June 13, 2008 
photo credit: angela7dreams
Rainforest Discovery Centre, Sandakan, Malaysia (Borneo)
Popularity: 73% [?]
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February 24, 2008 Popularity: 95% [?]
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December 17, 2007 A new online carbon calculator helps people easily calculate how much they are adding to global greenhouse gases. The CI carbon calculator offers a way to offset those emissions by helping protect tropical forests from being burned and cleared.
Tropical deforestation emits at least 20 percent of total greenhouse gases that cause climate change — more than all the world’s cars, SUVs, trucks, trains and airplanes combined. The calculator determines personal or family carbon emissions from home energy, vehicle, travel and diet behaviors, or from an individual event or travel.
“Most people don’t realize that the meat and food items they eat, the soaps and shampoos they use, even some of the biodiesel and ethanol biofuels powering their cars come from cleared tropical forests,” said Michael Totten, CI’s Chief Adviser for Climate, Water and Ecosystem Services.
Popularity: 100% [?]
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November 30, 2007 Tropical deforestation is the source of nearly a fifth of annual, human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere. Recent studies by Woods Hole Research Center scientists demonstrate that during years of severe drought, tropical rainforest fires, can double emissions from tropical forests. Now, an international team of forest and climate researchers has found that halving deforestation rates by mid-century would account for 12 percent of total emissions reductions needed to keep concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere at safe levels. This work is profiled in a recent issue of Science.
Popularity: 92% [?]
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November 30, 2007 Much of the discussion at the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia, will focus on monitoring tropical deforestation and the critical role that remote sensing systems will play in the development of REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) mechanisms — policies designed to compensate rainforest nation.
Popularity: 91% [?]
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November 29, 2007 Mooi tribe members tell of their fears that deforestation will destroy their livlihood and their children’s future.
Popularity: 82% [?]
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November 20, 2007
Open Letter to the Climate Action Network from Deforestation
Watch.org
Climate change is one of the biggest threats facing mankind since the last ice
age. Naturally, many well meaning NGO’s have grouped together to promote action plans that can help mankind avert this impending disaster. One notable grouping is the Climate Action Network (CAN).
The CAN is a worldwide network of over 365 Non- Governmental Organizations (NGOs), such as Friends of the Earth and others, working to promote government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels.
British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who signed his country to the IACP said that the NGO is a “significant step forward” for the creation of a global carbon trading system that will be “fundamental in arresting and reversing climate change.”
In publishing data on CO2 Emissions per capita however, some interesting
facts have emerged. Asia posted the second lowest emissions per capita of only 1.3 just above Africa (0.9) and below Latin America (2.1). Surprisingly, China which has often been touted as the second worst polluter after the USA, posted a low reading of 3.9 vis a vis Canada (17.0), Australia (18.4) whilst the USA posted a staggering reading of 19.6.
This calls the lie on the many claims made by such diverse organizations such as Greenpeace Netherlands and the World Rainforest Movement who’ve made the rather tenuous claim that palm oil is responsible for the destruction of rainforest which makes it a major contributor to climate change! Deforestation Watch
www.deforestationwatch.org is perturbed by this development as any wild and unsubstantiated position papers such as these can only damage our cause in the long run as it will ultimately destroy the credibility of our movement!
What these papers tries to conceal (which is obviously un-concealable) is that palm oil is largely grown in Asia, Africa and Latin America, all 3 of which are continents with the LOWEST emission data per Capita of any place in the world! Deforestation Watch takes the view that such unwarranted and unjustified attacks against a commodity that is contributing to uplifting the economic and social wellbeing of the peoples in the palm oil belt can hardly be described as “colonization”. Rather than colonization, the growing of palm oil actually serves to liberate economically and uplift the peoples of the lands in which palm oil is cultivated!
Popularity: 77% [?]
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November 20, 2007 A new Greenpeace report Cooking The Climate highlights the huge amount of carbon dioxide getting released into the atmosphere as a result of rainforest destruction. Destruction of rain forests for palm oil plantation production is a major cause of carbon dioxide emissions.
