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I'm sorry people don't get your comment. Maybe people aren't aware of the consequences of laws locking in car-based infrastructure.
China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert
71–80 of 161 posts
Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've sometimes wondered whether arid parts of the American Southwest could, through the right kind of permaculture interventions, support more biological carbon sequestration, more plant life, drive development of richer soil etc. But I suspect if you said "we're gonna use this big section of BLM land to incrementally try to keep water in the landscape, and introduce a sequence of plant species that can increase carb…
That's kind of the point of democratic institutions, though: centralizing a lot of these directive powers leads to explosive efficiencies at the cost of liberty to, for example, surface objections as you illustrate. Or, more dramatically, throwing people who object into dark cells. That's how autocratic regimes can take on megaprojects without a lot of the red tape that leads to, for example, a paralytically slow rol…
> That's kind of the point of democratic institutions
I think the problem is that American "democracy" is frequently undemocratic. If a clear majority of voters support a project or policy, it may still be blocked through various political/legal/regulatory means.
Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert
#73Shouldn't you be able to see that on sattelit pictures?
It's visible. Start at Taklamakan Desert Highway and go along it. TBH, I would like to know how much water it take to grow trees around the highway through middle of desert, but that is for another topic.
They use drought resistant / low water plants, bunch of retainment strategies (membranes, local rainfall water storage). IIRC still need to truck/pipeline/drip irrigate some water when plants initially growing (more water hungry), but the goal is to pick right plants that can survive on local conditions.
Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's kind of the point of democratic institutions, though: centralizing a lot of these directive powers leads to explosive efficiencies at the cost of liberty to, for example, surface objections as you illustrate. Or, more dramatically, throwing people who object into dark cells. That's how autocratic regimes can take on megaprojects without a lot of the red tape that leads to, for example, a paralytically slow rol…
This isn’t the traditional thought process on this topic. Traditionally, it was thought that the ills of resource allocation under democracy were far outweighed by the automatic optimization of the free market. The Soviets did a lot to suggest that the free market was actually better than central planning. China is showing that with 21st century needs, technologies, and planning that may no longer be the case.
> China is showing that with 21st century needs, technologies, and planning that may no longer be the case.
maybe. a considerable number of chinese projects are very flashy and the planning doesn't take into account upkeep. a good example is country gardens forest city:
Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert
#75It took 46 years to create the 1,900 mile, ~3060 km green belt around the 130,350 square miles (337,600 km2) desert. The linked article doesn't say anything about negatives, but the positives seem to be very beneficial for the area. I really wish other major powers would commit to similar projects. In my opinion, communities need larger goals to strive towards, to provide a sense of continued belonging and reinvestme…
Some stories I heard while living in China. A couple of decades ago farmers in china’s arid regions used to be tasked with planting trees, they would plant them upside down because they knew they didn’t have enough water to feed the trees and their crops. The Gobi was planted with trees a few times to reduce dust storms, but it takes a lot more than just planting trees, so the dust storms would always invariably return as the trees died out. There also used to be a graduation requirement that all students plant trees to graduate, they had farms dedicated to this, and they would dig out the trees planted by the last class so the next class could re-plant them.
I have no idea how effective today’s efforts are compared to efforts of the past. They could have solved the water problem with irrigation or are using more drought resistant trees. It could be that the green belt is going to stick around this time, if the experience is different from the Gobi experience somehow.
Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably a lot easier to just cut down all the trees in the midwest and throw them into a deep ocean trench every few years than to go up against the activation energy you will face converting a desert environment into something presumably more wet and less hot. This isn’t Arrakis.
Can you explain the tree-cutting rationale ? Wouldn't cutting all the trees have a masse effect that would lead to desertification ? i.e. can you pitch me your project :) ?
Have you seen a lot that's been clear cut right after and then after 5/10/20 years? They've got some near me where they cut adjacent lots every so often and they're on a cycle to do it again after whatever the interval is.
