Altered Amazon: Dramatic Changes Threaten Brazilian Tribes: Op-Ed

[Coyotl]

Altered Amazon: Dramatic Changes Threaten Brazilian Tribes:
http://www.livescience.com/29249-altered-amazon-changes-imperil-tribal-way-of-life-op-ed.html

Steve Schwartzman, director of tropical forests policy for the Environmental Defense Fund, contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Richard Muller, a physicist at Berkeley and a founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, used to be a skeptic on climate change. His analysis of climate data changed his mind; today he, like the overwhelming majority of scientists, believes that climate change is real and caused by people. But, also like most scientists, Muller's evidence comes primarily from the statistical analysis of large numbers of temperature observations over many years, not from direct observations of nature.

Ntôni Kisêdjê, leader of the Kisêdjê people in the Xingu river basin in Mato Grosso, Brazil, has a different perspective. Ntôni is a traditional healer and a highly skilled forest farmer, and like most of his peers across the Amazon he pays very careful attention to what the myriad plants and animals of the forest are doing at different times of the year, and to the weather.

"Before, when the little group of stars [the Pleiades] came out at sunset, and the muricí (Byrsonima crassifolia) flowered, it was the time to make gardens," Ntôni told a seminar on agriculture and climate change in Cuiabá, the capital of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. "People would clear their gardens, then the rains would come. We can see that this has changed."

....

[Judi Lynn]

1. Very bad news. It's affecting people unrelated to this mess in very intimate ways.

Very, very sad. They have had no say in the matter, and their world is getting more difficult day by day.

It was great, however, getting the first terrific look at a capybara in proportion to a human being. Didn't know they were that large, or that they love personal attention, like dogs or cats! So cute.

[Coyotl]

2. Capybaras are not very cute when a wild one runs through camp at night in the jungle

true story

[Judi Lynn]

3. Whoa! They're not so small you'd never notice, either.

That had to be a strange wake-up call.

Did it stick around to see how you liked it, or did it hurtle on off? Did it toss things around first? Yikes.