News Brief by Kip Hansen
The news channels, newspapers, news sites and the Twit-o-verse are full of “the Amazon is burning!” some of this was covered in here as “Amazon Fire History Since 2003” by Les Johnson on August 23.
Years ago, I asked the question “What Are They Really Counting?”. Always an important question when figures are being thrown about and talk is of scary numbers or records set or the numbers being scandalous. Nice numbers . . . but what are they really counting?
Here’s the number of fires:
This year, 2019, as of 21 August, is running a hair below 2016. There are two years since 2003 higher.
But for current Amazon fires, we want to know: not just the number of fires (for which the NY Times has quite a different number than Global Fire Data, which is shown above). . . .but instead:
What is burning?
It is natural to think that because the news is all full of stories stating that “The Amazon Rain Forest is burning” — well, one might think that the Amazon Rain Forest is burning.
However, that is not true, according to a brave journalist — Alexandria Symonds — at the NY Times (kudos kudos & kudos to her…) . She reports:
“Natural fires in the Amazon are rare, and the majority of these fires were set by farmers preparing Amazon-adjacent farmland for next year’s crops and pasture.
Much of the land that is burning was not old-growth rain forest, but land that had already been cleared of trees and set for agricultural use.”
Our brave journalists skates close to the dangerous edge of violating Editorial Mandates by telling readers:
“Did climate change cause these fires, and how will they affect climate change?
These fires were not caused by climate change. They were, by and large, set by humans. However, climate change can make fires worse. Fires can burn hotter and spread more quickly under warmer and drier conditions.”
[Note: there is no mention of actual conditions of temperature or rainfall concurrent with these fires in the article, as usual for when climate is being blamed — just the implication that “climate change will makes things worse” without any data. — kh]
Bottom Line:
What is Burning? Mostly land previously cleared for agriculture. Some of these fires have gotten out of control along the edges of still-forested land.
How many fires? About as many at this time of year in 2016.
Deforestation? Deforestation of the Amazon has been ongoing, but it has been down trending since 1985, according to the graph above from the Times.
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Authors Comment Policy:
I am glad to be able to commend a NY Times journalist — a rare opportunity. Unfortunately, her “by…” page is currently down but I know that “Alexandria Symonds is a senior staff editor at The Times.” I guess she has some slack from Editorial Narratives.
I just thought that readers should know the basic facts about the Amazon fires.
Note that the NY Times is also calling out “fake news” photos of the Amazon Fires.
Start comments with “Kip…” if speaking to me.
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At this rate the Amazon rainforest will disappear in about 2,000 years. Unless it grows back.
Nobody is writing about the devastating forest fires in Indonesia which are threatening the orangutans.
And of course: tropical rainforests are NOT the lungs of the earth, Leonardo DiCaprio.
“Moreover, it is a myth that photosynthesis controls the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. Even if all photosynthesis on the planet were shut down, the atmosphere’s oxygen content would change by less than 1 percent.”
OK, I’ll bite. Where did the oxygen in the atmosphere come from in the first place, and what sustains it now?
Anna ==> It is fairly well accepted that the oxygen in the atmoshpere originally came from various bacteria, such as cyanobacteria:
The Origin of Oxygen in Earth’s Atmosphere
but note that:
“These microbes conduct photosynthesis: using sunshine, water and carbon dioxide to produce carbohydrates and, yes, oxygen. In fact, all the plants on Earth incorporate symbiotic cyanobacteria (known as chloroplasts) to do their photosynthesis for them down to this day.”
The oxygen in the atmosphere has accumulated over more than 500 million years, while the carbon from the CO2 has simultaneously been slowly been sequestered as shale, coal, oil, peat etc, but mostly (>95%) as shale. If production of oxygen would stop completely tomorrow it would take many million years before enough unoxidized material has eroded or erupted to consume all that oxygen.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if it turned out the “Amazon forest” was simply their version of Central Park that got out of hand after everybody left?
NC Coder ==> Cute! But it has been found that the Amazon region once contained fairly robust civilizations that vastly modified the forest environment — and have since disappeared leaving the forest to grow back to what we see today.
Kip
I do want to share some interesting news / please give me your opinion on it.
I noticed that of 10 places that I checked here in South Africa, only one place showed warming – over the past 40 years – namely Johannesburg (Jhb). Now, truly, Jhb was a semi-desert but it had gold, but no running water… so water was diverted from elsewhere to satisfy the need of people wanting to make a living of the gold…
It appears, exactly the same thing happened in Las Vegas. There was no running water. So, water was diverted – and indeed – the biblical prophecy of turning a desert into an oasis became true – to satisfy the need of getting in on the action of getting rich quick…on gambling…
Now, to understand my point, you have to understand that I do not agree with the argument that de-forestation causes warming. I think it causes cooling…..as evident from the results of Tandil (ARG) where they chopped all the trees.
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3Aeea7a2fc-97f2-43f8-a1b0-5bb653e5a74d
You r surprised? You realize that in the evening and night, photosynthesis reverses to produce growth and energy?
The effect is apparently so strong that the sats can pick up increased CO2 above the big forests …
HenryP ==> Can’t give much of an opinion based on the two graphs — but interestingly, to me at least, is the differences in Max and Min temps overtime (which, obviously, cause the change in the Mean.)
The Las Vegas time series might well depend on the massive changes in human habitation — UHI and all that. It was a naked desert and is now a mega-city. It has undergone a ten-fold increase in population since 1950. UHI tends to raise night-time lows. So much would depend on the location of the weather station being measured.
Whereas I admit to knowing NOTHING whatever about Tandil, Argentina.
