The magic of the Amazon: A river that flows invisibly all around us
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0:00 - 0:02What do you guys think?
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0:03 - 0:07For those who watched
Shere Khan's memorable TED talk, -
0:07 - 0:10I am a typical example
of what he describes -
0:10 - 0:13as "a body carrying a head,"
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0:13 - 0:16a university professor, right?
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0:16 - 0:19You might think it was not fair
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0:19 - 0:22that I've been lined up to speak
after these first two talks -
0:22 - 0:24to talk about science.
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0:25 - 0:28I can't move my body to the beat,
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0:28 - 0:31and after a scientist
who became a philosopher, -
0:31 - 0:33I have to talk about hard science.
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0:33 - 0:36It could be a very dry subject.
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0:36 - 0:40Yet, I feel honored.
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0:40 - 0:41Never in my career,
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0:41 - 0:43and it's been a long career,
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0:43 - 0:45have I had the opportunity to start a talk
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0:45 - 0:48feeling so inspired.
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0:48 - 0:52Usually, talking about science
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0:52 - 0:55is like exercising in a dry place.
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0:55 - 0:56However, I've had the pleasure
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0:56 - 1:00of being invited to come here
and talk about water. -
1:00 - 1:03The words "water" and "dry"
don't match, right? -
1:04 - 1:07Even better, to talk about water
in the Amazon, -
1:07 - 1:11which is the splendid cradle
of life, right? Fresh life. -
1:11 - 1:16So, this is what inspired me.
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1:16 - 1:18That's why I'm here,
although I'm carrying -
1:18 - 1:20my head over here, sort of,
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1:20 - 1:22I am trying, or will try to convey
this inspiration. -
1:26 - 1:30I hope this story will inspire you
and that you'll spread the word. -
1:31 - 1:36We know that there is controversy.
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1:36 - 1:38The Amazon is the lungs of the world, right?
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1:39 - 1:44Because of its massive power to exchange vital gases,
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1:44 - 1:46between the forest and the atmosphere.
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1:46 - 1:50We also hear about the storehouse of biodiversity,
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1:50 - 1:55although many believe it, few know of it.
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1:55 - 1:56If go through this riverbank outside
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1:56 - 1:58you will marvel at the...
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1:58 - 2:02you can barely see the animals.
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2:02 - 2:04The Indians say that the forest has more eyes than leaves.
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2:04 - 2:08This is true and I will try to show you something.
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2:08 - 2:11But today I'm going to use a different approach,
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2:11 - 2:14an approach that, inspired by these two initiatives here,
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2:14 - 2:17a harmonic and a philosophical one,
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2:17 - 2:20I will try to use an approach
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2:20 - 2:24that is slightly materialistic,
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2:24 - 2:27but it attempts to convey that there is also, in nature,
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2:27 - 2:30an extraordinary philosophy and harmony.
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2:30 - 2:32There will be no music in my presentation,
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2:32 - 2:36but I hope that all of you will notice the music of the reality I'm going to show you.
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2:36 - 2:39I'm going to discuss physiology, not of the lung,
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2:39 - 2:43but other analogies with human physiology,
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2:43 - 2:45especially the heart.
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2:45 - 2:47We start by thinking that water is like blood.
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2:49 - 2:54The circulation in our body distributes fresh blood,
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2:54 - 2:59which feeds, nurtures, and supports us,
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2:59 - 3:02and brings the used blood back to be renewed.
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3:02 - 3:06In the Amazon, things happen similarly.
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3:06 - 3:11We'll start talking about the power of all these processes.
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3:11 - 3:16This is an image of rain in motion.
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3:16 - 3:20What you can see there are the years passing at every second.
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3:20 - 3:23The rains all over the world. What do you see?
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3:23 - 3:27The equatorial region, in general,
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3:27 - 3:30and the Amazon specifically,
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3:30 - 3:32is extremely important for the world climate.
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3:32 - 3:34It's a powerful engine.
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3:34 - 3:37There is an intense evaporation taking place here.
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3:37 - 3:39If we take a look at this other image
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3:39 - 3:44that shows the water vapor flux...
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3:44 - 3:47in black you have dry air, in grey, moist air,
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3:47 - 3:50the clouds are white.
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3:50 - 3:53What you see there is an extraordinary resurgence in the Amazon.
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3:53 - 3:54What phenomenon, if it's not a desert,
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3:54 - 4:00what phenomenon makes the water gush from the ground into the atmosphere
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4:00 - 4:02with such power that we can see from space?
