One consequence of destroying tropical forests

Some Christians claim we have dominion over God's creation and we do can with it as we see fit. If we destroy or drastically change something, they honestly believe that God will fix their mess and there will be no consequences. It is infantile spiritual belief and practice.

In the real world, everything has a function and destruction will have consequences. Consider tropical forests, sometimes called rain forests. Scientists at the University of Leeds examined moisture produced from air masses in tropical regions. They found that fronts passing over forests produced twice as much rainfall as air masses over land with sparse vegetation.

We find that for more than 60 per cent of the tropical land surface (latitudes 30 degrees south to 30 degrees north), air that has passed over extensive vegetation in the preceding few days produces at least twice as much rain as air that has passed over little vegetation.

Based on measurements of the relationship between tropical forests and regional rainfall, the researchers were able to estimate the impact of continued deforestation of tropical forests in the Amazon basin watershed.

We combine these empirical relationships with current trends of Amazonian deforestation to estimate reductions of 12 and 21 per cent in wet-season and dry-season precipitation respectively across the Amazon basin by 2050, due to less-efficient moisture recycling.

The push to clear tropical forests is coming largely from industrial agriculture companies looking to expand production of soybeans, cattle, and palm oil. The irony is the impact on rainfall from clearing the tropical forests will make these agricultural activities inefficient and expensive as they rapidly deplete groundwater.

Greed has consequences. Unfortunately, the greedy typically keep the profits and pass the suffering on to everyone else.