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Deforestation directly impacts climate change. (Deforestation Causes,…

- - - - Most widely traded vegetable oil around the world
      - Demand projected to increase
      - Nearly all palm oil grows on land that was once tropical moist forests
        
        Conversion to date, and future expansion, threatens biodiversity and increases greenhouse gas emissions
    - - Southeast Asia
        
        45% of sampled oil palm plantations were on areas that were forests in 1989
      - South America
        
        31%
      - Mesoamerica
        
        2%
      - Africa
        
        7%
      - Largest areas of vulnerable forest are in Africa and South America
      - Vulnerable forests in all 4 areas of oil palm plantations are home to high concentrations of mammal and bird species at risk of extinction
    - - African oil palm – Tropical crop grown primarily to produce palm oil
        
        World’s highest yielding AND least expensive vegetable oil
        
        Preferred cooking oil for millions of people globally and a source of biodiesel
        
        Also, common ingredients in many packaged and fast foods, personal care and cosmetic products, and household cleaners
      - Demand
        
        Rising demand for these products increased palm oil production
        
        Nearly doubled between 2003 and 2013
        
        Projected to continue increasing
        
        When measured in terms of production and importance to trade, palm oil is the most important tropical vegetable oil globally
        
        Accounts for 1/3 of vegetable oil production in 2009
        
        Yield of oil palm = over 4 times that of any other oil crop
  - - - Climate warms
  - - - Population growth and the associated expansion of agricultural lands
    - - While national laws have attempted to protect forests by regulating the production and trade of timber from harvesting to processing to sales, laws can be violated easily
        
        Taking wood from protected areas
        
        Harvesting more than permitted
        
        Harvesting protected species
      - Occurs worldwide
        
        Some areas, illegal logging is more popular than legal logging
      - Threatens world’s most valuable forests
        
        Amazon
        
        Congo Basin
        
        Indonesia
        
        Russian Far East
      - Bad for companies doing it the legal way as well
        
        Illegal logging drives down the price of timber worldwide
        
        Also, hurts governments b/c decreases tax revenue
      - Communities where illegal logging occurs are often poor – leads to human rights issues
    - - Natural and beneficial for many forests
      - Problem when they happen in the wrong places, wrong frequency, or wrong severity
      - Millions of acres of forest destroyed annually by fire
      - Often used to clear land
        
        Land then used for other purposes such as agriculture
      - Other ways fires harm forests:
        
        Invasive species can enter
        
        Limit biodiversity
        
        Change water cycles and soil fertility
        
        Destroy homes and lives of people living around forests
    - - Wood is a popular fuel choice
        
        Used for cooking and heating
        
        Approx. 50% of the illegal removal of timber from forests is predicted to be used for fuel
    - - Becoming very common as hotter temperatures dry out soil and leaves
      - Warmer air also leads to more lightning
    - - Largest cause of deforestation (annotation 10)
        
        Clears forests very quickly so they may be used for plantation agriculture, subsistence farming, and cattle ranches
        
        Mainly in tropical countries
    - - Estimates 54% of current deforestation is a result of slash-and-burn
      - 22% is due to the spreading of palm oil plantations
      - 19% due to logging
      - 5% due to cattle ranching
    - - Poverty combined with population growth in poor nations
      - Demand for cheap sources of palm oil and wood, as well as other commodities such as sugarcane, that is produced on deforested land
      - Failure of economics to consider the value of anything outside of their profits
      - Failure of the world as a whole to put a price on carbon and help protect tropical countries and their rainforests
      - Not enforcing the laws that exist and are designed to prevent irresponsible destruction of forests
  - - - However, the loss of forested areas is expected to continue during the present century
      - Amazon could be reduced by 50% by 2050
        
        Largest rainforest on Earth
    - - If current population growth continues, Earth’s population will reach 10 billion around 2100 (annotation 2)
        
        Current population to agriculture density of 147 people per km2
        
        To meet the same quantity of food availability as we currently have in 2100, we would have to increase agricultural areas by 43%
    - - Temperature response of high latitude deforestation is still dominated by the albedo effect
        
