Carbon emissions ACCELERATED climate change. Climate change is natural. It's the ACCELERATED change that is the problem. Not enough time for species to adjust.
Meteor strikes are also natural. That doesn’t mean they are desirable.
Why and when the Sahara Desert was green: new research
11–20 of 102 posts
Re: Why and when the Sahara Desert was green: new research
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
I went to school in Socorro, NM which was very brown on a dry year and pretty green on a wet year and my understanding is that it was a pretty grassland before white folks showed up but overgrazing caused the creosote bush to move in. If you go up the hills to the plains of San Augustin where the VLA radio telescope that is around 7000 feet in elevation and I think a bit cooler and wetter and that is a very pretty gr…
Considering that there are archaeological sites in the American Southwest that are posited to have been abandoned due to the disappearance of their water supply, it is hard to blame all the aridness on “white folks”. Moreover, when I cycled through the Anza-Borego State Park in California, several of the information boards discussed how hardscrabble the existence of the Native American peoples in this area was, becau…
This is a solid point. I was at Mesa Verde, the national park with the cliff dwellings. Apparently the people who lived there just up and left, well before Columbus showed up on the other side of the continent. One theory is that the current Hopi people are their descendants.
It's pretty clear that bad things happen, even when white people aren't around.
Re: Why and when the Sahara Desert was green: new research
#13Carbon emissions ACCELERATED climate change. Climate change is natural. It's the ACCELERATED change that is the problem. Not enough time for species to adjust.
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Re: Why and when the Sahara Desert was green: new research
#14Somewhat off topic, but if anyone's read Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, he talks about how the American Southwest, specifically Arizona, used to be green. Apparently the familiar reddish brown resulted from human impact
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Re: Why and when the Sahara Desert was green: new research
#15Sahara could be green again in the future once the East African Rift becomes a new ocean 10 million years from now.
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Re: Why and when the Sahara Desert was green: new research
#16Carbon emissions ACCELERATED climate change. Climate change is natural. It's the ACCELERATED change that is the problem. Not enough time for species to adjust.
Even natural climate changes can be problematic, such as drier climates precipitating the fall of the Roman empire or the late bronze age collapse.
Or The Samalas eruption - which is believed to have caused the Little Ice Age - and killed 90% of Europeans & North Americans at the time (55M people).
I imagine many millions of large mammals and birds and insects also died.
Re: Why and when the Sahara Desert was green: new research
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering that there are archaeological sites in the American Southwest that are posited to have been abandoned due to the disappearance of their water supply, it is hard to blame all the aridness on “white folks”. Moreover, when I cycled through the Anza-Borego State Park in California, several of the information boards discussed how hardscrabble the existence of the Native American peoples in this area was, becau…
This is a solid point. I was at Mesa Verde, the national park with the cliff dwellings. Apparently the people who lived there just up and left, well before Columbus showed up on the other side of the continent. One theory is that the current Hopi people are their descendants. It's pretty clear that bad things happen, even when white people aren't around.
It's not really a "theory" as anyone normal uses that term. We know beyond any reasonable doubt that there's significant genetic, cultural, and political ancestry tying modern Puebloan groups to the the people who inhabited Mesa Verde (and other earlier pueblos). "Most" went east to the Rio Grande area, but plenty went west too. Some Hopi ancestry also comes from other groups to the north, west and south (into modern Mexico) where Puebloan groups no longer exist.
With that said, Spanish and American colonization of the Southwest has radically changed the landscape. Much of what's now low brush used to be substantially more vegetated, similar to organ pipe national monument. Mesquite was rare outside intentional cultivation. It's actually an invasive species from the separate Chihuahuan deserts in Texas that was spread alongside cattle. Another fun fact is that prior to colonization, no part of AZ+NM was more than a day's walk from water (~20mi), which was important to long distance travel and later the Apache wars. That's no longer true due to groundwater depletion.
Re: Why and when the Sahara Desert was green: new research
#18I've heard about some efforts to regreen the desert by careful planting and geoforming. Anyone know anything about this? It would be cool if it could work, even partially.
Re: Why and when the Sahara Desert was green: new research
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a solid point. I was at Mesa Verde, the national park with the cliff dwellings. Apparently the people who lived there just up and left, well before Columbus showed up on the other side of the continent. One theory is that the current Hopi people are their descendants. It's pretty clear that bad things happen, even when white people aren't around.
It's not really a "theory" as anyone normal uses that term. We know beyond any reasonable doubt that there's significant genetic, cultural, and political ancestry tying modern Puebloan groups to the the people who inhabited Mesa Verde (and other earlier pueblos). "Most" went east to the Rio Grande area, but plenty went west too. Some Hopi ancestry also comes from other groups to the north, west and south (into modern…
Do you have a citation on mesquite spreading from Texas with cattle? I ask because the aforementioned information boards in the Anza-Borrego State Park speak of the local Native American population consuming mesquite, and Wikipedia, too, says the same about those Cahuilla people of southern California. From what I gather, it is only certain species that have later been invasive?
Re: Why and when the Sahara Desert was green: new research
#20Sahara could be green again in the future once the East African Rift becomes a new ocean 10 million years from now.
Would it though? The trade winds converge over central Africa, which is already quite lush, so presumably any extra moisture would just be deposited there instead of a few thousand miles to the north.