hau Cassie, great article, thank you for posting it.
What we need is more focus on the facts of global warming, the effects that the rapid, massive deforestation in the tropical and temperate rain forests are now being felt, but this doesn't stop the advance of those who seek to
profit from the
trees that are left.
Since 1950, the U.N. FAO has documented that Latin America has destroyed 37% of their rain forest, Central America has destroyed 66% of their rain forest, Southeast Asia 38% and Central Africa 52% In North America, a similar loss of old growth temperate rain forest has been documented.
If you average out the loss of carbon sequestering rain forest alone there is virtually no way to recover in less than 30 years simply because trees take time to grow large
enough to take in enough CO2 to make a difference.
One acre of rain forest can sequester 10% of its volume in carbon per day, One entire rainforest region can sequester 10% of all the CO2 created and released by humans per day.
We loose enough rainforest every day to sequester 100,000 automobiles emissions of CO2.
By the year 2090 there will be at least 16 billion humans on planet earth.
At the current forest destruction rate, by 2110 humans might not be on planet earth because of the increase in temperature along with the rise of ocean levels and large wild animal habitat loss.
All these things together could create the destruction of mankind along with most of the other inhabitants of earth.
People being active in planting "carbon farms" is a very real necessity but the News Media and even the scientific community do not put enough emphasis on this dire need.
The problem is, the News people don't think it is important enough to always be "News Worthy", while at the same time the scientific community can't come to a consensus of the long term effects and how to counter act the issue.
That lack of "keeping it in front of the people" means that the building of carbon farming is going slower than what would be needed to actually create a reverse in global warming. Especially when you account for the 20 million hectares that will be cleared today and every other day forward.
At that rate, it is impossible to use all the current methods to sequester back into the soil enough carbon that global warming would even slow down the tiniest bit. Indeed the rate of destruction would have to terminate today for us to be able to make a dent in the next 20 years.
Since it seems to be the nature of humans to do what ever it takes to put money into pockets so it can be spent, unless we as a race can curb this
greed desire, nothing will change regardless of anything we as a race can do to thwart or stem the quantities of free carbon dioxide rushing to the outer reaches of the earth mothers atmosphere and creating even more global warming.
There is hope, but unless the News Media and all special interest groups start a relentless push to stop the madness of clearing trees for lumber and useless farm lands.
(useless because the soil depletes in two years and so they clear even more rainforest to plant and this idiotic lunacy continues on and on and on, until there will be no rainforest left. When all the rainforest is gone most life now on planet earth will also be gone).
Along with weather patterns that will be totally unpredictable and vary month by month so much that no yearly pattern will be predictable, making it harder and harder to know when to plant for good yields of crops.
While Strip Inter-farming will help (a miniscule amount), it would take a massive, multi-country reforestation effort to actually make enough difference to be noticeable.
I realize this sounds defeatist, however, this is the actual reality we currently face as the human race.
change needs to be rapid, and while it can be done in the "developed" countries, it is a much greater task to get the developing world to jump on the carbon band wagon and reverse their current thought processes.
In developing countries it is the poor that do the most damage as they struggle to survive and desire to have a better life.
It is a vicious, never ending circle of destruction that threatens to destroy everything, and this circle will have to be broken before resurrection can occur.
What we can do is work hard at building our own, tiny speck of new forest, encourage everyone we meet to do the same and spread the word as quickly as possible.
Those with the ability to influence those who report in the Media, must be relentless so the Media talk about what needs to be done and hopefully ways to do what needs to be done.
For it is my observation that once humans understand something must change, and know that they need to make that change so they will live better, they are more than likely to do so.
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