
Does the Amazon provide 20% of our oxygen? - mchouza
http://www.yadvindermalhi.org/blog/does-the-amazon-provide-20-of-our-oxygen
======
wcunning
The basic gist of the article is found about 1/2 way in:

"First, the phytoplankton in the oceans also photosynthesise [...] Therefore
in terms of TOTAL global photosynthesis, photosynthesis in the Amazon
contributes around 9%. [...] Second, a bigger point that is often missed is
that the Amazon consumes about as much oxygen as it produces."

This reminds me, as we should all be reminded on a regular basis, the bulk of
the things you read in the popular press are at best skimming the surface and
at worst outright misleading due to grabbing onto one obscuring factoid
instead of the most important pieces of information. Per Gell-Mann, I only see
this in tech and science reporting, but that makes me really unreasonably
suspicious of political reporting, too.

~~~
majos
I don't quite get the claim behind the Gell-Mann effect. It assumes that
because journalism about physics is inaccurate and oversimplified, journalism
about everything else is too.

But why should this be? Physics, and similar hard sciences, are deep and
complex fields. There's plenty of math, jargon, and a long literature. Of
course inaccurate simplifications happen when writing about it for a popular
audience. Add in the weird incentives of mass media and the lack of scientific
expertise among most journalists, and it makes sense that popular physics news
is not so accurate.

In contrast, other newspaper topics like politics, sports, business, etc. are
often literal reporting of what people do. I'm not saying any of these areas
is necessarily simple, but they are at the root level about human actors, not
abstract quantities that most people have 0 intuition for. So I expect that
it's actually easier to do good reporting on those topics.

~~~
liability
> _In contrast, other newspaper topics like politics, sports, business, etc.
> are often literal reporting of what people do._

I was once in a local paper for my participation in a sports team. Well, my
picture was. The name given to me in the article and caption was fabricated.
Such a name didn't even belong to anybody else in my school, let alone on the
same team!

I assume the 'reporter' was too drunk to remember my name and too embarassed
to ask somebody, so he just made one up.

~~~
gamblor956
That is extremely unusual since besides generally require release forms from
people in the pictures they run.

~~~
Monroe13
In the US at least, no release form is required of those pictured in a news
article.

~~~
gamblor956
In the US at least, a release form is required of those pictured in a news
article by name for articles published by the AP or any major city newspaper
like the NYT, Chicago Tribune, WaPo, or LA Times...

~~~
Monroe13
Nope, even the big publications do not use or need release forms for photos in
news reporting.

If you are in public and the photo is “newsworthy” your image can be printed
in a newspaper without your consent.

“Use of someone's name or likeness for news reporting and other expressive
purposes is not exploitative, so long as there is a reasonable relationship
between the use of the plaintiff's identity and a matter of legitimate public
interest.” - [http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-
anoth...](http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-another)

------
tcgv
This subject has been treated so irresponsibly these past few days that not
only people are making inaccurate statements such as "the Amazon provides 20%
of our oxygen", but also high profile people such as Emmanuel Macron (France's
President) and Cristiano Ronaldo (World famous soccer player) are sharing
false information and photos[1]

[1]
[http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=pt&tl=en&u=http...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=pt&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fg1.globo.com%2Ffato-
ou-fake%2Fnoticia%2F2019%2F08%2F22%2Fveja-o-que-e-fato-ou-fake-sobre-as-
queimadas-na-amazonia.ghtml&sandbox=1)

~~~
m0zg
All of US presidential candidates, democratic and republican alike, routinely
and knowingly push blatant lies as a part of their platform and nobody blinks
an eye. If you went through what they say with a fine toothed comb and removed
all the lies, there'd be hardly anything left. People don't care about facts.
They care about how a narrative makes them feel. Sad but true.

~~~
Dumblydorr
While it's true most politicians lie or bend facts or report them wrongly, you
can not create a false equivalence between them all. Trump lies egregiously
and far more than basically any non dictatorial politician. Your stance
reminds me of those who said both 2016 candidates were bad, so they didn't
vote or voted for the two clown third party candidates.

~~~
m0zg
The entirety of Hillary Clinton's campaign could be summarized as "it's my
turn, orange man bad". I can't vote for that. In 2019 I likewise can't vote
for open borders, "free money" for everyone, multi-trillion dollar ill-
conceived "green deals", or "reparations", because I'd be the one paying for
all this shit. Plus, _all_ democratic presidential candidates made the
Charlottesville hoax the centerpiece of their campaign, so they too lie 100%
knowingly about it.

------
dredmorbius
What impressed me most from this article was the gross primary productivity
map
([http://www.yadvindermalhi.org/uploads/1/8/7/6/18767612/scree...](http://www.yadvindermalhi.org/uploads/1/8/7/6/18767612/screenshot-2019-08-24-at-06-31-02_orig.png)),
showing plant activity by region.

The red regions are largely tropical rainforest. _Exceedingly_ highly
productive, but _not_ particularly viable for human agricultural activity.

What stands out are the regions which I'm aware are highly agriculturally
productive, indicated in green and cyan: the eastern half of the US,
generally, the Argentine and Brazillian Pampas regions, the Sahel, Europe
(particularly western Europe -- England, France, and Germany), and south and
East Asia. A small patch of Central America.

Notably contrasting: the _western_ US, other than a thin strip (the central
valleys of California and Oregon), the Australia, other than the extreme
south-eastern band, the Sahara, virtually all of Russia, western South
America, and most of Canada. And of course, the Sahara and Antarctica.

We're feeding 7.7 billions of souls on those regions of green and light blue.
Those are also the regions in which the great civilisations of the past have
developed -- compare with a time-lapse of human population such as:

[https://invidio.us/watch?v=PUwmA3Q0_OE](https://invidio.us/watch?v=PUwmA3Q0_OE)

------
zests
What do you do when people quote statistics like this in real life? I usually
just sit there like an insincere fool and remain quiet or offer lukewarm
agreement. I can't bring myself to tell them that I disagree because I don't
want to be rude but at the same time my current system is not working.

