Anti-humanist political activists have been foaming about deforestation for decades. Several different types of activist use the same data to support their biases.

The best solution to this problem? Free contraceptives and other forms of birth control to everyone in the world. We have too many people. We aren't going to persuade them all to consume less. They will gobble up more and more habitat.

Since large chunks of our elites have decided (in a sort of madness of the intellectual crowds) that anthropogenic global warming (now renamed as Climate Change as part of that madness) is the biggest problem facing the planet they have decided that habitat loss must be seen through the lens of global warming (er, climate change).

I suspect that they are in basic agreement but have different emphases.

They can't imagine really mobilizing to stop the problem of habitat destruction unless they can shout "Climate Change!" It is not enough for them to say "Oh wait, it sure is nice to see elephants, lions, tigers, orangutans, bonobos, and lots of other species living in their native habitats and we should prevent the destruction of those habitats at the hands of human population expansion and economic growth." Nope, they need a core source of motivation that points its way back to industrial activity rather than destruction of habitats as the core evil. I think they aren't making sense.

Isn't this pretty bad even if it does not change average global temperature? Do we really need to be able to forecast a change in average global temperature in order to decide this trend is really bad? I mean, I don't need to consider the temperature effects of so much deforestation in order to decide this is bad.

Of course they think it's bad. The dispute is merely tactical. The objective in each case is to gain control of society and impose changes of some sort. They all want the same changes, but perhaps in different priority order.

There are articles from several journalists cited but no real science. They all have anecdotes to supplement the same small set of reports by government agencies and activists. But there is contradictory science.

Claims that tropical forests are declining cannot be backed up by hard evidence, according to new research from the University of Leeds.

This major challenge to conventional thinking is the surprising finding of a study published today in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences by Dr Alan Grainger, Senior Lecturer in Geography and one of the world's leading experts on tropical deforestation.

"Every few years we get a new estimate of the annual rate of tropical deforestation,” said Dr Grainger. “They always seem to show that these marvellous forests have only a short time left. Unfortunately, everybody assumes that deforestation is happening and fails to look at the bigger picture – what is happening to forest area as a whole.”

In the first attempt for many years to chart the long-term trend in tropical forest area, he spent more than three years going through all available United Nations data with a fine toothcomb – and found some serious problems.

“The errors and inconsistencies I have discovered in the area data raise too many questions to provide convincing support for the accepted picture of tropical forest decline over the last 40 years,” he said. “Scientists all over the world who have used these data to make predictions of species extinctions and the role of forests in global climate change will find it helpful to revisit their findings in the light of my study.”

Dr Grainger does not claim that tropical deforestation is not occurring, as there is plenty of local evidence for that. But owing to the lack of frequent scientific monitoring, something for which he has campaigned for 25 years, we cannot use available data to track the long-term global trend in tropical forest area with great accuracy.

“The picture is far more complicated than previously thought,” he said. “If there is no long-term net decline it suggests that deforestation is being accompanied by a lot of natural reforestation that we have not spotted.”

Grainger notes errors in reports and offers some explanations about how they arise while advocating improved monitoring systems. What makes the task difficult is that it's easier to notice areas recently cut than subsequent regrowth. Deforestation is dramatic and sudden, reforestation is undramatic and slow.

Given the exceedingly poor record of those claiming deforestation - journalists, activists, politicians, UN - Grainger's work deserves attention. There have been some related studies in Africa that debunked deforestation claims there, finding instead that human assisted forest encroachment on grasslands was the trend.

I think there's a lot more to be said on this subject. As with climate change the subject is so politicized and emotional that researchers avoid the subject and keep quiet to avoid career death. It will be a long, slow process to gain useful understandings.

Update:

See a related post, Mystified Obscurity, for further discussion and references of problems with the prevailing deforestation narrative. As that post notes:

See Webs of power: forest loss in Guinea by James Fairhead and Melissa Leach for more detail.