Thank you Hannah for all your great work this year, and putting so many news into the right perspective! Also I want to again congratulate you on your brilliant book!
It's good to see there's progress in the right direction, but unfortunately, rainforests and other ecosystems are still being lost. It takes hundreds to thousands of years to restore an old-growth forest and all the biodiversity it contains. Hopefully we can get deforestation rates to zero ASAP.
Thanks for all your informative perspectives in 2024 Hannah!
The slowdown in deforestation is all the more impressive (surprising!) given the 21% depreciation in the real versus the dollar over the past year. The fall in the Brazilian currency should increase the value of commodities for exporters who have their earnings denominated in dollars. In turn that should incentivise more land clearance. That relationship has tended to hold in the past, but not at the moment.
Thank you dear Hannah for your tireless work. It really matters, and I for one am very grateful to hear your perspective on things. Keep up the amazing work!
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , President of Brazil , has just had more surgery to prevent a brain-bleed.
He may take some time to recover and to resume his intended course of action.
Yes......it's good that he has been seen to be able to reduce the rate of deforestation in the Brazilian part of the Amazon forest...fine so long as he is still able to feed his people !
"The main cause of deforestation is clearing of land for agriculture and livestock. Although the annual rate of deforestation in Brazil has been sharply declining in recent years, it still amounts
to 2.6 million hectares (the size of Luxembourg)."[ Which is quite small really ! ]
It's amazing how upset people from DEVELOPED COUNTRIES can take such vitriolic umbrage when people from UNDEVELOPED or UNDER-DEVELOPED COUNTRIES want to DEVELOP their countries to an equivalent standard of living as all those "outraged victims" in the developed world ! How dare they !
Besides which , clearing trees to grow crops DOES NOT means less photosynthesis occurs ,
in fact , it may actually result in more release of oxygen than produced by trees !
[ It's not a well-known fact that a grass lawn produces oxygen for our environment at a far greater rate than the same area of trees. One acre of trees with full canopy coverage produces enough oxygen for between 8 and 18 people. The same acre in just grass cover produces
enough for 70 people!................ QED. !!! ]
Also , "70% of the Earth's oxygen is produced by phytoplankton (Prochlorococcus) as well as other aquatic plants while the forest and other inland plant and trees produce only 28% of the oxygen we breathe! " . Perhaps a little less 'pseudo-grief' and "self-righteous indignation" is called for when it comes to the choice of photosynthesising-foliage and clearing land to allow food production for humans ! At least........THINK ABOUT YOUR PRIORITIES !!!!
I suspect you're creating a false choice between burning down the rainforest on the one hand versus feeding a population / increasing the standard of living on the other. The latter does not and should not depend on the former. As an analogy, consider how many people used to think that economic growth used to depend on fossil fuel emissions. But as Ritchie and others have shown, growth and emissions have been decoupled. Burning down the rainforest to allow farmers to grow more food creates a ton of negatives in the long term with the positives only being short-term. You threaten endangered species and biodiversity, and you can only use the land for a very short period of time (maybe a few years, 5-10 years tops). That's because the soil, once deprived of the trees, is not very rich and conducive to farming. Then there is the question of how wasteful it is in terms of water consumption and methane emissions to substitute rainforests with cattle and beef production. If we want to have a sustainable future while slowing the effects of climate change and preserving one of the most precious environments in the entire world, then Silva's policies seem far more preferable and ethical to the alternative.
Stephen......it is a CHOICE , nothing false about it ! Starving people don't give a damn about "your sacred , precious rain-forest" ! If they have the chance to grow food , they will do whatever it takes ! Same thing goes for "endangered animals etc" !
For MOST of humanity's evolutionary history "WE" were the prey ! It is only very RECENTLY that humans gained the ascendancy , mostly due to our use of language , our manual dexterity , technology and ability to fashion and use tools and weapons. Incidentally , CARBON DIOXIDE and METHANE [ which oxidises to CARBON DIOXIDE anyway ! ] are FOOD for plants .....so the forests flourish on increased CO2 ......... END OF STORY ! Water shortage in the AMAZON REGION ??? Surely , YOU JEST !
Stephen , please remove your ideological blinkers and re-read my comment ,
but this time , with an open mind and NOT a foregone , predetermined conclusion ! Regards , Trevor.
[Edit: unless Trevor is Brazilian, his reaction probably isn't nationalistic. MA] Surely you don't believe Brazilians are exempt from the tragedy of the commons, because nobody is. Nor does the historic exploitation of resources in other countries justify "tu quoque" arguments. And beyond the false dichotomy Mr. Campbell points out, what of the documented economic injustices arising from "food production" on deforested land? My source is "The rotten apples of Brazil's agribusiness" (science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aba6646), co-authored by several Brazilians. From the abstract:
"Although most of Brazil's agricultural output is deforestation-free, we find that 2% of properties in the Amazon and Cerrado are responsible for 62% of all potentially illegal deforestation and that roughly 20% of soy exports and at least 17% of beef exports from both biomes to the EU may be contaminated with illegal deforestation."