~~~
luckylion
I found that, for me at least, it kinda works to not outright disagree, but to
say that you 'read an article' that disputed said fact and now you're confused
about whether it's actually true. I usually see one of three things happening:
they say something along the lines of "oh, I don't know a lot about that, so I
can't tell you" and the conversation moves on, they tell you "it's obviously
bullshit, because I read it in _$magazine_ ", or they'll engage with it to try
and lift your confusion. In the latter case, you can feed them arguments and
facts, but since it's not a debate ("you're wrong" \- "no, YOU are wrong"),
it's easier for them to see when/where their beliefs fall short.

------
BurningFrog
What you need to know: This has zero impact on oxygen levels. It might be a
real problem for CO₂.

Anyway, the geological history of oxygen is pretty wild:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_oxygen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_oxygen)

------
bendbro
This whole "RAINFOREST IS ON FIRE" meme reminds me a lot of Kony 2012.

~~~
thepangolino
Exactly. It’s highlights a real issue but completely misplaces mobilisation.

~~~
RandomBacon
But then you get the people that say, "At least they're doing _something_."

~~~
jdnenej
Well wtf can anyone really do about a disaster on the other side of the world.

~~~
pas
Probably incorporate their concerns when they vote. Choose representatives,
leaders, groups you support (parties), that share your concern, that try to
have an efficient foreign policy that cares about these things.

Naturally, this includes some marketing to support the message and to try to
persuade as many people as you can.

------
DenisM
A few comments are saying that forests capture a lot of CO2.

But how could that be? If a forest doesn't change over thousands of years it
cannot be accumulating carbon in any significant quantity. Or else where would
that material go?

The Amazon trees are about as tall and wide today as they were 10,000 years
ago, and only so many of them fit on a given area. If the amount of vegetation
remains the same the only way for a forest to capture carbon would be to
accumulate an ever-increasing layer of it under the forest floor. That would
be a lot of combustible material accumulated over millions of years that
Amazon was around, and I'm pretty sure it isn't there (otherwise certain
people would be mining it already).

Amazon is not scrubbing carbon out of the air, and neither does any other
forest of static size. The carbon has to go into the ground to remain
sequestered.

~~~
crimsonalucard
[https://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/where_we_work/amazon/ama...](https://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/where_we_work/amazon/amazon_threats/other_threats/oil_and_gas_extraction_amazon/)

it's just less accessible but I'm pretty sure like any forest on the face of
the earth, portions of dead animal and plant matter is getting sequestered
into the ground while another portion is getting exhaled by animals eating the
leaves or other animals eating the animals.

The stuff that's getting sequestered though is probably miniscule. At the
timescale of our lifetime it may be negligible but I wouldn't know as I'm not
an expert. Perhaps someone with the actual data can fill us in?

~~~
DenisM
Even if a tiny amount was sequestered each year over the course of 55 million
years there would be a huge pile of carbon there. But it isn’t there, is it?

~~~
OscarCunningham
Has the soil under the rainforest been slowly getting deeper?

------
povertyworld
I haven't been following this specific news story, but I remember from my
environmental sociology class that fire prevention in forests eventually leads
to unnatural states that are then prone to massive uncontainable fires. Have
they been suppressing natural fire in this region for too long? If this fire
is naturally burning, then isn't the best response to let it run its course
unless human lives are threatened?

