WEBVTT

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What do you guys think?

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For those who watched
Sir Ken's memorable TED Talk,

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I am a typical example 
of what he describes

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as "the body as a form
of transport for the head,"

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a university professor, right?

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You might think it was not fair

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that I've been lined up to speak
after these first two talks

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to speak about science.

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I can't move my body to the beat,

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and after a scientist
who became a philosopher,

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I have to talk about hard science.

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It could be a very dry subject.

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Yet, I feel honored.

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Never in my career,

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and it's been a long career,

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have I had the opportunity to start a talk

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feeling so inspired, like this one.

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Usually, talking about science

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is like exercising in a dry place.

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However, I've had the pleasure

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of being invited to come here
to talk about water.

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The words "water" and "dry"
do not match, right?

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It is even better to talk about
water in the Amazon,

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which is the splendid cradle 
of life, right? Fresh life.

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So, this is what inspired me.

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That's why I'm here,
although I'm carrying

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my head over here, sort of,

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I am trying, or will try to convey
this inspiration.

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I hope this story will inspire you
and that you'll spread the word.

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We know that there is controversy.

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The Amazon is the "lung of the world,"

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because of its massive power
to have vital gases exchanged

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between the forest and the atmosphere.

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We also hear about
the storehouse of biodiversity.

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While many believe it,

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few know it.

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If you go out there, in this marsh,

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you'll be amazed at the...

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You can barely see the animals.

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The Indians say, "The forest
has more eyes than leaves."

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That is true, and I will try
to show you something.

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But today, I'm going to use
a different approach,

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one that, inspired by these
two initiatives here,

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a harmonic one and a philosophical one,

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I'll try to use an approach
that's slightly materialistic,

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but it also attempts to convey
that, in nature, there is

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extraordinary philosophy and harmony.

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There'll be no music in my presentation,

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but I hope you'll all notice the music
of the reality I'm going to show you.

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I'm going to talk about physiology --
not about lungs,

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but other analogies with human physiology,

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especially the heart.

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We'll start...

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by thinking that water is like blood.

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The circulation in our body
distributes fresh blood,

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which feeds, nurtures, and supports us,

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and brings the used blood back
to be renewed.

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In the Amazon, things happen similarly.

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We'll start by talking about
the power of all these processes.

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This is an image

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of rain in motion.

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What you see there
is the years passing in seconds.

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Rains all over the world.
What do you see?

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The equatorial region, in general,

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and the Amazon specifically,

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is extremely important
for the world's climate.

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It's a powerful engine.

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There is an frantic evaporation
taking place here.

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If we take a look at this other image,

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which shows the water vapor flow...

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you have dry air in black,
moist air in grey,

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and clouds in white.

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What you see there is an extraordinary
resurgence in the Amazon.

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What phenomenon -- if it's not a desert,

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what phenomenon makes water
gush from the ground into the atmosphere

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with such power 
that it can be seen from space?

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What phenomenon is this?

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It could be a geyser.

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A geyser is underground water
heated by magma,

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exploding into the atmosphere

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and transferring this water 
into the atmosphere.

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There are no geysers in the Amazon,
unless I am wrong.

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I don't know of any.

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But we have something
that plays the same role,

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with much more elegance though:

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the trees, our good old friends,

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that, like geysers,

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can transfer an enormous amount of water
from the ground into the atmosphere.

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There are 600 billion trees
in the Amazon forest, 600 billion geysers.

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That is done with
an extraordinary sophistication.

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They don't need the heat of magma.

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They use sunlight to do this process.

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So, in a typical sunny day in the Amazon,

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a big tree manages
to transfer 1,000 liters of water

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through its transpiration.

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1000 liters.

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If we take all the Amazon,

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which is a very large area,

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and add it up to all that water
that is released by transpiration,

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which is the sweat of the forest,

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we'll get to an incredible number:

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20 billion metric tons of water.

