hello bart,
>I myself have heard numbers like 4 football fields a second, 10
>football fields a second, 13 football fields a second, and so on,
>tossed out in conversations and appeals (by music groups, amongst
>others) about Amazon forest loss. Moore apparently was reacting to
>similar, and perhaps even more extreme, claims.
>
>Define a football field as half a hectare (100 x 50 metres, more or
>less). Current cutting rates are on the order of 10,000 square
>kilometres per year, in a forest complex of roughly 5 million square
>kilometres. That is roughly 4 football fields per minute, or 28 square
>kilometres per day, which seems like a lot, until you realise it
>amounts to about 1/4 % of the forest complex annually.
>The extreme claims by *some* activists (using the numbers in my first
>paragraph) work out to 240, 600, and 780 football fields per minute. In
>round numbers, two or three orders of magnitude greater than current
>rates.
over the weekend i did some investigations. before me i have
parts of the official report of the FAO together with ITTO
(internat. tropical timber organisation) dating 03/08/1993
cited by deutsche presse-agentur on 03/09/93:
years 1981-1990 :
total losses of 150 mio ha tropical rainforest
of which 74 mio were in latin america and the
caribic (reforestation 14 mio ha) and of which
3.7 mio ha were in brazil
africa : 41 mio ha with a
reforestation area of 2 mio ha
new FAO from 1999: annual loss of
0.56 % per year
asian-pacific area: 39 mio ha with a
reforestation area of 28 mio ha
worldwide reforestation area: 38 mio ha (from which 1/3
according to experiences by replantings from years before is
seen as failures)
fao report 1999:
only minor parts of the cutted wood exported to industrialized
countries (about 10-15%), most of it used for agriculture,
growing cities and new industrial areas. a fire in january 1998
destroyed 56.000 sqare km alone. 28% of the fire-cuttings
officially allowed by government.
80% of all amazonian wood cut in 1997 and 1998 was cut by illegal
actions (data from abama, the governmental environment agency of
brazil). satellite data from january 1999 showed a loss of
rainforest area the size of switzerland (reasonable comparison,
for the fao's headquater is in geneva)
as pesticide industry also likes vivid comparisions (residues
comparable to a sugar lump in the entire lake tahoe), one might
also compare the lost rainforest area to soccerfield areas:
150.000.000 ha - 25% reforestation
= 112.000.000 ha / 10 years =
12.000.000 ha / 365.25 days a year
30.664 ha / day
a soccer field: 120*50 m = 0.6 ha
so 30.664 ha makes a loss of 51106 soccer fields ! PER DAY !!!
2.129 soccer fields / h
35 soccer fields / min
(makes one order of magnitude too large, still frightening,
because i already subtracted the reforestation rate before)
estimate not so bad, given that the CGIAR together with UNEP and
UNDP calculated it to 40 fields a minute (report from 1. week of
august 1996). cgiar-president serageldin warned, that the indians
and subsidient farmers might become the skapegoats, while in
reality about half the loss must be attributed to unscrupiolous
logging companies mostly working illegal.
and in 1995 NEW SCIENTIST uncovered a deal between the french and
the cameroun government: france offered a reduction of 6 billion
francs in debth, if cameroun was willing to give french logging
companies more rights. at this time they already had logging
rights for 71% !!! of the total cameroun forest.
on the other side some indian tribes also got some "image
problems". the same year the brazilian tribe of the caiapo became
extremely wealthy, some became millionaires for selling their
entire land (120.000 sq miles) to logging companies. the tribe
was renamed by some ngo's to "caiapo inc."
and in 1994 then-indonesian president suharto gave 184 mio$ from
the usa - given expressively for reforestation - to the airplane
company IPTN for the development of a new jet (you are generally
about 80% correct, if you assume, that the president of IPTN was
one of his family members).
p.s: i'm just about to write an article for a agricultural
journal and have to insert data from the u.s. the old problem !
can ANYONE help me out ?
how much is 1 bushel in kilograms for corn and for barley ? am i
correct in assuming that because of their diferent storage
densities these are different. or can all fruits be multiplied by
a fixed factor ignoring water content and different size or
seedcoat roughness from year to year ?
btw: the US metric conversion act dates back to 1975 -
long back into the last century with an amendment in 1988
quote:
"sec. 3. it is therefore the declared policy of the united
states-
(1) to designate the metric system of measurement as the
preferred system of weights and measures for United States
trade and commerce"
up to today i've seen some very rare tries by FAS and ARS to give
data in bushels AND metr. tons (strange, all of them in reports
by female researchers!). but in general this conversion act seems
only to be valid for trade and commercial companies. government
research personal seems to be entitled to totally ignore
governmental rulings (:^]
klaus
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