Amazon Deforestation

jim king · February 03, 2009, 08:27:34 AM

I thougt this atricle might be interesting to some people.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=17543
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AMAZON.CON -- Part 1
Shaky science behind save-rainforest effort
New TV documentary finds skeptics among researchers

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Posted: June 26, 2000
1:00 am Eastern

© 2009 WorldNetDaily.com

Editor's note: Through a special arrangement with the producers of the television newsmagazine American Investigator, WorldNetDaily brings you this exclusive news report. Part one of this two-part series focuses on questions about the scientific integrity of environmentalists. The series concludes tomorrow in WorldNetDaily.

By Marc Morano and Kent Washburn
© 2000, WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.

Patrick Moore became an instant celebrity in 1977 when a photograph showing him cradling a baby seal in defiance of arrest by Canadian authorities was broadcast around the world.

As the front man for the environmental activist group Greenpeace, he helped turn public opinion around on the high-profile issues of whaling, seal hunting, nuclear power and chemical pollution.

Today the environmental scientist and leader of a group called Greenspirit has a new cause -- alerting the public to what he calls the "myth" that the Amazon rainforest is endangered by development and deforestation.

"The Amazon is actually the least endangered forest in the world," states Moore in American Investigator's television newsmagazine documentary, "Clear-cutting the myths," hosted by former CBS and CNN newsman Reid Collins. Moore explains that, in the 20 years of warnings about deforestation, "only 10 percent of the Amazon has been converted to date from what was original forest to agriculture and settlement."

The finding that the Amazon rainforest threat is a myth based on bad science and political agendas -- especially by unlikely critics such as Moore, other scientists and inhabitants of the region -- is not expected to sit well with a movement that has enlisted schoolchildren throughout the United States and celebrities ranging from Sting to Alec Baldwin to Chevy Chase to Tom Jones and Tony Bennett. And which has also raised tens of millions of dollars for environmental activist groups.

"This is where I really have a problem with modern-day environmentalism," says Moore. "It confuses opinion with what we know to be true, and disguises what are really political agendas with environmental rhetoric. The fact of the matter is: There is a larger percentage of the Amazon rain forest intact than there are most other forests in this world."

Moore left Greenpeace, the organization he helped found, in 1986, after finding himself at odds with other leaders of the group.

"We had already helped the world turn the corner on the environmental issues," he said. "Once a majority agrees with you, its time to stop beating them over the head and sit down with them and try to figure out some solutions."

Yet, the notion that the Amazon jungles are threatened remains embedded in the popular culture:

The 1993 animated feature, "Ferngully: The Last Rainforest," takes the Amazon's mystical charm literally, showing magical rainforest fairies fighting for their lives against industrialist's chainsaws and bulldozers.

National Geographic's "Rainforest: Heroes of the High Frontier" warns that "despite efforts to save it, the rainforest is being consumed at an unprecedented rate."

"Amazonia: A Celebration of Life" shows playful jungle animals being rudely awakened to the sound of chainsaws.

The 1992 Sean Connery feature "Medicine Man" shows Connery discovering the cure for cancer at his makeshift lab in the heart of a burning Amazon rainforest. He loses the cure when developers raze his facility in order to build a road.

Environmental groups from Greenpeace to the Sierra Club to the World Wilderness Foundation to the Environmental Defense Fund to the Smithsonian Institution conduct outreach efforts in the name of the rainforest. Dozens of other groups with names like Rainforest Relief, Rainforest Action Network and Rainforest Foundation were created for the sole purpose of exploiting the issue.
A tourist to Brazil who picks up a "Lonely Planet" travel book will read numerous pleas for help: "Unless things change ... Indians will die with their forests," it pleads. "Invaluable, irreplaceable Amazon may be lost forever."

"Lonely Planet" has company on the bookshelf: "At the current rate of deforestation," Vice President Gore writes in "Earth in the Balance," "Virtually all of the world's tropical rainforests will be gone partway though the next century."

The scientific evidence paints a much brighter picture of deforestation in the Amazon. Looking at the NASA Landsat satellite images of the deforestation rates in the Amazon rainforest, about 12.5 percent has been cleared. Of the 12.5 percent, one half to one third of that is fallow, or in the process of regeneration, meaning that at any given moment up to 94 percent of the Amazon is left to nature. Even the Environmental Defense Fund and Sting's Rainforest Foundation concede, among the fine print, that the forest is nearly 90 percent intact.

