James Stewart
speaker
3,838 appearances
20 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 3 Sep
James Stewart’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 15 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 2.
Appearances
The Amazon can be wild and historical at the same time.
And in a cruel twist of irony, all of that carbon that the soil locks in is the very thing that's most under threat.
The Amazon holds roughly 150 to 200 billion metric tons of carbon in its forests and in its soils, an amount comparable to the last four to five years worth of global CO2 emissions.
Intact Amazon forests work as carbon sinks, helping reduce the impact of emissions on our atmosphere.
But that sink has weakened.
And in 2019, parts of the Amazon actually released more carbon than they absorbed.
This means that if the Amazon continues to shrink or indeed was lost entirely, the impact would be catastrophic, essentially releasing in the order of hundreds of billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere and dramatically altering regional and international climates.
Recent data shows Amazon deforestation soared to more than 10,000 km2 per year between 2019 and 2021, before enforced efforts to drive it down again in 2023 to 2025.
Severe wildfires in drought years have also released large amounts of carbon.
For example, satellite-based measurements found Amazonia emitted between 28 and 62 billion kilograms of carbon monoxide in 2024 from wildfires alone, approximately four times the average.
These trends underline that the Amazon's carbon bank account is being depleted, increasing risks of future climate impacts if not urgently addressed.
Which raises one big question, doesn't it?
What does the future look like?
So far, we've only really covered the ancient hidden human elements in this gargantuan rainforest.
But what about what else might live there?
The Amazon's biodiversity is so rich, it feels almost endless.
One in 10 known species on earth lives here.
But how many more species are out there that no one's cataloged yet?
I wish I could give you a nice round number to go off and continue your day with, but the answer is actually way more exciting.
Well, at least to me anyway.
Showing 2121–2140 of 3,838 · page 107 of 192
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