This blog may help people explore some of the 'hidden' issues involved in certain media treatments of environmental and scientific issues. Using personal digital images, it's also intended to emphasise seasonal (and other) changes in natural history of the Swansea (South Wales) area. The material should help participants in field-based modules and people generally interested in the natural world. The views are wholly those of the author.
Wednesday, 14 February 2024
Prime Considerations
The Amazon rainforest is home to more than 10% of the planet's terrestrial wildlife. It's also currently a carbon 'sink' (store) with a capacity equivalent to 15-20 years of global 'greenhouse gas' emissions. We really can't afford to lose it. A paper in the journal Nature, however, predicts that large sections of the Amazon will reach a 'tipping point' by 2050 (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/14/amazon-rainforest-could-reach-tipping-point-by-2050-scientists-warn). A 'tipping point' is, of course, a state, where changes are impossible to reverse. They often develop a momentum of their own. The Amazon is currently threatened by a combination of global heating; changing rainfall; longer dry seasons; deforestation (to take timber but also to clear land for cattle and/or grow soya cattle feed) and fires. The loss of large sections of the Amazon would be simultaneously a biodiversity and a climate disaster!
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