How many lives could be saved by cutting down the Amazon rainforest?

[Canada-Man]

The New York Times reported yesterday that the Amazonian rainforest was being cut down, but unfortunately not at a fast enough rate. That's because cutting down the rainforest actually saves lives.

First ask yourself who is cutting down the rainforest and why? According to the Times, it is because of evil agribusinesses plotting to make food for human beings:

According to Mighty Earth’s analysis, the Brazilian savanna areas in which Cargill operates, a region called the Cerrado, saw more than 321,000 acres of deforestation between 2011 and 2015. Mighty Earth also linked Bunge, the other agricultural giant, to more than 1.4 million acres from 2011 to 2015... farmers described what they called Cargill’s push to increase its purchases of locally produced soy and its attempts to enhance bonds with local producers.

A major culprit is the cultivation of soy, which has jumped more than 500 percent in Bolivia since 1991, to 3.8 million hectares in 2013, according to the most recent agricultural censuses. Little of that soy is consumed domestically. The vast majority is processed and exported as animal feed in a commodities trade that serves a global appetite for hamburgers, chicken and pork.

“There’s a lot of pressure for economic development,” Ms. Ascarrunz said. “When resources are flowing, production is happening and people have work. It’s very hard to argue with that.”

Additionally, some of the area is being used for ranches to raise cattle.

What happens when the supply of cheap feed for cattle, and the supply of cattle itself, increases radically?

The price of beef comes down. Millions of poor people around the world don't have access to beef because it is too expensive. In America steak in supermarkets is between $10 and $15 a pound, and even chopped beef is between $5 and $7 a pound. It's even more expensive in Europe.

What happens when the price of steak comes down to $2 a pound? What happens when the price of chicken and the price of beef comes down to $1 a pound? It becomes tremendously more affordable. In developed countries, middle class and poor people can eat more of it. In poor countries, people who have no access to it can get beef perhaps for the first time in their lives.

The same goes for fruits and vegetables.Why should an orange cost more than a dollar? It's all a matter of supply and demand.

If large portions of the Amazon were cut down and turned into farmland, the price of fruits, vegetables and beef would plummet. People all around the world would have a better standard of living and their health would improve, especially in the third world.

Furthermore, diseases endemic to the jungle, like malaraia, and parasites, like the footlong worm that grows inside your body, would be reduced by cutting down the rainforest.

People typically object to cutting down the rainforest for two reasons:

1) What about the medicines! They act like thousands of Sean Conneries from "Medicine Man" are bringing new medicines out of the rainforest every day made of termite dung and mosquito paste. The reality is that most drugs are synthesized artificially, and even if the Amazonian rainforest was cut down there would still be many jungles around the world for researchers to explore the healing properties of termite dung.

2) What about the animals! If you cut down the rainforest, where will the animals live? The answer: somewhere else. People seem to conveniently forget that Manhattan and Los Angeles were teeming with animal species before people moved there and paved it over from end to end with concrete. Where did the animals go? Somewhere else. Have a look at a current satellite image of New York State

You'll find it's mostly green. As in forests. Most of the landmass of the world is unoccupied. it's simply that big. There is plenty of space for animals.

I'm not advocating cutting down all the Amazonian rainforest. But I am advocating more development of farms and ranches to lift the living standards of everyone on the globe. But instead of treating the development of more food resources as something to celebrate, the Times sees it as an ecological disaster.

Just ask yourself how many lives could be saved if the cost of food was radically driven down and food became ubiquitous globally?

 

[Boing]

I don't need Coles notes for this one.

 

[50cents]

Good find Canada-man.

 

[cristycurves]

Cut it down and then who will pay for the cost of flood damage, drought, and who will fund the farmers that can no longer farm in their areas due to weather changes.....

