17th November 2025
Both loss of the Amazon rainforest and alteration to the oceans’s heat distribution properties are potential tipping points. ie they are physical changes that may be irreversible in the human lifetime and may trigger further destructive climate changes.
Amazon Rainforest:
If too greater proportion of the trees are lost, the Amazon basin will cease to exist as a rainforest. Fewer trees will mean less rainfall. Less rainfall and indigenous trees and plants will not thrive. Indigenous wildlife will die out and and indigenous people will loose their way of life. What was rainforest will become a savannah. The risk of wildfires will increase. Rivers that feed the Amazon basin will dwindle and with them the means of local transport. The lack of rainfall in the Amazon basin will also impact other regions. The daily absorption and release of water (known as flying rivers) carries water out from the basin to feed adjoining areas via the South American monsoons. And whereas the Amazon’s rainforest currently absorbs more CO2 than it releases, as savannah, the region will release more carbon dioxide than it absorbs, further adding to the rise in global temperatures. (1)
see also
The Green Tau 