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- bramkok, on 07/02/2009, -10/+125People should be more confronted with these pictures. I hope this will be published.
- CeeJayDK, on 10/12/2007, -3/+79People reading can actually help right now , and it won't cost them anything.
http://www.therainforestsite.com has a button on their site - If you click it , you will be shown ads , but more importantly the sponsors will pay the site , which in turn will buy some of the rainforest so it can be preserved.
It only counts one unique click per day per visitor , but you can keep coming back and clicking every day, 365 days a year.
They track the daily results .. Jan. 17th had 87,702 clicks , which saved 23 acres of rainforest .. let us try and see if the combined power of digg can't raise that number for today. - oooo, on 10/12/2007, -5/+72I think I have just been confronted. Often I hear "every year an area of the rainforest the size of this/that/other is destroyed" but I could never grasp the true significance. I was just floored looking at this picture.
Now, the big question is what can be done? - sockpuppets, on 10/12/2007, -5/+64That's about the size of the state of Vermont just to put it in perspective.
- unit101, on 10/12/2007, -1/+54What's amazing is how far back you can zoom and still see it.
- omgbanana, on 10/12/2007, -4/+49It's very much reversible.
It's just that we'll be dead by the time the planet gets around to reversing it. - hoberion, on 10/12/2007, -7/+40as long as consumers don't look at the origin of products they buy this will always continue
- JonForTheWin, on 10/12/2007, -6/+38***** terrifying.
- TyroPyro, on 10/12/2007, -2/+33Your demand for toilet paper isn't why. Usually it's the locals wanting more farmland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash-and-burn
- tutivlahos, on 10/12/2007, -8/+36Corruption. That's the problem. This isn't a problem that happens only in Amazon. Lots of forests near Sao Paulo are "protected" by law and by the police, yeah right. Just give the cops some money and you can do anything you want.
- cvrefugee, on 10/12/2007, -18/+40I love my desk, it's made with only the finest Amazonian wood and finished with the tears of environmentalists.
- CiXeL, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22looks alot like the failed housing development project out in big cypress swamp by the everglades in south florida
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=big+cypress+swamp&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=34.176059,70.400391&ie=UTF8&z=12&ll=26.064185,-81.495895&spn=0.151428,0.275002&t=h&om=1
in the 60's it was going to be the largest housing project in the US but they couldnt drain the land enough to put houses on it. they also logged the hell out of it for cypress and alot of palm trees were taken from there for landscaping.
that whole "restore the everglades project" is supposed to remove all that road and then release water to allow nature to reclaim it. right now you can go back there and drive for hundreds of miles of road out in the middle of nowhere. also MASSIVE canals. the biggest ive ever seen. theres all sorts of animal life out there too and i would imagine some of the best fishing since its pretty much wilderness with roads. we discovered it on accident when we looked at a national parks map of big cypress swamp and it said "travel not recommended beyond this point". our curiosity got the best of us. we found out why it said that though. YOU GET LOST! we were driving around endless roads in the middle of nowhere for hours before we found the way out. theres only 2 entrances/exits. either tthrough the fakahatchee strand or from I-75. - cyberdork, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23Spend more time on Google Earth and you will be surprised to see how much of the earths surface has already been altered by humankind. You basically have to search for areas which haven't been converted to farmland or are criss crossed by roads.
- 8Dan, on 10/12/2007, -13/+35try zooming in, you will see lots of small tree plantations, that is, the rainforest is being removed and allowed regenerate, even though the soil isn't the best quality and flooding etc. happens, it will grow back, and, if your concern is about CO2 levels *rolls eyes*, the forest will actually absorb more CO2 when regenerating!
this slash and burn has been practised, abit on a much smaller scale, by the people living in the amazon basin for hundreds of years. The real problem is ranchers who don't let the forest grow back after they have finished. - jasoneisen, on 10/12/2007, -6/+25This is an entire state (Rondonia) of Brazil. If you go find it in google maps with a screen larger than the little box offered on that site:
http://tinyurl.com/2zrlue (google maps)
you will see that it's actually becoming a developed city. Another interesting thing to point out is where you can zoom in real close and see detail:
http://tinyurl.com/38fekk (google maps)
These are VERY large parcels of land. Puts it into better perspective. Notice the trees left scattered about in the fields. - sockpuppets, on 10/12/2007, -3/+22Hawk this is Zerp, we were on the galagon nine together. Something's wrong with your implant, we haven't been able to locate you.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -43/+59So, look at all the trees cut down in north america to build houses and rail roads.
