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China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

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Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#81

Post by ilamont »

I've been to Turpan and the Tarim Basin area, which is on the northeast edge of the desert. It's the only place I've witnessed a sandstorm, and it's very hot ... local people told me not to leave rented bikes parked in sunlight as the tires were at risk of bursting.

Many centuries ago, local Uyghur people developed ingenious mechanisms to channel snowmelt from the northern mountains for irrigation ... basically covered stone channels that stretch for thousands of miles and enable crops like grapes and melons to be grown. In Turpan itself, grape trellises are grown over many sidewalks which cools pedestrians and looks quite nice.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#82

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

maxglute wrote: post #39
Etherlord87 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

jmyeet mentioned building rails, and baserev makes a counterargument, that it isn't necessarily a good "investment".

Counterargument based on retarded data. There's only ~1000 HSR stations with ~30 considered ghost, ~3%. It's not a good investment, it's a great investment. It's already profitable. Utilization is increasing YoY. All for ~1T over 20 years. Put it this way, US excessive health spending (~5% over OECD average works out to 2T/5T per year), PRC got entire HSR network for 6 months of excessive US health care spending that…

For context, 1 trillion US Dollars is about 50% of the cost of the Iraq War.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#83

Post by maxglute »

mnau wrote: post #78
maxglute wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

IIRC ~40% is in arid regions, rest in semi arid or better regions. I think in arid regions they'd prioritized desert margins with 100-200 mm rain. <100mm is extreme arid zones, i.e. central Takilmakan. I'm not sure if they'd even bother with that.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#84

Post by mnau »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #34
baserev wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has built 30,000 miles of high speed rails it doesn't need [1], going into $1 trillion of debt and other liabilities. Just keeping up with its debt requires $25 billion annually. Incidentally, Chinese local governments are now $11 trillion in debt [2], with all provinces except Shanghai in 2023 being positive on revenues. And now there are around 4000 ghost railway stations [3] [1]: https://www.wsj.com/world/ch…

> China has built 30,000 miles of high speed rails it doesn't need That's a ridiculous statement. High-speed rail is extremely heavily used in China (3 billion trips in 2023). This is like dismissing the US interstate highway system as a useless vanity project. HSR is a heavily used, central part of China's transportation infrastructure that has made getting between major Chinese cities way easier, faster and more co…

National security angle is also often overlooked. China is not self sufficient in airplane manufacturing. Not now and back then it was only a plan.

What would they do in case of airplane export ban? They could keep existing ones airworthy, but transport capacity would be capped.

High speed trains are a viable alternative to airplanes.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#85

Post by jmyeet »

cassepipe wrote: post #79
jmyeet wrote: post #10

China 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 a…

This smacks of "we need to commit war crimes because otherwise somebody else will commit war crimes". Theoretical atrocities are never justification for actual atrocities.

The "voluntary alliances" you speak of are basically the US, Canada, Australia and Europe. Africa, the Middle East and Asia didn't sign up for the absolute devastation we've inflicted on them, first with "normal" colonialism, now with economic colonialism.

I once heard it described that US foreign policy is to loot the Global South and US domestic policy is to divide up the spoils. We aren't the only perpetrators (eg [1]) but we certainly use sanctions and the IMF and World Bank to bully countries to our way of thinking. And that's before we even get started on all the coups the US has instigated, supported, backed and/or planned.

[1]: https://tehrantimes.com/news/489452/How-West-Africa-s-econom...

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#86

Post by vondur »

enraged_camel wrote: post #80
bloopernova wrote: post #2

It 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.

The Ottomans taking loans from the Russians, their traditional enemy, seems odd. I know they were reluctant allies when fighting Napoleon, but I've never heard of such a financial arrangement.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#87

Post by wahnfrieden »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #77
abeppu wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Healthcare access isn't sci-fi

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#88

Post by einpoklum »

xbmcuser wrote: post #5
mdp2021 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> other major powers would commit to similar projects There is African Union's "Great Green Wall (for the Sahara and the Sahel)" initiative, the 8000x15km wall of trees to stop desertification of the Sahel from the Sahara. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(Africa) https://www.sciencenews.org/article/africa-great-green-wall-...

This a good video to show some of what they are doing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbBdIG--b58

Note that if you follow the maps links at the bottom of the video, you'll see that the areas covered are tiny compared to the area necessary. The promotional videos which are presented with government sponsorship and supervision look great, but - is this project actually seriously progressing across the continent?

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#89

Post by otikik »

toast0 wrote: post #76
cassepipe wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> drop them off into deep ocean where they won't decompose muc

I’m sure that won’t come with any unintended consequences

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#90

Post by otikik »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #75
bloopernova wrote: post #2

It 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 retu…

> they would plant them upside down

That makes no sense. It takes more effort to plant a tree upside down and not irrigating it than it takes to plant it the regular way and not irrigating it.

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