Rainforests turned into smoldering ruins

Rainforests turned into smoldering ruins
December 06, 2009
Sumatra, Indonesia (CNN) -- The land still smolders, tinted with a depressing gray. Twisted hulks of tree trunks take on abnormal shapes. A dark black canal cuts through the wasted landscape.

It looks like a scene from an apocalyptic movie where an unknown force has obliterated all life. But this is the reality of Sumatra, Indonesia's largest island.

The Kampar Peninsula was once virgin rainforest, some of the most biodiverse in the world. The region has now been transformed into a lifeless plain, soon to be replanted with monocultures.

www.cnn.com...]/ex]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0c17dc77ed15.jpg[/atsimg]

This is very serious, the rainforests are the heartbeat of our beautiful planet, without them we are doomed. The Amazon rainforests are being destroyed on a daily basis also in the name of so called progress..

What some people call "smoldering ruins" i call "development". Did you expect other nations not to follow in the footsteps of capitolism? Do you want these people to wear loin cloths forever?

Im deffinately not saying its right. Im saying what did you expect?

MessOnTheFED!

It is sad. But what are these countries to do for food now that the new doctine for the world is to turn our food into fuel.

I just do not know anymore.

Amazon Destruction: Why is the rainforest being destroyed in Brazil?

Between May 2000 and August 2005, Brazil lost more than 132,000 square kilometers of forest—an area larger than Greece—and since 1970, over 600,000 square kilometers (232,000 square miles) of Amazon rainforest have been destroyed. Why is Brazil losing so much forest? What can be done to slow deforestation?

Why is the Brazilian Amazon being Destroyed?
In many tropical countries, the majority of deforestation results from the actions of poor subsistence cultivators. However, in Brazil only about one-third of recent deforestation can be linked to "shifted" cultivators. A large portion of deforestation in Brazil can be attributed to land clearing for pastureland by commercial and speculative interests, misguided government policies, inappropriate World Bank projects, and commercial exploitation of forest resources. For effective action it is imperative that these issues be addressed. Focusing solely on the promotion of sustainable use by local people would neglect the most important forces behind deforestation in Brazil.

rainforests.mongabay.com...

Some good information on the destruction of the Amazon in Brazil.

Did you know how much waste we use from trees?

Such Toilet paper and white paper, colored papers?


All these things came from trees and Rainforests.

reply to post by Agent_USA_Supporter


You are very correct in your statements. What is that magical plant that can get rid of all this waste..............? Oh yeah Hemp. Too bad it outlawed in most places.

Lets just get rid of the CO2 consuming rain forests then complain because there is to much CO2 in the atmosphere.

reply to post by Agent_USA_Supporter


Yeah we sure do use a lot of those things. I would've thought they would be reforesting but apparently they're clearcutting it for speculative use? So they will not be replanting?
That is just horrible gov't policy.

Originally posted by Agent_USA_Supporter
Did you know how much waste we use from trees?

Such Toilet paper and white paper, colored papers?


All these things came from trees and Rainforests.

They do and recycling is still on a small scale........

It makes me all warm and gushy inside to know that my oxygen supply for tomorrow is not as good as yesterday. I feel good knowing that one day I will not be able to breath. I like knowing our primary source of oxygen (aka life) is being ripped apart in the name of progress.

Might want to savor the breaths you have left.

[edit on 8-12-2009 by DaMod]

reply to post by MessOnTheFED!


Shut up fool ... you will get yourself the post deleted and the thread banned and all of us into trouble.
My god ... i am sounding like in the era of comunism in my country ... that was ... hmmm ... 20 years ago precisely ... i prayed to god that i would never use such phrases again. Doesnt helped.

Reply to Damod:

Instead of demanding that third world countries refrain from developing their resources how about if you flatten your house and plant trees on your property? Then you can go live under the nearest bridge with the certain knowledge that the rest of the world will salute your sacrifice

Or are you seriously expecting that people will continue to live in huts so that you don't have to?

What gives you the right to determine what others will do with their property?

Besides - you don't have to worry - this is the amazon. No sooner is the area clear cut than the global warming idiots supply money through carbon credits for them to grow corn or palm oil plantations so that the rest of the world can have biofuel. Either way - green stuff is growing and giving off oxygen. It doesn't have to be trees you know.

Tired of Control Freaks.