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4:02 - 4:07What phenomenon is this?
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4:07 - 4:10It could be a geyser.
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4:10 - 4:12A geyser is underground water heated by the magma
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4:12 - 4:15that explodes in the atmosphere,
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4:15 - 4:19and transfers this water to the atmosphere.
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4:19 - 4:20We don't have geysers in the Amazon,
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4:20 - 4:24unless I am wrong, I don't know of any.
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4:24 - 4:27However, we have something that has the same role,
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4:27 - 4:29with much more elegance,
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4:29 - 4:33our good old friends, the trees
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4:33 - 4:36that, like geysers,
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4:36 - 4:39transfer an enormous amount of water from the ground to the atmosphere.
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4:39 - 4:42There are 600 billion trees in the Amazon forest, 600 billion geysers.
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4:42 - 4:47This is done with an extraordinary sophistication,
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4:47 - 4:53they don't need the heat of the magma.
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4:53 - 4:57They use the sunlight to do this process.
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4:57 - 4:58So, in a day, a typical sunny day in the Amazon,
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4:58 - 5:01a big tree manages to transfer 1000 L of water
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5:01 - 5:05by its transpiration.
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5:05 - 5:081000 L!
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5:08 - 5:10If you take all the water from the Amazon,
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5:10 - 5:11which is a very large area,
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5:11 - 5:17and add up all this water that is released by transpiration,
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5:17 - 5:19which is the sweat of the forest,
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5:19 - 5:22you arrive at an incredible number,
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5:22 - 5:2420 billion metric tons of water.
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5:24 - 5:27You know, this is in a day.
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5:27 - 5:30Do you know how much that is?
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5:30 - 5:31The Amazon River, the largest river on Earth,
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5:31 - 5:34one fifth of all the fresh water
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5:34 - 5:36that leaves the continents of the whole world ends up in the oceans,
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5:36 - 5:38it dumps 17 billion tons of water a day in the Atlantic Ocean.
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5:38 - 5:41This river of vapor
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5:41 - 5:46that comes from the forest and goes to the atmosphere,
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5:46 - 5:47is greater than the Amazon River.
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5:47 - 5:50Just to give you an idea,
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5:50 - 5:51if we could take a gigantic kettle,
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5:51 - 5:53one that you plugged into a power socket, an electric one,
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5:53 - 5:57and put the 20 billion metric tons of water in it,
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5:57 - 6:00how much power would you need
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6:00 - 6:02to evaporate this water?
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6:02 - 6:05Any idea? A really big kettle,
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6:05 - 6:08a gigantic kettle.
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6:08 - 6:1050 thousand Itaipus.
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6:10 - 6:13For those who don't know it, Itaipu is still the largest hydroelectric plant in the world.
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6:13 - 6:16It's something Brazil is very proud of
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6:16 - 6:18because it provides more than 30% of the power
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6:18 - 6:20consumed in Brazil.
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6:20 - 6:22And the Amazon is here, doing it for free.
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6:22 - 6:27It's alive and an extremely powerful plant, providing environmental services.
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6:27 - 6:32Related to this subject,
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6:34 - 6:36we are going to talk about what I call the “Paradox of Chance”,
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6:36 - 6:39which is curious.
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6:39 - 6:41If you look at the world map,
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6:41 - 6:42it's easy to see this.
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6:42 - 6:44You will see that in the equatorial zone, you have the forests,
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6:44 - 6:47and the deserts are organized
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6:47 - 6:50on 30º north latitude, on 30º south latitude, aligned.
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6:50 - 6:53Look over there, in the southern hemisphere, the Atacama,
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6:53 - 6:56Namibia Kalahari in Africa, the Australian desert,
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6:56 - 6:59in the northern hemisphere, the Sahara, Sonoma, etc.
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6:59 - 7:02There is an exception, and it's curious,
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7:02 - 7:06It's the quadrangle that ranges from Cuiabá to Buenos Aires,
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7:06 - 7:10from São Paulo to the Andes.
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7:10 - 7:11This quadrangle was supposed to be a desert.
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7:11 - 7:14It's on the line of deserts.
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7:14 - 7:17Why isn't it?
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7:17 - 7:20That's why I call it the “Paradox of Chance”.
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7:20 - 7:23What do we have in South America that is different?