        Results in a cooler climate
        
        “While deforestation causes atmospheric CO2 concentrations to increase, the increment in albedo is enough to counteract greenhouse gas warming and yield a reduced surface air temperate (SAT)”
        
        Cooling is global, but centered over deforested areas
      - Temperature response of mid latitude deforestation follow same trend as high latitudes but with temperature changes of smaller magnitude
      - Low latitude different – yields a warmer climate, with the increase in temperature attributed to the reduction in ET and increased CO2
        
        Some sources say a reduction in cloud cover, and thus reduced atmospheric albedo over deforested areas was an important factor in warming climate
    - - These are home to most of the world’s biodiversity
      - Main cause: forest conversion for cattle ranching
      - Ex: Approx. 17% of the Amazon Rainforest has been lost in the last 50 years
      - In this region, deforestation is popular near populated areas, but remote areas are now being deforested as well after valuable gold, mahogany, and oil were discovered
    - - 100,000 acres per day
      - Over 34 million acres per year
        
        Somewhat offset by planting of new trees, so the net loss of forests every year is closer to 18 million acres
      - Largest contributors to global warming: USA and China
        
        3rd and 4th – Brazil and Indonesia b/c deforestation
        
        Over 60% of deforestation occurs in these two countries
  - - - Even if more trees are planted, they typically do not absorb as much carbon dioxide as the original forest did
      - “Radiative forcing associated w/ increase in atmospheric CO2 is, from a climatic perspective, the most important biogeochemical impact of deforestation”
      - “May also affect climate by altering transpiration rates, due to CO2 increased water use efficiency reducing stomatal conductance and increasing plant growth”
    - - surface albedo
        
        Croplands and pastures have higher albedo than forests
        
        Causes them to absorb less of the incoming solar radiation
      - Evapotranspiration
        
        Trees usually have deeper rooting depth than crops and grasses
        
        Thus, tree removal implies a decreased ET and associated reduction in latent heat flux
        
        ET also reduced through the reduction in canopy capture following deforestation
        
        Also from reduced turbulence associated with a lower aerodynamic roughness length and colder temperatures
        
        "Large-scale land cover – alterations in ET could influence cloud formation, possibly impacting atmospheric albedo and atmospheric longwave absorption.”
      - surface roughness length
    - - Higher atmospheric CO2, lower latent heat flux
      - Greater impact at low latitudes
        
        Absolute changes in ET are larger
    - - Increased albedo
      - Important at mid to high latitudes
        
        Presence of snow increases the differences in reflectivity between forests and fields
  - - - Produce vital oxygen
      - Provide homes for people and animals
      - 1.6 billion animals rely on forests for food, clothing, traditional medicine, shelter, and fresh water
    - - 48 football fields per minute of forest are lost
    - - Area size of New York State is destroyed every year
    - - First trees that look like modern day trees came about around 200 million years ago
        
        Conifers and broadleaf trees
      - 1/3 of the trees on Earth are coniferous
        
        Most found in northern hemisphere
        
        Former Soviet Union area is home to 45% of Earth’s coniferous forests
        
        North America is home to 35%
  - - - Fires
      - Clear-cutting for agriculture
      - Ranching and development
      - Unsustainable logging for timber
      - Degradation due to climate change
    - - Fire
      - Forest clear-cut for oil palm plantations
    - - Ongoing forest degradation
        
        Temperatures rise from climate change (caused by human activity)
  - - - “Old habits + old technology = predictable consequences”
        “Old habits + new technology = Dramatically altered consequences”
        
        Example: War
        
        Ancient habit
        
        Began with technology of spears and swords
        
        Horrible outcome, but predictable
        
        1945 – nuclear weapons altered equation
        
        Result – “We have tried to reevaluate, and change, the old habit we call war.”
        
        Made some progress – Cold War instead of nuclear war
        
        Still work to do
        
        Philosophy applied to deforestation
        
        We have always used Earth for sustenance
        
        Old technology – plowing, irrigating, digging, etc.
        
