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China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

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Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#91

Post by ffsm8 »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #70
lucianbr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like China is attempting a hybrid approach. Free market with the government intervening whenever and wherever it feels like. They still get some optimization and some otherwise-impossible-projects. I'd say the jury is still out on this strategy.

> Looks like China is attempting a hybrid approach. Free market with the government intervening whenever and wherever it feels like. A caveat I'd add is that the Chinese government is subjective to the party. China's accomplishments are significant but they tend to be secondary to the political wellbeing of the CCP. That wellbeing is secured though the harsh and thorough quashing of dissent. I'd criticize China but C…

> I'd criticize China but CCP's most repressive aspects seem to be finding widespread appeal here in the US.

And so does Russia, which is another effective repressive dictatorship. From my perspective, they're just exceptionally adapt at pushing their propaganda abroad.

Historically, the USA was the only one doing that, but it's no longer the only player. (To be clear, I meant spreading propaganda abroad. The USA is at least currently not a repressive dictatorship. And I doubt it will become so before I die.)

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#92

Post by vondur »

mnau wrote: post #65
asdf123qweasd wrote: post #49

Shouldn'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.

I can't really tell from the satellite photos. Looks like there is a river with some agricultural fields and green stuff next to it.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#93

Post by kbelder »

otikik wrote: post #89
toast0 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's where oil comes from that caused the CO2 that the trees are collecting; it's just closing the cycle.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#94

Post by AdrianB1 »

oivey wrote: post #41
emptysongglass wrote: post #32

Earlier 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.

Centrally planning a project is not bad and it was not bad even in USSR. What usually goes wrong is the implementation, where lack of ownership and widespread corruption makes the resource utilization perform pretty bad.

Socialist or Communist countries did some good projects, I saw quite a lot. Implementation, management and long term operation went bad.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#95

Post by mistermann »

abeppu wrote: post #6
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…

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…

>response would be "government overreach!" on one side and "what about threatened species X that thrives in the sparse desert?" on the other. And if you did get such a project approved

Maybe what is needed is a project to teach people how to think without making unforced errors.

> some elaborate supply chain would arise to provide plant seedlings at 10x the normal price

The beauty of it is, this one stone could kill many birds, even giant ones like this.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#96

Post by mistermann »

emptysongglass wrote: post #32
abeppu wrote: post #6

Earlier 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…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_w...

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#97

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

mnau wrote: post #84
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

China has the C919 (equivalent to a Boeing 737 or A320), which still relies on imported engines, but the country is also developing its own jet engines for commercial use. They would accelerate those efforts if there were an export ban.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#98

Post by vkou »

lucianbr wrote: post #50
oivey wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Looks like China is attempting a hybrid approach. Free market with the government intervening whenever and wherever it feels like. They still get some optimization and some otherwise-impossible-projects. I'd say the jury is still out on this strategy.

It's real wealth and productivity growth has dramatically outpaced peer nations over the last 40 years.

How much longer will the jury be out? Will it come back in my lifetime?

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#99

Post by _yb2s »

abeppu wrote: post #6
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…

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…

I don’t think this would be a good idea… these areas are not the result of desertification but are naturally desert ecosystems. The only way to make them anything else would be to take even more water from bordering non desert areas, which are already severely impacted by all of the water taken to support huge cities and green lawns in the southwest deserts.

For carbon storage it would make more sense to regrow forest in places that naturally have water and soil that support forest.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#100

Post by einpoklum »

emptysongglass wrote: post #54
einpoklum wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't you say the US is somewhat of an outlier w.r.t. government ability to undertake significant infrastructural projects?

As someone who has lived pretty firmly in both parts of the West: no, not really. Denmark, where I live now, has the luxury of commanding massive taxes from its citizens to finance its projects, all while putting a pittance of its share to its military. Denmark is also much, much, smaller than the US so the red tape that would be apparent at the size of the US is less apparent at the size of 6 million people. We also…

> Denmark, where I live now, has the luxury of commanding massive taxes from its citizens to finance its projects,

Well, so does the US - which is also able to do defict-spending much more easily due to the USD's role as a global reserve currency. But as you've pointed out, a huge part of it feeds the military-industrial complex - and that's a part (but not nearly the most important part) of how it struggles to expend on public infrastructure. Also, red tape is mostly not a per-capita thing; that kind of red tape is mostly in distributed execution rather than decision-making, legislation and such.

But point taken regarding Danish overspending on predatory contractors.

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