Globalized Impacts of Deforestation
"Teleconnections," associated with the mass movement of air and conditions in the upper atmosphere, have the potential to extend the impacts of tropical deforestation on climate globally. An increase in temperature in the tropics due to deforestation generates large upward-moving air masses. When these hit the upper atmosphere they cause ripples, or teleconnections, that flow outward in various directions, similar to the way in which an underwater earthquake can create a tsunami.
Models examined in the study showed that increased or complete deforestation could put the climate in some of the world's most important agriculture regions off kilter. These variations in rainfall and spikes in temperature could occur across the world, according to the report.
For example, complete deforestation of the Amazon Basin would likely reduce rainfall in the US Midwest, Northwest and parts of the south during the agricultural season. The complete deforestation of Central Africa would likely cause declines in rainfall in the Gulf of Mexico and parts of the US Midwest and Northwest and increase it on the Arabian Peninsula. There could also be precipitation declines in Ukraine and Southern Europe.
"While complete deforestation is unlikely to occur, over the course of history, deforestation has continued as countries develop," Lawrence said. "Further, this study fills gaps in our understanding of deforestation tipping points -- and what could happen if we continue down this path."
Turning up the heat, turning down the rain
Across the board, the study reports, deforestation poses risks to agriculture by causing an increase in average temperature, a decline in average rainfall and a change in the location and timing of rainfall. Deforestation, for example, would lead to a reduction in rainfall between 10-15 percent in the region surrounding where the deforestation took place.
According to Lawrence, there is almost always an increase in temperature with deforestation. "This does not change, no matter what you do -- no matter what kind of model you use, temperature increases occur -- whether it's half a degree, a full degree or two degrees."
"That's a very big deal," said Lawrence. "In the last few centuries, the average global temperature has never varied by more than about one degree. Once we go above one degree -- to 1.5 degrees or more -- we're talking about conditions that are very different from anything humanity has ever experienced." Because crops are highly sensitive to changes in temperature and moisture, she added, they would suffer in hotter conditions. Increased floods or decreases in soil moisture would further add to stress on crops.
"Farmers, so reliant on consistent and reliable growing conditions, could lose their bearings and even their incomes, when facing these ups and downs in temperature and rainfall," Lawrence said. "While farmers may ultimately adapt to shifts in the season, it's difficult -- if not impossible -- for farmers to adapt to increased floods or parched soils."
Forests: Not Lungs but Sweat Glands
Because forests turn water from soil into moisture in the air, they cool the atmosphere above them. Tropical forests move more water than any other ecosystem on land. They are central to the earth's process of generating and regenerating moisture, so clearing ever-larger swathes of forest eventually leads to a drying and warming effect. By disturbing the movement of air in remote parts of the atmosphere, tropical deforestation throws temperature and rainfall patterns worldwide out of whack.
The impact of deforestation is diverse and varies across regions and scales -- from small plots of farmland in the midst of the rainforest to large swathes of cattle pasture bordered by forests -- but the more deforestation that occurs, the greater the impact.
"Tropical forests are often talked about as the 'lungs of the earth,' but they're more like the sweat glands," said Lawrence. "They give off a lot of moisture, which helps keep the planet cool. That crucial function is lost -- and even reversed -- when forests are destroyed."
The study found that relatively small plots of deforestation can actually increase rainfall at a local scale. There is, however, a critical clearing size above which rainfall declines dramatically.
Models studied in the report show that in the Amazon and, possibly, in the Congo Basin, 30-50 percent may be the deforestation tipping point. Any additional forest clearing would lead to rainfall reductions that could significantly change ecosystems, and compound the risk of additional dangers, such as an increase in forest fires.
The location of deforested areas can also affect their impacts on regional climates, the study finds. Deforesting West Africa or the Congo could reduce rainfall across the region by 40-50% and increase temperatures there up to 3°C. Regional scale models project that in the Amazon Basin, clearing 40% of the forest would decrease wet-season rainfall by 12% and dry-season rainfall by 21%. It would also reduce by 4% rainfall in the Rio de la Plata Basin, a center for soy, corn and wheat production, thousands of miles south of the Amazon. Because Southeast Asia is surrounded by oceans, the impact of deforestation on regional temperatures and rainfall may be less severe.
To reduce the effects of deforestation on climate change, the data suggest it would be best to retain large swathes of forest across the tropical forest belt and to avoid large-scale deforestation in any single location.
Lawrence added that climate-change negotiators and other policymakers should take the impacts of deforestation seriously. "What happens on the surface of the earth (in terms of changes in vegetation) is a big factor in climate change. We ignore it at our own peril."

Read more at What Would Happen If Rainforests Were Destroyed? | Geology IN

 

[User-E]

I haven't read either of the articles but I firmly believe we need to protect the Amazon rainforest and every other rainforest (there's some in BC) that exists on the planet.

ffs - some people would cut every tree down and pave every park just so they could make a fortune from land development. If we destroy the natural planet, we cannot replicate it artificially, just like a real true human being cannot be reproduced by AI.

 

[cristycurves]

I'm not sure who the articles commentator "Ms Ascarrunz" is or who news machete are, however, neither seem to be authorities on farming or land conservation, or sustainability of food crops...they've also given the impression that Mighty earth is agreeable on deforestation and they're anything but. The article seems to point out the wastefulness of farming soy, which is used as animal feed, but suggests to use more land to farm beef, this seems redundant. So where then will the feed crops be grown that will provide food for the beef? lol. If you farm more food animals you'll need more land to farm their feed. I think more people need to look into sustainable farming methods and food sources that provide their farmers with sustainable incomes and smarter uses of land.

quote}Bolivia, on the other hand, presents a different situation. President Evo Morales, a socialist, has made securing “food sovereignty” a major part of his agenda, driving Bolivia’s agricultural expansion. There are relatively few forest protections, and the government’s Forestry and Land Authority is tasked with the potentially conflicting roles of regulating land use, forestry and agriculture, and issuing concessions for logging and farming. The landlocked country has declared that it expects to clear almost 14 million more acres of forest by 2025, to convert into farmland.

Bolivia’s greenhouse gas emissions levels per capita exceed that of many European countries, despite having a far lower per capita income. Deforestation is responsible for more than 80 percent of Bolivia’s total carbon dioxide emissions, according to a recent study by researchers at Insead, a graduate school based in Fontainebleau, France.

quote}The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that livestock production is responsible for 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, while other organizations like the Worldwatch Institute have estimated it could be as much as 51 percent. Even in the more modest estimate, this is more than all the cars, trucks, planes, and ships in the world!

One reason for this is that more than a third of all raw materials and fossil fuels consumed in the U.S. are used in animal production. Specifically, livestock accounts for an estimated nine percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, 35 to 40 percent of global methane emissions, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide emissions.

In fact, methane gas is one of the largest contributors to global warming and can trap up to 100 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a five-year period. Most of the methane comes from cows on factory farms that are fed low-quality grains that their bodies were not made to digest, resulting in high levels of indigestion and flatulence. All of this gas then enters our atmosphere.

In addition, meat and other animal products have a huge carbon footprint due to the deforestation needed to grow feed and graze animals, as well as all the transportation involved in both feeding the animals and distributing the products to consumers. That ends up being a lot of travel and tons of carbon output.

 

[Rolex]

So much to read :SayWhat?:

 

[Boing]

I'm just waiting for the next plague or war to take out a large portion of the world's population of humans. That will settle things down. We just have too many people on Earth. 7 Billion? Do we need that many? It's all the fault of those people who think Health Care is a right. Because everyone is getting health care, got to keep their doctors and their plans and has so much extra money in their pockets, people are living longer and using up space and resources for years past where they used to. Let some people die off and we wouldn't have any of these problems.....and plenty of parking.

You are always a man of a few words.