Science lesson of the day: popular lies

  'The Amazon rainforest is being clearcut at a dangerous rate." 

  "The Amazon Rain Forest is truly the lungs of planet earth."  

      Both of these are stupid lies, obvious to anyone with a modicum of education in science. 

    The Amazon, through photosynthesis, does affix carbon dioxode and produce oxygen...during the day. 

 At night of course the Amazon CONSUMES massive amounts of oxygen during cellular respiration, which goes on 24/7, unlike photosynthesis, so much of that oxygen made during the day gets used back up, leaving a modest surplus net gain.  If we clearcut the amazon completely, the loss of oxygen cycling would actually  be fairly small.  

    The Amazon produces about 16% of all LAND-BASED oxygen cycling.  But land only makes up about 29% of the earth's surface. So take all that land mass, add up the plant biomass there, and figure out the offsets for deforestation and Reforestation.

     Reforestation is a thing too.

 New England, for example, is being reforested at a shocking rate. Once America's Bread Basket, its' forests are criscrossed with old stone farm walls where wheat fields grew.  If you project ahead at the rate of reforestation in New England, by the year 2550, parking lots will cease to exist. 

   Enter phytoplankton- single-celled plants in the ocean, which covers about 71% of the earth's surface. Phytoplankton are the true lungs of the earth... and phytoplankton are doing great, thank you. 

   The rich green conferva soup of the ocean in the boreal and temperate latitudes, the spaces between arctic/antarctic and the tropics... that green seawater is rich in phytoplankton. In the tropics, where nutrients are tied up in the land, there are still phytoplankton, in more modest but massive numbers. 

       Globally, we have macroalgae- seaweeds. The Sargasso Sea comes to mind. It's growing, btb. Gets stinky when it washes ashore but that's a blessing of nature, just not for our delicate noses.  All that carbon and nutrients waiting to be released in the neotropics where free carbon and free nutrients are a bit scarce. 

   Globally we also have cyanobacteria, the smallest living single-celled plant on earth, often called blue-green algae. Both free in the water column and growing on EVERYTHING wet, even on land too. 

  You know those dark stains on rocky outcrops? Blue-green algae.  And it's an oxygen-making POWERHOUSE.  A conservative guess is that it alone produces HALF of all global oxygen, even before you get to the algae, diatoms and other oxygen-makers in the ocean. 

       So don't buy into the panic.   We're gonna be ok.  I like a clean, less-developed earth for my own quality of life, myself, but the poor ass Brazilian Indios are big fans of  not dying of famine or tropical diseases in their own backyard, so let the poor naked bastards sell off some land and buy some goddam shoes and address the Hierarchy of Needs if they want. 

    Oh, fun exception to the plants sucking down oxygen at night... the pothos plant.  They have oxygen storage capability- they pick up extra during the day and use it at night, but always release a surplus. 

      I really am a font of useless info. 

 But seriously, get a pothos.  They do a good.job of trapping dust and processing some nasty co ntaminants in the air.  We had one on the HQ for over 10 years- it circled the perimeter of the galley twice over, must have been 80+ feet overall.  Killed us when it finally died. The jungle motif was a treat.