The Drought Thread Pt. 2 (merged)

[EnergyUnlimited]

The relevant question here is simple:
Do Brazilian government/nation as such really WANT to keep those rainforests?
If the answer is NO (for example they would prefer to grow sugar cane there but they feel shy to announce it openly to the world), than nothing could be done to avert ecological disaster which may begin to show up now.

What the realistic consequences of Amazon gone could be (apart of species loss)?

More hurricanes in US?
Further progress of GW?
Famine in South America?

[Fergus]

sure.

people, water, no problem

no people, no water, no problem.

people, no water, big problem.

Only the deepest deep ecologist, or an analytical philosopher cares if the sahara really is dry. the rest of us just care if we can get a drink.

Water is not going to be a big issue. There will be plenty around for a long time.

You can make water materialize with a sheet of plastic and a small pebbel. You can cut into cactus's for water.

Waters the last of our issues. We can build a big ole ditch right down America and get canadian waters to flow to mexico.

[ohanian]

One scam is the familiar Ponzi scheme. Paulos thinks of a stock market bubble (as we experienced in the nineties) as a Ponzi scheme in which dot com buyers are hoping to sell to stupider dot com buyers, etc. In another context, Paulos notes perspicaciously, "Even the destruction of the environment may be seen as a kind of global Ponzi scheme, the early 'investors' doing well, later ones less well, until a catastrophe wipes out all gains."

[Tanada]

Actually oceanic phytoplankton aree the 'lungs of the planet', ocean covers 70% of the surface and about 30% of the earth surface receiving sunlight at any one time is ocean. Continental forests are worth a lot, but as for being the lungs, well they hardly rate as being the bronchial tubues!

So the amazon doesn't produce 20% of the oxygen?

In a word, no. Phytoplankton Oxygen

Fish and aquatic animals cannot split oxygen from water (H2O) or other oxygen-containing compounds. Only green plants and some bacteria can do that through photosynthesis and similar processes. Virtually all the oxygen we breath is manufactured by green plants. A total of three-fourths of the earth’s oxygen supply is produced by phytoplankton in the oceans.

When you add in the fresh water phytoplankton, then add up all the forests and stable savannah's other than the Amazon it contributes far less than 20%. The number is often repeated for phychological impact, but has little bearing on reality. The Amazon without the influence of man is stable, it emits the same ammount of CO2 as it absorbs through the decay of leaves and fallen trees, wildfires and so on.

[Zardoz]

Water is not going to be a big issue. There will be plenty around for a long time.

You can make water materialize with a sheet of plastic and a small pebbel. You can cut into cactus's for water.

Waters the last of our issues. We can build a big ole ditch right down America and get canadian waters to flow to mexico.

Put away the bong. You've had enough for one day.

[Kez]

I remember a few years back that someone was talking about how bad the Amazon was going to be, and that you could help by buying an acre, and just doing nothing with it. Did anyone here ever try that or was that just a scam? I would imagine it would be incredibly hard to determine if you actually bought anything. It does seem like the only way to save them however.

[turmoil]

This is good news! Finally some good news! We will all fry to death, but at least we will literally be "breathing easy" until the bitter end

Thanks again to all for your help.

[Skye]

I thought Terrence passed away a few years back....

[NEOPO]

There he goes with the anti - marijauna smoker stuff again!!!

Instead......I say the guy is either drunken or high on some other "legal" drug.....and stop making fun of Mr Mckenna...you bastards!!!

How do you know you are not a stoned ape at this very moment?
Fully intoxicated on hydrocarbons......

Oh thats right...we are......

Water is a problem wether you have not enough or too much.

[Tyler_JC]

I remember a few years back that someone was talking about how bad the Amazon was going to be, and that you could help by buying an acre, and just doing nothing with it. Did anyone here ever try that or was that just a scam? I would imagine it would be incredibly hard to determine if you actually bought anything. It does seem like the only way to save them however.

I remember those ads.

In fact, I remember buying several hundred acres when I heard about it.

Now the cattle rancher sends me a check every month or so.

It's a pretty sweet racket if you can get it.

