AMAZON DEFORESTATION FACTS:

SaveTheAmazonRainforest.com
2007

1. The Amazon River Basin is home to the largest Rainforest on Earth. The basin -- roughly the size of the forty-eight contiguous United States -- covers some 40% of the South American continent and includes parts of eight South American countries: Brazil , Bolivia , Peru , Ecuador , Colombia , Venezuela , Guyana , and Suriname .

2. Between May 2000 and August 2005, Brazil lost more than 132,000 square kilometers of Rainforest-an area larger than Greece -and since 1970, over 600,000 square kilometers (232,000 square miles) of Amazon Rainforest have been destroyed.

3. The Amazon Rainforest contains most of the known plant species in the world. It also home to many insect and animal species. About half of the medicines that doctors prescribe originally come from plants and animals found in the Amazon Rainforest. If the Amazon Rainforest continues to be cleared, we will lose all these important plants and animals.

4. In 2005, parts of the Amazon basin experienced the worst drought in 100 years. There are indications that 2007 could be a third successive year of drought. An article dated July 23, 2006 in the UK newspaper "The Independent" reported results from Woods Hole Research Center showing that the Rainforest in its present form could survive only three more years of drought. Scientists at the Brazilian National Institute of Amazonian Research argue in the article that this drought response, coupled with the effects of deforestation on regional climate, are pushing the Rainforest towards a "tipping point" where it would irreversibly start to die. It concludes that the Amazon Rainforest is on the brink of being turned into savanna or desert with catastrophic consequences for the world's climate.

5. Taking into account the range of possible forcing scenarios and factoring in the uncertainty in climate model performance, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects a global temperature increase of anywhere from 1.4 - 5.8�C from 1990-2100. However, this global average will integrate widely varying regional responses, such as the likelihood that land areas will warm much faster than ocean temperatures, particularly, those land areas in northern high latitudes (and mostly in the cold season).

Precipitation is also expected to increase over the 21st century, particularly at northern mid-high latitudes, though the trends may be more variable in the tropics.

Snow extent and sea-ice are also projected to decrease further in the northern hemisphere. Glaciers and ice-caps are expected to continue to retreat.

In its 2001 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated, "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities." Carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning and Amazon Rainforest land clearing has been accumulating in the atmosphere where it acts like a blanket keeping Earth warm and heating up the surface, ocean, and atmosphere. As a result, current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are higher than at any time during the last 650,000 years.

6. The identification of humans as the main driver of global warming helps us understand how and why our climate is changing and it clearly defines the problem as one that is within our power to address. Due to past emissions, we cannot avoid some level of warming from the heat-trapping emissions already present in the atmosphere. Some of these emissions, namely carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, last for 100 years or more. However, with aggressive emission reductions and flexibility in adapting to those changes we cannot avoid, we have a small window in which to avoid truly dangerous warming and provide future generations with a sustainable world. This will require immediate and sustained action to reduce our heat-trapping emissions through increased energy efficiency, expanding our use of renewable energy, and slowing deforestation (among other solutions).

Despite the fact that these ancient Rainforests provide the world with clean, fresh, and vital water, they are still being destroyed. Also, they support as much as 90 per cent of the earth's land-based plants and animals and play a critical role in shaping the world's climate. Finally, they are also home to millions of forest-dependent people.

Yet, every two seconds, a forest area the size of a soccer pitch is logged or burned. Less than 20 per cent of the earth's original forest cover remains in intact forest landscapes. More than one-third of this is under threat.

Industrial logging is the greatest menace to the Rainforest's survival. Transnational corporations have destructive operations and often work outside the law harvesting the worlds' last remaining ancient Rainforests.

Incredibly, these irreplaceable habitats are cut down to make cheap paper and wood products such as, phone books, milk cartons, and chopsticks. Huge volumes of plywood, much of it used to make disposable concrete moulds, come from these ancient forests.

Logging also contributes to climate change because carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is released when trees are cut down. Present rates of forest destruction account for 15 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Question: Why is it so important to save the Amazon Rainforest?

Answer: 20% of the Earths oxygen and 60% of the Earths fresh water comes from the Amazon Rainforest.

Question: Why is the Amazon Rainforest so important to every living thing on our planet Earth?

Answer: Every living thing on Earth needs oxygen to breath and water to drink. If the Amazon Rainforest disappears 20% of the Earths oxygen and 60% of the Earths fresh water will be gone for ever. There is no telling what the effects of this will have on the rest of the Earth Rainforests.

Question: What will happen to all living things on our planet Earth if the Amazon Rainforest is not saved now?

Answer: It has been said that if nothing is done to save the Amazon Rainforest now, in forty years the Amazon Rainforest will cease to exist. Life on Planet Earth will not be as we know it now.