"Researchers: Warming may change Amazon" ! 'Grassy Savanna' Anyone?

[leftchick]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061230/ap_on_sc/brazil_amazon_warming

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Global warming could spell the end of the world's largest remaining tropical rain forest, transforming the Amazon into a grassy savanna before end of the century, researchers said Friday.

Jose Antonio Marengo, a meteorologist with Brazil's National Space Research Institute, said that global warming, if left unchecked, will reduce rainfall and raise temperatures substantially in the ecologically rich region.

"We are working with two scenarios: a worst case and a second, more optimistic one," he said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

"The worst case scenario sees temperatures rise by 5 to 8 degrees until 2100, while rainfall will decrease between 15 and 20 percent. This setting will transform the Amazon rain forest into a savanna-like landscape," Marengo said.

[MasonJar]

1. Where will the living creatures get their oxygen and where will all

the carbon dioxide stored in the soil of the rainforests go? Someone had better do something and quick.

[leftchick]

2. think "Planet of the Apes"

although that is probably paradise compared to what we are in for. :(

[Warpy]

3. That land may be too poor to support grass

Can anyone say "Amazon Desert?"

[pitohui]

4. that's what i was taught

but that was quite a few decades ago now

i was taught that the laterite soils meant the amazon would indeed become desert once the forest was destroyed

[leftchick]

5. I agree

the writing on the wall says "ominous". :(