        Simple technologies
        
        New technology gives us the power to alter the surface of the Earth
        
        These new, powerful tools often lead to unanticipated consequences
        
        Specific examples: Colorado River, Aral Sea (essentially gone now)
        
        “Our new technologies, combined with our numbers, have made us, collectively, a force of nature” – Al Gore
  - - - Converted into plantations – used for rice, bananas, pineapple, sugar cane, rubber, coffee
      - Major timber companies have tree plantations
    - - When they find oil reserves, pipelines pollute the soil
      - Also, roads built leading into forest which give farmers access to clear the land
    - - Practiced and utilized by a lot of rainforest farmers
        (annotation 7)
      - Slash and burn agriculture releases gases, such as nitrogen, and fertilizers held by trees back into the soil(annotation 7)
        
        Farms made by using this practice to clear land only last for a few years before the soil can no longer be used
        
        Leads to the clearing of more forest
      - Brazil
        (annotation 7)
        
        Scientists estimate over 8,000 fires every day in Amazon
        
        Annual carbon dioxide emissions of burning forests in Brazil is equivalent to Earth’s worst polluters
        
        8th largest emitter of CO2 is Brazil
        
        Mostly from deforestation b/c Brazil has little to no industry
        
        Get rid of burning and Brazil would not make top 20 for world’s worst polluters
      - Largest cause of deforestation (annotation 10)
        
        Clears forests very quickly so they may be used for plantation agriculture, subsistence farming, and cattle ranches
        
        Mainly in tropical countries
  - - - Primary cause is conversion of forestland for agricultural use
    - - Primary cause is conversion to small scale farms
    - - 48% of earth’s deforestation found here
      - As of 2008, 20% of Amazon had been destroyed
      - After good, high-quality wood is taken, the rest is burned for cattle and crops
      - 80% of land that was deforested in the Amazon are now cattle pastures
    - - Brazil may destroy twice the amount of forest land than Indonesia, but Indonesia emits twice as much carbon dioxide as Brazil
        
        Primary reason is carbon-rich peatlands dry up when forest cover is removed, emitting their carbon dioxide stored as well
        
        They also burn a lot longer, releasing even more carbon dioxide into the air
      - Palm Oil
        
        Over 80% of the world’s supply comes from Indonesia and Malaysia
        
        Both countries have policies in effect that will increase their palm oil plantations in the coming years
        
        Indonesia to triple their number of plantations by 2020
        
        Big peatland forests are cleared of trees and drained
        
        Developers burn peatlands to make the land dry faster
        
        New policies encouraging the development of palm oil plantations has allowed loggers to make an excuse to clear timber in what would otherwise be protected forests (p. 175)
        
        Willie Smits – Conservationist living in Borneo, began an effort to save endangered orangutan, then expanded to restore indigenous forest
        
        “What they’re really doing is stealing the timber, because they get to clear it before they plant. But the timber’s all they want; hit and run, with no intention of ever planting. It’s a conspiracy.”
  - - - Total forested area on surface of the planet – 9 billion acres
        
        Covers 1/3 of landmass
    - - Always happened much slower and less efficiently
      - World Resources Institute study shows we only have 50% of the forests we had 300 years ago
- - - - Also, she says, “there’s a challenge in understanding the atmospheric lifetimes of all these greenhouse gases and how the radiative forcing changes as the concentration changes. There are interactive effects that change the radiative efficiencies of all these gases.”
    - - Will be for foreseeable future
      - Lasts for centuries after source is emitted
      - Will continue to warm the planet and thus cause sea levels to rise
      - “Some of our carbon dioxide will still be there in 1,000 years,” Solomon says. So for all practical purposes, she says, on a human timescale, carbon dioxide emitted into the air leads to “the irreversibility of carbon dioxide-induced warming.”
    - - Forests absorb carbon dioxide
        (annotation 3)
        
        This CO2 would otherwise be in the atmosphere, contributing to climate change
        
        Tropical forests hold over 210 gigatons of carbon (annotation 5)
      - Approx. 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation (annotation 5)
        
        Cause rising temperatures, changes in weather patterns and the water cycle
        
        Increase occurrence of extreme weather events
        
        Ex: Sumatra
        
        Rainforests on deep peatlands cleared, drained, and turned into pulp plantations
        
        Contributes to Indonesia’s high greenhouse gas emissions
      - Act as carbon sinks, but they become carbon SOURCES once they are removed (annotation 5)
        and (annotation 8)
        