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7:24 - 7:26If we can use the analogy
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7:26 - 7:31of the blood circulating in our bodies,
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7:31 - 7:34with the water circulating in the landscape,
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7:34 - 7:38we see that the rivers are veins.
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7:38 - 7:42They drain the landscape, they drain the tissue of nature.
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7:42 - 7:44Where are the arteries?
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7:44 - 7:46Any guess?
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7:46 - 7:48What takes...
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7:48 - 7:53how does the water irrigate nature's tissues
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7:53 - 7:57and bring everything back through the rivers?
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7:57 - 8:00There is a new type of river,
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8:00 - 8:03which originates in the blue sea,
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8:03 - 8:06which flows through the green ocean,
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8:06 - 8:09it not only flows, but it is also pumped by the green ocean,
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8:09 - 8:12and falls on our land.
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8:12 - 8:15All our economy, that quadrangle,
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8:15 - 8:1970% of the GDP in South America comes from that area,
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8:19 - 8:21and depends on this river.
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8:21 - 8:23This river flows invisible above us...
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8:23 - 8:25we are floating here on this floating hotel,
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8:25 - 8:28on one of the largest rivers on Earth,
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8:28 - 8:31which is the Black River. It's a bit dry and rough,
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8:31 - 8:34but we are floating here,
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8:34 - 8:38and above us there is this invisible river passing.
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8:38 - 8:40This river has a pulse.
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8:40 - 8:42Here it is.
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8:42 - 8:45That's why we also talk about the heart.
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8:45 - 8:48You can see the season of the year there... There is the rainy season.
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8:48 - 8:50In the Amazon, we used to have two seasons,
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8:50 - 8:52the humid season and an even more humid one.
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8:52 - 8:55Now we have a dry season.
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8:55 - 8:58You can see it covering that region
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9:02 - 9:05which, otherwise, would be a desert.
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9:05 - 9:08It's not.
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9:08 - 9:13We, scientists...
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9:13 - 9:18you see that I have a problem here
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9:18 - 9:19to take my head from one side to the other.
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9:19 - 9:22Scientists study how it works, why, etc.
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9:22 - 9:25and these studies are generating a series of discoveries
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9:25 - 9:28which are absolutely fabulous
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9:28 - 9:30to raise our awareness of the wealth,
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9:30 - 9:34the complexity, and the wonder that we have,
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9:34 - 9:36of the symphony we have in this process.
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9:36 - 9:38One of them is how the rain is formed.
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9:38 - 9:40Above the Amazon, there is clean air,
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9:40 - 9:44as there is above the ocean.
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9:44 - 9:47The blue sea has clean air and forms few clouds,
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9:47 - 9:48it almost doesn't rain.
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9:48 - 9:51The green ocean has the same clean air, but forms a lot of rain.
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9:51 - 9:54What is happening here that is different?
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9:54 - 9:59The forest emits smells,
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9:59 - 10:01and these smells are condensation nuclei
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10:02 - 10:07that form drops in the atmosphere.
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10:07 - 10:10Then clouds are formed and there is torrential rain.
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10:10 - 10:12The watering can of the Garden of Eden.
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10:12 - 10:17This relation between a living thing, which is the forest,
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10:17 - 10:20and a non-living thing, which is the atmosphere,
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10:20 - 10:24is ingenious in the Amazon,
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10:25 - 10:26because the forest provides water and seeds,
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10:26 - 10:27and the atmosphere forms the rain and gives them back,
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10:27 - 10:31guaranteeing the forest's survival.
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10:31 - 10:36There are other factors as well.
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10:36 - 10:38We've talked a little about the heart,
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10:38 - 10:43let's now talk about another function, that is the liver!
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10:43 - 10:46When humid air, with high humidity and radiation are combined
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10:46 - 10:49with this organic material,
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10:49 - 10:50which I call “exogenous vitamin C”, generous vitamin C is in the form of gas,
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10:50 - 10:54plants release antioxidants
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10:54 - 10:57that react with pollutants.
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10:57 - 11:00You can rest assured
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11:00 - 11:02that you are breathing the purest air on Earth, here in the Amazon
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11:02 - 11:06because the plants take care of this characteristic as well.
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11:06 - 11:08This benefits the way plants work,
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11:08 - 11:10another ingenious cycle.
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11:10 - 11:14Speaking of fractals,
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11:14 - 11:18and their relation with the way we work,
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11:18 - 11:22we can establish other comparisons.
