My point was he hasn't cited that research - if it is concluded ? published? reviewed?
He seems to be just having a technical rant about a contextual phrase while giving the impression that forests in general, or at least the amazon or equatorial forests do not help maintain the atmospheres oxygen content. That would certainly be a maveric proposition at this stage in Earth sciences.
I am far more willing to take the word of an established and respected expert who understand the subject mater than a random internet person with a poorly contextualized citation. You can find the author's published papers on this and related subjects quite easily at the top of the article.
> He seems to be just having a technical rant about a contextual phrase while giving the impression that forests in general, or at least the amazon or equatorial forests do not help maintain the atmospheres oxygen content. That would certainly be a maverick proposition at this stage in Earth sciences.
He is a scientist clarifying a technical subject that has been being misconstrued. There has already been plenty of damage done by people throwing around fake facts and pictures.
Here is a recent work[1] which substantiates matters that Amazons practical involvement in the planets atmospheric oxygen/carbon levels is really not as the professor felt like putting it as "effectively zero".
> Abstract: The response of the Earth’s land surface to increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 and a changing climate provide important feedbacks on future greenhouse warming6,7. One of the largest ecosystem carbon pools on Earth is the Amazon forest, storing around 150–200 Pg C in living biomass and soils8. Earlier studies based on forest inventories in the Amazon Basin showed the tropical forest here to be acting as a strong carbon sink with an estimated annual uptake of 0.42–0.65 Pg C yr−1 for 1990–2007, around 25% of the residual terrestrial carbon sink3,4. There is, however, substantial uncertainty as to how the Amazon forest will respond to future climatic and atmospheric composition changes. .... Here we analyse the longest and largest spatially distributed time series of forest dynamics for tropical South America. .... Our data show that mature forests continued to act as a biomass sink from 1983 to 2011.5, but also reveal a long-term decline in the net rate of biomass increase throughout the census period. The decline in net biomass change is due to a strong long-term increase in mortality rates, and occurred despite a long-term increase in productivity. While mortality increased throughout the period, productivity increases have recently stalled showing no significant trend since 2000. ....
[1]https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14283
Published in Nature: 18 March 2015 : "Long-term decline of the Amazon carbon sink"
I couldn't agree more. A bunch of people are coming away from reading that article believing that forests have no impact on global carbon sequestration and oxygen production. In attempting to make a contrarian technical point and refute mass media figures, the author has done a disservice to furthering public understanding of the issue.
Sure, a mature forest can come into equilibrium with regard to carbon/oxygen production and consumption. A forest could even be a net contributor of atmospheric carbon by means of an insect or fungus overpopulation. However:
1. Studies show that's not true for the Amazon rainforest (annually it is still a carbon sink).
2. Over the lifetime of the forest the effect is clearly a massive gain in oxygen and massive sequestration of carbon as evidenced by all the biomass (e.g., trees) and dirt you find in forests.
Why are you still conflating O2 and CO2?
Edit: You do realize that "Y. Malhi", one of that authors of that paper, is the same "YADVINDER MALHI" who wrote this blog post.