        “Once under way, the process, like collapsing ice sheets, will be unstoppable. Potentially, hundreds of billions of tons of carbon in the biosphere could be destabilized.” – Pep Canadell, carbon-cycle researcher for Australian government research agency CSIRO
        (ANNOTATION 8)
        
        Soil will go sink to source as well (annotation 8)
        
        New Study by IUFRO (p. 188)
        (ANNOTATION 10)
        
        International Union of Forest Research – Determined that a temperature increase of 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit could result in forests around the planet losing their role as net absorbers of carbon dioxide
        
        May become net contributors
        
        “Several projects indicate significant risks that current carbon regulating services will be entirely lost, as land ecosystems turn into a net source of carbon beyond a global warming of 2.5 degrees Celsius… Moreover, since forests also release large quantities of carbon if deforested or impacted by other degrading stressors, they exacerbate climate change further.”
        
        Already happening in boreal forests in Canada, according to the Canadian Forest Service
      - Plants (trees) absorb carbon dioxide, convert it to energy, and then release oxygen (annotation 7)
        
        Humans do opposite – take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide
        
        Cycle allows CO2 and oxygen levels to remain stable
        
        Deforestation releases billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, either by decay or burn, that would not be there otherwise
        
        Example: Idea in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol was for industrial countries to, rather than cut down on fuel emissions by 10%, plant enough trees to absorb the same amount of carbon dioxide, then only cut down on emissions by 5%
      - Diminishing (annotation 8)
        
        Currently, best guess is that forests still absorb more CO2 than they admit.
        
        Approx. 1/5 of carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels is still absorbed by forests
        
        However, carbon sinks are diminishing
        
        Peter Cox – Fears the worst
        
        Top British climate modeler
        
        Researches the carbon cycle at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, at Winfrith, in Dorset
        
        “Basically, we are seeing two competing things going on. Plants absorb carbon dioxide as they grow through photosynthesis; but they give back the carbon dioxide as they die and their wood, leaves, and roots decompose. The speed of both processes is increasing.”
        
        Additional carbon dioxide that is now in the air speeds up photosynthesis
        
        Plants grow faster, absorb more CO2
        
        We see this effect first b/c it takes a few decades to see warmer temperatures due to the emitted carbon dioxide
        
        However, the extra carbon dioxide is also warming the climate
        
        This warming speeds up processes that decompose plants, thus emitting their stored carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere
        
        Process of decay now catching up
      - Role in Carbon Cycle (annotation 10)
        
        Photosynthesis
        
        Through this natural process, carbon dioxide is absorbed from the atmosphere through small holes in leaves and is absorbed by the tree or the plant
        
        This CO2 stays intact until plant is disturbed (ex: burned)
        
        Forests – Lungs of the Earth
        
        “inhale” CO2
        
        “exhale” oxygen
        
        2 part role (annotation 10)
        
        Absorb it from atmosphere
        
        Store it in trees and in soil
        
        Also takes place at microscopic level
        
        Photosynthesis inside chloroplasts
        
        Up to 50 chloroplasts per plant cell
        
        Chloroplasts have grana surrounded by aqueous fluid – stroma
        
        Grana contains photolysis
        
        Process that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen
        
        Oxygen released by plant
        
        Hydrogen goes through second process – Calvin Cycle
        
        Uses energy made during photolysis to fuse hydrogen atoms with carbon dioxide to make sugars
        
        Sugars used as building blocks for complex plant cells that store carbon for long periods of time
    - - Biggest reservoir of carbon dioxide on the surface of the planet
        
        Has 77 billion tons of carbon dioxide, its soil probably has just as much as well
        
        Equivalent to 20 years of carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels
      - Key part of the climate
        
        Recycles moisture and heat
        
        Over 50% of the raindrops that hit the canopy of the forest do not hit the ground
        
        Rather, these raindrops evaporate into the air, creating more rain downwind
      - Climate change threat
        
        Farmers slowly cutting down the forests will never be able to severely harm the rain forest as they destroy it very slowly
        