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You know, in one day.

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Do you know how much that is?

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The Amazon River,
the largest river on Earth,

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one fifth of all the fresh water

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that leaves the continents of the
whole world and ends up in the oceans,

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dumps 17 billion metric tons
of water a day in the Atlantic Ocean.

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This river of vapor

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that comes up from the forest
and goes into the atmosphere

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is greater than the Amazon River.

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Just to give you an idea.

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If we could take a gigantic kettle,

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the kind you could plug into
a power socket, an electric one,

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and put those 20 billion
metric tons of water in it,

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how much power would you need
to have this water evaporated?

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Any idea? A really big kettle.

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A gigantic kettle, right?

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50 thousand Itaipus.

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Itaipu is still the largest
hydroelectric plant in the world.

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and Brazil is very proud of it

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because it provides
more than 30% of the power

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that is consumed in Brazil.

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And the Amazon is here,
doing this for free.

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It's a vivid and extremely powerful plant,
providing environmental services.

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Related to this subject,

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we are going to talk about
what I call the “Paradox of Chance”,

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which is curious.

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If you look at the world map --

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it's easy to see this --

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you'll see that there are forests
in the equatorial zone,

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and deserts are organized
at 30º north latitude,

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30º south latitude, aligned.

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Look over there, in the southern
hemisphere, the Atacama;

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Namibia and Kalahari in Africa;
the Australian desert.

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In the northern hemisphere,
the Sahara, Sonoma, etc.

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There is an exception, and it's curious:

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It's the quadrangle that ranges from
Cuiabá to Buenos Aires,

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and from São Paulo to the Andes.

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This quadrangle
was supposed to be a desert.

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It's on the line of deserts.

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Why isn't it? That's why
I call it the “Paradox of Chance”.

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What do we have in South America
that is different?

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If we could use the analogy

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of the blood circulating in our bodies,

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like the water
circulating in the landscape,

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we see that rivers are veins,

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they drain the landscape,
they drain the tissue of nature.

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Where are the arteries?

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Any guess?

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What takes...

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How does water get to irrigate
the tissues of nature

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and bring everything back through rivers?

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There is a new type of river,

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which originates in the blue sea,

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which flows through the green ocean --

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it not only flows, but it is also
pumped by the green ocean --

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and then it falls on our land.

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All our economy, that quadrangle,

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70% of South America's GDP
comes from that area.

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It depends on this river.

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This river flows invisibly above us.

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We are floating here
on this floating hotel,

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on one of the largest rivers on Earth,
the Negro River.

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It's a bit dry and rough,
but we are floating here,

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and there is this
invisible river running above us.

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This river has a pulse.

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Here it is, pulsing.

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That's why we also talk about the heart.

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You can see the different seasons there.

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There's the rainy season... In the Amazon,
we used to have two seasons,

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the humid season
and the even more humid season.

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Now we have a dry season.

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You can see the river covering that region

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which, otherwise, would be a desert.
And it is not.

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We, scientists...
You see that I'm struggling here

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to take my head
from one side to the other.

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Scientists study how it works, why, etc.

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and these studies
are generating a series of discoveries,

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which are absolutely fabulous,

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to raise our awareness of the wealth,

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the complexity,
and the wonder that we have,

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the symphony we have in this process.

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One of them is: How is rain formed?

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Above the Amazon, there is clean air,

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as there is clean air above the ocean.

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The blue sea has clean air above it
and forms pretty few clouds;

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there's almost no rain there.

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The green ocean has the same clean air,
but forms a lot of rain.

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What is happening here that is different?

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The forest emits smells,

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and these smells are condensation nuclei,

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which form drops in the atmosphere.

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Then, clouds are formed
and there is torrential rain.

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The sprinkler of the Garden of Eden.

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This relation between a living thing,
which is the forest,

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and a non-living thing,
which is the atmosphere,

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is ingenious in the Amazon,

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because the forest provides
water and seeds,

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and the atmosphere forms the rain
and gives water back,

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guaranteeing the forest's survival.

