The green issue that dare not speak its name

[Calliso]

Ok I just have to address this rainforest thing now that we actually have people that think that losing the rainforest would be a GOOD thing.

First of all the reasons the rainforest is being cut down is pretty simple. For the sale of tropical woods to developed nations. And the farming of crops and probably more often then that the farming of cattle to feed developed nations. Unfortunately rainforest soil is very poor and much of the nutrients in it come from falling decaying leaves and stuff from the upper canopys. And because of the heavy rains much of the nutrients in the top soil are washed away quickly especially once the trees are gone. Slash and burn techiques are often used to produce some fertilizing ash but this only works for so long before the soil is completely depleted. A few years at most then they move on to the next cleared spot often/usually in the wake of the timber companies. Cattle grazing compacts the soil making it harder and even impossible for rainforest recovery to occur. I imagine from what I know about soil this is because compaction of the soil makes it harder for oxygen to move through the soil, water to drain, and organisms to move through it. talking really small organisms here not like moles and stuff hehe And all those things and probably more I am forgetting are needed for good soil health. rain-tree.com/facts.htm That was a good site I found too with a lot of facts kinda like it says in the name ahha. But really what is needed is not short termed mass destruction of the rainforest for SHORT term benefits. Better farming practicing need to be put into place so less and less forest needs to be cut down. We need to find ways to make the already depleted soil farmable again so that people donlt keep having to cut more and more forest down. Basically what we need is a way to get long term sustainable benefits out of the rainforest, not short term ones that will only harm the poor in the end.

As for stuff like fixing alot of carbon dioxide that is true and cuting/burning the rainforest down releases much of that back into the atmosphere. However I believe that the ocean is a much bigger/ better sink. Course that is causing major problems of it;s own…problems that are effecting negatively animals low on the food chain. And unlike things like polar bears which are on top of the food chain…the lower end of the food chain being hurt can have negative effects all up the food chain to the very top. For instance crusteans and many species of plankton and other things with shells are in danger from ocean acidification caused by the absorbtion of co2 into ocean water. These things are in turn eaten by things like fish and even whales among other things. Long story short since this would be the third time I have talked about this and I donlt want to go all over it again…the ocean may be a good carbon dioxide sink heck I am pretty sure it is the best, but the effects of that could be distratrous.

There are also very many products most of us likely use in the rainforest as well. As well as many different medicines. For instance Guarana, Acai berries, natural rubber, cocoa, and brazil nuts are just a tiny list of the things that come from rainforests.

Then there is the medicinal products. For instance the Madagascar rosy periwinkle has too ingrediants in it, that are very good for medicine. One which provides 99% chance of remission in Lympocytic Leukemia and the other a 58% chance of remission and survival for people with hodkins disease, which before 1960 was only 19%. And that is just one example. There are about 265,000 indentified flowering plants on the earth. Only .5% of so of them have been studied for chemical composition and medicinal value amd we only know the chemical compostion of 5% of the flora in the rainforest. The natives of the rainforest can identify the specic uses of 49-82% of the trees in their native enviroment. Most of the world still uses plant and plants extracts for medicinal uses. So just think about what potential cures and treatments we are destorying before we can even discover them if we destory the rainforest. jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/FieldCourses00/PapersCostaRicaArticles/MedicinalPlantsintheRainfA.html
And another couple l links I thought were pretty good biomesonline.com/monographs/medicine.html

earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Deforestation/deforestation_update.html

And of course there is the native people on the rainforest. Whose lives/livelyhood are threatened. Not to mention the knowledge they hold about medinical plants and other products of the rainforest.

So class long story short…sustainable use of the rainforest is good, the current unsustainable use is bad.

Oh! and forgot to include this link to the search for plants I did on the national Cancer Institutes home page. cancer.gov/search/results.aspx

 

[Calliso]

Now, I’m one of the last people to get on the “Mother Earth’s needs over humanity!” crazy train, but dang! sometimes some people tend to get just as crazy on the other side of the debate.

