[HN Gopher] Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest continues to ...
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Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest continues to decline
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 46 points
Date : 2023-09-13 21:09 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.mongabay.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.mongabay.com)
| ChatGTP wrote:
| It shouldn't be declining it needs to stop completely. Now.
| sadhorse wrote:
| The US couldn't even compensate the native people whose land
| they completely destroyed with nuclear testing in the pacific.
| But it wants LATAM to compensate them by giving up their
| sovereignty over their own land "because it affects everyone".
| goatlover wrote:
| That's not how the world works. Most things aren't all or
| nothing. Usually there are tradeoffs and competing interests.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Note that a lot of deforestation still goes on - it's not that
| forested areas are being restored. This year, about 4950 square
| km, or 495,000 hectares of forest, will have been cleared.
|
| And remember, that Amazonian rain forest can't just be restored
| by planting a bunch of trees. If restoration is at all possible,
| it requires carefully planned intervention of decreasing
| intensity over a prolonged period of time. See:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_restoration
|
| for a bit more on this.
| holoduke wrote:
| In that wiki i read that it is actually quite doable despite
| the warnings given prior to some experiments. Forrest is
| quickly back in about 10 years
| npunt wrote:
| Its doable but not in 10 years. From [1]
|
| > They found that soil fertility takes less than 10 years to
| recover to old-growth forest values. Plant functioning takes
| less than 25 years, and species diversity takes 60 years.
| Above-ground biomass and species composition take over 120
| years.
|
| This is also discounting any of the unique biodiversity in
| the Amazon, of which there is a lot and may never come back.
|
| [1]: https://news.clemson.edu/researchers-if-left-alone-
| tropical-...
| einpoklum wrote:
| Indeed, it is doable, but it's not trivially doable:
|
| "Forest restoration is an inclusive process, which depends on
| collaboration among a wide range of stakeholders including
| local communities, government officials, non-government
| organizations, scientists and funding agencies."
| bombcar wrote:
| Sounds more like getting various permissions and money, be
| actually doing the work.
| readyplayernull wrote:
| Maybe it's due to plastics replacing wood. Interesting we haven't
| found/invented another kind of material to manufacture objects,
| maybe metal/crystal foam will replace it one day, some metal's
| microparticles should be more environmentaly safe than
| microplastic which carries additives that are toxic and can be
| burned.
| vondur wrote:
| Isn't the cleared land used for growing food and not wood for
| making things?
| readyplayernull wrote:
| Both?
| myshpa wrote:
| https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/soy
|
| Beef, soy and palm oil are responsible for 60% of tropical
| deforestation
|
| Beef - 2.71 million hectares / year
|
| Soy - 480,000 ha / year (77% for animal feed, just 7% for
| humans)
|
| Palm Oil - 270,000 ha / year
|
| Wood - 380,000 ha / year (but probably more)
| jeffbee wrote:
| We've pushed the atmosphere to conditions under which the Amazon
| will simply die without "deforestation".
| wayfinder wrote:
| I don't want the Amazon to continue deforestation but it's not
| quite fair that both Native Americans and the USA as well as the
| rest of the world deforested a lot of land already in pursuit of
| development yet countries in South America can't do that now
| because they're too late to the party.
|
| That said, I believe we've actually halted deforestation in the
| US so that's good.
| m463 wrote:
| I think we might have run out of trees.
|
| > 90% of the old-growth forests that existed in the contiguous
| United States in the 1600s have been cleared.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-growth_forest#Logging
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation
|
| Locations of remaining tracts 35% in South
| America 28% in North America 19% in northern Asia
| 8% in Africa 7% in South Asia Pacific Less than 3%
| in Europe
| tap-snap-or-nap wrote:
| Largely affected by steel production being outsourced to China
|
| https://worldsteel.org/steel-topics/statistics/world-steel-i...
| Qem wrote:
| The Amazon rainforest was really lucky Bolsonaro was not re-
| elected to a second term, nor the attempted January 8 coup
| succeeded.
| breakyerself wrote:
| I guess elections have consequences. Who'd have thought.
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| And that here in Colombia we elected the first left-wing
| president in more than 90 years.
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(page generated 2023-09-13 23:00 UTC)