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11:22 - 11:26As in the upper airways of the lung,
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11:26 - 11:27the air in the Amazon is free of excess dust.
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11:27 - 11:30The dust in the air that we breathe is cleaned by the airways.
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11:30 - 11:32This keeps the excess dust from harming the rainfall.
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11:32 - 11:35When there are fires in the Amazon,
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11:35 - 11:37the smoke stops the rain, it stops raining,
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11:37 - 11:40the forest dries up and catches fire.
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11:40 - 11:42There is another fractal analogy.
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11:42 - 11:46Like the veins and arteries,
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11:46 - 11:49the rain water is a feedback.
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11:49 - 11:52It returns to the atmosphere.
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11:52 - 11:55Like endocrinal glands and hormones,
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11:55 - 11:59there are those gases which I told you about before
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11:59 - 12:01that are formed and released into the atmosphere, like hormones,
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12:01 - 12:06that help in the formation of rain.
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12:06 - 12:08Like the liver and kidneys, as I've said, the cleaning of the air.
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12:08 - 12:12And, at last, like the heart,
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12:12 - 12:16pumping water from outside, from the sea,
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12:16 - 12:18into the forest.
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12:18 - 12:21We call it the "biotic moisture pump,"
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12:21 - 12:22a new theory that is explained in a very simple way.
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12:22 - 12:25If there is a desert in the continent
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12:25 - 12:29and a nearby sea,
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12:29 - 12:32evaporation is greater in the sea,
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12:32 - 12:35and it sucks the air above the desert.
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12:35 - 12:37The desert is trapped in this condition, it will always be dry.
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12:37 - 12:39If you have the opposite situation, a forest,
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12:39 - 12:42the evaporation, as we showed, is much greater, because of the trees,
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12:42 - 12:47it inverts the relationship.
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12:47 - 12:49The air above the sea is sucked in
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12:49 - 12:50and humidity is imported.
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12:50 - 12:53This is a satellite photo taken one month ago.
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12:53 - 12:58That's Manaus down there, we're down there,
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12:58 - 13:00it shows this process.
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13:00 - 13:02It is not a little river, one of those that flow into a canal.
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13:02 - 13:06It is a mighty river that irrigates South America,
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13:06 - 13:10among other things.
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13:10 - 13:12This image shows those paths, all the hurricanes
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13:12 - 13:15that have been recorded.
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13:15 - 13:17You can see that in the red square, there hardly are any hurricanes.
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13:17 - 13:20This is not by chance.
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13:21 - 13:26This pump that sucks the moisture into the continent,
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13:26 - 13:28also speeds up the air above the sea
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13:28 - 13:30and this prevents hurricane formation.
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13:30 - 13:33To close this part and summing up,
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13:33 - 13:36I'd like to talk about something different.
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13:36 - 13:39I have several colleagues
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13:39 - 13:42who worked in the development of these theories.
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13:42 - 13:44They think, and so do I,
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13:44 - 13:48that we can save planet Earth.
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13:48 - 13:50I'm not talking only about the Amazon.
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13:50 - 13:53The Amazon teaches us a lesson
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13:53 - 13:55of how pristine nature works.
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13:55 - 13:58We didn't understand these processes before
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13:58 - 14:00because the rest of the world is messed up.
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14:00 - 14:02Here, we can understand it.
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14:02 - 14:06These colleagues propose
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14:06 - 14:08that we can, yes, we can, save other areas,
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14:08 - 14:10even deserts.
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14:10 - 14:13If we can establish forests
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14:13 - 14:16in these other areas, we can revert climate change,
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14:16 - 14:21including global warming
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14:21 - 14:22I have a dear colleague in India
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14:22 - 14:25named Suprabha Seshan,
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14:25 - 14:28who has a motto,
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14:28 - 14:32"Gardening back the biosphere",
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14:32 - 14:36"Reajardinando a biosfera", in Portuguese.
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14:36 - 14:39She does wonderful work rebuilding ecosystems,
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14:39 - 14:41we need to do this.
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14:41 - 14:43Having closed this quick introduction,
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14:45 - 14:48we see the reality that we have out here
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14:48 - 14:52of drought, this climate change,
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14:52 - 14:55things that we already knew.
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14:55 - 14:57I'd like to tell you a short story.
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14:57 - 15:00Once, about four years ago,
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15:00 - 15:04I attended the presentation of a text by Davi Copenaua,
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15:04 - 15:06a wise representative of the Ianomami people
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15:06 - 15:08that went more or less this:
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15:08 - 15:11Doesn't the white man know
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15:11 - 15:13that if he destroys the forest the rain will end?
