Amazon Forest De-Forestation

[Bordoy 0]

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-13351618,00.html

Quote[/b] ]FOREST WIPE OUT INCREASES

Brazil's Amazon rainforest is being destroyed at the rate of nine football pitches a second, the country's government has said.

The clearance of the habitat in the 12 months up to August 2004 was the second highest on record.

Despite public efforts by the government to slow down the deforestation, an area almost the size of Belgium was cut down.

Much of the hacking away is being put down to illegal logging and cattle farming.

But an increasing amount is because of a surge in soy production, on the increase as a meat substitute after the BSE beef crisis.

Authorities had hoped the rate would stabilise after 2003, instead of which it accelerated by 6%.

Environment minister Marina Silva said measures had been put in place to tackle deforestation, such as forest patrols, increasing protected areas and supporting forest-based economic activities.

She said: "We've done a lot in two years, the results don't come overnight."

But critics say a lack of resources, corruption and political opposition are hampering any attempts to stop the lucrative destruction of the rainforest.

9 football pitches a second, oh my bloody god.

This makes me soooo mad

Is ther no international pressure, or is everyone watching idioly by, looking at another cause of the greenhouse effect

[Akira 0]

Nobody is sitting idley by, just no one cares or listens when people point out the danger. It doesn't "affect them."

[Nemesis6 0]

Rainforests, woods, and all those things are of course neccesary as they produce air, but they're always so nasty and if you enter them you'll either come out dead(If you come out at all, that is.), become deadly ill, or leave with some kind of malignant entity or poison as a result. To supplement this, there's a good chance the natives would flay you, do something horrible to you, or just kill you if they saw you. Air is good, but I hate the rainforest.

By the way, check out the headline. That, my friends, is bias, if not propaganda.

[desantnik 0]

what is this thread doing in OFP forums though?

[Bordoy 0]

what is this thread doing in OFP forums though?

This in not US politics neither European politics. This is MORE then international politics.

What i wannt know, is whay is there a champions league thread? Even the mods have broke the rules there. Don't see how they can complain.

Quote[/b] ]Rainforests, woods, and all those things are of course neccesary as they produce air, but they're always so nasty and if you enter them you'll either come out dead(If you come out at all, that is.), become deadly ill, or leave with some kind of malignant entity or poison as a result. To supplement this, there's a good chance the natives would flay you, do something horrible to you, or just kill you if they saw you. Air is good, but I hate the rainforest.

Don't enter one in the first place then. ;)  

But i hate when people in places like Australia or US go and try and find crocodiles or aligators that has ate someone and they go and kill it. Everyone who gets attacked is in their territory, i say "stay out, if you get attacked we won't look for it and kill it. It's YOUR fault"

[red oct 2]

Rainforests, woods, and all those things are of course neccesary as they produce air, but they're always so nasty and if you enter them you'll either come out dead(If you come out at all, that is.), become deadly ill, or leave with some kind of malignant entity or poison as a result. To supplement this, there's a good chance the natives would flay you, do something horrible to you, or just kill you if they saw you. Air is good, but I hate the rainforest.

By the way, check out the headline. That, my friends, is bias, if not propaganda.

i see human beings are real the problem not a rainforest which happens to home to countless plants and animals. carelessly wiping out the rain forest could very well effect peoplel living there. that land they need for crops isn't going to stay fertile if they keep on slashing and clearing all those plants. as for the natives, quite truthfully they have a very good reason for being hostile to outsiders. those south americans treat them very poorly, hardline christian groups wana force them to convert and government and radical groups kill them for land. they really should leave them alone since they aren't at all like radical muslims their villiges don't even have electricity.

[Gadger 0]

What difference does it make? Without being too phylisophical but isn't it better to make sure people that are living at the moment have the best quality of life rather than worrying about what might happen a couple of generations down the line?

[Stealth3 0]

How can you people say it doesn't affect you. It affects us all! It will affect your childreen. Are you people too immature to think of the consequences or is OFP the single most imporant thing in your life that effected your way of thinking straight? Rainforrests produce more then 90% of the worlds oxygen, and if they go down at that rate polution will increase. Not to mention the increasingly high use of cars. Cutting down trees is ok as long as you replant and cut them down controllably. At this rate, in a few decades, people will be forced to use masks to breath because of the polution. What you ignore now will bit you in the ass later. Remember that.

[4 IN 1 0]

bloody hell, i am die trying to reduce my damage on our home, but whatever i've done just doesnt seems to be work

[miles teg 1]

I don't have any children, or nieces, or nephews so why should I care??? lol!

