Amazon Alarmism: No, It Won’t Be The Death Of Us All
Ordinary people, academics, researchers, scientists, policymakers, and journalists often seem eager to make loud exclamations on a wide range of topics. The most prominent ranging from climate change, ecological destruction, and mass shootings, to automation, immigration, and foreign trade. I can’t help but remain extremely skeptical of any of the doomsayers’ arguments and their motives that are couched in their alarmist rhetoric; the masks of impending doom they wear in front of their actual fears and desires. It’s no wonder to me then, that the particular alarmist views a person expresses tend to predict other social, political and economic views they hold.
The Hysteria
There has been plenty of coverage and anxiety around the burning of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, but the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest isn’t unique to Brazil or the 21st century. In fact, the rise in deforestation is only an increase from recent lows, which were significant decreases from the historic norm. It seems the rate of the deforestation of the Amazon is still well below the historic average.
Much of the media coverage represents a bait and switch. They lead with a headline about an existential threat to atmospheric oxygen levels, spend maybe a paragraph or two on that and the climate, and spend the rest of the article on the politics and economics behind it all. This is done without really delving into the science at all. Sometimes they’ll throw something in about the cute little critters who call the Amazon forest home to pull on your heartstrings, in case scaring you isn’t enough. And instead of looking at proportions, they tend to use scarier absolute numbers, like tons and acres, without any context of the big picture.
Scare scare scare, blame blame blame, then suggest policy changes and more government control over production. It all seems to be about demonizing producers and production, a scaffolding from which to launch a bid for more government control over resources and the economy. But, these producers are producing crops and timber. Things people really need. These are the major factors of food and housing production. How can people so keen on solving world hunger and housing shortages cast stones at the folks who are helping to increase the supply of both? And why are they using questionable data and making ridiculous claims to do it?
The Amazon Rainforest
Why this level of hysteria around the rainforest in Brazil? Well, apparently because people seem to believe we are approaching a tipping point in the level of deforestation of the Amazon that will result in an imminent and catastrophic global loss of available oxygen for humans to breathe. And that it is this uptick in deforestation in Brazil that will push us all over the edge into apocalyptic suffocation.
An article published at climatenexus explains why this is hyperbolic nonsense. According to the article, the 20 percent figure many publications are attributing to the Amazon rainforest, as the portion of globally produced oxygen it is responsible for, is way off. The article cites an explanation from Dr. Jonathan Foley, which says the Amazon is responsible for at most, 6 percent of the oxygen produced each year. It goes on to explain, that the current level of oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere is the result of millions of years of production and all the deforestation in the world wouldn’t leave us without oxygen to breath. It also notes that nearly all of the oxygen production on Earth happens in ocean sediments, rather than on land.
Well what about losing the Amazon as a carbon sink, you ask? Despite how serious an issue one thinks climate change is, the fact about the Amazon rainforest is, that it only sinks about 6.25 percent of the world’s carbon emissions (approximately 25% of released carbon is absorbed by land plants, the Amazon represents around a quarter of that) and Brazil has only about 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest. Only a fraction of which has been destroyed to date. That is, a fraction of 3.75 percent of the Earth’s ability to sink carbon has been lost to date as a result of Brazilian rainforest deforestation. Not to mention, that much of what is being lost in the Amazon is being replaced by carbon sinking and oxygen-producing crops.
So can we please stop waving our hands and running around like our hair, or “our planet’s lungs”, are on fire!? What’s happening to the Amazon right now, in Brazil, isn’t going to kill us. So let’s please stop acting like it is. So we can actually talk about it like reasonable adults instead of frightened little children.
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