Deforestation: The hidden cause of global warming

[cal04]

In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. Stopping the loggers is the fastest and cheapest solution to climate change. So why are global leaders turning a blind eye to this crisis?


The accelerating destruction of the rainforests that form a precious cooling band around the Earth's equator, is now being recognised as one of the main causes of climate change. Carbon emissions from deforestation far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories.

The rampant slashing and burning of tropical forests is second only to the energy sector as a source of greenhouses gases according to report published today by the Oxford-based Global Canopy Programme, an alliance of leading rainforest scientists.

Figures from the GCP, summarising the latest findings from the United Nations, and building on estimates contained in the Stern Report, show deforestation accounts for up to 25 per cent of global emissions of heat-trapping gases, while transport and industry account for 14 per cent each; and aviation makes up only 3 per cent of the total.

"Tropical forests are the elephant in the living room of climate change," said Andrew Mitchell, the head of the GCP.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2539349.ece

[Kagemusha]

1. My reaction when reading this article was

...But clamping down on burning the rain forests won't sock it to those rich white capitalist scumbags in Western industrialized countries, so who the hell cares?

[PaulaFarrell]

10. Actually it will

Who do you think owns the logging companies and buys the cheap wood, cheap soybeans, and cheap palm oil?

[depakid]

11. On the other hand, who eats all of the cows...

A good deal of deforestation (and range destruction) is caused by cattle ranching... which of course is fueled by those who eat at all the drive in junk food outlets.

Not necessarily the rich... though probably disproportionately American.

There's a lose/lose if ever there was one....

[PaulaFarrell]

16. Not a lose-lose at all

How do you figure stopping deforestation is lose-lose? Firstly, the environement, hence the people living on the planet, would win.

Cattle ranching (actually mainly rasing soybeans) is only one cause of destruction. Meat is too cheap. People eat too much of it, and waste incredible amounts of it. If people stopped eating food from junk food outlets, I'd say that's a win too, for their own health.

In fact, I can't think of a single negative. Sorry.

[Gregorian]

2. I had this conversation with a Swiss scientist once.

Deforestation is, according to him, accountable for about one fifth of the carbon dioxide concentration increase. However, it decreases global dimming.

I have made my own observations about deforestation. And they're pretty dramatic. I fully believe this is a big deal. But when it comes to science, there isn't a lot of credence in personal observation. I just know that I've experienced phenomena that contribute to the overall picture. There is nothing good about six billion consumers.

And here's what it looked like just before it was destroyed.

[wtmusic]

3. Wonder what accounts for the remaining 44%?

:shrug:

[glitch]

9. I am sure oceans are a piece of it. The oceans are no longer the carbon sink they once were.

Turns out plastic doesn't do as good a job as plankton.

[Eugene]

4. Slowing deforestation key to climate fight: experts - Reuters

Source: Reuters

Slowing deforestation key to climate fight: experts
Mon May 14, 2007 3:24AM EDT

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Even slowing the amount of clearing of
tropical forests could significantly cut the amount of heat-
trapping carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere,
international experts say in a new study.

Deforestation in the tropics accounts for nearly 20 percent
of carbon emissions caused by human activities, said Pep
Canadell of the international scientific body Global Carbon
Project and the CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric
Research.

"If by 2050 we slow deforestation by 50 percent from
current levels...this would save the emission of 50 billion
tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere," he said.

The aim was also to stop deforestation when 50 percent
of the world's tropical forests remained. This would avoid
the release of the equivalent of six years of global fossil
fuel emissions, Canadell said.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSSYD30267120070514

[YankeyMCC]

5. Hidden?

Perhaps there are new data supporting the contention that deforestation is contributing to the problem but...Hidden? Haven't we known this is a problem for a long time?

[OneBlueSky]

12. my reaction as well . . . there are folks who have been screaming about this issue . . .

for decades now . . . the problem is that as long as there's money to be made deforesting the Amazon and other rainforests, governments will always listen to the industries making the money (oil, timber, agriculture, etc.) rather than to those "alarmist" scientists . . . I believe Indonesia has pretty much destroyed its rainforest permanently, and no one seemed to care while it was happening . . . too much expensive mahoganey, don'tcha know . . .

[tex-wyo-dem]

6. This seems as obvious to me as the five fingers on my hand...

There's a reason the forests (and in particular, the rainforests) of the world have been referred to as the world's lungs (albeit in reverse) ==> CO2 in, O2 out. Over time when you have ever increasing CO2 emissions from human activity in concert with the steady destruction of the earth's ability to remove this CO2 through photosynthesis, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand the effects and to realize that what we are seeing now is the result of decades of increases in human activity coupled with the destruction of the very environment that works to counter these effects.

[glitch]

8. They play dumb to play for time. They use that time to cut down the trees.

Once the trees are gone objections are no longer an issue. Simple, isn't it?

Exactly the same mental process as the criminal's "catch me if you can".

