[Sailorsam]

interesting article in the Atlantic (yes I know, left wing media)

https://www.theatlantic.com/interna.../china-brazil-amazon-environment-pork/606601/

Brazil is cutting down forest for more crop land and building a train to get it to port. China needs soy to feed its pigs.


The rain forest here in Brazil has progressively fallen victim to global demand for soy and beef. And the country’s biggest customer for both is China. The story of the Amazon has become entangled not simply with the story of Brazil’s poor protection of its forest frontier but also with that of the rise of this new superpower and its food-security strategy. Soy is China’s weak link, the main food commodity it needs from the outside world. The country imports the crop, which it mostly uses to feed its pigs, and Chinese state-owned companies also invest directly in Brazil’s supply chain so the South American country can increase its own exports. This growing hunger for soy has incentivized Brazilian prospectors to keep pace by razing pristine jungle, thereby accelerating deforestation.

personally I think what Brazil does is its own business, but I'm sure the environmental types will cry foul.

 

[Ghost863]

interesting article in the Atlantic (yes I know, left wing media)

https://www.theatlantic.com/interna.../china-brazil-amazon-environment-pork/606601/

Brazil is cutting down forest for more crop land and building a train to get it to port. China needs soy to feed its pigs.


The rain forest here in Brazil has progressively fallen victim to global demand for soy and beef. And the country’s biggest customer for both is China. The story of the Amazon has become entangled not simply with the story of Brazil’s poor protection of its forest frontier but also with that of the rise of this new superpower and its food-security strategy. Soy is China’s weak link, the main food commodity it needs from the outside world. The country imports the crop, which it mostly uses to feed its pigs, and Chinese state-owned companies also invest directly in Brazil’s supply chain so the South American country can increase its own exports. This growing hunger for soy has incentivized Brazilian prospectors to keep pace by razing pristine jungle, thereby accelerating deforestation.

personally I think what Brazil does is its own business, but I'm sure the environmental types will cry foul.

I am not an environmentalist but considering the Amazonian Rain Forest is the largest producer of Oxygen on the Planet, if we still want to breath It would probably be a very good idea not to cut down too much of it.

 

[Exarmyguy]

Are they shipping them bats?

 

[ActionJackson]

interesting article in the Atlantic (yes I know, left wing media)

https://www.theatlantic.com/interna.../china-brazil-amazon-environment-pork/606601/

Brazil is cutting down forest for more crop land and building a train to get it to port. China needs soy to feed its pigs.


The rain forest here in Brazil has progressively fallen victim to global demand for soy and beef. And the country’s biggest customer for both is China. The story of the Amazon has become entangled not simply with the story of Brazil’s poor protection of its forest frontier but also with that of the rise of this new superpower and its food-security strategy. Soy is China’s weak link, the main food commodity it needs from the outside world. The country imports the crop, which it mostly uses to feed its pigs, and Chinese state-owned companies also invest directly in Brazil’s supply chain so the South American country can increase its own exports. This growing hunger for soy has incentivized Brazilian prospectors to keep pace by razing pristine jungle, thereby accelerating deforestation.

personally I think what Brazil does is its own business, but I'm sure the environmental types will cry foul.

The Libs will be completely torn. On the one hand, they'll applaud any aid to their Communist buddies regardless of the environmental impact. On the other hand, they will blame Trump for the chopping of a single, sacred tree. I wonder who will gouge his/her eyes out first.

 

[The Old Coach]

China will buy from Brazil partly because the Brazilian plant/harvest seasons are out of phase with ours.

 

[Ghost863]

China will buy from Brazil

and then they will mark up the cost substantially and sell it to us.

 

[Asag]

China will buy from Brazil partly because the Brazilian plant/harvest seasons are out of phase with ours.

Thanks for the sanity:thumb:

 

[ajole]

Do soybean plants produce more or less oxygen or consume more CO2 that the rainforest?

 

[The Old Coach]

Soybeans obviously must release oxygen, since they grow by photosynthesis.

Somebody wrote a good paper several years ago pointing out that the Brazilian rain forest actually consumes much of the oxygen it releases, through the mechanism of organic decay, and through the respiration of the dense fauna it supports. Went looking for it last night but couldn't locate it. I wound up wondering if it has been consigned to the infamous memory hole, not being in line with the alarmist orthodoxy.

 

[The Old Coach]

Aha! Here's a bowdlerized version, (posted by the magisterial CAGW alarmist National Geographic!)

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...azon-doesnt-produce-20-percent-worlds-oxygen/

Trees don’t just exhale oxygen—they also consume it in a process known as cellular respiration, where they convert the sugars they amass during the day into energy, using oxygen to power the process. So during the night when there’s no sun around for photosynthesis, they’re net absorbers of oxygen. Malhi’s research team reckons that trees inhale a little over half the oxygen they produce this way. The rest is probably used up by the countless microbes that live in the Amazon, which inhale oxygen to break down dead organic matter of the forest.

By far the greatest contributors of oxygen are phytoplankton in the oceans.