From: Dickey, Michael F (michael_f_dickey@groton.pfizer.com)
Date: Fri Aug 09 2002 - 07:30:09 MDT
"Satellites Find Less Deforestation Than Expected, 'But Still Far Too Much'"
The relatively liberal US version of SCI AM, which spent months on a Lomborg
Smear Campaign with IMHO a pretty pathetic rebuttal full of ad homimems
reported this in their news section today. Hasnt this always been one of
Lomborg's complaints? "Satellites Find Less Deforestation Than
Expected...researchers have recognized for some time that those figures are
highly inaccurate because they rely on data collected according to a
hodge-podge of different techniques and standards" and importantly "The good
news is that the rates were 23 percent lower than expected"
"The findings could help ecologists balance the carbon books. So far,
investigators have been unable to explain where a significant chunk of the
carbon released by human activities--notably fossil fuel burning and
deforestation--actually goes."
Lomborg and Sci AM <http://www.greenspirit.com/lomborg/> and
<http://www.lomborg.com/critique.htm>
"Curious aside: While the US edition of Scientific American found it
necessary to defend science against my book, the Italian edition of
Scientific American, Le Scienze published a very positive review in November
2001. Click here an extract English translation. [Again, I have removed the
December covers of the Scientific American and Le Scienze due to Scientific
American's threat to sue.] In the February 2002 issue of Le Scienze, they
have included the translated critique of the American Scientific American
January critique."
Michael
Satellites Find Less Deforestation Than Expected, But Still Far Too Much
COURTESY OF HUGH EVA
from -
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0006D63D-CFC7-1D52-90FB809EC58800
00
Estimates of global forest loss typically come from the United Nations' Food
and Agriculture Organization (FAO). But researchers have recognized for some
time that those figures are highly inaccurate because they rely on data
collected according to a hodge-podge of different techniques and standards.
Now the results of a new remote-sensing study, published today in the
journal Science, may help to refine those estimates.
An international team led by Frédéric Achard of the Joint Research Center in
Ispra, Italy, used satellite images to assess deforestation rates between
1990 and 1997, sampling 100 patches representing 6.5 percent of the planet's
humid tropical forests. The good news is that the rates were 23 percent
lower than expected. The bad news is that the losses still amounted to about
5.8 million hectares a year on average-an area almost twice the size of
Belgium.
The findings could help ecologists balance the carbon books. So far,
investigators have been unable to explain where a significant chunk of the
carbon released by human activities--notably fossil fuel burning and
deforestation--actually goes. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, about a quarter of it (2.3 petagrams) is probably soaked up
by temperate forests. Yet scientists haven't actually found enough
vegetation to do that. But if less deforestation has occurred, as Achard and
his collaborators argue, then less carbon has been released, and less
vegetation is required to absorb it. In that case, because climate models
take into account how much carbon plants absorb, global warming predictions
may change.
Only further probing will reveal exactly what is going on. In the meantime,
habitat destruction "costs the human enterprise, in net terms, on the order
of $250 billion that year, and every year into the future," argues another
group of scientists in the same issue. Andrew Balmford of the University of
Cambridge and his colleagues looked at case studies of the economic
productivity of ecosystems before and after they were converted to human
use. They found that in each case the value of the wild land far outweighed
that of its altered counterpart. In fact, the team estimates that global
conservation of the natural habitats that remain would have an overall
benefit to cost ratio of at least 100 to 1.
"People are hearing a message that nature is being eroded, but it takes a
while to sink in, even for me," Balmford remarks. "One third of the world's
wild nature has been lost since I was a child and first heard the word
'conservation'--that's what keeps me awake at night." --Kate Wong
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