Amazon: Smoker's Lungs Of Planet

Correction: For the correct story see "Stop Global Whining," above.

The Amazon. The lungs of the Earth. Save the Rainforest. Join the Rainforest Action Network and save the planet! All a pleasing mantra not just to eco-whackos, but to school kids and mainstreamers as well.

Now the LATimes, know for weepy-green reporting, writes that it ain't necessarily so. Like all eco-myths, this one is just more smoke and mirrors:

Ever since saving the Amazon became a fashionable cause in the 1980s, championed by Madonna, Sting and other celebrities, the jungle has consistently been likened to an enormous recycling plant that slurps up carbon dioxide and pumps out oxygen for us all to breathe, from Los Angeles to London to Lusaka.

Think again, scientists say.

Far from cleaning up the atmosphere, the Amazon is now a major source for pollution. Rampant burning and deforestation, mostly at the hands of illegal loggers and of ranchers, release hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the skies each year.

Brazil now ranks as one of the world's leading producers of greenhouse gases, thanks in large part to the Amazon, the source for up to two-thirds of the country's emissions.

Read the entire article here.