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There are other factors as well.

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We've talked a little about the heart,

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and let's now talk about
another function: the liver!

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When humid air, high humidity
and radiation are combined

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with this organic material,

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which I call “exogenous vitamin C”,
generous vitamin C in the form of gas,

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the plants release antioxidants

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which react with pollutants.

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You can rest assured

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that you are breathing the purest air
on Earth, here in the Amazon,

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because the plants take care
of this characteristic as well.

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This benefits the way plants work,

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which is another ingenious cycle.

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Speaking of fractals,

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and their relation with the way we work,

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we can establish other comparisons.

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As in the upper airways of our lungs,

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the air in the Amazon
gets clean up from the excess of dust.

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The dust in the air that we breathe
is cleaned by our airways.

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This keeps the excess of dust
from affecting the rainfall.

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When there are fires in the Amazon,

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the smoke stops the rain, 
it stops raining,

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the forest dries up and catches fire.

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There is another fractal analogy.

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Like the in veins and arteries,

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the rain water is a feedback.

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It returns to the atmosphere.

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Like endocrinal glands and hormones,

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there are those gases
which I told you about before,

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that are formed and released
into the atmosphere, like hormones,

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which help in the formation of rain.

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Like the liver and the kidneys,
as I've said: cleaning the air.

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And, finally, like the heart:

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pumping water from outside, from the sea,

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into the forest.

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We call it "The Biotic Moisture Pump,"

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a new theory that is explained
in a very simple way.

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If there is a desert in the continent

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with a nearby sea,

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evaporation's greater on the sea,

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and it sucks the air above the desert.

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The desert is trapped in this condition.
It will always be dry.

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If you have
the opposite situation, a forest,

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the evaporation, as we showed,
is much greater, because of the trees,

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and this cycle is reversed.

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The air above the sea
is sucked into the continent

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and humidity is imported.

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This satellite image
was taken one month ago --

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that's Manaus down there,
we're down there --

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and it shows this process.

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It's not a common little river,
that flows into a canal.

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It's a mighty river
that irrigates South America,

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among other things.

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This image shows those paths,

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all the hurricanes
that have been recorded.

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You can see that, in the red square,
there hardly are any hurricanes.

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This is no accident.

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This pump that sucks
the moisture into the continent

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also speeds up the air above the sea,

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and this prevents hurricane formations.

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To close this part and summing up,

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I'd like to talk about
something a little different.

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I have several colleagues

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who worked in the development
of these theories.

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They think, and so do I,

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that we can save planet Earth.

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I'm not talking only about the Amazon.

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The Amazon teaches us a lesson

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on how pristine nature works.

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We didn't understand
these processes before

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because the rest of the world
is messed up.

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We could understand it here, though.

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These colleagues propose
that, yes, we can,

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save other areas,

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including deserts.

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If we could establish forests
in those other areas,

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we can reverse climate change,

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including global warming.

00:14:10.324 --> 00:14:12.540
I have a dear colleague in India,

00:14:12.540 --> 00:14:15.614
whose name's Suprabha Seshan,
and she has a motto.

00:14:15.614 --> 00:14:20.248
Her motto is,
"Gardening back the biosphere",

00:14:20.248 --> 00:14:22.286
"Reajardinando a biosfera", in Portuguese.

00:14:22.286 --> 00:14:25.284
She does wonderful job
rebuilding ecosystems.

00:14:25.284 --> 00:14:27.851
We need to do this.

00:14:27.851 --> 00:14:32.036
Having closed this quick introduction,

00:14:32.036 --> 00:14:35.622
we see the reality that we have out here,

00:14:35.622 --> 00:14:38.632
which is drought, this climate change,

00:14:38.632 --> 00:14:40.515
things that we already knew.