[Lighthouse]

I would say the map is weird. Perth in Western Australia is suffering immense water shortage. That can not change. Neverless it's blue on this map. We on the Sunshine Coast are in a pocket with enough water but we are red on this map.

Who did this map?

[gg3]

Bottom line: most of the Americas and Europe are going to be OK; most of the regions that are already suffering population overshoot crises are going to be screwed even harder.

Meanwhile here in northern California, at least there's one fewer thing I have to worry about.

[grabby]

Is this post a joke???? The %oxygen in the atmosphere is not proportional to the rate of photosynthesis. It's a standing mass of gas which is slowly added to and subtracted from by photosynthesis and respiration/combustion. The turnover time is about 100,000 years. Killing the Amazon would be awful but would have no significant effect on %oxygen for millenia.

1 mole of octane (118 grams) stoichiometrically, needs 9 moles of o2 to form the equation:

c8h18 + 12O2 = 8Co2 + 9 H20. when burning octane.

1 mole Octane takes 12 moles O2 (oxygen) to burn.
The trees reverse that.
to make 118 grams of matter they release 12 moles of 02

1 mole of oxygen is 22.4 liters at standard temperature pressure.

1 pound of octane will need 48 moles of O2 to burn completely.

1 mole gas is 22.4 liters 48 moles gas is 1075 liters o2
If an oil drum is 42 gallons that is 168 liters

6 oil drums of oxygen aat standard temperature and pressure are used up to burn one pound of octane.

whish is at about 20% ox,

30 barrels of air per pound of octane burned up.

Ventilation is important.

you can use up all the air in a garage just idling a car for a few minutes.

but there are billions of cubic miles of air in the world and
burning 3 million barrels of oil uses up one cubic mile of air.
so we use up 30 cubic miles of air every day burning our oil.

So per year we use 11,000 cubic miles of air all burned up.
or all the air above america 5000 feet high.

of course there is about 3 billion cubic miles of air, so there is no danger now of using it all up by burning all the oil. .

[EnergyUnlimited]

1 mole of octane (118 grams) stoichiometrically, needs 9 moles of o2 to form the equation:

c8h18 + 12O2 = 8Co2 + 9 H20. when burning octane.

1 mole Octane takes 12 moles O2 (oxygen) to burn.

Grabby, it would be so good, if you could spell your ideas in precisive way.
As I am a chemist myself, I have no difficulty in understanding of your argument.
But please take an effort to balance your equation and make sure that a number of oxygen atoms on the left hand side equals the number on right hand side, or it can be very confusive otherwise.
Eg correctly it should be:
C8H18 + 12.5O2 = 8CO2 + 9H20, and purists will write it as:
2C8H18 + 25O2 = 16CO2 + 18H2O (as "12.5O2" does not exist).

12.5 mole of oxygen will combine with 1 mole of octane.

From this what you said above it appears that it is either 9 or 12 moles. Non chemist will have a trouble with it, if he bother to investigate.

[strider3700]

There have been recently reports in po.com that some people have trouble breathing. Wonder if oxygen levels are already decreasing badly.

My grandparents say it has gotten a lot tougher to breath than when they were teenagers

Age and general wear and tear on the lungs almost certainly explains this. The other thing that may affect them depending on where they live is particulate in the air. Compaired to a nice crisp winter breath the air here is dirty smog thanks to 2 months of drought now. It makes sence that air is harder to breath when you can see it.

[Cabrone]

Actually oceanic phytoplankton aree the 'lungs of the planet', ocean covers 70% of the surface and about 30% of the earth surface receiving sunlight at any one time is ocean. Continental forests are worth a lot, but as for being the lungs, well they hardly rate as being the bronchial tubues!

I would imagine that if the rainforest goes, the atmosphere will be burdened with even more CO2. This in turn will mean that more CO2 is absorbed by the oceans thus raising acidity levels. In turn this may start to kill off the phytoplankton thus depeleting this major carbon sink? Double whammy.

I've read a few times on other forums that as we are putting a tiny % of CO2 into the atmosphere what's all the fuss about? The way that I see it is that we are tampering with the atmosphere and putting changes into place that we will not be able to stop. Positive feedback loops will amplify our initially small addition of CO2 and before you know it the climate is out of control. It's like pouring sugar into your petrol tank, really easy to do but once you've done it the car is screwed and you are going to have to make a huge effort to get it back to working condition.