It seems clear the governments of both Brazil and the EU have thought about their priorities, and together seek to limit deforestation for the purpose of food production, by law. And some of the *illegal* deforestation is done by "rotten apples of Brazil's agribusiness". Unless you're one of them, don't take data-driven criticisms of Amazonian deforestation personally!
Thanks for your work, Hannah. I have a wondering... prior to say 2008. How many towns in North America were burned in whole or in part due to wildfire as compared to after that arbitrary date? I have been unable to find anyone willing or able to entertain an analysis of this. complacency about towns lost to wildfire is stunning to me.It's treated as normal now but I wonder if it ever happened before climate change. Jasper. Lytton. Ft macmurray. How many in California...?! Whole towns or cities largely destroyed. And still 1 week news cycles. Would love to see the data about this as a before and after. Who knows, Maybe towns used to burn down all the time but we just didn't hear about it ... (?!@), or maybe climate change...?
Anyway, Your work is illuminating. Thank-you, Hannah Ritchie!
Several towns were destroyed by the great wildfire of 1910 which burned 3 million acres. Total acreage burned in the 20th century was several times higher than now. In 1930, 50 million acres burned in the US, which is much higher than the annual average for the last decade which is less than 8 million acres. The UN IPCC sees no attribution of climate change to current wildfires, which are mostly due to human factors (faulty power lines, unmanaged underbrush and inadequate controlled burning) and towns are endangered because they encroach into existing unmanaged forests.
Buzen, is it that you simply can't imagine how climate change can be a partial cause of individual wildfires if human factors can also be identified? Of course factors other than climate change also contribute to wildfire frequency/severity/area burned, but we don't need to show repeatedly that global warming is affecting wildfires now: that ship has sailed! Whether or not there were large fires in 1910 is irrelevant today.
"Fire weather: Climatic conditions conducive to wildfire have increased in Mexico, Western and North-Western North America, primarily due to warming (high confidence)."
And cites Abatzoglou and Williams 2016, "Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests" (pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1607171113).
Climate is statistical weather, and when weather statistics change, we say climate is changing. Growing scientific understanding now makes it possible to attribute causation for individual events. Why is that so hard to accept?
Some positive news at last - lets hope the trend continues. Thank you Hannah for all your informative posts this year - I look forward to them
Just a side comment: the linked PDF at the end is not in Spanish, but Portuguese (the language of Brazil)
So what did the da Silva administration do to slow the rate of deforestation, and what did Bolsonaro administration undo?
Thank you Hannah for all your great work this year, and putting so many news into the right perspective! Also I want to again congratulate you on your brilliant book!
Do you think the impending EU Regulation on Deforestation-free Products will meaningfully impact this trend?
It's good to see there's progress in the right direction, but unfortunately, rainforests and other ecosystems are still being lost. It takes hundreds to thousands of years to restore an old-growth forest and all the biodiversity it contains. Hopefully we can get deforestation rates to zero ASAP.
Thanks for all your informative perspectives in 2024 Hannah!
The slowdown in deforestation is all the more impressive (surprising!) given the 21% depreciation in the real versus the dollar over the past year. The fall in the Brazilian currency should increase the value of commodities for exporters who have their earnings denominated in dollars. In turn that should incentivise more land clearance. That relationship has tended to hold in the past, but not at the moment.
Thank you dear Hannah for your tireless work. It really matters, and I for one am very grateful to hear your perspective on things. Keep up the amazing work!
Wishing you all the best for the year ahead, as well
Is the data trusted ? Because that is not what we see in Brazil
Is the source of these data trusted ? Because that is not what we see in Brazil
Thanks, Hannah. I remember this from your book.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , President of Brazil , has just had more surgery to prevent a brain-bleed.
He may take some time to recover and to resume his intended course of action.
Yes......it's good that he has been seen to be able to reduce the rate of deforestation in the Brazilian part of the Amazon forest...fine so long as he is still able to feed his people !
"The main cause of deforestation is clearing of land for agriculture and livestock. Although the annual rate of deforestation in Brazil has been sharply declining in recent years, it still amounts
to 2.6 million hectares (the size of Luxembourg)."[ Which is quite small really ! ]
It's amazing how upset people from DEVELOPED COUNTRIES can take such vitriolic umbrage when people from UNDEVELOPED or UNDER-DEVELOPED COUNTRIES want to DEVELOP their countries to an equivalent standard of living as all those "outraged victims" in the developed world ! How dare they !
Besides which , clearing trees to grow crops DOES NOT means less photosynthesis occurs ,
in fact , it may actually result in more release of oxygen than produced by trees !
[ It's not a well-known fact that a grass lawn produces oxygen for our environment at a far greater rate than the same area of trees. One acre of trees with full canopy coverage produces enough oxygen for between 8 and 18 people. The same acre in just grass cover produces
enough for 70 people!................ QED. !!! ]
Also , "70% of the Earth's oxygen is produced by phytoplankton (Prochlorococcus) as well as other aquatic plants while the forest and other inland plant and trees produce only 28% of the oxygen we breathe! " . Perhaps a little less 'pseudo-grief' and "self-righteous indignation" is called for when it comes to the choice of photosynthesising-foliage and clearing land to allow food production for humans ! At least........THINK ABOUT YOUR PRIORITIES !!!!
