What do you guys think?

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

I am a typical example of what he describes

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

a university professor.

You might think it was not fair

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

to speak about science.

I can't move my body to the beat,

and after a scientist who became a philosopher,

I have to talk about hard science.

It could be a very dry subject.

Yet, I feel honored.

Never in my career,

and it's been a long career,

have I had the opportunity to start a talk

feeling so inspired, like this one.

Usually, talking about science

is like exercising in a dry place.

However, I've had the pleasure

of being invited to come here to talk about water.

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

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

which is the splendid cradle of life. Fresh life.

So this is what inspired me.

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

my head over here.

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

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

We know that there is controversy.

The Amazon is the "lung of the world,"

because of its massive power to have vital gases exchanged

between the forest and the atmosphere.

We also hear about the storehouse of biodiversity.

While many believe it,

few know it.

If you go out there, in this marsh,

you'll be amazed at the --

You can barely see the animals.

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

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

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

one that is inspired by these two initiatives here,

a harmonic one and a philosophical one.

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

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

extraordinary philosophy and harmony.

There'll be no music in my presentation,

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

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

but other analogies with human physiology,

especially the heart.

We'll start

by thinking that water is like blood.

The circulation in our body distributes fresh blood,

which feeds, nurtures and supports us,

and brings the used blood back to be renewed.

In the Amazon, things happen similarly.

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

This is an image

of rain in motion.

What you see there is the years passing in seconds.

Rains all over the world. What do you see?

The equatorial region, in general,

and the Amazon specifically,

is extremely important for the world's climate.

It's a powerful engine.

There is a frantic evaporation taking place here.

If we take a look at this other image,

which shows the water vapor flow,

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

and clouds in white.

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

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

what phenomenon makes water gush from the ground into the atmosphere

with such power that it can be seen from space?

What phenomenon is this?

It could be a geyser.

A geyser is underground water heated by magma,

exploding into the atmosphere

and transferring this water into the atmosphere.

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

I don't know of any.

But we have something that plays the same role,

with much more elegance though:

the trees, our good old friends

that, like geysers,

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

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

That is done with an extraordinary sophistication.

They don't need the heat of magma.

They use sunlight to do this process.

So, in a typical sunny day in the Amazon,

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

through its transpiration --

1,000 liters.

If we take all the Amazon,

which is a very large area,

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

which is the sweat of the forest,

we'll get to an incredible number:

20 billion metric tons of water.

In one day.

Do you know how much that is?

The Amazon River, the largest river on Earth,

one fifth of all the fresh water

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

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

This river of vapor

that comes up from the forest and goes into the atmosphere

is greater than the Amazon River.

Just to give you an idea.

If we could take a gigantic kettle,

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

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

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

Any idea? A really big kettle.

A gigantic kettle, right?

50 thousand Itaipus.

Itaipu is still the largest hydroelectric plant in the world.

and Brazil is very proud of it

because it provides more than 30 percent of the power

that is consumed in Brazil.

And the Amazon is here, doing this for free.

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

Related to this subject,

we are going to talk about what I call the paradox of chance,

which is curious.

If you look at the world map --

it's easy to see this --

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

and deserts are organized at 30 degrees north latitude,

30 degrees south latitude, aligned.

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

Namibia and Kalahari in Africa; the Australian desert.

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

There is an exception, and it's curious:

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

and from São Paulo to the Andes.

This quadrangle was supposed to be a desert.

It's on the line of deserts.

Why isn't it? That's why I call it the paradox of chance.

What do we have in South America that is different?

If we could use the analogy

of the blood circulating in our bodies,

like the water circulating in the landscape,

we see that rivers are veins,

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

Where are the arteries?

Any guess?

What takes --

How does water get to irrigate the tissues of nature

and bring everything back through rivers?

There is a new type of river,

which originates in the blue sea,

which flows through the green ocean --

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

and then it falls on our land.

All our economy, that quadrangle,

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

It depends on this river.

This river flows invisibly above us.

We are floating here on this floating hotel,

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

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

and there is this invisible river running above us.

This river has a pulse.

Here it is, pulsing.

That's why we also talk about the heart.

You can see the different seasons there.

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

the humid season and the even more humid season.

Now we have a dry season.

You can see the river covering that region

which, otherwise