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China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

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Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#141

Post by 6510 »

jrflowers wrote: post #131
throwawaymaths wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Combining the two seems a design flaw. The one requires research, experience, training, labs, clinical trials etc etc. The other little more than a database.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#143

Post by lenkite »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #59
maxglute wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO Missippi shipping good example of lack of commitment. Low water levels already curtailing barge activity. It's a massive effort, but not really sufficient.

> not really sufficient Our barge use is crippled by the Jones Act, not water levels. Make it lucrative to ship by barge and the incentives will get the levels back up.

Jeez that act is ridiculous - the U.S. would sanction other nations for such a law on their books.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#144

Post by dzhiurgis »

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

And solar powers water pump (or condenser)?

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#145

Post by chii »

vkou wrote: post #98
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.

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?

> productivity growth has dramatically outpaced peer nations over the last 40 years.

and yet, are the citizens getting their fair share of said productivity growth? Or has it been obsorbed by the CCP, in which the wealth is then allocated to something that said citizen would not have chosen to allocate to?

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#146

Post by vkou »

chii wrote: post #145
vkou wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> productivity growth has dramatically outpaced peer nations over the last 40 years. and yet, are the citizens getting their fair share of said productivity growth? Or has it been obsorbed by the CCP, in which the wealth is then allocated to something that said citizen would not have chosen to allocate to?

Given that hundreds of millions of people living in it had to go outside to shit in an outhouse four decades ago, but are now living first-world and nearly first-world lifestyles, you tell me if any of that wealth made it to them.

People tolerate the CCP because of the clear material gains they have seen in their lives. If some strongman authoritarian stood with a megaphone on Main Street and credibly promised Americans one tenth of that gain in prosperity, they'd elect him dictator for life.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#147

Post by SapporoChris »

toss1 wrote: post #135
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)

Risk of Collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(Africa)#Risk...

Monitoring (or lack of) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(Africa)#Moni...

That is amazing.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#148

Post by SapporoChris »

mlinksva wrote: post #102
enraged_camel wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd enjoy reading if you have any pointers to such projects. Not coming up with any from web search and asking a LLM. Closest might be the Hijaz Railway and maintaining a large military presence in desert regions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire#Decline_and_mod...

"As the Ottoman state attempted to modernize its infrastructure and army in response to outside threats, it opened itself up to a different kind of threat: that of creditors."

That's the closest thing I found related.

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#149

Post by lucianbr »

vkou wrote: post #98
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.

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?

I mean, the USA has enjoyed more than 40 years of prosperity, so if that's the cutoff, the winner is already decided for some time.

I wanted to give China a chance, but if you don't... :)

Re: China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert

#150

Post by tim333 »

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…

Related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41951420 "We Can Terraform the American West"
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