Hi Kip, Boffin
I carefully analysed 10 cities here in South Africa. I can show you the results. All these cities have grown, so you’d think that there must be at least a noticeable UHI effect over the past 40 years. Yet 9 of the cities show no warming whatsoever. In fact Tmin has dropped by 0.8K over the past 40 years. The only city showing warming is Johannesburg and this was the one city that had no flowing water, just like Las Vegas. Water was diverted from elsewhere enabling people to live, work and plant trees, lawns, gardens and even crops.
Here is an interesting report:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI3627.1
Looking quickly at the conclusion you will notice that Tmin rose by 3K in the valley that was cultivated compared to the areas that was left untouched.
Now, as the world’s population grows, obviously everyone wants gardens with trees and lawns and raise crops. So here is the strange paradox: it appears to me that is the forestation and cultivation of land that traps heat, causing a portion of the earth’s warming …..
Henry ==> some interesting ideas there — there have been lots of studies about the temperature effects of land use changes — including an entire special report from the IPCC. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/srccl/
hi Henry,
There is an article about this in (dare I say it) Scientific American from 2007, referencing some research published in PNAS:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tropical-forests-cool-earth/
A new study, however, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that forests’ other climatic effects can cancel out their carbon cleaning advantage in some parts of the world. Using a three-dimensional climate model, the research team mimicked full global deforestation and also studied the effects of clear-cutting in different regions of latitude, such as the tropics and boreal zones. Apparently, these natural carbon sinks only do their job effectively in tropical regions; in other areas, they have either no impact or actually contribute to warming the planet. In fact, according to this model, by the year 2100, if all the forests were cut and left to rot, the annual global mean temperature would decrease by more than 0.5 degree Fahrenheit.
You r surprised? You realize that in the evening and night, photosynthesis reverses to produce growth and energy?
The effect is apparently so strong that the sats can pick up increased CO2 above the big forests …
Kip and Henry,
I did not know that photosynthesis reverses at night – interesting – but there is obviously a time-averaged net removal of carbon from the atmosphere when plants build roots and stems and leaves.
However the greenhouse impact of CO2 removal is so small that it could be easily out-weighed by water brought up from the soil and released into the air as water vapour – so the net greenhouse change due to plant growth is probably toward warming, as per the PNAS article.
I suspect an even more important mechanism for warming is the change in Earth’s albedo in the visible bands, where greenhouse effects are not relevant. Arid areas reflect more light energy directly to space, than vegetated areas. An intuitive illustration of this is NASA’s “blue marble” (an image taken in the visible bands). The brighter the marble, the less light energy is being shifted into heat. The clouds are brightest, of course, so condensing clouds and airplane contrails reduce heating. But look at the non-cloudy areas: the darkest areas are the oceans and lakes and rainforests. Ergo, if the forests spread, the Earth will warm. That being said, I like the trees – it’s a conundrum.
All true. But i did not see any link?
Don’t see the link Henry? I’m just riffing on your earlier statement: it appears to me that is the forestation and cultivation of land that traps heat, causing a portion of the earth’s warming.
Aye, Kip if only matters were that simple… if only the propagandists were right and it was as simple as reducing oil and gas consumption.
I think we could try to make a list of simple things to do:
– invent ways to increase the Earth’s albedo in the visible light bands. Some kooky ideas to get us thinking:
— build homes with bright galvanized steel roofs
— replace solar panels with simple mirrors
— let natural forest fires and grass fires burn longer
— stop irrigating our lawns and fields
— encourage aircraft to fly at altitudes where they leave a contrail
— wear tinfoil hats 🙂
boffin, alternatively
Sub saharan buildings white chalked:
https://www.google.com/search?q=subsaharan+buildings+white+chalked&oq=subsaharan+buildings+white+chalked+&aqs=chrome.
Boffin ==> If only climate maters were that simple…..
I note an increase in Tmin on NH and a decrease on the SH.
This could het due to most land being on NH.
However.
The inside of earth has also been moving to re-align with the magnetic field of the sun…
The graphs being used are only using specific amazon regions where it’s not severe. The cumulative charts from the same website you linked to show a record break for 2019. https://gyazo.com/05078d994ba23aa73fb532889c5f3267
Casey ==> Better to ink to the actual page where the data is found — can’t tell from your link what is being shown.
THIS piece is not about number of fires, but is about WHAT IS BURNING.
http://gfmc.online/wp-content/uploads/WP-FM05E-South-America.pdf (page 4).
1991 14 mio hectares burned in S America (Brazil mostly).
2019 2-3 mio burned in Brazil sofar.
1991 – > Nirvana made a record, people were happy
2019 -> Everyone is on Facebook, people are easily mislead
Boffin77
thanks for the link. I made a note of it in my reference file. It confirms exactly what I am saying. More forrestry makes it warmer on earth, not cooler.
Not that I think it would overheat due to more vegetation…
http://gfmc.online/wp-content/uploads/WP-FM05E-South-America.pdf (page 4)
2019 -> 2 – 3 mio hectares burned.
And before this cyanobacterias Earth’s atmosphere was murderous for mammals :
https://www.google.com/search?q=earth+atmosphere+before+cyanobacterias&oq=earth+atmosphere+before+cyanobacterias+&aqs=chrome.
And before this cyanobacterias Earth’s atmosphere was murderous for mammals :
Most scientists believe that for half of Earth’s 4.6-billion-year history, the atmosphere contained almost no oxygen. Cyanobacteria or blue-green algae became the first microbes to produce oxygen by photosynthesis, perhaps as long ago as 3.5 billion years ago and certainly by 2.7 billion years ago.
https://www.google.com/search?q=earth+atmosphere+before+cyanobacterias&oq=earth+atmosphere+before+cyanobacterias+&aqs=chrome.
Nah. I don’t believe that story.
See my comment to Rick,