00:14:40.515 --> 00:14:43.499
I'd like to tell you a short story.

00:14:44.649 --> 00:14:48.282
Once, about four years ago,

00:14:48.282 --> 00:14:52.169
I attended a declamation,
of a text by Davi Copenaua,

00:14:52.169 --> 00:14:55.267
a wise representative
of the Ianomâmi people,

00:14:55.267 --> 00:14:57.462
and it went more or less like this:

00:14:57.462 --> 00:15:00.087
"Doesn't the white man know

00:15:00.087 --> 00:15:03.478
that, if he destroys the forest,
there will be no more rain?

00:15:03.478 --> 00:15:06.591
And that, if there's no more rain,
there'll be no drinking water,

00:15:06.591 --> 00:15:08.464
or food?

00:15:08.464 --> 00:15:11.145
I heard that and my eyes welled up

00:15:11.145 --> 00:15:12.588
and I went, "Oh, my!

00:15:12.588 --> 00:15:16.464
I've been studying this for 20 years,
with a super computer,

00:15:16.904 --> 00:15:19.034
dozens, thousands of scientists,

00:15:19.034 --> 00:15:22.712
and we are starting to get to this
conclusion, which he already knows!

00:15:22.712 --> 00:15:27.746
A critical point is the Ianomâmi
have never deforested.

00:15:27.746 --> 00:15:30.385
How could they know the rain would end?

00:15:30.385 --> 00:15:34.327
This bugged me and I was befuddled.

00:15:34.327 --> 00:15:35.773
How could he know that?

00:15:35.773 --> 00:15:39.536
Some months later,
I met him at another event and said,

00:15:39.536 --> 00:15:45.342
"Davi, how did you know that if the forest
was destroyed, there'd be no more rain?"

00:15:45.342 --> 00:15:50.157
He replied:
"The spirit of the forest told us."

00:15:50.157 --> 00:15:54.744
For me, this was a game changer,

00:15:54.744 --> 00:15:56.447
a radical change.

00:15:56.447 --> 00:15:57.866
I said: "Gosh!

00:15:57.866 --> 00:16:02.105
Why am I doing all this science,

00:16:02.105 --> 00:16:05.167
to get to a conclusion
that he already knows?"

00:16:05.167 --> 00:16:11.174
Then, something 
absolutely critical hit me,

00:16:11.174 --> 00:16:13.127
which is...

00:16:15.697 --> 00:16:19.072
seeing is believing.

00:16:19.932 --> 00:16:23.140
"Out of sight, out of [mind]." Right?

00:16:23.140 --> 00:16:27.928
This is a need the previous speaker
pointed out:

00:16:27.928 --> 00:16:30.712
We need to see things --

00:16:30.712 --> 00:16:32.900
I mean, we, western society,

00:16:32.900 --> 00:16:35.262
which is becoming global, civilized --

00:16:35.262 --> 00:16:36.665
we need to see.

00:16:36.665 --> 00:16:39.188
If we don't see,
we don't register the information.

00:16:39.188 --> 00:16:40.932
We live in ignorance.

00:16:40.932 --> 00:16:42.822
So, I make this proposal --

00:16:42.822 --> 00:16:45.274
of course, the astronomers
wouldn't like the idea --

00:16:45.274 --> 00:16:48.130
but let's turn the Hubble telescope
upside down.

00:16:48.130 --> 00:16:50.547
And let's make it look down here,

00:16:50.547 --> 00:16:52.797
rather than to the far reaches
of the universe.

00:16:52.797 --> 00:16:54.539
The universe is wonderful,

00:16:54.539 --> 00:16:56.914
but we have a practical reality,

00:16:56.914 --> 00:17:00.734
which is we live in an unknown cosmos,

00:17:00.734 --> 00:17:02.117
and we're ignorant about it.

00:17:02.117 --> 00:17:05.787
We're trampling on this wonderful cosmos

00:17:05.787 --> 00:17:07.826
that shelters us and houses us.