Why can't these guys cut down their own trees ?
If you drive a stupid SUV and digg this then your are a hypocrite, your canyonaro is responsible for much more planet destruction that cutting down these trees (and planting new saplings in there place, or other CO2 removal vehicles (no, I don't mean cars))
Americans need to wake up and stop taking their stupid F150 into the city, or their incredibly dumb Chevy Tahoe (aka Canyonaro aka planetkiller)
***** em.
I'll drive my 450hp 911 that gets 30/gallon on the freeway and just tool past all you morons with 8mpg hummers.
- ZennZero, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16@gorfle
I just read a great article about this in National Geographic. Much of that farmland (and the cutting of timber) is illegal. The farming is being done on someone else's land and the products are sold overseas. Brazil is now the number 2 exporter of soy beans and their exports are increasing (of both soy and wood). Most of the companies doing this illegal farming and timbering hire private armies to guard their crops and workers. You may have heard of Dorothy Stang -- she was a nun and rainforest activist murdered by one of these companies for her meddling. They are better armed and funded than the local law enforcement, so they can generally do whatever they want.
Don't make the mistake of thinking these crops are grown to feed the local people. - zephc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16Yeah, a mere 2-3 zooms out and you can see most of the continent. Disgusting.
- zzleeper, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18Every year, an area of rain-forest the size of Switzerland is destroyed, in Brazil only. When people from South America talk about the "destruction of the rain-forest", it LITERALLY means that in less than 20 years the Amazon Forest will be called the Amazon Plains.
And by the way, industrialized countries have already destroyed their "forests" (Europe being the prime example, plus the US with the destruction of the Florida swamps), so trying to oblige poor countries like Brazil , Peru or Bolivia to stop "using" the forest is a bit hypocrite. - banditski, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Yes, it is hypocritical, but to be fair, it wasn't known the complete devastation that was caused by clear cutting. Just because one person / country does something wrong (especially in history) it doesn't give a free pass to someone else to do the same thing once the problem is known.
I can't say "my grandfather smoked when he was 20, why shouldn't I smoke when I'm 20?" We now know it's just wrong.
People learn. And we have to use that knowledge to improve the world we live in. - Junkyarddawg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13What you're seeing in the picture is a result of a Brazilian government policy to develop the amazon.
The government builds roads through the amazon, then sells long narrow slices of land perpendicular to the road, where farmers then cut down the jungle and plant crops. Each "line" going out from the road is one peasants field. It's considered "seeding" for future development, in the future there'll of course be plots further from the road too. There are similar "slices" sold along some of the river systems.
If you go to google earth and look at the amazon, you'll find that much or even most of the Amazon forest looks like this (you'll also find huge, tens of kilometers per side, square or rectangular cattle farms where the forest has been cleared).
It isn't a huge area of unbroken forest any more. Within our lifetimes there'll be no forest in the lowland amazon outside reserves. - kaskarn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Just for your information, oil companies in the rainforest dump 1.5 million gallons of toxic wastes in the Amazon rainforest EVERY DAY! Many of these products are not tolerated by the Geneva convention. 20% of the world's water fresh supply is in the Amazon..... The damage done to our planet is not always visible.
Just so you know :) - oooo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15How do you figure a sapling, which may be 1/100th of a size of a fully grown tree that has been around for 100s years in the rainforest, will remove several times more CO2? What a ***** comment.
- alexiscaptive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Sorry but, here in Brasil we have no problems with the KYOTO PROTOCOL
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Most wood products these days do not come from old trees. Especially paper products. They come from trees that are planeted SPECIFICALLY to produce these products.
In other words, if it weren't for these products, the area with those trees might be a shopping mall, or a parking garage now. - davidrools, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12just a guess, but a full grown tree dumps a bunch of leaves which decay and release as much CO2 as it absorbed to make em. A growing tree, on the other hand, captures more CO2 permanently into its structure.
