The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Raging wildfires worsen global warming
With summer, the world now experiences raging wildfires that raise carbondioxide levels and accelerate global warming. The Amazon Valley is of particular interest because of its role in producing a large proportion of Earth’s oxygen. While the Amazon Valley is the largest and most spectacular source of fires, even Greenland, which used to be regarded a place of perpetual ice, is being scarred by fire on its now snowless west coast.
As more of the Amazon’s forests are felled for economic development, turning rich, oxygenproducing areas to savannah and ashes, the area on balance may become a net carbondioxide producer rather than a net source of oxygen. In scientific language, the Amazon is becoming a source of CO2 rather than a “sink.” This change, together with similar trends in other fireravaged areas around the world, are rapidly adding to the proportion of CO2 in the world atmosphere at a rate equal to or greater than human emissions, which have been increasing since the dawn of the fossilfuel age two centuries ago.
The conversion of Amazon (and other) forests to savannah also reduces rainfall. When most of the land is forested, trees retain moisture, and feed it back into the atmosphere, seeding more rain in a feedback cycle. Once a certain proportion of the rainforest has lost its cover, reduced rainfall increases chances of drought, which enhances fires, establishing an opposite feedback loop.
Scientists have calculated that deforestation takes on a momentum of its own when roughly 20 to 25 percent of forest cover has been lost. By the end of August, 2019, this figure reached 19.3 percent. If drought and fire continue, the point at which the Amazon Valley may reach “dieback,” a selfperpetuating cycle, may be 2020, one damaging fire season away. The Amazon in total holds 100 billion tons of carbon dioxide. All the coalfired power plants on Earth emitted 15 billion tons of CO2 in 2017.
Wildfires worldwide
As fires raged in the Amazon Valley during the summer of 2019, vast stretches of savannah were aflame in central Africa. Arctic areas of Siberia also were experiencing record wildfires, 6 million acres. Even Indonesia also was experiencing intense fires, feeding off peat bogs. These fires were pouring about as much carbon dioxide into the air as worldwide human emissions, and killing trees that used to take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. South of the Equator, Australia has been experiencing large wildfires for several years during its calendar summer, December through March.
John Abatzoglu, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Idaho, said that hotter, drier weather “are going to continue promoting the potential for fires…. [providing] a risk of large, uncontainable fires globally.”
Large amounts of deforestation afflict not only Brazil, but also every country with which it shares the Amazon basin — Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Paraguay and Argentina. Each of these countries has prepared a menu of development that requires felling of trees: mining, agriculture, cattle ranching, logging, road building, and construction of towns and cities. Almost half of the Amazon basin lies outside of Brazil, mainly along its northern and western borders. Development is occurring at speed unknown in previous years. If a country is politically stable and can provide a workforce and utilities, the developers swarm in.
In Peru, deforestation has jumped due to increasing production of coco (for cocaine) and illegal gold mining. More than half of that nation’s land lies within the Amazon Basin. Small mines have destroyed forests totaling about 170,000 acres in five years, according to a report by researchers at Wake Forest University.
Agriculture and ranching are also producing a surge in deforestation in Bolivia, where President Evo Morales has made expanding the country’s agricultural frontier a priority, sometimes by distributing land to farmers. The opening of China’s beef market to Bolivian exporters is thought to be driving some of the forest loss this year as ranchers seek pastures for expanding herds.
Wildfires have quickly become a source of greenhouse gases equal to that of human emissions as nationalistic leaders such as Donald Trump of the United States, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Vladimir Putin of Russia deny that any problem exists. History will remember them as three of the most powerful and ignorant men in human history.
Once a certain proportion of the rainforest has lost its cover, reduced rainfall increases chances of drought, which enhances fires, establishing an opposite feedback loop.