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15:13 - 15:16And that if the rain ends, there will be no drinking water
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15:17 - 15:19or food?
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15:19 - 15:23I heard that and my eyes welled up
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15:23 - 15:28because, oh, my...
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15:28 - 15:30I've been studying this for 20 years, with a super computer,
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15:30 - 15:34tens, thousands of scientist,
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15:34 - 15:36and we are starting to reach this conclusion that he already knows!
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15:36 - 15:40A critical point is that the Ianomami have never deforested.
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15:40 - 15:45How could they know the rain would end?
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15:45 - 15:50That bugged me
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15:50 - 15:55and I was befuddled.
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15:55 - 15:56How could he know that?
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15:56 - 15:58Some months later, I met him at another event and said:
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15:58 - 16:02"Davi, how did you know that destroying the forest the rain ends?
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16:02 - 16:05He replied: "The forest spirit told us."
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16:05 - 16:11For me, this was a "game changer,"
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16:11 - 16:13a radical change.
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16:16 - 16:19I said:
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16:20 - 16:23"Gosh, why am I doing all this science,
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16:23 - 16:28to reach a conclusion that he already knows?"
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16:28 - 16:31Then something absolutely critical hit me.
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16:31 - 16:33It is that...
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16:33 - 16:35Seeing is believing.
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16:35 - 16:37"Out of sight, out of heart."
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16:37 - 16:39This is a need that who came before me pointed out
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16:39 - 16:41that we need to see things...
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16:41 - 16:43We, I mean, western society
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16:43 - 16:45that is becoming global, civilized,
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16:45 - 16:48we need to see, if we don't see, we don't register the information.
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16:48 - 16:51We live in ignorance.
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16:51 - 16:53Thus, I make this proposal:
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16:53 - 16:55let's... of course, the astronomers would spend on this
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16:55 - 16:57let's turn the Hubble upside down.
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16:57 - 17:01And let's make the Hubble look down here,
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17:01 - 17:02rather than to the end of the universe,
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17:02 - 17:06the wonderful end of the universe.
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17:06 - 17:08Now, we have a practical reality,
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17:08 - 17:09we live in an unknown cosmos,
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17:09 - 17:13we're ignorant,
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17:13 - 17:15we're trampling on this wonderful cosmos
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17:15 - 17:17that shelters and houses us.
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17:17 - 17:20Talk to any astrophysicist,
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17:20 - 17:23the Earth is a statistical improbability.
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17:23 - 17:25The stability and comfort that we enjoy
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17:25 - 17:29with the droughts of the Black River,
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17:29 - 17:32all the heat and cold and all,
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17:32 - 17:33there is nothing like it in the universe, that we know of.
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17:33 - 17:37Then, let's turn the Hubble down here and look at the Earth.
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17:37 - 17:41Let's start with the Amazon!
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17:41 - 17:43Let's dive,
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17:43 - 17:45let's reach out the reality we live in daily,
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17:45 - 17:47and look at it, since that's what we need,
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17:47 - 17:49Davi Copenaua doesn't need this.
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17:49 - 17:50He already has something that I think I missed.
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17:50 - 17:55I was educated by television.
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17:55 - 17:57I think that I missed this,
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17:57 - 18:00an ancestral record,
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18:00 - 18:04a valuation of that which I don't know, which I haven't seen.
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18:04 - 18:06He is no doubting Thomas.
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18:06 - 18:10He believes with veneration and reverence,
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18:10 - 18:12in that which the ancestors and the spirits taught them.
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18:12 - 18:14As we can't, let's look into the forest.
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18:14 - 18:17Even with the Hubble up there,
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18:17 - 18:19looking into the sky...
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18:19 - 18:22This is a bird's-eye view.
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18:22 - 18:24Even when this happens,
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18:24 - 18:26we also see something that we don't know.
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18:26 - 18:28The Spanish called it the green inferno.
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18:28 - 18:31If you leave here, go into the bushes, and get lost,
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18:31 - 18:35and by any chance you head west,
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18:35 - 18:36it's 550 miles to Colombia,
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18:36 - 18:38and another 600 miles to somewhere else,
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18:38 - 18:40then you can figure out why they called it the green inferno.
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18:40 - 18:45But go and look at what is in there.
