[Terrapreta] Amazon cattle ranging

[Nikolaus Foidl]

>> 
>> *From:* terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org [mailto:
>> terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org] *On Behalf Of *lou gold
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, 21 May 2008 1:08 PM
>> *To:* Nikolaus Foidl
>> *Cc:* terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
>> *Subject:* Re: [Terrapreta] Amazon cattle ranging
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Oh boy Folke, since David Yarrow and I seem to be the tree-huggers who
>> regularly contribute to this forum I can't help but think that your lecture
>> is being delivered at least in part to me. So let me take the time to
>> correct some of your statements that simply seem off-the-mark to me.
>> Dear Lou, I was a bit surprised that you accuse me of unproven or incorrect
assumptions by responding me with un correct and un proven assumptions, that's a
neat semantic trick you have, one never stops to learn. Are you a Jesuit? ( no
offense meant, not to you and not to the Jesuits, but thats a discussion tactic
i was seeing very frequently with Jesuits)
>> *I know, everybody loves trees and it is a gut feeling for everybody that
>> cutting trees is bad. *
>> 
>> 
>> I don't know who the "everyone" is that you are refering to but it
>> definitely does not include me. I am not against cutting trees and I am not
>> against the logging industry. The problem is that somehow you really don't
>> seem to see the forest for the trees.
>> 
>> In fact, one can take a long term view of the earth's vegetative cover and
>> see a ceaseless war between forestland and grassland. . The territory
>> controlled by these two great vegetative kingdoms has shifted back and for
>> across the earth many times due mostly to changing climatic conditions.
>> *
>> In general, human beings have been soldiers in the army of the grasslands
>> using all the weapons of "civilization" and "domestication" to achieve
>> victory over the forest. In general, BUT NOT ALWAYS. Apparently, one of the
>> great exceptions is to be found among -- you guessed it -- the Indios de
>> Terra Preta -- who are thought to have had millions of people living in the
>> central Amazon basin without ceaseless deforestation.
>> *Dear Lou, these are absolute unproven assumptions, both the millions of
Indio's and the non- deforestation. Watching Indio's which are still not
completely absorbed by our civilization, living still mostly the ancient way, I
see a quiet big area per person cut down and used for food production per
person, as they still use inefficient crop and techniques, the area per kg of
harvestable and eatable food is relatively big. So if there where ³millions²
as well the deforested area would have been huge. As you might know, you can
not live on meat or fish in the Amazon alone, specially if you are densely
populated.
>> Deforestation sounds like a catastrophic event.
>> 
>> *Well, some times it is and some times it is not*.* It is when it triggers
>> climate change. Human deforestation created the climate shifts that resulted
>> in the Sahara desert, making it uninhabitable by most plants and critters. A
>> shift like that is catastrophic. When deforestation starts to trigger
>> regional climate change we might prefer to keep a lot of the forest
>> standing.
>> As well the assumption that the Sahara desertification is man made has no
prove at all. 
>> *A grown established forest has neutral balance of fixation and loss, if
>> the forest gets too old the danger of loosing all the stored biomass with a
>> big scale fire is imminent and very often.*
>> 
>> This is not true for the central Amazon basin where fire has historically
>> been extremely rare due to heavy rainfall. And where does the rainfall come
>> from? It comes from the transpiration of the trees in the forest. Without
>> the forest, the climate shifts to drought as has already been ocurring in
>> the Eastern Amazon. And drought triggers more fire, etc, etc in a positive
>> feedback loop that can alter both regional and global climate in
>> catastrophic ways.
>> Typical desk argumentation which can not be confirmed with what happens in
reality
The last two years we had in the neighboring Amazon ( intact forest areas)
severe drought where the river levels dropped 9 meters below the normal
levels measured in this season whilst in neighboring nearly complete
deforested Bolivia we had severe rains and inundations with rains more then
double then normal.
In the last 15 years we note a rise in average rainfall  of some 100 mm
every 7 years.( 15 years ago we had an average of 200 mm less then we have
now) meanwhile in the huge and still intact Amazon forest ( the remaining
one) the average rainfall goes down every year.
We as well are suffering a temperature shift, more cold days every year (
cold in our region means temperatures below 18 degrees Celsius)
Whole Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay and Argentina  have a common
weather pattern which is not so much influenced by the small local changes,
these are big scale changes which are influenced by more then only Amazon
Jungle changes.
>> With all due respects for the important work that you are doing in Bolivia
>> -- and the creative stewardship for both conservation and food production
>> that it represents -- I've got to say that the lowland basin of the Eastern
>> Amazon presents a radically different situation. Here is what Dan Nepstad
>> from Woods Hole says about it:
>> 
>> *Mongabay: **In Bali you also put out some rather dire projections for the
>> Amazon in 2030. Could you elaborate on this?
>> 
>> **Nepstad:* There are all these models (namely the Hadley model) pointing
>> to the end of the century when there will be a big forest die-back in the
>> Amazon. But before global warming is going to kick in there is going to be
>> all sorts of damage from the droughts we are already seeing as well as
>> deforestation, logging, and the fires that are part of that regime. To
>> factor in these effects, we took our deforestation model, our logging model,
>> and what we know about the effect of drought on tree mortality, and
>> projected out the year 2030 using current climate patterns ? the last 10
>> years repeated into the future. We found that by the year 2030, 55 percent
>> of the forest will be either cleared or damaged ? I think 31 percent cleared
>> and 24 percent damaged by either logging or drought, with a large portion of
>> that damaged forest catching fire. This produces a huge amount of emissions.
>> We're looking at 16-25 billion tons of carbon going into the atmosphere in a
>> very short time frame -- the next 22 years. The scary thing is some of these
>> assumptions are quite conservative.
>> http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0124-nepstad.html
>> Dear Lou, do you live in the Amazon, if so for how long now? Have you ever
been in Bolivia?
Are you a farmer or somebody making his living in forests or grain
production or cattle fattening?
Have you own practical observations or trials or projects which deal in
detail with the above mentioned or are you just a well informed North
American member of a research center or University?
I have not seen arguments from you , only citations from third persons. Do
you discuss based on own personal investigation in this environment?( Amazon
Forests) Sorry if I have doubts and please don't take it as an personal
attack, but I get the feeling that your arguments a third hand assumptions
and not lived reality.
>> *We have to see that this planet is the only one and until we do not have
>> an alternative to agricultural food production we cannot save all the trees
>> in this world.*
>> 
>> In what possible scenario do you imagine that anyone seriously involved in
>> these issues is trying to "save all the trees in the world"? You never worked
with FSC or other Forest saving organizations. There for real you get the
impression that the only what counts is saving the trees in the world.
>> OK, I'm glad to think about how we can be most creativily involved in earth
>> changes INCLUDING DEFORESTATION but let's not clutter the discussion with
>> assertions that simply are not true. You might revise yours too!!!
>> 
>> Touch the earth and blessed be.
>> Get real and blessed be.
>> lou
>> Nikolaus
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 

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