Say hello to the Amazon Desert.

[Rex]

Well so much for living and breathing. I thought it would take 50 years to make Earth uninhabitable, not 5. Been nice breathing cool air. Gonna miss it.

http://www.welt.de/z/plog/blog.php/the_free_west/the_free_wests_weblog/2006/07/23/amazon_desert

"Geoffrey Lean in Manaus and Fred Pearce report in today's Independent that 'studies by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre, carried out in Amazonia, have concluded that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down ... the Amazon now appears to be entering its second successive year of drought, raising the possibility that it could start dying next year. The immense forest contains 90 billion tons of carbon, enough in itself to increase the rate of global warming by 50 per cent. Dr Dan Nepstead expects "mega-fires" rapidly to sweep across the drying jungle. With the trees gone, the soil will bake in the sun and the rainforest could become desert. Dr Deborah Clark from the University of Missouri, one of the world's top forest ecologists, says the research shows that "the lock has broken" on the Amazon ecosystem. She adds: the Amazon is "headed in a terrible direction"."

And here we can't stop killing each other long enough to address global extinction, guess we don't deserve to survive.

[Bluebear]

1. Holy cannoli, Rex

:scared:

[Rex]

2. I know and I was about to go to bed.

Just last minute surfing...dam...why...didn't I just go to bed Bluebear? :(

[Dead_Parrot]

3. bugger. nt

[no_hypocrisy]

4. I heard that at one time, the Sahara Desert used to be the lushiest, the

most fertile farmland on the planet. It can happen.

[Puglover]

5. As I said when I read that the coral reefs very

likely will be gone in 50 years IF not sooner. I'm so glad I'm 52 and chose not to have children. I don't want to live in a world like the world we as a species seem hell bent on creating. And I'd be scared to death if I was leaving children to live in it. I really hope that I'm being overly gloomy and will be proved wrong. The nice thing however, is when we do finally fuck it up beyond all hope and it becomes uninhabitable and people either die out or the population drastically reduces it will correct itself.

I read somewhere on DU that someone asked a scientist "What if every human being disappeared tomorrow? What would happen?" Answer was, "Almost every species would flourish."

[DIKB]

6. Bill Hicks was right.

We are a virus with shoes.

And we are killing all life on the planet.

[Zodiak]

7. This is bad

However, throughout geological history, the rain forest has appeared and disappeared according to sea levels. At times, the amazon rain forest becomes a series of forested islands and the land bridge between North and south America is cut off. I do not know if this effectively deletes the forest or simply disrupts it a bit.

It matters because apparently the forest is going to disappear without an accompanying sea level rise. I would like to think that a million years from now it will be back, even if I won't be.