# Say Amazon rainforest completely burns away, do we suffocate? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 23, 2019, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/say-amazon-rainforest-completely-burns-away-do-we-suffocate/839117 "2019-08-23T16:44:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/say-amazon-rainforest-completely-burns-away-do-we-suffocate/839117/41 "2019-08-28T00:23:11Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Most of the value of those species is to those species. So to hell with them. Em… Aren’t most new drugs derived from plant species? ---
**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/say-amazon-rainforest-completely-burns-away-do-we-suffocate/839117/42 "2019-08-28T00:58:22Z")
If the entire Amazon Rainforest burned down in let’s say a week, wouldn’t any loss of oxygen, if it caused some sudden change just resolve itself via some “local event” if a bunch of organisms just dropped dead and then some sort of global correction or equilibrium take place? I’m not saying that would be a good outcome I’m just wondering if it happened really suddenly. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/say-amazon-rainforest-completely-burns-away-do-we-suffocate/839117/43 "2019-08-28T01:01:16Z")
Yes, the environment would change in response and reach some new equilibrium, but the change in response wouldn’t just be a “local event”, and the new equilibrium would probably be unfavorable to a lot of species including us. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/say-amazon-rainforest-completely-burns-away-do-we-suffocate/839117/44 "2019-08-28T02:32:56Z")
> [@MarvinKitFox](#): > > The african rainforest is twice as large, The Amazon has by far the largest area of tropical moist forest in the World. Africa has the smallest area of tropical moist forest of the main regions (America, Africa, and Southeast Asia/New Guinea). ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/say-amazon-rainforest-completely-burns-away-do-we-suffocate/839117/45 "2019-08-28T08:29:27Z")
Just to reinforce my earlier point, the total mass of the biosphere is about 4 exagrams (4000 petagrams, 4 million teragrams, 4 trillion tonnes etc). This includes soil bacteria and so on. The total mass of the oxygen in the air is 1200 exagrams, 1.2 quadrillion tonnes. Even if the biosphere were made of pure carbon, we would only remove about a third of a percent of the oxygen in the air by burning it all. Of course burning all that carbon would raise the level of greenhouse gases beyond the danger level, but we wouldn’t care, since we would be part of the carbonised biosphere anyway. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/say-amazon-rainforest-completely-burns-away-do-we-suffocate/839117.md?page=2)