Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 13:29:55 -0700 (PDT) From: michael pagoulatos <michaelpagoulatos@yahoo.com> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg1846$foo@default> Subject: Amazon rainforest destruction a hoax! What a relief!
http://208.248.87.252/05302000/4951.htm
ECO-SCIENTISTS DENY AMAZON'S IN DANGER
By BARRY WIGMORE
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FOR a dozen years, pop superstar Sting has warned that
man has brought the Amazon rainforest to the verge of
extinction.
He and a host of celebrities have insisted that
Amazonia - 2.7 million square miles of nearly
impenetrable Brazilian forest, an area nearly as big
as the lower 48 states - is being destroyed at a
horrifying rate.
But now, two of the world's top eco-scientists,
Patrick Moore and Philip Stott, say the
save-the-rainforest movement is wrong: at best, vastly
misleading; at worst, a gigantic con.
"All these save-the-forests arguments are based on bad
science," says Moore, a founding member of Greenpeace
who recently returned from a fact-finding mission to
the Amazon.
"They are quite simply wrong. We found that the Amazon
rainforest is more than 90 percent intact. We flew
over it and met all the environmental authorities. We
studied satellite pictures of the entire area."
TV reporter Marc Morano, who's spent more than a year
investigating the rainforest movement's claims for an
American Investigator TV program that will be
broadcast nationally next month, says he was amazed
when he discovered the truth.
He says the statistics he found--backed up by
satellite imagery of the forests--speak for
themselves.
"We learned that only 12.5 percent of the original
Amazon has been deforested, leaving 87.5 percent
intact," he said.
"Of the 12.5 percent deforested, one-third to one-half
of that land is fallow or in the process of
regeneration. That means that at any given moment up
to 94 percent of the total Amazon is left to nature.
That is not wanton destruction."
Stott, who has spent nearly 30 years studying tropical
forests, agrees.
"Many of these stars want to have an impact beyond
their normal music and the environment is an area that
they feel they can move into quite easily. It's a
convenient one for them to go to. So a lot of the
young teenagers, the 14-, 15-, 16-year-olds, follow
them," he says.
Everyone has jumped on the rainforest bandwagon - from
actor Leonardo DiCaprio to supermodel Naomi Campbell,
from Greenpeace to the Rainforest Foundation, the
group formed by Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler.
William Shatner - "Star Trek's" Capt. Kirk - beamed
down to earth to narrate a National Geographic video,
saying "rainforest is being cleared at the rate of 20
football fields per minute."
These eco-warriors say the rainforests are the lungs
of the earth, pumping out oxygen. Without them, they
say, we will all choke on polluting hydrocarbons.
The eco-warriors turned out in force last month for
the 10th annual Save the Rainforest rock concert at
Carnegie Hall.
Sting, Elton John, Billy Joel and Tom Jones joined
hands with Ricky Martin, Gladys Knight and Stevie
Wonder before a sellout crowd of 1,800.
During one set, Sting, Jones and Martin donned Day-Glo
wigs to become Gladys Knight's backup group, the Pips.
After the concert, the celebrities trooped to the
Pierre for an auction.
Marie Claire magazine editor Glenda Bailey paid $8,000
for lunch with Courtney Cox. An afternoon sail on
Billy Joel's yacht went for $20,000. A walk-on part on
"Law and Order" cost $45,000.
And co-chairwoman Sarah Ban Breathnach paid $140,000
to do a duet with Sting on "Every Breath You Take."
Altogether, the night raised more than $2.7 million
for Sting's foundation, and the feel-good factor was
enormous.
THE rainforest movement started when the
environmentally friendly Body Shop company decided to
buy nuts from Amazon Indians to put in its lotions.
Not to be outdone, Sting took three Amazon tribal
chiefs on a world tour in 1989. First stops: the pope
and French President Francois Mitterrand.
Brazilian environment minister Otavio Moreira Lima was
furious.
"We see this melancholy spectacle of an Amazon chief
in Europe being presented like a prized wild animal in
the hands of a rock singer," he said. "This is
revolting and I consider it an affront."
But he was ignored.
Now an increasing number of scientists are siding with
the Brazilians, who have for years insisted that while
their Amazon policy may have been flawed initially, it
has since been corrected.
Among them are Moore, a Canadian who helped found
Greenpeace, and Stott, professor of biogeography at
London University's School of Oriental and African
Studies and editor of the Journal of Biogeography.
Both started as conventional environmentalists -
agreeing with the accepted wisdom that the rainforests
are endangered.
Moore, in particular, was in the vanguard of
Greenpeace's early direct-action campaigns, sailing
into nuclear test grounds to get the United States,
then France, to stop nuclear testing in the
atmosphere.
But in the '80s and early '90s the two independently
started to dig deeper into the rainforest issue.
Separately, they came to remarkably similar
conclusions - public opinion is wrong.
\221IF THE rainforest in Amazonia was being destroyed at
the rate critics say, it would have all vanished ages
ago," Stott says.
"One of the simple, but very important, facts is that the rainforests
have only been around for between 12,000 and 16,000 years. That sounds
like a very long time but, in terms of the history of the earth, it's
hardly a pinprick.
"Before then, there were hardly any rainforests. They
are very young. It is just a big mistake that people
are making.
"The simple point is that there are now still -
despite what humans have done - more rainforests today
than there were 12,000 years ago."
"This lungs of the earth business is nonsense; the
daftest of all theories," Stott adds.
"If you want to put forward something which, in a
simple sense, shows you what's wrong with all the
science they espouse, it's that image of the lungs of
the world.
"In fact, because the trees fall down and decay,
rainforests actually take in slightly more oxygen than
they give out.
"The idea of them soaking up carbon dioxide and giving
out oxygen is a myth. It's only fast-growing young
trees that actually take up carbon dioxide," Stott
says.
"In terms of world systems, the rainforests are
basically irrelevant. World weather is governed by the
oceans - that great system of ocean atmospherics.
"Most things that happen on land are mere blips to the
system, basically insignificant," he says.
Both scientists say the argument that the cure for
cancer could be hidden in a rainforest plant or animal
- while plausible - is also based on false science
because the sea holds more mysteries of life than the
rainforests.
And both say fears that man is destroying this raw
source of medicine are unfounded because the
rainforests are remarkably healthy.
"They are just about the healthiest forests in the
world. This stuff about them vanishing at an alarming
rate is a con based on bad science," Moore says.
"Anyone who has been in the jungle knows that if you
want to live there, you'd better take a few machetes.
Otherwise, it'll take it all back."
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