From above:

"The number of trees killed by the 2005 storm was equal to 30 percent of the total human-caused deforestation in that same year for the Manaus region."

Then I would hope that there would have been a similar decrease in the trees cut for timber within the same year.

Though there is the saying:
Wish in one hand...

Man, all of your books come from farmed trees.

Two weeks after Katrina I spent time in Louisana and MIssissippi. There were so many trees down ( yellow pines ) that the guy in the "yella wood" commercials would have been devistated. Wonder if he cries yella fella tears to hear the Amazon lost the trees.
On a serious note the Yellow Pines have really small root systems and fell over quite easily.

Both events are devastating to the environment and the trees are hard to replace. We are running out of time and mother nature is pissed!

I says it was a band of severe thunderstorms, sounds natural enough.

From link above:

"When trees die, they release their stored carbon into the atmosphere, which contributes to climate change. In a vicious cycle, these storms could become more frequent in the future due to climate change."

http://news.discovery.com/earth/when-500-million-trees-fall-in-the-rainforest.ht...

"The great rainforest of the Amazon basin is an important player in the global carbon cycle -- both a "sink" and a source of atmospheric carbon dioxide -- and is the subject of numerous studies related to our changing climate and a future of global warming. Earlier studies attributing all of the big 2005 die-off to drought were not based on field work that examined the cause of the death of individual trees.

Author of one such study, Professor Oliver Phillips at Leeds University in the UK, told Discovery News the new research describes "an interesting phenomenon, but its basinwide implications are unclear and I don't see any conflict with our work."

"We observed that across Amazonia the probability of tree death during 2005 increased in direct proportion to the rainfall deficit experienced locally," he said. Moreover, "we were able to also determine that forests which did not experience drought did not, on average, experience extra mortality."

Still, the new study introduces an intriguing, abrupt time element to the mix of causes and effects."

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This one event of a huge storm may or may not be attributable in part to AGW, however, the effect of the tree deaths caused by it as was stated here may also contribute to the very climate change that then contributes to stronger storms.

If watching hours and hours on end of National Geographic and Discovery Channel has taught me anything it's that trees dying in the Amazon is a good thing, because it opens a hole in the canopy for seedlings on the jungle floor to get sunlight and grow. It's something like a 10 to 1 ratio of trees that grow into the vacant canopy opening and the decaying dead trees provide the perfect decomposing nutrient rich stuff for fertilizer for them too. So this is actually a good thing. ...even though it was like Poland 1939 for 'those' trees.

I'm pretty sure just one volcano can pump a lot more CO2 into the atmosphere than all of these decomposing trees combined. And there's something like 500 erupting volcanoes on Earth at any one time.

a tree falling in the rain forest here or there is a good thing, but when that many trees die all at once, what tree is left to release seeds to start off the next generation

I hope you're right, but it probably wont be that simple. In recently heavily disturbed rain forests, fast growing vines and weeds can often invade before tree species have a chance to reestablish, means the vines and weeds take over the area rather than the rainforest regenerating. -- this is the bane off all rain forest restoration projects.

No answer yet.

Jan, can`t you just feel the earth warming because of this dam.
Pend Oreille River, outside Fruitvale B.C. This dam supplies enough power for a city of 250 000 people.

"Wow, humans are stupid."

Just after you said that, three of them showed up. Fascinating.

LOL. priceless.

do u?