Philip Stott of the University of London and author of the new book, "Tropical Rainforests: Political and Hegemonic Myth-making," maintains that the environmental campaigns have lost perspective.

"One of the simple, but very important, facts is that the rainforests have only been around for between 12,000 and 16,000 years," he says. "That sounds like a very long time, but in terms of the history of the earth, it's hardly a pinprick. The simple point is that there are now still -- despite what humans have done -- more rainforests today than there were 12,000 years ago."

Moore maintains that "the rainforests of the Amazon, the Congo, Malaysia, Indonesia and a few other parts of the world are the least endangered forests" because "they are the least suitable for human habitation."

Despite the Amazon being at least 87.5 percent intact, many claims abound as to how fast the forest is being cleared.

In "Amazonia," the narrator intones that "in the brief amount of time it takes to watch this film, roughly 400,000 acres of forest will have been cleared." Ruy de Goes of Greenpeace Brazil says in the last four years "an area the size of France was destroyed."

Actor William Shatner in a National Geographic documentary claims that worldwide, "Rainforest is being cleared at a rate of 20 football fields a minute." Rainforest Action Network says the Amazon is being deforested at a rate of eight football fields a minute. Tim Keating of Rainforest Relief says that the deforestation can be measured in seconds. "It may be closer to two to three football fields a second," says Keating.

When de Goes of Greenpeace Brazil is confronted with the disparity in numbers regarding these football fields, he replies, "The numbers are not important, what is important is that there is huge destruction going on."

However, Moore says that the only way such huge numbers are generated is by using double accounting. "You would have cleared 50 times the size of the Amazon already if accurate."

Luis Almir, of the state of Amazonas in Brazil calculated using five football fields a minute and concludes sarcastically that if the numbers were correct, "we would have a desert bigger than the Sahara."

Another familiar claim of the environmentalist community is that the Amazon constitutes the "lungs of the earth," supplying one-fifth of the world's oxygen. But, according to Antonio Donato Nobre of INPE, and other eco-scientists, the Amazon consumes as much oxygen as it produces, and Stott says it may actually be a net user of oxygen.

"In fact, because the trees fall down and decay, rainforests actually take in slightly more oxygen than they give out," says Stott. "The idea of them soaking up carbon dioxide and giving out oxygen is a myth. It's only fast-growing young trees that actually take up carbon dioxide."

Stott maintains that the tropical forests of the world are "basically irrelevant" when it comes to regulating or influencing global weather. He explains that the oceans have a much greater impact.

"Most things that happen on land are mere blips to the system, basically insignificant," he says.

Many environmentalists claim that tens of thousands of species are being driven to extinction every year because of the destruction of tropical forests like the Amazon:

A video called "Amazonia Celebration" states in dire tones: "We alone will have to bear the blame for the greatest mass extinction since the disappearing of the dinosaur some 60 million years ago."

"An average of 35 species becomes extinct every day" as a result of deforestation, says Rainforest Action Network.

"30,000 species per year," or 83 per day, says the "Hall of Biodiversity" website.

Al Gore in "Earth in the Balance" writes of "100 extinctions each day."

Rainforest Relief's Keating weighs in with a hefty "450 species lost per day."

Most of these estimates are rooted in the research of Harvard's Edward O. Wilson, featured by Time magazine as an environmental "hero" in its special Earth Day 2000 edition. In the accompanying article, Wilson argues passionately to stem the tide of extinctions "now 100 to 1,000 times as great as it was before the coming of humanity" -- neglecting to mention that his estimates of 50,000 extinctions per year are based on his own computer models.
"There is no scientific basis for saying that 50,000 species are going extinct," says Greenspirit's Moore. "I want a list of Latin species."

Moore maintains no one can name these species that are said to be going extinct.

"The only place you can find them is in Edward O. Wilson's computer at Harvard University. They're actually electrons on a hard drive," Moore states.

When asked if he can name a single species of the 50,000 that are said to go extinct, Keating admits: "No we cannot, because we don't know what those species are."

Moore is flabbergasted by such statements.

