Note: this topic is from 7/24/2006. Thanks voletti.
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’.”
"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!!!
Note: this topic is from 7/24/2006. Thanks voletti.
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