18% of the Amazon has been destroyed already.
Burning rain forest in the Amazon, Para, Brazil. Photo by Julio Etchart, used with permission.
Almost one fifth of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed to date according to an article on Mongabay.com titled Fires rage in Amazon rainforest park.
In 2005 and 2006 the Amazon experienced the worst drought on record as thousands of square kilometers of land burned for months on end, releasing more than 100 million metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
2007 is shaping up to be a similar year with meteorologists forecasting conditions akin to those seen in 2005: warming in the tropical North Atlantic (the same conditions that influence hurricane formation in the Caribbean and East Coast of the United States). Another year of drought is of great concern to researchers studying the Amazon ecosystem. Field studies by the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Research Center suggest that Amazon forest ecosystems may not withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without starting to break down. Severe drought weakens forest trees and dries leaf litter leaving forests susceptible to land-clearing fires, which, in turn, produce smoke that hinders the formation of rain clouds. Logging and deforestation only worsen the effects, which can lead to a feedback cycle that further dries the forest.
While only 18 percent of the Brazilian Amazon has been destroyed to date, simulations by scientists from Woods Hole and other institutions suggest that 40 percent of the rainforest could be lost by 2050. Climate change, which may increase temperatures in the basin by as much as five degrees Celsius (eight degrees F), could exacerbate the loss.
My emphasis added there and I’ll repeat it again for you. Only 18% of the Brazilian Amazon has been destroyed to date! ONLY. Good grief! The loss of the Amazon rainforest is one of the key tipping points for runaway planetary heating. Here’s some others:
- The vanishing Sahara - Dust from the Sahara helps feed plankton in the Atlantic, sequestering CO2. It also suppresses hurricane formation.
- Melting Greenland - Ice making up 6% of all the world’s fresh water is melting faster than anyone thought, raising sea levels and potentially disrupting ocean currents, changing salinity balances the world over and potentially disrupting the North Atlantic current that keeps Europe from freezing.
- The Tibetan plateau is melting - It covers over a quarter of what is now China, reflecting heat back into space. As it melts it darkens, reflecting less heat.
- The West Antarctic ice sheet could collapse - A couple of years ago the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed in the space of just over a month, releasing over 3000 square kilometres of ice, about 40% of it.
- Sub-sea methane - There’s around 11 trillion tonnes of methane, 24 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2 frozen near the bottom of the ocean. If the oceans’ temperature rises enough the icy lattuces trapping that methane will melt, releasing it quickly into the surrounding ocean and the air above.
- The Siberian permafrost - Also a massive store of carbon. If that melts, and it is melting, then the world is in a lot of trouble.
We are messing around with things we truly do not comprehend. That farmer in the photo above, much like the proverbial butterfly whose flapping wings may trigger a hurricane further upstream the chain of consequences, could be the death of us all. — DS
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