Originally posted by endisnighe
It is sad. But what are these countries to do for food now that the new doctine for the world is to turn our food into fuel.

I just do not know anymore.

Burn food into fuel? The only country that I'm aware of where that is happening is the USA, where corn is turned into ethanol. Which is very unfortunate because corn is a very poor basis for ethanol and an equally poor basis for food.

Brazil use sugar cane, which is very fast growing, and Scandinavia uses waste from the forestry industry to create ethanol for use as a fuel.

What i cannot understand is why we don't hear more about the destruction of the rain forests,ten fifteen years ago the extent of the destruction was in every paper you picked up, including the fact that deforestation was causing the droughts in Africa and the temperatures rising.

Now all we hear about is global warming caused by carbon emissions

reply to post by illece


I agree with you, this is so important and affects all of us not just the rainforest's in question, as Graham Hancock would say they are destroying our rainforest's just so the world can eat soya burgers, ugh!

Originally posted by TiredofControlFreaks
Reply to Damod:

Instead of demanding that third world countries refrain from developing their resources how about if you flatten your house and plant trees on your property? Then you can go live under the nearest bridge with the certain knowledge that the rest of the world will salute your sacrifice

Or are you seriously expecting that people will continue to live in huts so that you don't have to?

What gives you the right to determine what others will do with their property?

Besides - you don't have to worry - this is the amazon. No sooner is the area clear cut than the global warming idiots supply money through carbon credits for them to grow corn or palm oil plantations so that the rest of the world can have biofuel. Either way - green stuff is growing and giving off oxygen. It doesn't have to be trees you know.

Tired of Control Freaks.

I'm glad you asked. Well, I plant trees on my property without demolishing my house. They do grow around things you know.

A few things:

1. Rainforests are the oldest untouched habitats on earth. They survived over every other place. The animals that evolved in this habitat will be forced into extinction in the name of progress. This is only a technicality compared to the possible medical breakthroughs that could be lost.

Nearly half of the world's species of plants, animals and microorganisms will be destroyed or severely threatened over the next quarter century due to rainforest deforestation.

Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year. As the rainforest species disappear, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases. Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has identified 3000 plants that are active against cancer cells. 70% of these plants are found in the rainforest. Twenty-five percent of the active ingredients in today's cancer-fighting drugs come from organisms found only in the rainforest.

Vincristine, extracted from the rainforest plant, periwinkle, is one of the world's most powerful anticancer drugs. It has dramatically increased the survival rate for acute childhood leukemia since its discovery.

In 1983, there were no U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers involved in research programs to discover new drugs or cures from plants. Today, over 100 pharmaceutical companies and several branches of the US government, including giants like Merck and The National Cancer Institute, are engaged in plant research projects for possible drugs and cures for viruses, infections, cancer, and even AIDS.

We are losing countless species which you may not give a flying fart in space about. What you might care about is the potential medical benefits by keeping the rain forests around.

Which is more important? Cures / Plants / Animals or paper? (which btw we really don't need paper anymore. Technology made that possible.)

2. You said it was the people you care about?

There were an estimated ten million Indians living in the Amazonian Rainforest five centuries ago. Today there are less than 200,000.

In Brazil alone, European colonists have destroyed more than 90 indigenous tribes since the 1900's. With them have gone centuries of accumulated knowledge of the medicinal value of rainforest species. As their homelands continue to be destroyed by deforestation, rainforest peoples are also disappearing.

Gee, seems like this is really helping people...

3. Its all a matter of how much oxygen is released by certain kinds of plants. You see corn everywhere on earth as well as all kinds of other forests, plains, and marshlands. The rainforests still produce 20% of the earths oxygen. That might not seem like much but think about how small of an area that 20% encompasses.

4. How about produce?

At least 3000 fruits are found in the rainforests; of these only 200 are now in use in the Western World. The Indians of the rainforest use over 2,000.

5. How profitable is it really?

Experts agree that by leaving the rainforests intact and harvesting it's many nuts, fruits, oil-producing plants, and medicinal plants, the rainforest has more economic value than if they were cut down to make grazing land for cattle or for timber.

The latest statistics show that rainforest land converted to cattle operations yields the land owner $60 per acre and if timber is harvested, the land is worth $400 per acre. However, if these renewable and sustainable resources are harvested, the land will yield the land owner $2,400 per acre

They will be gone in about 40 years.