Consider Matthew 25:14-30. The master rewarded those who exercised proper stewardship over his property. They used the resources (in this case, money) in a way that not only kept the original resource intact, but also yielded more than originally given.

But look at how unhappy the master was with the one who didn’t use the resources properly. Dang! the third servant just left the money as is, hidden in a hole, and that ticked the master right off. Imagine how angry the master would have been if the servant had lost or destroyed or squandered the resources and met the master with a “hey, you put me in charge of the money, I figured I could use it for whatever I wanted” attitude.

Being stewards of the Earth doesn’t mean that we can blithely trash whole ecosystems (or even the local watershed). But neither does it mean that the resource takes priority over the stewards.

Exactly! we should use the resources but should use them sustainably! Short term thinking and misuse of our resources will only hurt future generations.

 

[cynic]

I have no basis for disagreeing that the Amazon rain forest is the most biodiverse environment on the planet. It may well be. I am not sure, however, how much of that might be due to human intervention. Much of it seems to have been brought there from other places in precolumbian times; a phenomenon that is fairly common in the western hemisphere. Certainly it has been proved true in my part of the country. Precolumbian Indians brought plant species into this area that were not, theretofore, “native” to the area. Doubtless some kinds of animal life, insect life, bacteria, molds, etc, were introduced as well.

Rainforests are the most naturally biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, and it’s to do with increasing biodiversity towards the equator - high temperature and high rainfall. Less than 1% of the plant fauna has been categorized. A high % of pharmaceuticals are derived from ingrediates sourced there, and they are the origin of much of the fruit we eat and food staples like pototoes, rice, sugar cane etc.

 

[cynic]

True, its not so much a shortage as it is a supply/dependency problem. If the resources of the rain forests were put to use, as God has intended us to use our brains to figure out how to do, it would be much more beneficial to mankind than just having a pretty, picturesque, and untouched parkland.
.

There’s no need to, and most this use is as a source of cheap timbre for export.

My manure pile is a fairly biodiverse environment.
.

You’re serious?

Nature isn’t fallen, It’s people who are unwilling to make use of the Earth that God has given us.

by leaving a certain amount of it alone.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Rainforests are the most naturally biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, and it’s to do with increasing biodiversity towards the equator - high temperature and high rainfall. Less than 1% of the plant fauna has been categorized. A high % of pharmaceuticals are derived from ingrediates sourced there, and they are the origin of much of the fruit we eat and food staples like pototoes, rice, sugar cane etc.

Potatoes are from the Andes, rice from Asia, and sugar cane from the Caribbean.

 

[cynic]

Well, they do exist on the forums, so I must question your sanity. Classifying them as fatalistic is a worthless rhetorical adjective that does not dispute their precise accuracy. And nature is fallen. You have yet to contest this point with any semblance of logical argument.:bounce:

Semblence of a logical argument - God created nature, ecosystems and the animals in them prior to the fall. Hence they can’t be fallen.

(by the way I’m not a Christian, but I can argue from that point of view, the Bible clearly states that the earth and wildlife were created prior to man)

I’ll leave the rest up to Calliso, he’s done far more research than all of us.

 

[cynic]

Potatoes are from the Andes, rice from Asia, and sugar cane from the Caribbean.

in or near tropical rainforest in Asia, the Carribbean and South America

 

[summasix]

Ok I just have to address this rainforest thing now that we actually have people that think that losing the rainforest would be a GOOD thing.

First of all the reasons the rainforest is being cut down is pretty simple. For the sale of tropical woods to developed nations. And the farming of crops and probably more often then that the farming of cattle to feed developed nations. Unfortunately rainforest soil is very poor and much of the nutrients in it come from falling decaying leaves and stuff from the upper canopys. And because of the heavy rains much of the nutrients in the top soil are washed away quickly especially once the trees are gone. Slash and burn techiques are often used to produce some fertilizing ash but this only works for so long before the soil is completely depleted. A few years at most then they move on to the next cleared spot often/usually in the wake of the timber companies. Cattle grazing compacts the soil making it harder and even impossible for rainforest recovery to occur. I imagine from what I know about soil this is because compaction of the soil makes it harder for oxygen to move through the soil, water to drain, and organisms to move through it. talking really small organisms here not like moles and stuff hehe And all those things and probably more I am forgetting are needed for good soil health. rain-tree.com/facts.htm That was a good site I found too with a lot of facts kinda like it says in the name ahha. But really what is needed is not short termed mass destruction of the rainforest for SHORT term benefits. Better farming practicing need to be put into place so less and less forest needs to be cut down. We need to find ways to make the already depleted soil farmable again so that people donlt keep having to cut more and more forest down. Basically what we need is a way to get long term sustainable benefits out of the rainforest, not short term ones that will only harm the poor in the end.

