Rain, Rain, Go Away…

Be careful what you wish for. The Amazon rain forest is nothing short of amazing, almost essential to life on earth. “[It] has been described as the ‘Lungs of our Planet’ because it provides the essential environmental world service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. More than 20 percent of the world oxygen is produced in the Amazon Rainforest… More than half of the world's estimated 10 million species of plants, animals and insects live in the tropical rainforests. One-fifth of the world's fresh water is in the Amazon Basin.” Rain-Tree.com. From foods to rare medicinal herbs, the Amazon has blessed us all with her bounty. Unfortunately, even beyond the deforestation of encroaching civilization, the world has not reciprocated.

Rain falls year-round in the Amazon, but the major moisture comes primarily during the wet season. According to an October 21^st study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Amazon is beginning to show signs of accelerating damage, well beyond even the dire predictions in the recently released United Nations report from the International Panel on Climate Change. Simply put, the rain forest is drying out, the wet season is contracting, threatening to turn these precious resources into kindling for forest fires the likes of which we have never witnessed b efore, much like the raging flames that have created the largest wildfire in distant Australia’s recorded history. It will take time, but the endgame may soon no longer be reversible.

“‘The length of the dry season in the southern Amazon is the most important climate condition controlling the rain forest,’ Rong Fu, a climate scientist at The University of Texas at Austin's Jackson School of Geosciences [part of the research team that created the report], said in a statement. ‘If the dry season is too long, the rain forest will not survive.’… But with the dry season already spanning an extra week each decade since 1979, the Texas team said the future effects will be more severe…

“‘The dry season over the southern Amazon is already marginal for maintaining rain forest,’ Fu said. ‘At some point, if it becomes too long, the rain forest will reach a tipping point.’… Global warming can limit tropical rainfall across the southern Amazon in two ways, Fu explained. First, shifts in the southern jet stream can block cold fronts that trigger rainfall. (In the Northern Hemisphere, extremes in the northern jet stream pattern have been linked to wacky weather, such as the unusually warm winter in 2012.) Rising surface temperatures, attributed to global warming, also make it harder for storms to start. The heat inhibits ‘convective energy,’ keeping warm, dry air near the surface from rising and mixing with cool, moist air above.” Huffington Post, October 22^nd. The short result: the forest goes drier and drier until its lifeless growths explode into raging fires.

With more CO₂ from continuing to burn fossil fuels with fewer Amazonian leaves to apply their photosynthesis to reconvert that carbon dioxide into oxygen, the quality of breathable air all over the earth will deteriorate significantly. It’s a vicious cycle and it only gets worse, eventually exponentially. Why is it that the great powers that burn with abandon, China, Russia and the United States, just will not deal with these issues in any way that meaningfully reduces greenhouse emissions? How many plants, animals and people must die as a result?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the writing is on the wall, the ceiling, the floor…..