- Hazardc, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13apparently the word biodiversity means nothing to mr wowbagger
- ZennZero, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12Digg up CeeJayDK. 11.4 sq ft of rainforest per click isn't much, but it is something.
- dawgma, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13If you pull out to see all of South America, the scar is still perfectly visible. The empty land looks like a massive mountain range from space.
- kdehead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9trouble is , even if the trees grow back, it'll take another 20 million years for the biodiversity to come back.
- ROFLance, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9This picture is much more amazing:
http://www.lance.hm/pictures/rainforest.jpg - banderbe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8The concentration of idiots on this thread alone is astonishing.
- stinkstank, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I'll give away the ending: The trees win and we lose.
- vandadam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8and here's what it looks like on the ground:
http://laplaza.org/%7Eclockman/cacauiburn.html
puts it into perspective a little better - 5um1th, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9We are giving planet earth lung cancer, what is the cure?
- actorboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9@ jshusta
Tree farms are a good thing but they're not tomato plants that can be harvested in a few months. Some of the trees they are cutting are hundreds of years old (at least), and won't replenish as fast as they are being depleted. - baxtermaddux, on 10/12/2007, -9/+16the world i grew up in will never be the same again. we are totally ***** our one and only place to live in an irreversible way
- redstinger, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Wait...he's right in saying that a sapling does absorb more CO2...BUT...a hundred-year-old tree is certainly contributing more to Mother Nature....more established roots to hold the soil, better canopy cover, holding rainwater, and not forgetting the ability to produce more offsprings (seeds) naturally :)
- geekchic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Direct GoogleMaps link
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&z=13&ll=-11.235485,-62.264328&spn=0.108936,0.160675&t=k&om=1 - davecor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8You think you can tell a poor nation they can't sell a resource that has value? Pass a UN Resolution and they'll just give you the finger.
You willing to send in troops to save the trees?
Only 2 things can be done;
1. Reduce demand for the wood. (Good luck getting other poor nations to play along)
2. Convince them to use sustainable harvesting practices that guarantees the money will continue flow in. Slash & burn makes quick money, but takes too long to raise a new crop. - directedition, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Umm.... I hate to break it to the submitter. But logging has minimal impact in the rainforest. What you are seeing in the photo is the resolt of slash anb burn agriculture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_and_burn
- zirconx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Legalizing hemp farming would go long way toward reducing our tree consumption. And that new program in South or North Dakota doesn't count - you have to spend thousands of (non refundable) dollars to apply for a license. Give me a break.
- TheCatsPants, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Perhaps we'd all be environmentalists if we lived 10 times as long as we normally do. Then we'd start to worry about the future state of the planet.
- actorboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@ boredsam
Got the stats to back that? - DiggCommando, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6One of the effects of global warming is increased rainfall in certain areas, those areas will suffer fewer droughts for a while, until they are washed away. "Global Warming" does not mean every place will get warmer, it is better called "Global climate change" since the warming part only applies to the average. Also, not all green is created equal, some trees "breathe" more than others.
- NoStoppingUs, on 10/12/2007, -8/+14and i bet everyone who is going to bitch and moan on here do not use any products that contain parts of the same trees that should be there in that photo, right?
you're all part of the problem too. dont be hypocrites, please. - mutatron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@Duositex,
You said the comment was pure genus, yet everything you wrote indicated you missed the point completely. Bottom line is: we lose. Sure the Earth always wins in the end, nobody is really worried about the Earth. It's our habitat we're worried about. The world is becoming uglier, wilderness is being eliminated, variety is diminished, the natural habitat from which we came is being destroyed. It's all about overpopulation, and there may be nothing we can do about it, but that doesn't mean you can go around trying to command people not to complain about it. - 8Dan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@ oooo
how do you figure a tree that has been around for hundreds of years will remove more CO2??? try looking up generations of forests and look at the CO2 needs of each generation, the comment was perfectly sensible, global warming CO2 levels amazon rainforest stuff is just missing the bigger picture.
The really huge problem with knocking down the amazon rainforest is that you have just destroyed a huge reserve of natural beauty and diversity, to learn from, investigate and admire, like the bible says, we should preserve gods creation. -
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