~~~
gleglegle
The Amazon does not burn naturally. Fires there are man made to clear land for
agriculture.

~~~
kawera
Agriculture and mining: [https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/brazilian-gold-
rush-destr...](https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/brazilian-gold-rush-
destroying-amazon-forests-190822020613066.html)

------
diedyesterday
A subtle point that is often missed is that only a growing plant population
and ecosystem will have a positive oxygen balance and negative CO2 balance
(trapping CO2 as tree biomass at ever increasing volume). Stable ecosystems
reach an equilibrium and the carbon cycle stabilizes and net oxygen/CO2
production consumption becomes zero.

To increase net oxygen levels in the atmosphere and reduce CO2 levels we would
also have to eliminate a lot of the microorganisms that help recycle dead
trees and go back to the Paleozoic era and before when these organisms didn't
exist and the Earth witnessed several glaciation events.

Adding more stable forests to the world does not reduce CO2 levels or increase
oxygen levels (relative to after it becomes a stable forest). It just speeds
up the carbon cycle.

------
EGreg
I have a question about trees:

If trees sequester carbon in their trunks and release oxygen, what do they use
the oxygen for at night, and how come they are oxygen-neutral, do they store
it somehow?

Also, if the Amazon is a carbon sink today, what about if there was dieback?
It would turn into a carbon source, but how? Don’t the “unit economics” of
trees remain the same?

~~~
gus_massa
Oversimplifiying: Some of the carbon goes to the wood and some goes to sugar.
During the night the plant "burns" the sugar with oxygen produce energy. (If
you keep a plant in hermetic place without oxygen and without light, it would
die, exactly like an animal.)

(Notes about the oversimpliplification: Wood is made of cellulose that is a
carbohydrate and sugar is algo a carbohydrate, they are quite similar
chemically. Also, plants produce and "burn" other compounds.)

------
amriksohata
What this article doesn't go into is if the forest is destroyed, what the net
effect is, it consumes as much oxygen as it produces, but once those animals
have no oxygen they will put a strain on the surronding ecosystem. Not to
mention the flash floods that will result from the lack of vegetation

------
gdubs
This thread feels politically toxic. The discussions seems to be heavily
focused on a “gotcha”, exploiting a kind of Guilt By Association fallacy to
minimize the disturbing event unfolding in the Amazon.

“The lungs of the world” is a poetic phrase. Trying to make it literal
diminishes it, by giving cynics a small thread to pull on until it unravels —
while in the process ignoring all the other ways in which the Amazon is
important.

A vibrant discussion of the original post would be relevant — using the
misaccounting as a cudgel against environmentalists and journalism as a whole
is explicitly _not_ the spirit of HN.

------
palisade
More importantly as the planet's "lungs" the Amazon filters a great quantity
of carbon dioxide from the air.

~~~
m0zg
I googled some and it looks like Amazon rainforest alone removes about a
quarter of fossil fuel CO2 from the atmosphere. That's more than I thought
it'd be. And it looks like it could sequester much more if there was more
phosphorus in the soil.

~~~
jamesdmiller
Where do they put it? Wouldn't this require the total biomass of the
rainforest to be continually increasing?

~~~
sp332
Old growth forests are not carbon-neutral. Models had to be adjusted after
this study in 2008: [https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Global-
Warming/2008/09...](https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Global-
Warming/2008/0924/surprise-old-growth-forests-soak-up-co2)

------
crb002
Guessing a lot is ocean based, and plants are more efficient at getting it
with higher concentrations.

------
squirrelicus
tl;dr the rule holds, the answer is no. :]

Though i have to admit to bring skeptical of his analysis that suggests the
rainforest is a net zero on oxygen production.

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m3kw9
Amazon sells oxygen canisters?

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diego_moita
No, it doesn't provide.

But the article totally misses the issue of carbon capture.

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higherkinded
Wrong Amazon, you again!

~~~
_emacsomancer_
Eventually Amazon may provide 20% of our oxygen....

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dvduval
So far there have not been too many third-party merchants who have profited on
selling oxygen, but once they do, Amazon will definitely move in and take on
this part of the market as well.

------
paggle
20% of sequestered carbon dioxide is in the Amazon. If it burns to the ground
then that CO2 will be released. It doesn’t affect oxygen levels.

~~~
ridgeguy
Isn't it 20% of sequestered _carbon_ , not CO2?

Burning that carbon to CO2 requires oxygen, which will deplete the atmospheric
reservoir to some degree.

~~~
paggle
But isn’t there oxygen in the organic materials of the tree?

~~~
ridgeguy
I think the oxygen in the tree materials is already combined with carbon in
the form of CxHyOz hydrocarbons, where x,y,z = atoms of the respective atomic
species.

Burning cellulose (poly-C6 H10 O5) to CO2 and H2O would require (for each
molecule): 12O (for 6CO2) and 5O (for 5H2O). This is a total of 17O.

Cellulose contains only 5O, so 12O (or 6O2) would be required for a full
stoichiometric burn of cellulose.

------
sabujp
You know what, it really doesn't matter because the majority of people don't
really care about and understand all of the other effects. People don't even
understand global warming or care enough to do anything about it. Talking
heads, pundits, and politicians should just inflate the numbers and say that
it provides 50% of oxygen and that we'll all asphyxiate without it because the
truth is that people won't care unless you make them scared enough to care. If
the end goal is to save as much of the forest as possible then stretching the
truth doesn't matter. How many lies have been told from the other side for
decades to reduce environmental regulations?