        Climate change, however, could do it very quickly (a few years)
      - Impact of the possible loss of the Amazon Rainforest (p. 64)
        
        Release tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere
        
        Diminish rainfall in Brazil
        
        May change the climate and weather throughout the whole Northern hemisphere
      - International effort monitoring health of Amazon – Large-scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (p. 65)
        
        Current estimate – fires emit 200 million tons of CO2 annually
    - - Found in Britain
      - Global climate model highly esteemed, ranked top 3 best in the world
      - Predicts that if carbon dioxide emission trends continue, sea temperatures will be warmer, which increases risk of droughts in the Amazon, causing “threshold issues” at which point fires will be abundant
      - Trees gone means direct exposure to sunlight for the soil
        
        Could literally turn into a desert
      - Carbon dioxide predictions:
        
        Over past 100 years: 77 billion tons
        
        Will decrease to 44 billion tons by 2050
        
        16.5 billion tons over the next 100 years
        
        It calculates that this will be enough to raise the rate of global warming worldwide by at least 50%
      - Greater impact of these changes
        
        Nicola Gedney and Paul Valdes – climate researches at University of Reading
        
        Discovered that the Amazon and its water cycle create winter storms that are pushed across the North Atlantic to Europe
        
        “There is a relatively direct physical link between changes over the deforested region and the climate of the North Atlantic and western Europe.”
    - - Carbon Dioxide – invisible, tasteless, odorless
      - We put 90 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air every day
  - - - While this is the one with the biggest impact on climate change, it is not the only one impacting our climate
    - - To our climate
        
        It’s important to be able to compare the different greenhouse gases that affect our climate, but this is hard to do (annotation 3)
        
        Vary in their sources and the measures needed to control them
        
        Also, vary in how intensely they trap solar heat, how long they last once they’re in the atmosphere, and how they react with other gases and ultimately get flushed out of the air
        
        These differences make it very hard for researchers and scientists to mitigate the problem by coming up with a simple conversion factor to allow exact comparisons among them
    - - Compared to CO2 (annotation 3)
        
        CFCs can produce nearly 10,000 times as much warming once in the atmosphere
        
        Fortunately, they were banned by an international agreement
        
        Montreal Protocol (1987)
        
        Not for their extreme warming potential (secondary reason)
        
        B/c they were the primary cause of the destruction of Earth’s ozone layer
        
        Ozone layer protects us from dangerous, cancer-causing levels of ultraviolet radiation
        
        Kyoto Protocol (now superseded by Paris Agreement of 2015) – Called for a series of measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
        
        Produced total reduction of 2 gigatons of “carbon equivalent” emissions per year
        
        Phase-out of CFCs already reduced 5 times as much – estimated 10 gigatons per year
      - “CFCs “would be a major player by now” in contributing to global warming if they hadn’t been phased out, says Susan Solomon, the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies at MIT.” (annotation 3)
        
        “If still used at the same rate as before the phase out, CFCs would contribute to about 1/3 as much to the Earth’s greenhouse effect as CO2, which remains biggest contributor”
    - - Number 2 producer of greenhouse gases
      - Main constituent of natural gas
      - About 100 times as potent as CO2 when initially released
      - Lifetime much shorter – one decade
        
        CO2 can last for centuries
      - “When averaged over 20-year period, methane’s “greenhouse gas equivalency” is about 72 times that of carbon dioxide, but when looked at on a timescale of 100 years, that equivalency drops to just 25 times.”
      - Comes from several sources
        
        Some are hard to measure
        
        Example: leakage from natural gas wells, distribution systems, and storage facilities
        
        Extent of leaks is hard to measure b/c leaks are variable and depend on factors like construction
        
        Other sources also difficult to measure
        
        Wetlands, DEFORESTATION, and cattle
      - “Because of the very different dynamics of methane in the atmosphere compared to carbon dioxide, it can be misleading to rely on the conventional single-factor comparisons that are often used.” – Jessika Trancik, the Atlantic Richfield Career Development Associate Professor in Energy Studies at MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society
        