Think about it in ecological terms. Why is it that the soil is so poor in rainforests? It is because of the type of life that inhabit it, that don’t need to fertilize the soil because they rely on the topsoil. Farmland would fertilize the soil, especially with the use of fertilizers and the growth of nitrogen fixers (legumes). Farmers know a lot more about what they do than you, I feel inclined to inform you.

As for stuff like fixing alot of carbon dioxide that is true and cuting/burning the rainforest down releases much of that back into the atmosphere. However I believe that the ocean is a much bigger/ better sink. Course that is causing major problems of it;s own…problems that are effecting negatively animals low on the food chain. And unlike things like polar bears which are on top of the food chain…the lower end of the food chain being hurt can have negative effects all up the food chain to the very top. For instance crusteans and many species of plankton and other things with shells are in danger from ocean acidification caused by the absorbtion of co2 into ocean water. These things are in turn eaten by things like fish and even whales among other things. Long story short since this would be the third time I have talked about this and I donlt want to go all over it again…the ocean may be a good carbon dioxide sink heck I am pretty sure it is the best, but the effects of that could be distratrous.

I can’t follow you at all on this point. Please clarify (perhaps in another thread about environment?).

There are also very many products most of us likely use in the rainforest as well. As well as many different medicines. For instance Guarana, Acai berries, natural rubber, cocoa, and brazil nuts are just a tiny list of the things that come from rainforests.

Luxuries.

Then there is the medicinal products. For instance the Madagascar rosy periwinkle has too ingrediants in it, that are very good for medicine. One which provides 99% chance of remission in Lympocytic Leukemia and the other a 58% chance of remission and survival for people with hodkins disease, which before 1960 was only 19%. And that is just one example. There are about 265,000 indentified flowering plants on the earth. Only .5% of so of them have been studied for chemical composition and medicinal value amd we only know the chemical compostion of 5% of the flora in the rainforest. The natives of the rainforest can identify the specic uses of 49-82% of the trees in their native enviroment. Most of the world still uses plant and plants extracts for medicinal uses. So just think about what potential cures and treatments we are destorying before we can even discover them if we destory the rainforest.

That is one medical path we can take, flailing in the dark hoping to find some panacea or balm of Gilead. Another is the time tested approach of addressing disease from its chemical perspective.

And of course there is the native people on the rainforest. Whose lives/livelyhood are threatened. Not to mention the knowledge they hold about medinical plants and other products of the rainforest.

Their lifestyle is threatened. Not their lives. And I would sure like them to speak up about their wealth of medical knowledge.

So class long story short…sustainable use of the rainforest is good, the current unsustainable use is bad.

So often ecologists refuse to actually base their opinions on facts, instead taking the lazy approach of name calling and generalizations to marginalize their opponents. So I am playing devil’s advocate (if it wasn’t obvious enough based on my previous silly posts) to try and pry out some of the basis behind actually, gasp, caring for the environment.

My voice echoes with stubbornness and arrogance. But my soul cries out for the truth!

 

[summasix]

Nature isn’t fallen, It’s people who are unwilling to make use of the Earth that God has given us.

Nature is fallen. When Adam chose to disobey God, he doomed the world to original sin. One of the consequences of original sin is pain of childbirth. Is childbirth painless for animals? No. So nature must be fallen.

 

[Calliso]

Semblence of a logical argument - God created nature, ecosystems and the animals in them prior to the fall. Hence they can’t be fallen.

