From the NZ Herald, a story that a two year drought in the Amazon basin could turn it into a desert and accelarating global warming.
The prediction is based on a study that involved covering a patch of rainforest the size of a football pitch with plastic panels that prevented rain falling on the forest. After three years, the trees started dying, releasing stored carbon into the atmosphere and exposing the forest floor to sunlight.
The fear is that if the current drought continues, the whole forest could die, drying out the ground and releasing vast amounts of stored carbon that could double the rate of global warming.
With all of these kinds of reports, my inclination is to treat them with a certain amount of skepticsm, knowing the difficulty journalists have in interpreting the real significance of what they are told and recognizing the “bandwagon effect” of global warming in the scientific community.
Nonetheless, the warning needs to be treated with some respect. We should watch closely how the Amazonian climate and ecosystem fare over the coming year and try to learn from the outcomes. In some circles there is an almost religous confidence that the natural state of the earth simply cannot be so easily disrupted as so-called fear-mongers suggest. Regardless of the truth about this, I see no evidence that such confidence is based on any more rigorous scientific analysis than predictions of global doom. We need to proceed with caution.