00:17:07.826 --> 00:17:09.492
Talk to any astrophysicist.

00:17:09.492 --> 00:17:12.778
The Earth is a statistical improbability.

00:17:12.778 --> 00:17:16.976
The stability and comfort that we enjoy,
despite the droughts of the Negro River,

00:17:16.976 --> 00:17:19.939
and all the heat, and cold,
and typhoons, etc.,

00:17:19.939 --> 00:17:22.673
there is nothing like it in the universe,
that we know of.

00:17:22.673 --> 00:17:24.922
Then, let's turn Hubble in our direction,

00:17:24.922 --> 00:17:28.951
and let's look at the Earth.

00:17:29.431 --> 00:17:31.541
Let's start with the Amazon!

00:17:31.541 --> 00:17:32.920
Let's dive,

00:17:32.920 --> 00:17:37.466
let's reach out the reality
we live in every day,

00:17:37.466 --> 00:17:40.693
and look carefully at it,
since that's what we need.

00:17:40.693 --> 00:17:42.624
Davi Copenaua doesn't need this.

00:17:42.624 --> 00:17:44.773
He has something already
that I think I missed.

00:17:44.773 --> 00:17:46.678
I was educated by television.

00:17:46.678 --> 00:17:48.589
I think that I missed this,

00:17:48.589 --> 00:17:50.484
an ancestral record,

00:17:50.484 --> 00:17:54.864
a valuation of what I don't know,
what I haven't seen.

00:17:54.864 --> 00:17:56.986
He is no "doubting Thomas."

00:17:56.986 --> 00:18:00.192
He believes, 
with veneration and reverence,

00:18:00.192 --> 00:18:03.563
in what his ancestors
and the spirits taught him.

00:18:03.563 --> 00:18:06.337
We can't do it,
so let's look into the forest.

00:18:06.337 --> 00:18:09.543
Even with Hubble up there --

00:18:09.543 --> 00:18:11.888
this is a birds'-eye view, right?

00:18:11.888 --> 00:18:13.758
Even when this happens,

00:18:13.758 --> 00:18:16.862
we also see something that we don't know.

00:18:16.862 --> 00:18:19.148
The Spanish called it "the green inferno."

00:18:19.148 --> 00:18:22.018
If you go out there,
and go into the bushes, and get lost,

00:18:22.018 --> 00:18:24.256
and, let's say, if you head west,

00:18:24.256 --> 00:18:26.225
it's 550 miles to Colombia,

00:18:26.225 --> 00:18:28.162
and another 600 miles to somewhere else.

00:18:28.162 --> 00:18:31.309
So, you can figure out
why they called it the green inferno.

00:18:31.309 --> 00:18:34.563
But go and look at what is in there.

00:18:34.563 --> 00:18:36.054
It is a live carpet.

00:18:36.054 --> 00:18:38.350
Each color you see is a tree species.

00:18:38.350 --> 00:18:40.135
Each tree, each tree top,

00:18:40.135 --> 00:18:44.691
has up to 10,000 species of insects on it,

00:18:44.691 --> 00:18:48.749
let alone the millions of species
of fungi, bacteria, etc.

00:18:48.749 --> 00:18:50.401
All invisible.

00:18:50.401 --> 00:18:53.645
All of it is an even stranger cosmos to us

00:18:53.645 --> 00:18:56.554
than the galaxies billions
of light years away from the Earth,

00:18:56.554 --> 00:18:59.983
which Hubble brings
to our newspapers everyday.

00:19:00.983 --> 00:19:02.853
I'm going to end my talk here --

00:19:02.853 --> 00:19:04.664
I have a few seconds left --

00:19:04.664 --> 00:19:06.708
by showing you this wonderful being.