        “Instead, she and collaborators suggested in a 2014 research paper — and further expanded on the idea in 2016 — that a measure of the relative effects of different gases based on specific climate mitigation goals should be used, for example where the time horizon for the comparison is based on a specific stabilization goal.”
  - - - Shown some of the effects of greenhouse gases can exist for centuries
        
        Even after gas that initially triggered climate change is no longer be emitted
      - Specific example – Expansion of water as it warms, combined with melting polar and glacier ice, can cause significant sea-level rise that would last for centuries even if all greenhouse gas emissions were stopped
        
        These gases will remain in the atmosphere and will thus still trap heat long after their sources are eliminated
        
        This fact is often overlooked when talking about mitigating climate change
        
        IF all CO2 emissions were eliminated by 2050, Solomon and her co-authors found that as much as half of the emissions would still exist in the atmosphere 750 years later, and would still be warming the planet
    - - global warming
        
        Biggest greenhouse gas of all: water vapor (annotation 3)
        
        No doubt this is responsible for more greenhouse warming than any other atmospheric constituent
        
        Behavior of water vapor depends on climate
        
        Thus, it is not a driver of climate change, but rather an amplifying feedback
        
        Water cycle is a constant part of the atmospheric circulation
        
        Air gets warmer, it can hold more water vapor
        
        Warming climate means more water vapor in the air
        
        Water vapor only stays around until next rain
        
        “Water vapor is a slave to the climate system, it’s not a master,” Solomon says.
      - Deforestation causes Disruption of Water Cycles (annotation 5)
        
        Forests keep a balance between the water on land and the water in the atmosphere
        
        Balance thrown off by deforestation
        
        Results in changes in precipitation and river flow
      - Soil Erosion
        
        Trees anchor fertile soil
        (annotation 5)
        
        Without this, erosion occurs and land is swept into rivers
        
        Even when new plants are planted to replace the deforested trees, these new plants cannot hold onto the soil
        
        Plants include coffee, cotton, soybean, wheat, and palm oil
        
        These can actually increase soil erosion
        
        “Scientists have estimated that a third of the world’s arable land has been lost through soil erosion and other types of degradation since 1960.”
        (annotation 5)
        
        As soil erosion eliminates land, agricultural producers move to other forests, exacerbating the deforestation and continuing the cycle of soil loss (annotation 5)
  - - - W/o them Earth’s temperature would be around 0 degrees Fahrenheit
      - The additional greenhouse gases that are being emitted from human activity is what is harming us, warming up the planet which is contributing to the climate change we see around us
    - - Accounts for 80% of total greenhouse gas emissions
      - When do we release CO2?
        
        Burn fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) in our homes, factories, power plants, or cars
        
        Cut or burn down forests
        
        Produce cement
    - - Was here before us, but we have increased its amount in the atmosphere by a lot
      - 60% of methane in atmosphere is result of humans
      - Comes from:
        
        Landfills
        
        Livestock farming
        
        Specifically, liquid manure stored in large tanks that emit methane
        
        Dry manure left on fields does not
        
        Fossil-fuel burning
        
        Wastewater Treatment
        
        Other industry
    - - Occurs naturally, but we have added 17% more of nitrous oxide to our atmosphere
      - Comes from:
        
        Fertilizers
        
        Fossil Fuels
        
        Burning of Forests and Crop Residues
    - - Produced solely by human activity
      - Emissions on the rise
    - - Natural greenhouse gas
      - “Increases in volume w/ warmer temperatures – Thus magnifies the impact of all artificial greenhouse gases”
- - - - Products – rubber, rattan, etc.
      - Small scale agriculture
    - - Ex: Greater Mekong in Southeast Asia
        
        Land tenure systems are weak
        
        Deforestation thus caused social conflict and migration
      - Ex: Brazil
        
        Poor people lured out of their villages to remote soil plantations where they are often forced at gunpoint to work under terrible conditions
    - - Himalayas contain 100 times as much ice as Alps
      - Provide over half the drinking water for 40% of the world’s population
      - Through seven Asian river systems that all originate on the same plateau
      - Within 50 years, that 40% of the population may face a drinking water shortage
    - - 25% of pharmaceuticals originated here
      - Ex: Quinine, cortisone, anti-cancer meds, etc.
      - If forests are gone, so may be future medicines
      - Currently over 200 pharmaceutical companies study plants from rainforests foe medicinal purposes
    - - Around 250 million indigenous people in 70 countries
        
