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China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

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Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#131

Post by jrflowers »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #125
wahnfrieden wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthcare access isn't sci-fi

yes and believe it or not healthcare runs into real constraints and concerns about equity, etc. suppose a rare disease is only well researched in a few white families. lets say, the mennonites. curing the disease is possible, but expensive. should everyone else be forced to subsidize it? what if the markers are known and parents choose to have kids anyways even though they have the markers. does the situation change…

This is a good point. If you imagine that by healthcare people mean an imaginary expensive Mennonite disease instead of the ability to see a doctor and receive treatment for common diseases and injuries it becomes very murky indeed.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#132

Post by kupopuffs »

Yeul wrote: post #36
philosopher1234 wrote: post #27

Meanwhile the US uses it surpluses of wealth to do… what? Optimize ad sales to 16 year olds and fund genocide in Gaza?

I have always wondered why the US doesn't use the trillion dollar deficit to fund healthcare for all. Republicans always find money for more tax cuts but never social security...

Wow you mentioned a lot of topics

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#133

Post by jrflowers »

redeeman wrote: post #120
throwawaymaths wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

heres a radical thought, if a group of people, be it 2, 5 og 250 million wants to build the starship enterprise, how about we say "sounds fun, have at it", and let them mind their own business? and in this pristine new reality, how about we DONT let them put their grubby fat hands into the remaining peoples pockets to fund it? In exchange, when the naysayers to the enterprise projects wants to make something, the ent…

> Now we have utopia

A good example of such a libertarian utopia would be a recent experiment in Grafton, New Hampshire. They had a real bear of a time.

https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#134

Post by lmz »

jonstewart wrote: post #115
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.

Maybe, but China has also poured so much capital into infrastructure projects that don’t deliver ROI. This has harmed their longterm growth. We didn’t do enough when interest rates were low and we have a hard time with complicated projects, but China isn’t perfect at this, either. Also they march people out into fields and execute them at point blank range. Worth keeping in mind.

> Also they march people out into fields and execute them at point blank range. Worth keeping in mind.

Some of us think the US's predicament with lethal injection drugs is quite funny and bringing back firing squads would improve things.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#135

Post by toss1 »

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…

It is being done in Africa, a 4000-mile wall south of the world's largest desert, the Sahara, called the Great Green Wall. Some references below. Pretty amazing stuff.

[0] https://www.bbcearth.com/news/five-ways-the-great-green-wall...

[1] https://sequoiares.org/research/posts/The-Great-Green-Wall

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(Africa)

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#136

Post by cleanerbob »

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…

[dead]

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#137

Post by aaron695 »

zhaohan_dong wrote: post #43
soneca wrote: post #29

> ”The initiative combines solar-powered sand-blocking technology with extensive vegetation planting to stabilize the desert’s edges.” What sand-blocking tech is that? Does anyone know?

I think they put solar panels up and plant some bushes under the shade

[dead]

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#138

Post by chabska »

_yb2s wrote: post #99
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…

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 fores…

US southwest is a desert, but there are significant areas that used to be grassland and shrubs that turned into bare rocks due to excessive grazing in the 19th century.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#139

Post by mlinksva »

hnmullany wrote: post #116
mlinksva wrote: post #107

Very interesting topic but the article strikes me as being blogspam adjacent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(China) cites https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-completes-3-000-km-11254926... which is one of many press articles that only cites (but does not link) state media. The Economist has paywalled writeup https://www.economist.com/china/2024/12/05/will-chinas-green... that is a bit skeptical of the p…

Vegetation-type is determined by temperature and precipitation. You can't un-desertify a true desert unless you irrigate. Most of these projects that "succeed" - miraculously correlate with good rainfall experience. Most of the Sahel revegetated all by itself, when the decadal drought ended in the 90's. Re-vegetation projects can help put vegetation back when it's been removed by shitty management practises like seve…

> unless you irrigate

One of the reasons for the interestingness of speculative proposals like Qattara, seawater-for-Salton, and it turns out an even more ambitious project to pump seawater from the Bohai Sea to Xinjiang.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#140

Post by akhosravian »

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…

Funny you mention Seattle’s light rail. The first part of New York’s subway system was built in 4 years and had more stops than Seattle’s light rail does after 15 years.

We (Americans) absolutely built big public projects in reasonable timeframes a century ago, and we don’t now. Attributing it to the form of government seems to miss the mark.

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