"You're telling me that I'm supposed to prove that those species didn't go extinct when they're not there anymore and we never knew they were there in the first place?" Moore asks rhetorically. "That's impossible. I don't know how Wilson can truck out the number 50,000 and keep a straight face."

Stott agrees that the focus on species loss is misguided from a scientific point of view.

"The earth has gone through many periods of major extinctions, some much bigger, let me emphasize, than even being contemplated today and 99.9999 percent (of all species) and I wouldn't know the repeating decimal have gone extinct. Extinction is a natural process," he asserts.

Another claim the environmental movement makes is that fires are destroying the Amazon. The late 1980s are generally regarded as record seasons for burning in the Amazon, inspiring books with titles such as "Decade of Destruction," "Green Fires: Assault on Eden" and even the 1994 Hollywood film, "The Burning Season."

In recent years, it was reported that fires in the late 1990s equaled or even surpassed those of the peak "burning season" of the '80s. The Woods Hole Research Institute maintains that up to half of the Amazon rainforest is "a tinderbox about to go up in flames."

Moore counters: "To say that half of the Amazon rainforest is going to go up in smoke is just crazy. Of course it's not. That's completely ridiculous and extremist. But, let's say a large portion of the rainforest burned. The next thing that will happen is it will grow back again."

A 1995 study backs up Moore. The scientists concluded: "The incidence of burning cannot be taken as a direct indicator of deforestation rates." By combining satellite data, on-site visit information, and years of topographic data, the researchers concluded that most of the new fires were not being set to deforest new tracts of forest. Rather, they were lit to keep already cleared areas from growing back.

The 1994 feature film "The Burning Season" features Raul Julia as Chico Mendes, shouting, "This soil is useless!" at chainsaw-wielding loggers. "You can't even grow weeds in this soil! This land is no good once the trees are gone!" A World Wildlife Fund documentary called "Amazonia: A Celebration of Life" states: "Poor tropical soil is virtually incapable of supporting life."

Moore disputes the soil claims, saying that much of the Amazon is extremely fertile.

"There's a myth, of course, that once you cut the trees down in the Amazon, the soil turns to cement," he states. Moore believes you can "find examples of very poor soils in the Amazon," noting it's almost as big as the continental U.S.

Merle Faminow, a professor from the Federal University of Parana, Brazil, agrees. According to Faminow's research, the Amazon has a "wide and varied range of soil properties" and only "8 percent of the soil is classified as having a high erosion risk." He concludes that "there is ample scientific and practical evidence to confirm that agriculture can be carried out in a profitable and sustainable manner."

Antonio Donato Nobre and Bruce Nelson are two scientists working with the Institute for Research in Amazonia or INPA in Brazil who make no mistake about their quest to preserve the Amazon.

"I say to you, deforestation is completely, absolutely not justifiable in any circumstance," shouts Nobre. "And I have a conviction about this. I strongly believe that when you develop, you harm the environment."

Asked about the 50,000 species that go extinct, Nelson responds: "Those are assumptions. It was an estimate of the number of species that might exist in the tropical forests of the world." When confronted with the travel book, "Lonely Planet's 'Brazil,'" which repeats many of the claims of massive species extinction, fires raging out of control and the belief that the "Amazon may be lost forever," Nobre and Nelson get uncomfortable.

Nobre roars, "There is a lot of overblowing -- a lot of people projecting their egos in NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and environmentalist movements, etc. This is wrong!" he shouts as he holds up the book. "This is a bad way ... This does a disservice to the truth." Nobre believes, "When you overblow the facts, you are actually comprising the actual importance of it."

Stott believes the more scrutiny the "Save the Amazon" cause gets, the more the bad science will be exposed.

"When we actually look at these myths -- this is what is terrifying about them -- when we look at the science, we suddenly find that these myths are just unsupportable, 'unsustainable,' to use a nice green term. They just don't make sense."

Tim Keating of Rainforest Relief, who calls the destruction of rainforests "the greatest ecological catastrophe," nonetheless concedes that the Amazon "is still the largest area of tropical rainforest left on earth, and has probably the lowest volume of clearing that has occurred of any large rainforest areas in the world."