-----------------------------------------

This doesn't sound like progress to me. The opposite actually.

P.S. Face Pwnt



[edit on 8-12-2009 by DaMod]

reply to post by DaMod


Thank you for putting this info together DeMod, I am certainly aware of it and how important the rainforest are to all of us, by clear cutting and burning the trees will never come back.

Originally posted by Durabys
reply to post by MessOnTheFED!

 

Shut up fool ... you will get yourself the post deleted and the thread banned and all of us into trouble.
My god ... i am sounding like in the era of comunism in my country ... that was ... hmmm ... 20 years ago precisely ... i prayed to god that i would never use such phrases again. Doesnt helped.

Mods please don't delete this. This post is simply for fact correction purposes.

Marijuana and Hemp are two totally different things.

Lets leave this train of thinking right there please.

Damod

As you so glibly assure me - it is alright to tear down the rain forest because the trees will just grow around whatever you build there!

At one time, Alaska was a rain forest. This is evidenced by the presence of oil. Now Alaska is a frozen desert and the rain forest is located in Brazil. So which state is the "right" state of being for each of these two areas. Are we supposed to be working to preserve Alaska as a frozen desert or to bring it back to its rain forest state?

At one time, the Carolinian Forest of North America was a unique place. Then it was logged to create wealth. Wealth that allowed you to build a house and live in relative comfort and with good health. Now you would deny others the right to exploit their natural resources to build the same lifestyle for themselves. But its ok because you are willing to recycle and plant trees?

As for preservation of species. Nature has a pretty good handle on that. For every species that goes extinct, another takes its place. Someday man will also go extinct. And that is how it should be.

Perhaps - just because you are so interested in species preservation - we should consider bringing back smallpox and polio???

As for preserving the rain forest for our use - like exploring to see if we can find pharmaceuticals that we can make a profit from? Isn't it just a little selfish to want to deny others the right to exploit their natural resources for their own benefit - just so we can exploit them for ours.

Are you really suggesting that others should live in grinding poverty just so that you can preserve the option to exploit their resources in the future?

How big of you!

Tired of Control Freaks

Hopefully this isn't deleted, as industrially grown hemp has had less than three tenths of one percent of any drug content for as long as anyone here's been around to research it.

HEMP IS NOT A DRUG and this post IS relevant...

'A Plan to Save Our Forests'
Some cannabis plant strains regularly reach tree-like heights of 20 feet or more in one growing season. The new paper process used hemp “hurds”, 77% of the hemp stalk’s weight, which was then a wasted byproduct of the fiber stripping process.

In 1916, USDA Bulletin No. 404 reported that one acre of cannabis hemp, in annual rotation over a 20-year period, would produce as much pulp for paper as 4.1 acres of trees being cut down over the same 20-year period. This process would use only 1/7 to 1/4 as much polluting sulfur-based acid chemicals to break down the glue-like lignin that binds the fibers of the pulp, or even none at all using soda ash. All this lignin must be broken down to make pulp. Hemp pulp is only 4-10% lignin, while trees are 18-30% lignin. The problem of dioxin contamination of rivers is avoided in the hemp papermaking process, which does not need to use chlorine bleach (as the wood pulp papermaking process requires), but instead substitutes safer hydrogen peroxide in the bleaching process.

Thus, hemp provides four times as much pulp with at least four to seven times less pollution.

As we have seen, this hemp pulp-paper potential depended on the invention and the engineering of new machines for stripping the hemp by modern technology. This would also lower demand for lumber and reduce the cost of housing, while at the same time helping re-oxygenate the planet.1

As an example: If the new (1916) hemp pulp paper process were in use legally today, it would soon replace about 70 percent of all wood pulp paper; including computer printout paper, corrugated boxes and paper bags.

Pulp paper made from 60-100 percent hemp hurds is stronger and more flexible than paper made from wood pulp. Making paper from wood pulp damages the environment. Hemp papermaking does not.

(Dewey & Merrill, Bulletin No. 404, U.S.D.A., 1916; New Scientist, 1980; Kimberly Clark production from its giant French hemp-fiber paper subsidiary De Mauduit, 1937 through 1984.)

Source: Book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes, 1998, by Jack Herer, which can be read here...

There are videos on youtube of people building houses with a cement/hemp fibre spray that's more efficient than most things we use now..

[edit on 8-12-2009 by alaskan]