The fact of the matter is that nobody gives a rats ass and nobody will until things are at a crisis. Thousands upon thousands of unique species of plants and animals are rapidly disappearing, many of which probably held the cures for all kinds of diseases. But no, we gotta have our cheap wood products and the mestizos gotta have land to feed all their little babies... what ya gonna let 'em starve? You're damned no matter what. Save the forests, starve people, or cut down the rain forests and give people jobs, food, and farms now.

Humans are idiots. Its like global warming... the evidence is EVERYWHERE that its taking place and rapidly getting worse yet the Bush administration is in total denial and the US Enviornmental Protection Agency is pretty much owned by corporations. So we're just going to keep polluting and do absolutely nothing to stop the deforestation because Bush knows that cutting down the rainforests is good for capitalism and economic growth.

Besides everybody knows that only granola eating, smelly, commie, tree-hugging hippies care about the enviornment.

They're like those ELF (Enviornmental Liberation Front) terrorists and since they're terrorists, then what they stand for must be evil and God told Bush he must fight evil and lead American against evil... so we need to support deforestation cuz its good for God and capitalism.

(sarcasm off)

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[simba 0]

Quote[/b] ]This makes me soooo mad

So what do you think we should do ?

[Bordoy 0]

What difference does it make? Without being too phylisophical but isn't it better to make sure people that are living at the moment have the best quality of life rather than worrying about what might happen a couple of generations down the line?

Not really. If you draw a graph, the quality of life will get higher for a period, then it will fall rapidly as there is alot of pollution in the sky.

YOU HAVE to think of the consequences.

Quote[/b] ]So what do you think we should do ?

Well I have done about this in Geography GCSE, and my teacher was very knowledgeable and knew alot of stuff. By I'll think of some stuff if I can remember them.

Start prison sentances for anyone/companies cutting down the trees illegally, this will cut down on alot of tree lost. There will be a quota a year so you can only cut down a maximum area per year. All cooperations are to help in re-planting in trees in other areas. If they do not, they don't get a quota. Must be some other things, but it's too early in the morning for me............ and its 12 o'clock lol

Quote[/b] ]How can you people say it doesn't affect you. It affects us all! It will affect your childreen. Are you people too immature to think of the consequences or is OFP the single most imporant thing in your life that effected your way of thinking straight? Rainforrests produce more then 90% of the worlds oxygen, and if they go down at that rate polution will increase. Not to mention the increasingly high use of cars. Cutting down trees is ok as long as you replant and cut them down controllably. At this rate, in a few decades, people will be forced to use masks to breath because of the polution. What you ignore now will bit you in the ass later. Remember that.

Here Here

[jankyballs 0]

Nine f***ing football fields a second? I hope all the people cutting these trees down enjoy killing maybe thousands of people in the future and kids like me

The governments dont care about trees because as someone said earlier "It wont affect us!" and these corporations just want money, money, and more money. If we dont start thinking about the environment sooner or later, in the future, we could probably be racing away on a spaceship with the last of our race because our planet has no resources, no air and no animals because we either killed it or used it all.

This to makes me extremely angry

[Akira 0]

There is an interesting show on PBS called "Deep Jungle" and highlights researchists in the rain forests and what they have learned in just the last few years.*

The rainforest has more species of bugs, birds, plantlife, and life in general then the entire rest of the world. The rainforest is one of the fundementally important ecologies that keep the world working.

To cut down this rainforest so farmers can have more land to graze a few damn cows is the highth of all humna idiocy. Are those cows important enough to possibly kill us all? I wouldn't worry about the planet...the planet will take care of itself. What people need to worry about is how it will affect humans. And the basic short anwer is...it will kill us.

*One of the episodes dealt with a new species of tarantuala discovered. It was big enough to attack, kill, and carry off a chicken ....I almost didn't make it through that episode.

[denoir 0]

Bah, worrying about the rain forrests is sooo 80's

No but seriously, I remember that this was a big issue in the mid 80's when I was just a wee little lad in elementary school. We used to have various projects on the subject. Of course, I don't recall any numbers, but there were talks of football fields per time unit back then as well.

It would be interesting to see in what direction it has gone the last 20 years. I can imagine that computers and digitalization might have reduced the need for paper a bit.

[Akira 0]

Interesting you mention digitalization, since one of the episodes of "Deep Jungle" dealt with a researcher who was using lasers to map out the forest and its canopy. Other researchers would use this digitizations and speed up the lifecycle of the forest based on known variables to see what the life cycle is like. Was very interesting.

