[Coleus]

...Far from cleaning up the atmosphere, the Amazon is now a major source for pollution. Rampant burning and deforestation, mostly at the hands of illegal loggers and of ranchers, release hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the skies each year.

Brazil now ranks as one of the world's leading producers of greenhouse gases, thanks in large part to the Amazon, the source for up to two-thirds of the country's emissions....

Sunken Fires Menace Land and Climate

Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from Pennsylvania to Mongolia, releasing toxic gases, adding millions of tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until vegetation shrivels and the land sinks.

[Slump Tester]

Hmmmm... Sounds like we should use better catalytic converters and legislate more different kinds of gasoline for specific localities.

[Wiseghy]

I've been down there. The locals are kinda touche' when you say "slash & burn". They prefer to call it "clearing the land".

Corruption is so bad, it's had to imagine anyone putting a stop it, anywhere in LA, except where saner heads are cashing in big time on eco-tourisim, like in Costa Rica.

[Desron13]

Oh my GOD! if the glaciers melt LA and New York will be flooded out of existence! Oh wait... BURN BABY BURN!!!

[Sofa King]

I always found it hard to belive that forests in one part of the world were supplying oxygen for the rest of the planet.

[Coleus]

Even without the massive burning, the popular conception of the Amazon as a giant oxygen factory for the rest of the planet is misguided, scientists say. Left unmolested, the forest does generate enormous amounts of oxygen through photosynthesis, but it consumes most of it itself in the decomposition of organic matter.

[RightWhale]

Is the Amazon a rain forest? GG Liddy mentioned that the northwest forest, Oregon, Wash, Alaska, is a rain forest. The Amazon may have been farmland even quite recently.

[COBOL2Java]

"It's not the lungs of the world," said Daniel Nepstad, an American ecologist who has studied the Amazon for 20 years. "It's probably burning up more oxygen now than it's producing."

Ted Turner, please pick up the white courtesy phone...

[Bogey78O]

'Rampant burning and deforestation, mostly at the hands of illegal loggers and of ranchers, release hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the skies each year.'


uhhhh...That's what the environmentalists are trying to stop. You're not exactly making your case.