00:19:06.708 --> 00:19:09.596
When we see the Morpho butterfly
in the forest,

00:19:09.596 --> 00:19:12.431
we feel like someone's left
the door to heaven open,

00:19:12.431 --> 00:19:15.632
and this creature escaped from there,
because it's so beautiful.

00:19:15.632 --> 00:19:18.017
However, I cannot close

00:19:18.017 --> 00:19:20.548
without showing you a tech side.

00:19:20.548 --> 00:19:23.758
We are tech-arrogant.

00:19:23.758 --> 00:19:27.049
We deprive nature of its technology.

00:19:27.049 --> 00:19:28.773
A robotic hand is technological,

00:19:28.773 --> 00:19:30.150
mine is biological,

00:19:30.150 --> 00:19:31.913
and we don't think about it anymore.

00:19:31.913 --> 00:19:34.015
Let's then look at the Morpho butterfly,

00:19:34.015 --> 00:19:39.456
an example of an invisible
technological competence of life,

00:19:39.456 --> 00:19:44.083
which is at the very heart of our
possibility of surviving on this planet,

00:19:44.083 --> 00:19:46.348
and let's zoom in on it.
Again, Hubble is there.

00:19:46.348 --> 00:19:48.262
Let's get into the butterfly's wings.

00:19:48.262 --> 00:19:52.465
Scholars have tried to explain:
Why is it blue?

00:19:52.465 --> 00:19:53.935
Let's zoom in on it.

00:19:53.935 --> 00:19:59.011
What you see is that the architecture
of the invisible humiliates

00:19:59.011 --> 00:20:02.043
the best architects in the world.

00:20:02.043 --> 00:20:04.440
All of this on a tiny scale.

00:20:04.440 --> 00:20:07.968
Besides its beauty and functioning,
there is another side to it.

00:20:07.968 --> 00:20:10.836
In nature,

00:20:10.836 --> 00:20:14.529
all that is organized in extraordinary
structures has a function.

00:20:14.529 --> 00:20:19.019
This function, of the Morpho butterfly --
it is not blue,

00:20:19.019 --> 00:20:20.673
it does not have blue pigments.

00:20:20.673 --> 00:20:24.717
It has photonic crystals on its surface --
according to people who studied it --

00:20:24.717 --> 00:20:26.748
which are extremely 
sophisticated crystals.

00:20:26.748 --> 00:20:30.427
Our technology had
nothing like that at the time.

00:20:30.427 --> 00:20:33.208
Hitachi has now made a monitor

00:20:33.208 --> 00:20:34.563
that uses this technology,

00:20:34.563 --> 00:20:36.940
and it is used in optical fibers
to transmit...

00:20:36.940 --> 00:20:41.350
Janine Banes, who's been here several
times, talks about it: Biomimetics.

00:20:41.350 --> 00:20:42.702
My time's up.

00:20:42.702 --> 00:20:48.012
Then, I'll wrap it up with
what is at the base of this capacity,

00:20:48.012 --> 00:20:50.584
of this competence of biodiversity,

00:20:50.584 --> 00:20:53.006
producing all these wonderful services:

00:20:53.006 --> 00:20:54.913
The living cell.

00:20:54.913 --> 00:20:58.427
It is a structure with a few microns,
which is an internal wonder.

00:20:58.427 --> 00:21:01.454
There are TED talks about it,
I won't talk much longer,

00:21:01.454 --> 00:21:04.628
but each person in this room,
including myself,

00:21:04.628 --> 00:21:08.319
has 100 trillions of these
micromachines in their body,

00:21:08.319 --> 00:21:11.159
so that we can enjoy this well-being.

00:21:11.159 --> 00:21:13.916
Imagine what is out there
in the Amazon forest.

00:21:13.916 --> 00:21:17.927
100 trillions. This is greater
than the number of stars in the sky.

00:21:17.927 --> 00:21:19.985
And we are not aware of it.

00:21:19.985 --> 00:21:21.869
Thank you so much. (Applause)