(by the way I’m not a Christian, but I can argue from that point of view, the Bible clearly states that the earth and wildlife were created prior to man)

I’ll leave the rest up to Calliso, he’s done far more research than all of us.

I am a woman but thank you! sadly to those that want to believe what they want to believe it likely wonlt mattter. But perhaps my ramblings have gotten through to someone… My big problem is I am horrible at putting up an argument and the longer I go on the more confusing and less to the point I can get. Really people should check out the links I put up my post was based off of those. Took me forever to post because I spent like two hours doing research lol!

 

[Calliso]

I am a woman but thank you! sadly to those that want to believe what they want to believe it likely wonlt mattter. But perhaps my ramblings have gotten through to someone… My big problem is I am horrible at putting up an argument and the longer I go on the more confusing and less to the point I can get. Really people should check out the links I put up my post was based off of those. Took me forever to post because I spent like two hours doing research lol!

Ran out of time to edit lol! really though people should check out the links they give FAR more detail and info then I ever did and give a lot more examples. I didn;t get too many examples because my post was already reaching the novel length state…

Oh and Summ I had llike two posts on it a few pages back I think I should be the last poster and I think it was another population or enviroment threaad Also this months discover magazine had a great article on it if you want to take a look at that,.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Perhaps one of the most interesting things I have read in a long time is the book “1491”. Someone else on here has read it as well; Mapleoak, I think.

I will say that the book veriied some things I have learned and/or observed in my own area.

Written by anthropologists who did a great deal of research and in consultation with experts in other fields, they had some interesting conclusions about the Amazon basin, and about “unspoiled lands” generally. In reverse order, they concluded that there was virtually noplace on earth that was not profoundly altered by man tens of thousands of years ago. No one alive when Columbus landed, let alone anyone today, knows what an “unspoiled area” looked like in the temperate or tropical zones.

Earliest Spanish accounts record that there were large and sophisticated populations in the Amazon basin (as well as along the Mississippi, but that’s another story). Later explorers found nothing but wilderness, and doubted the earlier accounts. Archaeologists, however, have discovered artifacts establishing that there were, indeed, huge farmed areas in what is now wilderness there. In those areas, they found that the earlier Amerinds (who were wiped out by diseases brought by the very first explorers) “fixed” the soil by introducing pottery shards (presumably for drainage) and charcoal (charcoal attracts and binds nutrients in the soil) over vast areas. “Laterization”, the process where jungle soil turns to a brick-like substance, does not happen where the soil was managed in that fashion.

They also noted that a great array of useful plants, many brought from other parts of the Americas, grow in the Amazon basin, including a great number of food-bearing plants. Such plants tend to be concentrated in enormous areas near those areas where the soil had been “treated” as abovementioned. They were, in effect, gigantic “orchards” and “herb gardens”, well-tended by man. Laterization did not take place in those places because the “orchards” and “herb gardens” also formed a canopy which acted much like the canopies that are there now.

When disease decimated the tenders, the basin quickly assumed a chaotic condition which we assume is some “primordial state of nature”, but which is really a garden/orchard gone to ruin because the “farmers” are gone. Remaining “savage” tribes are simply the survivors of the great die-off; likely some who ran off to more remote places to escape the plagues.

If all of that is true, then I am inclined to think human utilization of the Amazon Basin is not some outrage against nature or anything else. The real question is not whether it can or cannot be exploited at all, but whether it will be tended by man in a manner consistent with what works best in each area.

I have seen that, on a different scale, in my own part of the country. There are a number of plants the Indians brought here from elsewhere; plants that were once considered “native”. Some concentrations of highly useful plants (black walnuts come immediately to mind) are not at all “accidental”. “Native pecans” have been found to have come from Texas by way of Oklahoma, brought by precolumbian Indians. After a number of failed attempts, my part of the country is beginning to be utilized in a way consistent with its capabilities, the preservation of wildlife and its contribution to human nutrition and enjoyment.

Such wisdom takes a long time to develop. Perhaps that will happen in the Amazon basin, perhaps not. But it is up to the governments there to determine how to utilize their part of the earth consistent with proper stewardship. “Proper stewardship” is not necessarily letting it grow tatterdemalion, chaotic and rank, any more than it would be where I live.

