A tree breathes, two trees breathe twice as much and in the case of the Amazon, it is the largest jungle in the world that breathes. And it does so with force, because there are millions of trees that live in its immense territory of about six million km2, eight times larger than the Borneo jungle, 75% depleted, largely during the last three decades of the Last century. What was recently the lung of Southeast Asia, today is a mutilated and diseased organ. The predation was such that the huge island became the first exporter of wood on the planet, larger than Africa and Brazil combined. The consequences of this disaster were immediate. Borneo and its areas of irradiation or influence (some believe that it ranges from Chile to Australia), suffered a drastic local climate change, undoubtedly of anthropogenic origin.In the case of the Amazon, to give you a better idea of its size, the South American rainforest could accommodate almost twelve times the territory of Spain. Consequently, one can imagine the magnitude of the damage that its deforestation would cause if it continues along the Borneo road, which is already underway and if it does not stop it will create a global climate cataclysm, since its area of irradiation or influence is not only local but the entire planet.since its zone of irradiation or influence is not only local but the entire planet.since its zone of irradiation or influence is not only local but the entire planet.
Trees produce oxygen, vital for most species, and in turn absorb carbon dioxide, CO2, the largest component of Greenhouse Gases, GHG, causing global warming, the main trigger for climate change. During photosynthesis, a process carried out by trees and the vast majority of plants, they absorb and store CO2, which is fixed in their roots, trunks and leaves in the form of carbon. Plants, although they take oxygen from the air and re-enter carbon dioxide, the bottom line is positive in favor of the extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide absorption capacity is directly proportional to the size, density and quantity of plants and trees present in a forest.
In the Amazon jungle there are about 80 thousand kinds of trees and more than 140 thousand species of plants. There are hundreds of millions of specimens that absorb water and then return it, through their leaves, in immense amounts of water vapor to the atmosphere, a mega perspiration that forms clouds, from which the vital liquid returns through temporary drizzles or prolonged downpours, which partly fall on the jungle itself, with which its forests maintain a constant humidity, although they also irrigate distant places such as the Andean mountain range. This gigantic biochemical machinery gives us an idea of its importance and explains why it is called the "lung of the world", while worrying that it could disappear in less than half a century.
The natural greenhouse effect of the Earth is a phenomenon that has allowed it for millions of years to maintain temperatures in a fairly uniform range, necessary to develop and maintain a great diversity of life on it. How does it work? The solar rays arrive from space, bounce off the planet's surface and try to escape back to the cosmos, but are trapped by the atmosphere and as a consequence the vital condition of uniform temperature is produced. If this phenomenon did not happen, the Earth would be an icy planet, probably uninhabited like most of the others, or at least not suitable for life as we know it. All this thanks to the gases involved in it, which is why they are called greenhouse gases, such as water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4),nitrogen oxide (N2O) and ozone (O3), although the largest volume corresponds to the first two.
According to some scientists, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased since the beginning of the industrial revolution, 1750, modifying the composition of the atmosphere and the natural greenhouse effect of the Earth., increasing its temperature in an apparently slow process, from the point of view of human chronometry, but almost instantaneous with respect to geological times. It is estimated that two thirds of this increase comes from the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil, gas and coal, while the remaining third comes from the deforestation of large areas of forests and jungles. In the Amazon, the destruction of forests is already well advanced to make way for the clearing of soils for urbanization, agriculture, livestock, the timber sector, oil and mining exploitation, construction of roads, pipelines, hydroelectric dams, in addition that some 30 million people live in the Amazon basin. All this represents a large-scale human intervention, never before occurred on the planet,for which there is no previous experience of something like this, which, if not stopped, would irreversibly affect the lung of the world and therefore all the inhabitants of this blue point called Earth.
As its trees are cut down, the Amazon will decrease the amount of water vapor it releases into the atmosphere, reducing humidity and rainfall over the jungle and increasing drought. Something has already happened in Borneo at a catastrophic level, as we explained in another article, where homo sapiens, through the uncontrolled felling of trees, turned one of the largest humid forests in the world, one of the most important rainy reservoirs on the planet, where it does barely a little over half a century, humidity and mud made a forest fire unimaginable, in an arid, dry and hostile place, unsuitable for animals or vegetables in most of its territory, where vegetation fires are everyone's business the days.Borneo is a very serious case of human unconsciousness regarding the environment, which should be the rear-view mirror of humanity, to look at what could happen to the Amazon rainforest in the near future if the problem is not addressed in time.
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