Peter Bunyard

About the author: Peter Bunyard is the science editor of the Ecologist magazine and the author of The Breakdown of Climate.

The destruction of Earth's rain forests, in particular the Amazon, will have a devastating effect on global climate. Since rain forests absorb carbon dioxide (CO2), when they are destroyed by fires or logging, they add to the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This CO2 contributes to global warming. The Amazon rain forest also serves as a heat pump, transferring solar energy from the tropics to northern latitudes. Destruction of the rain forest will be responsible for collapsing this energy-transfer mechanism and possibly causing a significant cooling over temperate zone countries such as Britain while causing the Amazon to heat up significantly. This alteration of the...