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18:45 - 18:49It is a live carpet.
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18:49 - 18:50Each color there is a tree species.
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18:50 - 18:54Each tree, each tree top,
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18:54 - 18:57has even 10,000 species of insects in it,
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18:57 - 19:00let alone the millions of species of fungi, bacteria, and all.
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19:01 - 19:03All invisible.
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19:03 - 19:05All an even stranger cosmos to us
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19:05 - 19:07than the galaxies billions of light years away from the Earth
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19:07 - 19:10that the Hubble brings to our newspapers everyday.
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19:10 - 19:13I close my talk here.
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19:13 - 19:16I have a few seconds left,
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19:16 - 19:18showing this wonderful being.
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19:18 - 19:21When we see the Morpho butterfly in the forest,
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19:21 - 19:24we feel like someone left the door to paradise open
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19:24 - 19:27and that this creature escaped from there,
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19:27 - 19:29Because it's so beautiful.
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19:29 - 19:30However, I cannot close
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19:30 - 19:32without showing a tech side,
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19:32 - 19:34we are tech arrogant.
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19:34 - 19:39We deprive nature of its technology.
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19:39 - 19:44A robotic hand is technological,
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19:44 - 19:46mine is biological,
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19:46 - 19:48and we don't think about it anymore.
-
19:48 - 19:52Let's then look at the Morpho butterfly,
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19:52 - 19:54an example of an invisible technological competence of life.
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19:54 - 19:59It is at the very heart of our possibility of surviving on the planet.
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19:59 - 20:02Let's zoom in on it.
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20:02 - 20:04Again, there is the Hubble.
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20:04 - 20:08Let's get into the butterfly's wings,
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20:08 - 20:11the scholars have tried to explain: "Why is it blue?"
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20:11 - 20:15Let's zoom in on it.
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20:15 - 20:19What you see is that the architecture of the invisible humiliates
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20:19 - 20:21the best architects in the world.
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20:21 - 20:23All this on a tiny scale.
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20:23 - 20:25Besides the beauty and functioning, there is another side to it.
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20:25 - 20:27All in nature
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20:27 - 20:30that is organized in extraordinary structures has a function.
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20:30 - 20:33This function, of the Morpho butterfly, it is not blue,
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20:33 - 20:35it does not have blue pigments.
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20:35 - 20:37It has photonic crystals on the surface,
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20:37 - 20:41according to the person who studied it,
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20:41 - 20:43extremely sophisticated crystals.
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20:43 - 20:48Our technology had nothing like that at the time.
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20:48 - 20:51Hitachi has now made a monitor
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20:51 - 20:53that uses this technology,
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20:53 - 20:55and it is used in optical fibers to transmit...
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20:55 - 20:58Janine Banes, who's been here several times, talks about it, biomimetics.
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20:58 - 21:01My time is up.
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21:01 - 21:05Then, I'll wrap up with what is at the base of this capacity,
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21:05 - 21:08of this competence of biodiversity,
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21:08 - 21:11of producing all these wonderful services.
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21:11 - 21:14The living cell.
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21:14 - 21:18It is a structure with a few microns, which is an internal wonder,
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21:18 - 21:20there are TED talks about it, I won't drag on,
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21:20 - 21:22but each person in this room, including myself,
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Not Syncedhas 100 trillion of this micromachine in his body,
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Not Syncedso that you can enjoy this well-being.
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Not SyncedImagine what is out there in the Amazon forest.
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Not Synced100 trillion, this is greater than the number of stars in the sky.
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Not SyncedWe are not aware of it.
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Not SyncedThank you so much.
- Title:
- The magic of the Amazon: A river that flows invisibly all around us
- Speaker:
- Antonio Donato Nobre
- Description:
-
Antonio Donato Nobre studies the interactions between forests and the atmosphere. His research showed that there are actual water vapor rivers running above the Amazon forest, bringing moisture to most of the continent. South America is not a desert like in Africa because of these rivers. His research reveals the fragility of forests facing climate changes and the risks we all face.
- Video Language:
- Portuguese, Brazilian
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 21:35
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for Antonio Donato Nobre | ||
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for Antonio Donato Nobre | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Antonio Donato Nobre | ||
Morton Bast approved English subtitles for Antonio Donato Nobre | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Antonio Donato Nobre | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Antonio Donato Nobre | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Antonio Donato Nobre | ||
Gustavo Rocha accepted English subtitles for Antonio Donato Nobre |