Amazon Rainforest Could Die

[Jamie in Chile]

The Amazon is approaching a tipping point, data shows.

Climate crisis: Amazon rainforest tipping point is looming, data shows

Analysis of satellite observations show forest is losing stability with ‘profound’ global implications

www.theguardian.com

"The study does not enable a prediction of when the tipping point could be reached. But the researchers warned that by the time the triggering of the tipping point could be detected, it would be too late to stop it."

"Once triggered, the rainforest would transform to grassland over a few decades at most, releasing huge amounts of carbon and accelerating global heating further."

Have been following the science on this for a while. Absolutely possible that most of the Amazon rainforest could collapse and die.

The Amazon rainforest contains an estimated 390 billion trees. 30 million people of 350 different ethnic groups live in the Amazon, according to the wikipedia article for the Amazon rainforest, which further adds that "The region is home to about 2.5 million insect species,[38] tens of thousands of plants, and some 2,000 birds and mammals. To date, at least 40,000 plant species, 2,200 fishes,[39] 1,294 birds, 427 mammals, 428 amphibians, and 378 reptiles have been scientifically classified in the region.[40] One in five of all bird species are found in the Amazon rainforest, and one in five of the fish species live in Amazonian rivers and streams. Scientists have described between 96,660 and 128,843 invertebrate species in Brazil alone".

 

[Jamie in Chile]

Have been thinking about this a bit more, trying to quantify how serious an issue this is in terms of number of animals affected.

This post may be one of the most depressing I´ve ever written, so consider leaving it for another day depending on your current state of mental health and mood and stress. And the way I think about it not to everyone´s tastes.

I couldn´t find the numbers of animals in the Amazon but I found an estimate for number of vertebrates (includes mammals, reptiles and amphibians) living globally as between 100 billion and 100,000 billion. Source: How Many Wild Animals Are There?

I looked up the land area of the Amazon vs the whole Earth´s land area, it looks like about 5%. It seems reasonable to assume that if the Amazon is 5% of the land area, it is >5% of the creatures. Say 20%.

That would give an invertebrate population of between 20 billion and 20,000 billion for the Amazon. (Of course, much higher if we include smaller creatures like insects.)

If the entire Amazon collapses it seems reasonable guess to say that half of them will die, so 10 billion to 10,000 billion deaths. (Although in practice a steady collapse over decades would be more than most of the animal´s lifetimes, so it might be better to think of it in terms of that number of creatures failing to have a life at any given time?).

If the collapse does happen and if it really is caused by human caused climate change - that would mean 8 billion of us caused 10 billion to 10,000 billion deaths. That´s an estimated 1 to 1,000 (invertebrate) deaths caused by each of us in the Amazon rainforest alone.

Or if you prefer, by government inaction, or evil fossil fuel executives. I mean some people are more guilty than others.

So, at the risk of just making the same point I´ve already made in the past, can you be a vegan, and not cut your carbon footprint substantially, if those numbers are right?