 

[Calliso]

Perhaps one of the most interesting things I have read in a long time is the book “1491”. Someone else on here has read it as well; Mapleoak, I think.

I will say that the book veriied some things I have learned and/or observed in my own area.

Written by anthropologists who did a great deal of research and in consultation with experts in other fields, they had some interesting conclusions about the Amazon basin, and about “unspoiled lands” generally. In reverse order, they concluded that there was virtually noplace on earth that was not profoundly altered by man tens of thousands of years ago. No one alive when Columbus landed, let alone anyone today, knows what an “unspoiled area” looked like in the temperate or tropical zones.

Earliest Spanish accounts record that there were large and sophisticated populations in the Amazon basin (as well as along the Mississippi, but that’s another story). Later explorers found nothing but wilderness, and doubted the earlier accounts. Archaeologists, however, have discovered artifacts establishing that there were, indeed, huge farmed areas in what is now wilderness there. In those areas, they found that the earlier Amerinds (who were wiped out by diseases brought by the very first explorers) “fixed” the soil by introducing pottery shards (presumably for drainage) and charcoal (charcoal attracts and binds nutrients in the soil) over vast areas. “Laterization”, the process where jungle soil turns to a brick-like substance, does not happen where the soil was managed in that fashion.

They also noted that a great array of useful plants, many brought from other parts of the Americas, grow in the Amazon basin, including a great number of food-bearing plants. Such plants tend to be concentrated in enormous areas near those areas where the soil had been “treated” as abovementioned. They were, in effect, gigantic “orchards” and “herb gardens”, well-tended by man. Laterization did not take place in those places because the “orchards” and “herb gardens” also formed a canopy which acted much like the canopies that are there now.

When disease decimated the tenders, the basin quickly assumed a chaotic condition which we assume is some “primordial state of nature”, but which is really a garden/orchard gone to ruin because the “farmers” are gone. Remaining “savage” tribes are simply the survivors of the great die-off; likely some who ran off to more remote places to escape the plagues.

If all of that is true, then I am inclined to think human utilization of the Amazon Basin is not some outrage against nature or anything else. The real question is not whether it can or cannot be exploited at all, but whether it will be tended by man in a manner consistent with what works best in each area.

I have seen that, on a different scale, in my own part of the country. There are a number of plants the Indians brought here from elsewhere; plants that were once considered “native”. Some concentrations of highly useful plants (black walnuts come immediately to mind) are not at all “accidental”. “Native pecans” have been found to have come from Texas by way of Oklahoma, brought by precolumbian Indians. After a number of failed attempts, my part of the country is beginning to be utilized in a way consistent with its capabilities, the preservation of wildlife and its contribution to human nutrition and enjoyment.

Such wisdom takes a long time to develop. Perhaps that will happen in the Amazon basin, perhaps not. But it is up to the governments there to determine how to utilize their part of the earth consistent with proper stewardship. “Proper stewardship” is not necessarily letting it grow tatterdemalion, chaotic and rank, any more than it would be where I live.

Yeah one of the links I looked at talked about how some of the most diverse areas were areas that were not trully wild but really a result of human working in harmony with nature. The problems come when things are mismanaged…but this shows that with the right management and use nature and man can coexist. I think the problem is and this is purely opinion is that often times the short term mismanaged way is also the easiest way and most tempting way.

 

[cynic]

They also noted that a great array of useful plants, many brought from other parts of the Americas, grow in the Amazon basin, including a great number of food-bearing plants. Such plants tend to be concentrated in enormous areas near those areas where the soil had been “treated” as abovementioned. They were, in effect, gigantic “orchards” and “herb gardens”, well-tended by man. Laterization did not take place in those places because the “orchards” and “herb gardens” also formed a canopy which acted much like the canopies that are there now.

A bit different from complete deforestation

 

[Ridgerunner]

A bit different from complete deforestation

Well, of course, very large tracts which are now forest-covered were completely deforested previously. Many were not. I personally doubt there is a “one size fits all” solution, and I have come to believe it’s a very complex thing.