That's why all the stuff we knew in the 70s is still being argued as if it's a brand new shiny idea. They get away with it because they assume we're stupid. And they are right, we are stupid, because we do let them get away with it.

[RestoreGore]

7. They are turning a blind eye out of greed

As in the Amazon where about 70% of deforestation occurs due to cattle ranching for commercial interests. That is why planting trees is an essential component in the solution to this crisis. Deforestation brings about famine, drought, and water scarcity, therefore I too find it baffling that more national leaders who claim to be concerned about this crisis are not making this connection. However, it appears they only seem to be concerned about climate change in so far as the solutions don't interfere with their own interests and their campaign contributions. That is why I am connected with Tree Nation and support other initiatives that seek to plant trees in parts of Africa and other countries hit hardest by deforestation. We are living beyond our means and if national leaders will not see this then we will have to take up the mantle in doing all we can to mitigate this crisis because it is a moral issue, and frankly, I do not equate morality with politics.

Recommended.

[melnjones]

14. see my tree nation tree here...

http://tree-nation.com/?tree=4814
I named her begadkepat. Feel free to join in her discussion.

[Xithras]

13. Many people, myself included, believe that deforestation may be THE cause of GW

Myself and many others have been screaming about this for years, but we've been largely ignored as people focused on industrial CO2 production. Eliminating forests, however, dramatically decreases the water holding ability of the local soil. It eliminates continental cloud generation, leads to localized heating of the ground, and when carried out on a large enough scale can cause regional temperature shifts. The drying of the atmosphere in deforested regions can impact the climate hundreds and even thousands of miles downwind. In addition to eliminating their CO2 absorbing benefits, and dumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere during their destruction, deforestation causes direct heating of the atmosphere and is probably a major contributor to global warming.

One of the most moving moments in An Inconvenient Truth was when the elimination of the Kilamanjaro glacier was demonstrated. The only problem with that moment was that scientists now know, beyond any doubt, that the elimination of the glacier is caused by deforestation around the glacier, and not global warming. As the forests around the glacier were cut, the air dried and warmed. The reduction in water vapor from the forest has not only raised the temperature on top of the mountain, it has slashed precipitation. Tanzania is already moving to ban logging in the region, but it may be a case of too-little too-late.

Deforestation also appears to be a leading candidate for the loss of tropical glaciers in South America, and may be a large contributor to the reduction in snowfall and glacier size in the Alps over the past 150 years or so.

[va4wilderness]

15. Deforestation may affect the hydrological cycle, too,

I've seen several articles on this... passed on to me from someone who looks into this issue in the Northern Rockies. One abstract is pasted below.

Not many people realize how complex the relationship is among water, oceans, forests - across the planet. Or how dependent entire civilizations have been, over time, on these factors, or how deforestation or other man-induced changes can alter living conditions in which civilizations thrive.

----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/102/21/7612
Published online before print May 12, 2005, 10.1073/pnas.0500208102
PNAS | May 24, 2005 | vol. 102 | no. 21 | 7612-7617

Human modification of global water vapor flows from the land surface

Line J. Gordon *, , Will Steffen , Bror F. Jönsson , Carl Folke *, Malin Falkenmark ¶ and Åse Johannessen *
Departments of *Systems Ecology and Meteorology, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden; Bureau of Rural Sciences, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Australian Government, G.P.O. Box 858, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia; and ¶Stockholm International Water Institute, Hantverkargatan 5, SE-112 21 Stockholm, Sweden

Edited by Stephen R. Carpenter, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, and approved April 11, 2005 (received for review January 10, 2005)


It is well documented that human modification of the hydrological cycle has profoundly affected the flow of liquid water across the Earth's land surface. Alteration of water vapor flows through land-use changes has received comparatively less attention, despite compelling evidence that such alteration can influence the functioning of the Earth System. We show that deforestation is as large a driving force as irrigation in terms of changes in the hydrological cycle. Deforestation has decreased global vapor flows from land by 4% (3,000 km3/yr), a decrease that is quantitatively as large as the increased vapor flow caused by irrigation (2,600 km3/yr). Although the net change in global vapor flows is close to zero, the spatial distributions of deforestation and irrigation are different, leading to major regional transformations of vapor-flow patterns. We analyze these changes in the light of future land-use-change projections that suggest widespread deforestation in sub-Saharan Africa and intensification of agricultural production in the Asian monsoon region. Furthermore, significant modification of vapor flows in the lands around the Indian Ocean basin will increase the risk for changes in the behavior of the Asian monsoon system. This analysis suggests that the need to increase food production in one region may affect the capability to increase food production in another. At the scale of the Earth as a whole, our results emphasize the need for climate models to take land-use change, in both land cover and irrigation, into account.

[bgmark2]

17. co2

All this is assuming of course that co2 is responsible for global abnormaklities in climate, not global warming as this is not true as some places are actually colder. With the previuos amounts of forest levels 200 years ago we should have been freezing back then but we were not. this global warming does not make sense.