$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')tanding on an island in a quiet channel of the giant river, he points out what is happening. A month ago, the island was under water. Now, it juts 5m above it.
It is a sign that severe drought is returning to the Amazon for a second successive year. And that would be ominous. New research suggests that one further dry year beyond that could tip the whole vast forest into a cycle of destruction.
The day before, top scientists delivered much the same message at a remarkable floating symposium on the Rio Negro, on the strange black waters beside which Manaus, the capital city of the Amazon, stands.
They told the meeting - convened on a flotilla of boats by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of the Greek Orthodox Church, dubbed the "green Pope" for his environmental activism - that global warming and deforestation were pushing the entire enormous area towards a "tipping point", where it would start to die.
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