        Control 10-20% of world’s lands
      - 50 million in rainforests
      - Scientists estimate 10 million people lived in Amazon 500 years ago
        
        Today, less than 200,000
      - Live sustainably with forests
        
        According to Rainforest Foundation of Great Britain “indigenous people practice shifting agriculture, hunting, gathering, and fishing, They have an intimate knowledge of plants that they use to provide them with food, medicine, pesticides, poisons, building materials, clothes, string, and implements.”
    - - These have allowed us to practice an exceptional form of very productive agriculture, leading to massive population growth
      - The loss of this form of agriculture combined with climate change will lead to a massive decline in the world’s food supply, and many will go hungry
  - - - 2 football fields gone every second
      - Example: Mexico – Lost 50% of temperate and tropical forests since 1960s
    - - Tropical dry forest
      - Tropical moist forest
      - True tropical rainforest
        
        80-120 inches of rain per year
      - Cover 6-7% of planet’s surface
        
        Found 10 degrees in both directions
        
        Cover 3.4 million square miles
    - - Form habitats
      - Emergent layer
        
        Top layer
      - Canopy layer
        
        60-90 feet above ground
        
        Trees form canopy
        
        Branches covered with flowering plants
        
        Many species live here
        
        Eagles, hawks, sloths, monkeys, parrots
      - Understory
        
        Very little sun
        
        Plants that can live with low sunlight exposure are found here
      - Floor
        
        Least sunlight and plants
  - - - Approx. 50-90% of all animal species found here
  - - - Nearly all glaciers and other ice structures are melting
      - GPS and laser altimeters from measurements taken by aircrafts evidence that 5,000 square kilometer Malaspina glacier in Alaska is melting nearly a meter of thickness every year
        
        Equivalent to three cubic kilometers of water
    - - According to IPCC, they are rose 10-20 cm during 20th century
      - Present day: rising around 2 mm annually
      - Generally accepted projection: Sea levels will rise throughout the 21st century to around 50 cm (a little less than 2 feet), but even some scientists say they will rise a full meter
        
        About 1/6 of people on earth live within one meter of sea level on coastal areas
  - - - 50-90% of all species on the planet located here
    - - Prominent examples: orangutan in Borneo, Asian elephant, Sumatran tiger
    - - Norman Myers at an Asia-Pacific forestry conference in Vietnam – “I’m going to give you my bottom-line message right now, up front: This is a super crisis that we are facing, it’s an appalling crisis, it’s one of the worst crises since we came out of our caves 10,000 years ago. I’m referring, of course, to elimination of tropical forests and of their millions of species.”
      - Most biologists believe that this is the “Sixth Great Extinction”
        
        Species dying off way faster than natural rate due to deforestation and habitat loss
        
        “Virtually all students of the extinction process agree that biological diversity is in the midst of its sixth great crisis, this time precipitated entirely by man.” – E.O. Wilson, well distinguished biologist
    - - Three of last 5 happened 65 million years ago – Extinction of the dinosaurs
      - 200 million years ago – 76% of species went extinct; scientists are not sure why yet
      - 250 million years ago – 96% of ocean species went extinct along with 2/3 of amphibian and reptilian families on land
      - Two other mass extinction events, not really understood by scientists, happened 364 million years ago and 440-450 million years ago
- - - - If we experience the change slowly, over time, we can ignore it and fail to recognize its significance until it’s too late
      - Sometimes, as the frog did, we only react to sudden change
      - Global warming may not seem sudden to us, but in context of Earth’s history it is happening insanely fast
      - “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt,” – Mark Twain
  - - - Published in Newsweek, but never peer-reviewed by other scientists
      - The author also corrected his statement afterwards and explained why his comments were wrong
  - - - Said when he was head of NOAA – the scientific agency that is responsible for most measurements related to global warming
  - - - “Percentage of articles in doubt as to the cause of global warming: 0%”
    - - “Percentage of articles in doubt as to the cause of global warming: 53%”
    - - Also happened with cigarettes and the tobacco industry 40 years ago
      - “Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” – Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company memo, 1960s
  - - - 1995-January 20, 2001 – American Petroleum Institute lobbyist in charge of global warming disinformation
      - January 20, 2001 – Hired as chief of staff for the White House Environment Office
        
