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by palisade 2487 days ago
More importantly as the planet's "lungs" the Amazon filters a great quantity of carbon dioxide from the air.
2 comments
gus_massa 2487 days ago
No, with some minor simplifications, the plants amount of CO2 that the pants absorb is proportional to the amount of O2 they produce. So

Does the Amazon provide 20% of our oxygen?

is equivalent to

Does the Amazon remove 20% of our waste carbon dioxide?

The main part of the "lungs" of the planet is the phytoplankton in the sea.

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m0zg 2487 days ago
I googled some and it looks like Amazon rainforest alone removes about a quarter of fossil fuel CO2 from the atmosphere. That's more than I thought it'd be. And it looks like it could sequester much more if there was more phosphorus in the soil.
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jamesdmiller 2487 days ago
Where do they put it? Wouldn't this require the total biomass of the rainforest to be continually increasing?
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sp332 2487 days ago
Old growth forests are not carbon-neutral. Models had to be adjusted after this study in 2008: https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Global-Warming/2008/09...
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sp332 2487 days ago
Where did you see that figure?
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m0zg 2487 days ago
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2019/08/20/amazon-rainforest-abso...

Quote: "The Amazon Basin is critical to help mitigate climate change due to its trees absorbing around a quarter of the CO2 released each year from the burning of fossil fuels."

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shkkmo 2487 days ago
This is why you need to be careful about understanding and quoting scientific facts.

The specific quote is talking about trees in the rainforest, not the rainforest itself. The rainforest is an ecological system that also produces CO2 (mainly through microbes breaking down wood) and you can't ignore the rest of the system.

Which is not to say that the Amazon doesn't play a significant in the global environment and weather systems.

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