Where I live, the value of trees was little appreciated at one time. They were once thought either a nuisance or a resource to cut down and haul away, with no regard at all to the propriety of it or what would happen to the land in the future. There have been a lot of discoveries even in just the last few years. The land can be much more productive than anyone had thought, and trees are a part of that productivity. But then, it is known that Indians used to set the countryside on fire, horizon to horizon, every single year. Their purpose was to encourage the proliferation of large ungulates as a food resource; the same purpose cattlemen now have. But it’s also known that burning the grass species prevalent at the time produced fires so terrific that in the long run it only left scattered trees here and there except in bottoms and draws, whereas it is now believed that tree “belts” actually serve conservation purposes better, particularly given that grass species now largely in use tolerate grazing better but very hot fires less well. Some places here should never be anything but timber, and timber only of particular sorts. It’s all pretty tricky, and there are a lot of things to consider even in a more simple ecosystem like this one.

But when we think about it realistically, we in the U.S. have almost nothing to say about what they do with rain forests in Brazil. We can only hope they develop them intelligently, because develop them they surely will. We would be accomplishing a lot if we only husband our own land wisely. And, truthfully, the government has almost no hand in it and would be hard put to devote the resources to it. Furthermore, while the universities and agricultural agencies have some good ideas, they have had some terrible ones as well. Individuals usually know their own land better than any “experts” do. As I imagine will be the case in the Amazon basin, it is a matter of what individual owners understand and how they care to husband the land.

 

[summasix]

Ran out of time to edit lol! really though people should check out the links they give FAR more detail and info then I ever did and give a lot more examples. I didn;t get too many examples because my post was already reaching the novel length state…

Oh and Summ I had llike two posts on it a few pages back I think I should be the last poster and I think it was another population or enviroment threaad Also this months discover magazine had a great article on it if you want to take a look at that,.

Oh I didn’t notice. Thank you!

 

[summasix]

Semblence of a logical argument - God created nature, ecosystems and the animals in them prior to the fall. Hence they can’t be fallen.

(by the way I’m not a Christian, but I can argue from that point of view, the Bible clearly states that the earth and wildlife were created prior to man)

I’ll leave the rest up to Calliso, he’s done far more research than all of us.

Equal semblance of a logical argument- God created humans prior to the fall. Hence they can’t be fallen.

And thank Calliso for that. SHE does all the work for me, allowing me to build conclusions and spout them lazily like most other posters on this thread. But research does have an unpleasant side effect: it reveals the truth.

shiver down my spine

 

[cynic]

Their lifestyle is threatened. Not their lives. And I would sure like them to speak up about their wealth of medical knowledge.

So are their property rights. Oh but we don’t like such rights when they get in the way of a quick profit, do we.

 

[cynic]

Equal semblance of a logical argument- God created humans prior to the fall. Hence they can’t be fallen.

So animals existed but they didn’t prey on each other and there was no food chain before the fall. There were also no rainforests.

Riiight.

:whacky:

And thank Calliso for that. SHE does all the work for me, allowing me to build conclusions and spout them lazily like most other posters on this thread.

Actually I brought up this (diversion), made statements, she agreed and backed them up with links, (some of which I’d looked at anyway but the data seemed to lack a source so I didn’t post them).

But research does have an unpleasant side effect: it reveals the truth.

shiver down my spine

Did you bother to look at any of the links that were provided? The facts in them, if you accept them as such, don’t back up your ‘truth’. And you accuse me of being lazy.

 

[summasix]

So are their property rights. Oh but we don’t like such rights when they get in the way of a quick profit, do we.

Well, there’s your golden ticket. Only problem, the Amazon isn’t in the U.S… And Latin American countries don’t have a very consistent view of property rights. And we don’t seem to care about third world countries’ right to reproduce when it comes to overpopulation armaggedon theories threatening our own profit and stranglehold on world resources. And suddenly charity trying to save Africans from AIDS is merely counterproductive in trying to increase the quality of life in the long run.