        Even though he had no scientific background at all
        
        Job: edit/censor official statements of global warming and climate change from EPA
      - Cooney’s edited newspaper leaked out the public
        
        Shows that he edited out specific global warming warnings from a New York Times article
        
        Forced to resign
      - June 14, 2005 – Leaves White House to take job at Exxon Mobil
    - - “By ignoring scientific consensus on critical issues such as global climate change, President Bush and his administration] are threatening the Earth’s future.”
      - Signed by 48 Nobel Prize winning scientists
  - - - Most, if not all, scientists agree that human activity is changing Earth’s climate. Even more scientists agree that the Earth is getting warmer, that this warming is also caused by human activity, and that if we do not stop emitting greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, more and more damage will be done by the warming.
    - - Climate also sensitive to many other things, like water vapor
      - Shows that we should worry even more about CO2
    - - Climate does naturally change, and scientists have discovered this by studying things such as lake sediments, ice cores, and tree rings
      - However, these climate changes occurred with smaller, natural changes in CO2 levels
      - Carbon dioxide levels now are higher than they have been in the last 650,000 years
        
        Discovered through cores studied from deep in the ice of Antarctica
        
        Puts us outside the possibility of natural climate change
    - - Ozone Layer – Part of upper atmosphere that has high amounts of ozone gas and protects the Earth from the sun’s radiation
      - Hole is caused by CFCs – man made chemicals
      - Hole exposes extra UV radiation to Earth’s surface
        
        Does NOT affect the temperature of Earth
      - Only connection between the hole and climate change: Global warming (not responsible for hole) could slow the repairing of the hole
        
        Global warming heats lower atmosphere, but cools upper atmosphere, worsening the stratospheric ozone loss
    - - Worst misconception
      - Many things we can do, but we must start now
      - Reduce fossil fuel use
        
        Methods of doing so: government initiatives, individual action, industry innovation
    - - Some areas growing, however other areas are definitely melting
        
        Overall, ice is shrinking
        
        Globally – Over 85% of glaciers are shrinking
      - Some say Greenland’s ice is growing
        
        False, it is melting and causing sea levels to rise
        
        Lost 50 cubic kilometers of ice in 2005 alone
    - - Negative impact of global warming outweighs the local differences in winter temperatures
    - - Basically saying cities trap heat b/c asphalt and buildings
      - Wrong statement
      - Temperature measurements normally taken in parks
      - Scientific studies show the “urban heat effect” has a very small, if any, effect on overall global warming
    - - True that temperature not increasing everywhere
      - Global warming means the increase in average temperature of entire planet’s surface, caused by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases
      - Climate very complex, not everywhere will react the same
- - - - Capable of altering the concentration of its basic molecular components
      - Specifically, humans have immensely increased amount of carbon dioxide – most important of greenhouse gases
    - - Enters as light waves, heating up the planet
    - - Form: infrared waves
    - - This is good – keeps Earth at normal temperatures
      - Ex: Greenhouses gases on Venus are so abundant that the planet is too hot for human life
      - Greenhouse gases on Mars, however, are barely there
        
        Temperature too cold
      - Why the Earth is called “Goldilocks planet” – temperatures just right
    - - Thin layer of atmosphere being thickened by the emittance large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases cause by human activity
      - Thickened layer traps more of the infrared radiation that is supposed to be released back into space
  - - - A healthy economy and a healthy environment can co-exist
      - Must consider all factors when making economic decisions – not just the ones that involve money
      - Considering sustainability issues when making economic decisions should not lower one’s returns, but studies show it may do the opposite and raise them
      - Invest wisely
      - People think this is a difficult choice when it is very simple
        
        1st – no planet means one won’t be able to enjoy his/her money
        
        2nd – Doing the right thing will create wealth, jobs, and other opportunities