The Amazon rainforest is “approaching a point of no return under the effect of climate change and could turn into an arid desert within half a century,” Agence France Press (AFP) reported this week.
Citing a recent study published in Nature Communications, AFP said that the Caribbean coral reef could also disappear in 15 years if it, too, passes a point of no return.
The Amazon’s tipping point would allegedly be reached once 35 percent of its surface forestation is lost, the report suggested.
Currently, some 20 percent of the rainforest — with an area of 2.1 million square miles stretching over seven countries — has been lost since 1970 to make room for growing soybeans, palm oil, and biofuels or for cattle farming.
“Humanity needs to prepare for changes far sooner than expected,” said the study’s lead author Simon Willcock of Bangor University, and the Amazonian ecosystem could tip as soon as next year.
Willcock cited recent fires in the Amazon and Australia to suggest that many ecosystems are “teetering on the edge of this precipice.”
Professor Thomas Lovejoy of George Mason University and Carlos Nobre of the University of São Paulo concur with the results of the study, CNN reported, warning that the Amazon rainforest is “teetering on the edge of functional destruction” and that the point of no return where the rainforest starts drying out and turning into a savannah is “at hand.”
See Also: Everything You’ve Heard About The Amazon Being The ‘Lungs Of The World’ Is Wrong
The regional droughts of 2005, 2010, and 2015-16 “could well represent the first flickers of this ecological tipping point,” they said.
According to John Dearing, who took part in the study, man-made climate change is aggravating the destruction of ecosystems.
“When you add in additional stresses like pollution, deforestation, overgrazing, overfishing, the fact that you’ve got this stress in the background just magnifies the chance that the systems could actually collapse quite quickly,” Dearing said.
Read more at Breitbart
Yeah, yeah. And the world will end in ten years if we don’t give up 85% of the energy that has given us modern civilization. That’s what 1975? No, no 1985? No 1995? No make that 2005? Nope 2015? For sure it will be 2025. Give me a break. It’s complete hubris to believe that you can see a few fires in the Amazon (not yours Jeff Bezos) and believe you have even half a clue what Brazilians are doing with their part of the environment. A little more CO2 has been a complete benefit for our planet. Yet climate hysterics keep wailing on.
I can still remember all that Save the Rain Forests poppycock from back in the 1990’s that the Rain Forests the size of ten city blocks was being wiped out the and Rain Forest Action Network and Rain Forest Alliance and all their load of Malarkey and the World Wildlife Fund(WWF)inserting their fake message in the George of the Jungle VHS tapes
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
― Yogi Berra
The reason that the rainforests and coral reefs have such very complex and specific species interactions is because their environments are the most stable on the planet. This is completely the opposite of what the neophyte environmentalist would like people to believe. That is to say, the equatorial regions are always hot. Such highly evolved relationships could not have developed without millions of year of relative stability.
It is the simpler ecosystems and those near the poles that are at risk. The next glacial period is going to completely wipe Canada off the map. You might own land up there, but it will be about 90,000 years before is will be out from under the ice. Do anything you want in Canada, nature will wipe it away.
We need to get everything we can out of the Athabasca oil sands, before it’s under a mile of ice.
“The future ain’t what it used to be.”
– Yogi Berra
These folks ought to remember this one. Their future’s always the same but it never happens.
Where do they pull these study determinations from? Oh wait, I know, from their backside. They conjure up “proof” that what they are saying is going to happen and put out a so-called research paper stating so.
The rain forests will always be there their not going to dissapear yeah back in the 1990’s and Hollywood got into the SAVE THE RAIN FORESTS stuff made a few movies like FERNGULLY which al bombed in the box office
Utterly ridiculous balderdash. Who pays for this nonsense?