Rainforest Crunch

I scream, you scream, we all scream, because we must scream

Amazon Rainforest under assault. Photo by Victor Moriyama. Greenpeace.

Welcome new readers. I have been at this endeavor over four years now. My original subject was climate change to educate myself and share as our oligarch owned media largely peddles capitalist propaganda. Capitalism is destroying an inhabitable planet. My thousands of hours of research encompasses overshoot, so-called renewable energy and the impending end of the Age of Oil. I have also been forced to address the Gaza genocide and AI and fascism, as ICE goons invade our cities and attempt to cow us into submission. All of these issues are deeply related and reflect profound behavioral problems in Homo Sapiens leveraged to dehumanizing extinction level gravity by uncontrolled technology.

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The importance of our rainforests

Most of us have heard the term “Lungs of the Earth,” a myth referring to the Amazon Rainforest. This myth attributes rainforests as providing 20 percent of the oxygen on the planet. The truth is the local animals and microscopic life in rainforests consume most of that oxygen. Net production of oxygen by rainforests (or any forests) is close to zero. The oceans provide the majority of the air we breathe, around 50 percent dependent on humble phytoplankton and photosynthesis. However, rainforests DO sequester a massive 250 billion tons of carbon dioxide, critical to mitigating human caused global warming. As reference, in 2022 we deluded apes emitted 40 billion tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere.

In the last century, oceans have absorbed about 90 percent of our excess energy from burning fossil fuels resulting in its bastard offspring heat, and roughly 30 percent of carbon dioxide, now reaching full saturation levels, acidifying and killing coral reefs. These ancient ecosystems, critical to biodiversity of the oceans, provide protein to 20 percent of the human population and comprise an annual $3 trillion economy, the fourth largest in the world as measured by the sickly yardstick of GDP foisted on us by ignorant economists and dependent on planet rape.

The inexorable rise of ocean temperatures.

Would you rather eat a fish or a gold bar?

Remember, matter is neither created nor destroyed, it is transformed, as per the Law of the Conservation of Mass, established in the 18th century. This heat we have produced is equivalent to a mind-bending 25 billion Hiroshima size nuclear bombs going off continuously for the last 50 years. Between 1971 and 2020, it’s estimated that 380 zettajoules of energy has been trapped in our oceans. Do billionaire oligarchs understand these basic physics lessons? If they don’t, they are fools and if they do, they are psychopaths.

Let’s attempt to write that Hiroshima number for good effect. The energy of a joule is one watt per second. Written in mere joules, 380 zettajoules, it looks like this:

380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Yeah, I can’t absorb that number either and neither can the oceans. This I do know. If not for the oceans absorbing our excess, greed-driven, Industrial Revolution heat, we would all be dead now or land surface air temperatures would have long ago become uninhabitable. As unabated ocean warming continues, this heat sink will no longer protect us.

Overshoot driving billionaires

There are two kinds of overshoot, the mindless consumption that has persuaded us material possessions are happiness and massive overpopulation only made possible by fossil fuels. The former is a clever form of enslavement and the latter a subject of justified profound concern as it results in human crime at scale. Who decides who lives and who dies? Who gets to play God?

The horrifying genocide of the Palestinian people is just one example. Sad truth, genocide is a current and historic routine feature of Homo sapiens behavior and the source of military industrial complex profits.

The Levantine Basin holds around 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas — that just happens to be in the Mediterranean off the shores of Gaza — as EROI on oil approaches its end. While the racist philosophy of Zionism factors hugely, diminishing energy resources tell a story as well.

Somehow, I’ve barely managed to address rainforests so far. Let’s rectify that. This is the challenge of writing because as in nature, everything human is also connected. The Amazon Rainforest, seriously jeopardized, is a key biological system critical to our survival.

Let’s honor Jeff Bezos and his disgustingly named Amazon empire. Jeffrey just laid waste to his environmental reporting staff at the Washington Post. Please boycott all things Bezos, including Whole Foods.

Rainforest facts

Rainforests can be found on every continent except Antarctica, both temperate and tropical. They comprise just two to six percent of the Earth’s surface. The lack of consensus on this figure surprised me given satellite proliferation, but it is agreed by multiple sources tropical rainforests provide ecosystems for over 50 percent of all known animal and plant species. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) puts rainforest coverage of the Earth at 6 percent, but Mongabay another non-profit reporting on environmental destruction estimates 3.6 percent.

