Amazon near Manaus [credit: Wikipedia]

If journalists, politicos, celebs and the Pope can fall for scientific myths and get the facts so wrong, why should we believe them on other climate issues? – asks Climate Change Dispatch.
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The idea that the Amazon rainforest is the lungs of the world is so embedded in our minds that few questioned its widespread use when news about fires in the Amazon was reported this summer, writes Dr. David Whitehouse.

The idea is everywhere—so it’s obviously true. Trees absorb carbon dioxide (bad), don’t they, and give off oxygen (good), and there are billions of trees in the Amazon, so surely it makes sense.

Responding to the fires in the Amazon the Pope has said that the “Lungs of the forest are vital for the planet.”

Emmanuel Macron tweeted, “The Amazon rainforest – the lungs which produce 20% of the planet’s oxygen – is on fire.”

Leonardo DiCaprio has almost 3 million likes for his Instagram posting saying, “The lungs of the Earth are in flames.”

Christiano Ronaldo tweeted that The Amazon Rainforest produces more than 20% of the world’s oxygen,” adding #prayforamazonia

Green Party MP Caroline Lucas says “It’s the lungs of the Earth…which provides 20% of our oxygen.”

Barry Gardiner Shadow Minister for International Climate Change tweeted he couldn’t agree with Macron more.

Lib Dem MEP’s say the lungs of our planet are literally burning.

Even Donald Tusk, the President of the European Commission tweeted about “…the destruction of the green lungs of Planet Earth.”

The Rainforest Alliance said, “The lungs of the world are in flames.”

Friends of the Earth want a deal to stop the fires adding: “They need to say ‘we won’t do a deal with you if you are effectively condoning burning the lungs of the world’.”

WWF says the Amazon is popularly known as the lungs of the world.

DiCaprio’s Earth Alliance has formed an emergency Amazon Forest Fund with an initial commitment of $5 million to focus critical resources on the key protections needed to maintain the ‘lungs of the planet.’

However, as the saying goes, it’s not that simple – things never are in science. Check where the figure comes from (and it’s actually not that straightforward to do) and you will find that it’s not that simple. It’s actually wrong.

Geology’s Gift

The Amazon rainforest is not the lungs of the world and they do not produce 20% of the world’s oxygen as is so often said.

The Amazon rainforest is a vast, vital wonder, full of biodiversity and photosynthesizing plants producing 9% of the world’s photosynthetic output but, here is the key figure, 0% of its net output.

You could destroy all of the world’s forests and it would hardly affect our oxygen supply.

In fact, you could destroy every living thing on Earth and still not dent it because our atmosphere of 20.9% oxygen is the gift of geologic time, slow to build up and we have enough to last millions of years.

Yet this idea about the world’s lungs and of atmospheric oxygen needing to be refreshed and replenished—ideas unsupported by science—is everywhere.

Surely journalists would act differently from advocacy groups, celebrities, and politicians and check this fact before writing and broadcasting about it.

Full article here.

via Tallbloke’s Talkshop

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August 30, 2019 at 09:24AM