I suspect you're creating a false choice between burning down the rainforest on the one hand versus feeding a population / increasing the standard of living on the other. The latter does not and should not depend on the former. As an analogy, consider how many people used to think that economic growth used to depend on fossil fuel emissions. But as Ritchie and others have shown, growth and emissions have been decoupled. Burning down the rainforest to allow farmers to grow more food creates a ton of negatives in the long term with the positives only being short-term. You threaten endangered species and biodiversity, and you can only use the land for a very short period of time (maybe a few years, 5-10 years tops). That's because the soil, once deprived of the trees, is not very rich and conducive to farming. Then there is the question of how wasteful it is in terms of water consumption and methane emissions to substitute rainforests with cattle and beef production. If we want to have a sustainable future while slowing the effects of climate change and preserving one of the most precious environments in the entire world, then Silva's policies seem far more preferable and ethical to the alternative.
Stephen......it is a CHOICE , nothing false about it ! Starving people don't give a damn about "your sacred , precious rain-forest" ! If they have the chance to grow food , they will do whatever it takes ! Same thing goes for "endangered animals etc" !
For MOST of humanity's evolutionary history "WE" were the prey ! It is only very RECENTLY that humans gained the ascendancy , mostly due to our use of language , our manual dexterity , technology and ability to fashion and use tools and weapons. Incidentally , CARBON DIOXIDE and METHANE [ which oxidises to CARBON DIOXIDE anyway ! ] are FOOD for plants .....so the forests flourish on increased CO2 ......... END OF STORY ! Water shortage in the AMAZON REGION ??? Surely , YOU JEST !
Stephen , please remove your ideological blinkers and re-read my comment ,
but this time , with an open mind and NOT a foregone , predetermined conclusion ! Regards , Trevor.
[Edit: unless Trevor is Brazilian, his reaction probably isn't nationalistic. MA] Surely you don't believe Brazilians are exempt from the tragedy of the commons, because nobody is. Nor does the historic exploitation of resources in other countries justify "tu quoque" arguments. And beyond the false dichotomy Mr. Campbell points out, what of the documented economic injustices arising from "food production" on deforested land? My source is "The rotten apples of Brazil's agribusiness" (science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aba6646), co-authored by several Brazilians. From the abstract:
"Although most of Brazil's agricultural output is deforestation-free, we find that 2% of properties in the Amazon and Cerrado are responsible for 62% of all potentially illegal deforestation and that roughly 20% of soy exports and at least 17% of beef exports from both biomes to the EU may be contaminated with illegal deforestation."
It seems clear the governments of both Brazil and the EU have thought about their priorities, and together seek to limit deforestation for the purpose of food production, by law. And some of the *illegal* deforestation is done by "rotten apples of Brazil's agribusiness". Unless you're one of them, don't take data-driven criticisms of Amazonian deforestation personally!
Thanks for your work, Hannah. I have a wondering... prior to say 2008. How many towns in North America were burned in whole or in part due to wildfire as compared to after that arbitrary date? I have been unable to find anyone willing or able to entertain an analysis of this. complacency about towns lost to wildfire is stunning to me.It's treated as normal now but I wonder if it ever happened before climate change. Jasper. Lytton. Ft macmurray. How many in California...?! Whole towns or cities largely destroyed. And still 1 week news cycles. Would love to see the data about this as a before and after. Who knows, Maybe towns used to burn down all the time but we just didn't hear about it ... (?!@), or maybe climate change...?
Anyway, Your work is illuminating. Thank-you, Hannah Ritchie!
Several towns were destroyed by the great wildfire of 1910 which burned 3 million acres. Total acreage burned in the 20th century was several times higher than now. In 1930, 50 million acres burned in the US, which is much higher than the annual average for the last decade which is less than 8 million acres. The UN IPCC sees no attribution of climate change to current wildfires, which are mostly due to human factors (faulty power lines, unmanaged underbrush and inadequate controlled burning) and towns are endangered because they encroach into existing unmanaged forests.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5444731.pdf
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-783
Buzen, is it that you simply can't imagine how climate change can be a partial cause of individual wildfires if human factors can also be identified? Of course factors other than climate change also contribute to wildfire frequency/severity/area burned, but we don't need to show repeatedly that global warming is affecting wildfires now: that ship has sailed! Whether or not there were large fires in 1910 is irrelevant today.
And the IPCC explicitly recognizes that climate change has made wildfires more likely in North America! Chapter 12 of the AR6 WG1 report (ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Chapter12.pdf) includes the following on p 1832:
"Fire weather: Climatic conditions conducive to wildfire have increased in Mexico, Western and North-Western North America, primarily due to warming (high confidence)."
And cites Abatzoglou and Williams 2016, "Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests" (pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1607171113).
Next, this CarbonBrief interactive map shows how weather events around the world, including wildfires, are being partially attributed to global warming: interactive.carbonbrief.org/attribution-studies/index.html.
Climate is statistical weather, and when weather statistics change, we say climate is changing. Growing scientific understanding now makes it possible to attribute causation for individual events. Why is that so hard to accept?