Moore, however, believes that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the conventional wisdom that the Amazon is about to disappear will remain the conventional wisdom for some time. He says, "If people ... actually go to the Amazon, go to Manaus, get on a river boat, and go up or down the Amazon for hundreds of miles, go inland and look for yourself and fly over it, (they) will see that you can fly for three hours over solid forest and really not see any sign of human habitation. It is not all burning up. It has not all been destroyed. And there really is no chance that it will be in the foreseeable future."

The idea that a cleared rainforest can grow back is an idea that is not accepted by most environmental campaigns and the popular culture.

Yet recent studies indicate that trees do in fact regrow very well in rainforests. A 1998 study by Charles Cannon of Duke University found that eight years after industrial logging in Indonesian rainforests, recovery of both native flora and fauna far exceeded expectations. In Borneo, logged forest contained just as many tree species as unlogged forest.

"These findings warrant reassessment of the conservation potential of large tracts of commercially logged tropical rainforest," wrote Cannon.

Science magazine contributor Robin Chazdon, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut, says: "You can find species that will show increased growth and increased population as a result of logging."

"There are many, many tree species that we see commonly in the tropical flora whose regeneration is not occurring in natural forests. They require large scale disturbances," she says.

Moore sees a contradiction or double standard in the way environmentalists look at the Amazon vis-à-vis forests in the United States.

"On the one hand, you will hear environmentalists in the United States say we should be letting more fires burn in our forests, because it's a natural part of the ecology," he points out. "On the other hand, when fires burn in the Brazilian rain forest, they act as though the ecosystem is coming to an end."

Throughout the Amazon, scientists are discovering that plant life that may help cure human disease is thriving in recovering forests, and scientific reforestation efforts are paying off in parts of the Amazon.

In 1982, miners cleared a large tract of land in Western Brazil. Once finished, they hired scientists to reforest the territory. New studies show that the rejuvenated forest is virtually indistinguishable from its original form. Ninety-five percent of the original animal species have returned, prompting many to believe that "sustainable logging" can lower costs and increase productivity and help prove that man and nature can, indeed, co-exist in the Amazon.

Brazilian Brigadier Gen. Thaumaturgo Sotero Vaz, who spent 39 years in the military, 18 of them in the heart of the Amazon, finds it humorous that anyone would doubt the jungle's ability to recover.

"That's very funny," he says. "They don't know the Amazon, believe me. Because all these lands in the north, west, it's almost untouchable because of this great capacity of regeneration," he explains.

Logging and burning of the forests can actually benefit some small species of flora, say scientists. Chazdon's research center in the rainforests of Costa Rica has found that the large "treetop canopy" created by dense foliage hundreds of feet above ground blocks sunlight which small competing species need to thrive.

"When dominant [species] were removed through logging," she says, "there was an enhancement of what we would call the 'suppressed species.'"

Many of these suppressed species are what environmentalists typically point to as the species most worthy of preservation -- those with medicinal properties. The Natural Resources Defense Council's "Rainforest Book: How You Can Save the World's Rainforests," calls the rainforest "a fantastic medicine cabinet" with plants that contain ingredients essential to "antibiotics, painkillers, heart drugs and hormones." Of the "3,000 plants" identified as having cancer-fighting properties," it continues, "70 percent of them are native to the rainforest."

Chazdon discovered that "in secondary forests that are 15 to 20 years old, the overall abundance of species that have medicinal uses is higher compared to the older forests."

Of further benefit is the tendency of younger forests to consume more carbon dioxide than older forests. For those worried about global warming, deforestation can actually be an ally, say scientists.

"Trees in (young) forests grow at a phenomenal rate," says Chazdon, "and they are taking a lot of carbon dioxide out of the air and putting it in their own tissues and in the soil. That is reducing the amount of carbon dioxide that would otherwise be present in the atmosphere."

Chazdon believes that all of these reasons are leading to "a growing recognition of the value of secondary forests."

Despite all of this mounting scientific evidence supporting regeneration, many still want to keep mankind out of the Amazon and other tropical forests. Chazdon believes that it is not very realistic to keep man out.

"No matter how hard we try," she says, "it's hard to put a lock and key on the forests." She points out that great civilizations once inhabited Central and South America and newly discovered charcoal deposits and agricultural artifacts suggest that humans have repeatedly burned the rainforest. "We are part of the long history of humans that have relied on these forests and used them," pointing out that "the Mayan Empire deforested huge areas of Central America."

