Sahara desert could become a rainforest.
Just as likely.
Since what seems to be needed is some rain. Maybe we could get a rain machine and send it down there. Oh !!Thats right, we dont have a rain machine do we?
Forest fires cause global cooling from particulates. Plus a healthy rainforest produces lots of methane. Look at a picture of global methane (sorry lost my link) and you will see the most massive amounts coming out of the rainforests.
WE'RE DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!!!
Or as late as 2075 ... but it's all very scientific, really!
Al Gore "science".
Ok. Next "news" item...
Oh yes, the technique: cite a ridiculously obvious fact; prove it "scientifically". Then go on a rant with endless handwringing over (scientifically) totally unrelated causes and consequences.
I think you'll find that wetlands by far produce the most methane followed by forest termites, and oceans. They are the top three sources of (natural) methane.
What's new?
Nature is cruel, unfeeling and uncompromising; and the one constant in nature is change.
..........yea..and San Fancisco may become a Mormon stronghold.....
Land fills, refineries (and similar) and the bowels of cud-chewing domesticated livestock are the three largest 'man-made' sources of methane.
Those Amazon trees are sure resilient.
2 years without rain and they all survive. Most survived even the third year without rain.
Drought resistent tropical rain forest (averaging 100 inches of rain per year), who would have guessed it.
Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda! Let us know when it happens!
Our tax dollars at work? He actually obtained a grant to see what happens if you exclude rain from a rain forest?
I wonder what would happen if you removed the water from the ocean? (Sadly, I am not a Ph.D. at MIT so I will probably not receive a grant to explore this brilliant idea!)
If anyone has been in the Amazon, you know that plants can grow so fast you can see them do it, like watching the hour hand on a clock.
The only thing that could possibly destroy the bio-mass of the Amazon Basin is a complete cessation of rain fall, and even then the massive compost process would carry plant life for hundreds of years.
This is just a revisit of the idea: " My daughter will be a virgin her whole life!"
This just proves one should not do drugs and science at the same time.
Algore at it again? He just HAS to quit bellowing all that hot air - it's changing the Amazon climate....
Seriously, has anyone been down to the Amazon region? I have yet to hear what I would call a reliable source claiming that the region is about to turn into a desert. My understanding is that that would require the rain to dry up - and I haven't seen or heard any evidence that that is happening.
First our Urban centers will dry up as a result of a collapsing economy due to crime, as our giant institutions which preserve the American lifestyle of individual freedoms based on responsibility of each of us, come crashing down.
The rule of law shall end and the precincts of our large cities will have no more cars, only braying donkeys that sidle back and forth aimlessly while their owners do weed in the shadows of a society of freedom long forgotten!We need a totalitarian state right NOW!
Climatoligists are well aware of many past episodes of "mega El Ninos" in South America. These resulted in intense drought in the rain forest and huge forest fires.
Somehow the jungle always survives and regenerates.
Hey yahoo "scientist", cover up your entire lawn with plastic garbage bags and prevent any moisture from entering for 3 years....hmmm...do you think anything will die? BONEHEAD!
"Repent now all ye sinners, (That's thee and not me, don't you know, for I am pure of heart--and don't own a Hummer, or use hair spray and would rather swelter than turn on my air conditioner) before its too late and God's wrath descends on all American, Capitalist Pigs who have used up all of His precious resources and despoiled His Universe."
Wow, what fascinating science. Cut out water and sun from plants and they die! Who knew?
This is an obviously conclusive scientific study. After all, it was done by a "scientist", and they know more than you do.
The sky is falling? And now they have a date!! Next year!!! I am SO TIRED of the hysteria.
Is this what happened to the Sahara rain forest?
Woods Hole must be running out of funding.
No, but it's on lay-away down at the Haliburton Outlet.
And don't forget that poison ivy is going to grow much better because of 'global warming." we will have the Amazon basin filled with poison ivy. It will be a disaster.
It might just be bad reporting. Hard call to make in the circumstance. The experiement may have been legitimate and the reporter an idiot at explaining it.
Hopw about Walmart? Dont they have one?
Is he telling us that there has never been three consecutive drought years in the Amazon in human history in the region?
If this is true is there anything that can possibly be done to reverse this process?
"Each year, the Rainforest is responsible for over three thousand deaths from accidents, attacks or illnesses. There are over seven hundred things in the Rainforest that cause cancer. Join the fight now and help stop the Rainforest before it's too late." - South Park
Anyone know yet that it's BUSH'S fault?
I want to know who or what is responsible for my finding fossilized sea shells many places here in central Indiana.
Could it possibly be that there was once an ocean here?
Nature isn't static!
Paging Ms. Little; Ms Chicken Little. Please meet your party in the Amazon.
Or was it that Antarctica was a dessert? No wait, that was Alaska, baked. Antarctica might have been a desert.
And I 'could be banging Claudia Schiffer'.
Sometimes, when the boy cries wolf, there really is a wolf.
Even if the boy is wearing a rainbow t-shirt, doesn't bathe, and lives in a tree. :)
its all Crapola!
Don't forget to look at methane sinks. It tends to break down quickly (and warming, manmade or not, increases the rate of break down). My major point about forests still holds, if you want global cooling it is better to burn them.
Old growth forests are net polluters -- kill em all!!!
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