Can't someone get it through to the heads of the people that run this crazy show that it's better not to pour the damn sugar into that tank in the first place?

[Dukat_Reloaded]

The Amazon will be cut down, it's just a matter of time. India & China are demanding more burger meat and agricultural everyday, it is a great fertile land that is constantly being explotied and it's all forsale.

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[katkinkate]

I don't mean to get into an envronmental debate....I just wanna know at what percentage is human life not possible. Right now oxygen is roughly 20% of the atmosphere, and the amazon provides roughly 20% of that. If the amazon goes to desert within a few years or gets completely cut down, can we survive on roughly 16% oxygen? 10%?

Is this post a joke???? The %oxygen in the atmosphere is not proportional to the rate of photosynthesis. It's a standing mass of gas which is slowly added to and subtracted from by photosynthesis and respiration/combustion. The turnover time is about 100,000 years. Killing the Amazon would be awful but would have no significant effect on %oxygen for millenia.

Syncline is exactly right. There would be no appreciable effect on the oxygen levels by the loss of the Amazon forrests.

But there would be another very serious consequence. The equatorial rainforests aren't the lungs of the planet, they are the airconditioners of the planet. Removing all that tree cover exposes the soil to the equatorial sun, thus heating it up. That would result in much of the surviving vegetation becoming heat-stressed and maybe dying out in the local area, but it also adds an enormous amount of heat energy to the admosphere.

At the moment the rain forest is keeping the ground cooler and the clouds that cover the area for most of the day are reflecting much of the sunlight back into space. Without the forest and the resulting rain clouds, all the energy will be absorbed by the ground and heat up the air above it, thus adding another heat source to all those we already are guilty of.

[Heineken]

(Are you serious, Tyler, or just kidding?)

Looks as though buying rainforest land and just letting it be is no longer a solution, since the main threat now seems to be climate-related.

Global warming is like an invisible, omnipresent, omnipotent hand.

[Madpaddy]

Why should any of this news surprise us anymore. I grew up in a very small village in the west of Ireland. The main road ran outside my house. Everyday, the other boys and I would gather on the main road, set up goalpsots with our jumpers and kick ball. Every 10 minutes or so we would hear a car coming and move to one side before starting our game again.

Moving on 20 years, the same road runs past the house where my parents still live. There is a constant stream of traffic to the thousands of new houses built on the once fertile farmland. The woods where we used to play has been replaced by 2,3 and 4 bed houses called "Bluebell Wood" in honour of the wood that was destroyed. I weep that PO didn't come 20 years ago when there was so much that could have been saved.

Dublin in the Rare Old Times

Raised on songs and stories, heroes of renown.
Are the passing tales and glories, that once was Dublin town.
The hallowed halls and houses, the haunting children's rhymes.
That once was Dublin city in the rare old times.

Ring a ring a Rosie, as the light declines,
I remember Dublin city in the rare old times

My name it is Sean Dempsey, as Dublin as can be
Born hard and late in Pimlico, in a house that ceased to be.
By trade I was a cooper, lost out to redundancy.
Like my house that fell to progress, my trade's a memory.

And I courted Peggy Dignan, as pretty as you please,
A rogue and child of Mary, from the rebel Liberties.
I lost her to a student chap, with skin as black as coal.
When he took her off to Birmingham, she took away my soul.

Ring a ring a Rosie, as the light declines,
I remember Dublin city in the rare old times

The years have made me bitter, tha gargle dims my brain,
'cause Dublin keeps on changing, and nothing seems the same.
The Pillar and the Met have gone,
the Royale long since pulled down,
As the great unyielding concrete, makes a city of my town.

Ring a ring a Rosie, as the light declines,
I remember Dublin city in the rare old times

Fare thee well sweet Anna Liffey,
I can no longer stay,
And watch the new glass cages, that spring up along the Quay.
My mind's too full of memories, too old to hear new chimes,
I'm part of what was Dublin, in the rare old times.

Ring a ring a Rosie, as the light declines,
I remember Dublin city in the rare old times