Greenpeace investigations centred on the tiny Indonesian
province of Riau on the island of Sumatra which contains 25 per cent of
Indonesia’s palm oil plantations. Its peat swamps and forests are among
the world’s most concentrated carbon stores.They contain an estimated 14.6bn tonnes of carbon and their
destruction would release the equivalent of total global greenhouse gas
emissions for a year.Greenpeace claims the burning of Indonesia’s peatlands and forests
releases 1.8bn tonnes of greenhouse gases annually – equal to four per
cent of the global total – even though it occupies 0.1 per cent of the
land on Earth.
Note that the push for biomass energy from Brazil and other
equatorial countries is leading to huge CO2 emissions as forests get
ripped down and burned. A lot of this is happening to feed a growing
population of humans. Also, Asian industrialization is increasing the
amount of spending money people have for food and so Chinese, Indians,
and others are spending more on types of foods (e.g. meats) that
require more land usage to produce. This increases food imports by
these countries and forest destruction by food exporters.
Making a bad trend even worse, some Westerners who pose as environmentalists are promoting biomass energy usage. Well, because of the CO2 released by rainforest clearing equatorial region biomass production expansion causes a net boost in CO2 emissions.
So people who worry about global warming and therefore advocate biodiesel are not just wiping out species (and I’m not trying to belittle the importance of this problem). They are increasing atmospheric concentrations of a gas whose rise they view as a big problem.
Fossil fuels burning attracts a lot of attention for its effect on global temperatures. But Greenpeace says that forest destruction is also very important for global climate warming.
About three million hectares (7.5 million acres) of
these peatland forests are earmarked for conversion to palm oil
plantations over the next decade, Greenpeace said.
This “climate bomb” is ticking loudly in the run-up to December’s
United Nations’ climate change meeting in Bali, which is expected to
debate forests’ role in accelerating — and slowing — climate change,
said Sue Connor, Greenpeace International Forests Campaigner.“(If the Riau peatlands are cleared) it would wipe out any chance we
have of keeping the temperature increase below two degrees Celsius,”
she said, referring to a threshold given by the UN’s climate panel.
Palm oil is used in anything from body lotions and toothpaste to
chocolate bars, crisps and as a component of biofuels, such as
biodiesel.
I am more concerned about the destruction of habitats and species.
My guess is that CO2 emissions will peak some time in the next 20 years
and then decline as fossil fuels reserves depletion causes fossil fuels
extraction to decline. This will happen first for oil, then natural
gas, and eventually even coal.
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November 19, 2007 Rainforest Cafe is a themed Restaurant chain owned by Landry’s Restaurants, Inc. of Houston, Texas.
The restaurant is decorated to depict some features of a generic rainforest including plant growth, mist, waterfalls, robotic animals and insects. Large marine aquariums are common in most restaurants. Automated water sprinklers, set to specific patterns and synchronized lights are also featured. A simulated thunderstorm occurs every thirty minutes. It not only simulates rain, but also lightning and thunder by flashing lights and thunder effects played through high-powered subwoofers while all the robotic animals panic. The restaurant is partitioned into several rooms by means of rain curtains which fall into basins running along the tops of partition walls and booths. The flow rate of these rain curtains intensifies during the simulated thunderstorms. Some of the The Rainforest Cafe restaurants also have a Retail Village where rainforest themed merchandise is sold.
Popularity: 62% [?]
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November 19, 2007 JAKARTA (Reuters) – Foreign nations share the blame for the destruction of Indonesian forests and should pitch in to help restore them, Vice President Jusuf Kalla said on Friday.
Indonesia, host of a U.N. climate change conference in December, has been a driving force behind calls for rich
countries to compensate poor states that preserve their rainforests to soak up greenhouse gases.
“Those foreigners keep harping on our country’s high emissions. Our emissions are high, but don’t forget who created this. Where did our timber go?” Kalla told reporters.
Kala said developed countries such as Japan and the United States had been major consumers of Indonesian timber, much of which was logged illegally.
“It means they have to pay,” he said.
According to global environmental group Greenpeace, Indonesia had the fastest pace of deforestation in the world between 2000-2005, destroying an area of forest the size of 300 soccer pitches every hour.
The Indonesian government says it must be given incentives, including a payout of $5-$20 per hectare, to preserve its forests. It also wants to negotiate a fixed price for other forms of biodiversity, including coral reefs.
Indonesia has a total forest area of more than 225 million acres, or about 10 percent of the world’s remaining tropical forests.
Popularity: 67% [?]
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