Our Sponsors
____________________
Note: Comments are moderated so be sure that your responses are expressed in a respectable and friendly way. We are here to express our thoughts toward controversial issues, not to scold or defame anyone. Watch what you say, and remember that by using this site, you agree to our Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy.

Animals within the Rain forest have the possibility to help cure diseases so it will severe affect the successful growth of the medical industry.
ROTF&LMAO!
The rainforest is in an area where there is a lot of rain, and that is why a lot of trees grow there. Where there is a lot of trees and other vegetation, there is a lot of bugs. According to some scientists, bugs in the rainforest area sprout up and die off by the millions annually. If the rainforest goes away, the bug population will slow down but not disappear as the rain will continue fall in the same amounts in that area and humans will plant trees and other vegetation as they inhabit the area.
To answer your question – Not much will change if the rainforest goes away.
This is the foremost concern you'd have if the rainforests disappeared?
It's not millions. It's billions. Possibly even trillions of insects. The reason there are lots of such creatures has more to do with the dense nature of rainforest and the constant levels of partial decay of animal and plant matter. The amount of rainfall is incidental. In fact one reason you get the rainfall is the amount of moisture trapped and evaporated by dense jungle. Take that away, and you can get deserts instead of forests and fertile land.
Where rainforest is destroyed, human beings are not "planting trees and other vegetation as they inhabit the area". They are clearcutting forest with slash and burn agricultural methods. Even where they are planting "vegetation" it is vastly different habitat (farms) than the dense tropical vegetation capable of supporting millions of species of animals and plants. I'd hardly say therefore that "not much will change". One can look at desertification in Africa and see there's a difference.
Wrong, my friend, very wrong.
I live in a desert, and have lived here a long time. There have been many changes since western civilization began coming to the desert. There are many bugs, many animals, and the humidity level has been on a constant rise (I know this as I have an evaporative cooler for my house and have recently had to add an air conditioner because the rising humidity has rendered the evaporative cooler ineffective over half the summer season).
Where ever western civilization goes they may remove native vegetation in order to build human habitats but they also plant trees, flowers, grass and other vegetation. They raise the humidity levels of the deserts – and strangely enough – the rains do not follow the "trapped humidity" that they provide. Weather patterns have changed very slightly over the last hundred or so years that western civilization has been populating the southwestern deserts of the USA.
I would suggest a basic meteorological course to learn how weather is made and how mountains and wind patterns and heating and cooling of the Earth's surface and oceans create weather in the different regions of this planet – including why there is so much rain in the rainforest areas of the southern hemisphere.
Factoid for you – The forest does not create the rain = the rain creates the forest > Topography creates the the pressure gradients that help form the clouds that provide the rain.
5k years ago, much of the SW US was lush forest, and was clear cut by natives to build those interesting abandoned cities in the hills you've got out there as a tourist attraction.
You might want to look into what happened…. The crucial element is soil erosion happens a lot faster without the trees to hold it in, and jungle soil is not particularly fertile. You can have rainfall without the forest, but without the forest, the rainfall isn't particularly useful.
The second problem is that the rain forests are not being removed or destroyed by "western civilization". They are being destroyed by natives.
Hmmmmm.
We have a problem here. There is something missing in our conversation. Communication, it is called communication. We are not communicating in this conversation. I am saying one thing and you are reading something else. You are saying one thing and I am reading something else. We seem to not be communicating.
Trying to keep this short and simple. I googled "pacific northwest ca 1900" or something close to that about two years ago. Found a website with old photos taken at specific spots with new photos taken at the same specific spots. Old ones had hardly any trees, new ones were covered with trees. Visual evidence is hard to refute unless one finds it is fake(like UFO photos). Time span was about eighty to one hundred years.
In the course of my lifetime I had to take "Weather recognition" classes in order to interpret the weather when called upon to do so. I learned a lot, well at least enough to not be confused by the TV weather mans maps and graphics. And enough to keep me from flying into weather patterns that could damage or destroy the aircraft I was flying at the time. Had to understand how weather is made, especially way out over the ocean and near mountainous terrain. Very interesting to say the least. I have also lived in a desert environment for almost thirty years. Found out that after WW1 veterans were sent out here so they could breath better in the arid climate, but since that time a lot of people have inhabited this desert and planted grass and trees where none existed before. that raised the humidity levels. Also raised the 02 content some (don't know how much). But weather patterns have not changed significantly despite Al Gore's "chicken little" movie about global warming(threw that in for some much needed humor).
Concluding – In spite of what my children and grandchildren say, I was not around 50k years ago so I do not know what the Earth looked like back then, so will have to take your word on it. However, our local National Park Geologist (Grand Canyon National Park) tells me that for many millions of years the Pacific southwest and Pacific northwest was at the bottom of what he calls a "primordial ocean" and that is what makes it look like it does today.
Okay, so my weather knowledge is a bit more than my geological knowledge. Take away the rainforest and it will still rain by the bucket-load over there because the high mountains push the warm moist air up until it cools enough to make clouds and holds them there until they get heavy enough with moisture to rain. There are places on the other side of those mountains that have not seen rain for thousands if not millions of years. Thats just the way it is.
Your first paragraph seems to be the first time you've recognized that you've never been a good communicator and have always read what you wanted in my replies (for instance, I said 5k not 50k, not that you were around then either, but I'm still talking about a drastic change brought on my deforestation in our recent past, not something that precedes any "civilized" human beings). I'm talking about things like soil erosion and plant/animal decay more so than rainfall.
But I'm not just making up the rainfall element either..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/programmes/tv/jungle/…
Dense forests with light soil (ie, most jungles because the soil is drained of nutrients by heavy rains) contribute heavily to the amount of rainfall that they receive because they provide ample opportunity for the water to evaporate and return to the water cycle.
"Half of all rainwater that falls here in the Amazon is produced by the trees themselves"
Now it's true that if you take half of the rainfall out of the Amazon, it would still rain a lot by the standards of say, Arizona certainly. But turning the Amazon into say, Miami would still be a huge dropoff in climate. The central point is that the major rainforests of the Amazon, Congo, and in Indonesia (and especially West Africa) are not controlled by environmentally conscious Westerners who would demand replanting and sustainability efforts to be undertaken by lumber companies, certainly not on the scale you describe in the PacNW or elsewhere in America (and to a lesser extent Europe). They are not really controlled by anyone and as a result represent a huge tragedy of commons problem. The jungle is clearcut by short-sighted needs of local farmers and local companies and it does not regenerate. Often times you end up with infertile arid like soil within a short time that cannot sustain their attempts to raise cattle or grains and the whole process continues.
What will happen if the rainforest is destroyed?
Then millions upon millions of exhibitionist, nudist colonies, hippies, and naked wanderers will walk the streets.
Look there goes one now!!!
What will happen if the rainforest is destroyed?
Then millions upon millions of exhibitionist, nudist colonies, hippies, and naked wanderers will walk the streets.
Look there goes one now!!!
Most of the species will be wiped out and we will also have bad air…..:(
When rainforests get destroyed the entire earths climate warms up resulting to global warming and less oxygen in the air we breath everyday. The large trees in the rainforest trap moisture from the suns heat which inturn creates a strong vapour from the rainforests soil and rivers which results in heavy rainfull. The rain basically keeps the entire forest (trees,plants, animals and insects) alive and healthy. The world will become a hot desert if all rainforests were destroyed.
Theres a sand dune desert in Texas if you people didnt already know Its called Monahans National park. Where in the world do you know about another sand dune desert? Unless im missing something. A third sand dune desert?