Tomorrow

Tom · February 03, 2009, 10:04:20 AM

That is interesting, and backs up the photographs and graphs you have shown to me. I just wonder what causes a die-hard environmentalist that once believed that all people are bad and the world is ending, to change his stripes and realize that things aren't as bad as the propoganda insists? It takes a strong person to change his agenda.

rbhunter · February 03, 2009, 11:14:16 AM

Thanks for the post. It has some interesting statistics that are not widely known. I find it interesting that it uses more oxygen than it generates. It was good to be reminded that it is the fast growing trees that use up carbon dioxide.

Riles · February 03, 2009, 03:43:52 PM

Actually a no-brainer when you think it through. Plants are like the rest of us, they need oxygen to process food into energy. Where they differ is when photosynthesis takes carbon out of the air to make woody tissue. Now it's strictly a matter of volume. Put on a lot of volume, take out a lot of carbon (and release oxygen). Slow down the growth, reduce the carbon storage. At some point the lines cross and the tree becomes a net user of oxygen instead of a net producer.

Gary_C · February 03, 2009, 03:58:18 PM

Quote from: Riles on February 03, 2009, 03:43:52 PM
Actually a no-brainer when you think it through.

When I first read this I thought you were talking about the people that contribute money to the "Save the Rainforest" groups. ;D

I believe that Patrick Moore left Greenpeace just because of this type of propaganda they were spouting that just was not scientific and believable. I do lose respect from some organizations like "The Arbor Day Foundation" when they use the football fields comparison to inaccurately protray the problem that does not exist. Unfortunately, it's all about fundraising rather than accuracy of claims. :

SwampDonkey · February 03, 2009, 06:07:54 PM

Thanks for the post Jim, lots of good reading. ;D

Even as a teenager growing up I was intelligent enough to know a money grubbing scam from fact. There are still people in this province who don't even know what goes on in the woods and on news forums will make posts that demonstrates how little they know. There is a continued belief that the forest is static and has no way to come back to "equilibrium" from a major disturbance such as harvesting, insects or fire. Because uncle George said so, it must be so.

LeftyLogger · February 03, 2009, 08:30:04 PM

Very interesting topic.

Interesting, when you think about it...how the trend seems to go with big-topic environmental issues such as this one...and, say, global warming?

Before my time...but I seem to recall reading quiet a bit of material while completing my degree by some certain research groups claiming that cooling trends were on the way...funny, and call me a conspiracy theorist to some degree, but are these not many of the same groups now perched quiet high on soap boxes about the warming trend? But hey, don't get me wrong...I aim to neither push nor discredit global warming here...just seems to be more trend than one when you really think about it. Stemming from? One has to ask...

Money can do some pretty amazing science nowadays.

On another note...in some ways, I consider greenpeace (and many other NGO's) to be very similar to an oposition government...they don't always realease the facts they have, but they do keep the majority party (or industry, perhaps, as a comparison) on their toes, ready to answer questions about what they're up to. Kinda forced transparency, in some ways. But...they should strive to get the facts right - but remember, what gets votes? Same things that get funding for NGO's.

It is nice to see someone come out once in a while and say 'we just don't really know' if you know what I mean.

Just some thoughts from a young guy who's still a little optomistic that there are true 'do-gooders' out there with motives other than cash and creating useless jobs. Gotta see the bright side, I guess.

Just gotta keep in mind - it's about the trees. Otherwise, what are we doin' here?

SwampDonkey · February 03, 2009, 08:41:04 PM

Your likely not old enough to remember Suzuki's Global Cooling theory in the 1970's. ;D

TerryB · February 03, 2009, 09:53:53 PM

That article falls in-line with a class I took last year. It's amazing how logic and reasoning often lead you to different conclusions than you hear from experts. :

SwampDonkey, I actually had not heard of Suzuki's earlier position on climate change, but it's not surprising coming from him.

As if you needed another reason to discredit David Suzuki, here's an article I stumbled upon David Suzuki deals a devastating blow to his climate-change cause. "And now B.C.'s very own David Suzuki, a Companion of the Order of Canada, wants to throw politicians who question his climate-change thesis in prison."