The Amazon accounts for more than half of Earth’s remaining tropical forests.

Although rainforest coverage as a percentage of the planet’s land mass is low, they play an outsized role in moderating climate and maintaining an inhabitable world for human beings and myriad life that evolved with us. The Holocene epoch, a period of coolness on our ever-changing planet provided favorable conditions. As mentioned, rainforests store 250 billion tons of CO₂ — both in their leaf canopies and floor peat. Additionally, like coral reefs they provide habitats for the greatest biodiversity of any terrestrial ecosystem.

However, their ability to continue absorbing carbon dioxide at this level indefinitely is under dire threat as the forests are destroyed for monoculture plantations, animal grazing (particularly cows for beef) and mining projects that cause vast amounts of greenhouse gases to be released.

A list of the ten largest rainforests can be found here.

Refugia: an explanation of rainforest diversity

Details of the astonishing biodiversity of tropical rainforests is a subject of debate, However, the core evidence is agreed upon. Nowhere on terrestrial Earth is there a greater density of unique species. The refugia hypothesis offers the explanation.

The last Ice Age, spanned a period around 2.6 million and 11,700 years ago.

The last Glacial Maximum occurred a scant 23,000 and 19,000 years ago or perhaps 25,000 to 18,000 years ago (older estimate), dated through well-established radiocarbon techniques pioneered in the 1940s, AKA carbon-14.

During this period ice sheets advanced enormously, dropping ocean levels hundreds of meters, creating a much colder, drier climate. As the ice advanced, although it didn’t reach the tropics, rainforests were profoundly affected. Formerly expansive, warm, moist ecosystems were separated by savannas and woodlands in response to the cooler climate. Remaining pockets of rainforest harbored life that evolved on separate evolutionary paths for thousands of years. As the Pleistocene gave way to the Holocene savannas and woodlands faded reuniting the fragmented rainforests.

This graphic gives a sense of just how short a time the Pleistocene and Holocene encompass. Illustrating our brief time on Earth, it should impart some humility, too.

I once read years ago that those pockets of humid rainforest that persevered could be as small as five square miles. For this reason, every hectare burned likely destroys countless undiscovered plant and animal species. Aside from the moral questions, are practical ones. 25 percent of the pharmaceuticals we depend on come from rainforests including some of the most mundane such as blood pressure medications.

The current state of the Amazon

The Amazon has been under withering assault in recent years during the feeding frenzy of President Jair Bolsonaro. A military product, he rolled back environmental and indigenous protections in an attempt to fix Brazil’s struggling economy. This boosted multinational corporate profits, punished the poor and resulted in record Amazon destruction. In 2022, Brazilian forest loss accounted for a boggling 43 percent of global deforestation.

In 2023, Lula da Silva came to power in part by vowing to reverse the carnage at COP30. He pledged to end deforestation in the Amazon by 2030. Remarkably, it appears he’s on the right track. According to this article, in 2023 the rainforest shrank 50 percent less than in 2022. However, we must remember this is merely a reduction in the rate of destruction and the Amazon could be tipped by 2100. Given that climate thresholds are being broken faster than modeling has predicted, I have to wonder if 2100 is a conservative assessment.

Act, you have power

These are the most challenging times many of us have ever seen. It’s easy to become overwhelmed and feel powerless. Trump’s re-election drained me, but I’m back on the horse. We have tools, particularly economic power. The vampires destroying the planet require our money that they literally convert into blood money. With organized strikes, forever boycotts and courageous protests, we can deprive the depraved of their lifeblood. The Minnesota protests are the blueprint. We need to honor Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Organize at the local level, and watch it grow. Channel your anger, let it empower you and inspire others.

Move your money to credit unions, away from fossil fuel banks. They finance death. Cancel culture? Cancel Jeff Bezos. Don’t buy ANYTHING you don’t absolutely need. Cut out beef that’s driving deforestation of the rainforests. Fast food is poison. Get pissed about it. Don’t pay taxes. Remember your history. NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION. Our tax money is killing babies in Gaza and used to abduct Americans off our streets. It’s beyond time to draw the line.