Bad Rain Forests. No Carbon Sink.

Amazon Carbon Cycling: "

At first blush, this doesn't seem like terribly good news, but it does give us a bit more information to use when thinking about our climate response options. Researchers studying the carbon cycle in the Amazon River basin (particularly the uptake and release of CO2 by the region's plants) have found that, rather than sequestering the CO2 for decades or centuries, the carbon is cycled out back into the atmosphere within five years. Among the implications of this discovery (assuming it's confirmed) is that the Amazon rain forests are not good candidates for long-term capture of CO2, and that we need to pay close attention to the actual carbon cycle for each biome before assigning sequestration targets.

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in QuickChanges at 02:05 PM)"

(Via WorldChanging: Another World Is Here.)