I guess that really tells you how large the forest is, if swaths of forest the size of football fields have been disappearing since the 1980s (I too remember this issue in the 80s).

Surely with space based imaging and remote sensing, there must be before/after picks of the Amazon somewhere...

[denoir 0]

And another graph from a UN website:

So at least 10 years or so ago, it was on the way down.

[miles teg 1]

Actually from what I understand the main culprit of deforestation is not commercial logging or cattle ranching but simply hundreds of thousands of small farmers (campesinos) who are struggling to feed their familes. There are also largescale commercial agricultural projects (like massive soybean farms in Brazil) and some big cattle ranches that also contribute. So basically unless someone figures out how to teach poor people to make a living or provide them with jobs, they're going to keep burning down and cutting down the rain forests of central and South America at increasing rates as population sizes increase.

One idea is teaching them how to harvest natural resources from the forests. The collection of brazil nuts, bee farming, and eco-tourism are some examples.

Some of the national wildlife parks in Africa that are Chimpanzee habitats have done alot of pioneering work in this area. An example is the Gombe National Park in Tanzania where the Jane Goodall Institute has done alot of good work. They realized that the only way to save the park and to keep poachers and desperate squatters from taking over the park, was to provide them with new employment options that would work in harmony with the park and its chimpanzee populations.

I had the honor of speaking with Jane Goodall a few years back after a lecture. It was truly inspiring. You feel like you're talking to Mother Teressa or something.

But if governments and corporations refuse to do their parts, then all the feel good enviornmental activism is for nothing.

The important thing is working to find solutions. Not enough people go into such fields of work in the social sciences. Sadly most development work these days is designed to enhance capitalist markets, increase agricultural output in areas, and to train labor forces....not in developing enviornmentally friendly programs or self-sustaining agricultural projects. You can have self-sustaining agriculture, however the problem is that often the types of food that are limited to such agricultural is not consistent with the modern tastes of many people in the world. However inidigenous groups have practiced such agriculture in many parts of the Amazon for many years on small plots. That mixed in with trade, and hunting and gathering has subsidized their incomes and diets.

So there are solutions, but there is just not the political will or financial backing to really push forward solutions. That along with the added problem of massive corruption in Latin American governments makes saving the rain forests an uphill struggle. Sadly its not like oil in the minds of the Bush administration. No short term profits for American corporations (or major long term profits...just clean air...but air is free...unless... thats commercialized also. lol

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[bn880 5]

Well, we have kind of un-reasonable expectations when itcomes to rain forests. We wiped out all we waned in our own 1st class nations in terms of coniferous forests etc... we have endless farm land and gigantic cities, but when it comes to the nations where rain forests are situated, when they need land, we think it's something different at times.

I don't see how it can reasonably stop, unless we buy the people there not to cut it down. And I mean _buy_ $$$... that's what it's about.

So, until some strange reason causes major economies to invest to protect these forests, they will eventually be converted into farmland, unfortunately.

At least that's the way I see it... doubt I'm wrong here.

[Bordoy 0]

They should replant trees in un-used land in Britain and re-grow Sherwood Forest, it has shrank considerably loads.

[Gadger 0]

What difference does it make? Without being too phylisophical but isn't it better to make sure people that are living at the moment have the best quality of life rather than worrying about what might happen a couple of generations down the line?

Not really. If you draw a graph, the quality of life will get higher for a period, then it will fall rapidly as there is alot of pollution in the sky.

YOU HAVE to think of the consequences.

Miles summed it up better than I ever could.

[IsthatyouJohnWayne 0]

The massive reduction in species diversity is definately the thing that pisses me off most about losing vast chunks of the amazon everyday, we're shooting ourselves in the balls with that one (Brazilians most of all).

But hey, the way we're continuing the human race will either go extinct or become machines so we might as well get it over with and wage a full scale war on nature to turn the planet into one big production line and then work out why we've done it afterwards.

[CAPAIRMAN 0]

At least we can be thankful they're not using agent orange.

Seriously, 9 football fields per seond? Thats absolutely insane!

[Bordoy 0]

The massive reduction in species diversity is definately the thing that pisses me off most about losing vast chunks of the amazon everyday, we're shooting ourselves in the balls with that one (Brazilians most of all).

But hey, the way we're continuing the human race will either go extinct or become machines so we might as well get it over with and wage a full scale war on nature to turn the planet into one big production line and then work out why we've done it afterwards.

I heard that 1 species gets extinct every few hours. This is absolutly ball, and like Agent Smith (off the Matrix) says "The human race is a virus". He is 100% correct.

[simba 0]

wrong ,

capitalism is a virus