If you cut the whole thing down at once, yeah, maybe it won't come back. But if you do a reasonable section, it comes back alright.
So, current management practices are only cut down what you need to produce lumber and other wood products and wood adjacent stuff; plus the extras that get cut and don't make it to the mill whatever.
I think the proposal is to cut more, and drop them off into deep ocean where they won't decompose much. As trees grow, they turn environmental carbon dioxide (and other inputs) into wood, but an established forest is mostly steady state in carbon dioxide... cutting it down and depositing it into the ocean is a way to keep the existing carbon dioxide as wood and turn more carbon dioxide into new wood.
Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's kind of the point of democratic institutions, though: centralizing a lot of these directive powers leads to explosive efficiencies at the cost of liberty to, for example, surface objections as you illustrate. Or, more dramatically, throwing people who object into dark cells. That's how autocratic regimes can take on megaprojects without a lot of the red tape that leads to, for example, a paralytically slow rol…
> That's kind of the point of democratic institutions I think the problem is that American "democracy" is frequently undemocratic. If a clear majority of voters support a project or policy, it may still be blocked through various political/legal/regulatory means.
> If a clear majority of voters support a project or policy
thing is, projects run into reality. if a majority voted to build the starship enterprise today would it make sense to do it just because a majority wanted it
Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's visible. Start at Taklamakan Desert Highway and go along it. TBH, I would like to know how much water it take to grow trees around the highway through middle of desert, but that is for another topic.
They use drought resistant / low water plants, bunch of retainment strategies (membranes, local rainfall water storage). IIRC still need to truck/pipeline/drip irrigate some water when plants initially growing (more water hungry), but the goal is to pick right plants that can survive on local conditions.
Yeah, I have read a lot about the plants, Populus Euphratica, and a lot of others, but it still...
There just isn't enough rainfall. Annual average precipitation in the Taklimakan Desert is less than 100 millimeters. With drip irrigation, they can probably keep at it at reasonable expense, but that place is horrid. Just look at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuylRKAK1Tc
Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert
#79China may well have replaced the USSR as the latest bogeyman to keep attention away from whatever war crimes the US is currently supporting or committing, but all I can think about is the ~$10T spent on and millions of lives lost to the "War on Terror" and what could've been done with the money instead. I mean just look at the high speed rail transformation in 16 years [1]. China is not without its issues but neither…
The U.S need to spend a ton to defend their "imperium" even though it is a bit different from how empires have worked in history. If it doesn't another country will take place and assume leadership of the world. The nice thing about the Pax Americana is that it is based on voluntary alliances that benefit from the relationship and more neutral third-party that are not punished for their neutrality (and thus are not available as allies against the leading coalition). So much so that you can count on your fingers the states that actually want to change the world order : Russia, Iran, China and North Korea and they are not even great allies to each other. So the status quo coalition is running the world and it's a good thing for the world. Interstate anarchy is a state of constant war and is awful for everyone.
Now you will say oh yeah but what about the war in Iraq. The thing is that it happened when US power was uncontested. It was a mistake in the sense that it has undermined the rules of the order it was supposed to guarantee. But nothing we should not be surprised that unchecked power is bad. Now that China is a (the only) real competitor with the U.S, the U.S actually has to be a good leader for the status quo coalition it gets its prosperity from. The equilibrium between leader and aspirant leader is good, let's hope it stays like that.
Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert
#80It took 46 years to create the 1,900 mile, ~3060 km green belt around the 130,350 square miles (337,600 km2) desert. The linked article doesn't say anything about negatives, but the positives seem to be very beneficial for the area. I really wish other major powers would commit to similar projects. In my opinion, communities need larger goals to strive towards, to provide a sense of continued belonging and reinvestme…
One of the reasons for the decline of the Ottoman Empire was that sultans spent precious labor and resources on grand projects like this, for example around the Arabian peninsula as well as the Sahara. This ended up contributing to the bankrupting of the empire, which required them to take heftier and heftier loans from Europe and Russia.