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How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert
11–20 of 62 posts
Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert
#12It seems crazy to me that after we've had so many unintended consequences preventing earth's natural processes using technology, the same crowd is now celebrating using technology to prevent yet another of earth's natural processes. Regardless of your position on the Sahara desert, it's been growing since Roman times. Personally, I'm in favor of the use of technology to affect the planet, but it seems to me that the…
Do hand-dug berms planted with native and non-invasive plants count as technology? And is increasing desertification one of earth's natural processes or is it an effect of technology, specifically technology we've used to pull massive amounts of carbon out of the ground and add it to the atmosphere? Not trying to be hostile, just questioning some of your assumptions.
Hand-dug berms are certainly technology, but perhaps not “high technology”.
And desertification is a natural process, see the Middle East or the Sahara itself, but perhaps accelerated by human impact.
Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert
#13It seems crazy to me that after we've had so many unintended consequences preventing earth's natural processes using technology, the same crowd is now celebrating using technology to prevent yet another of earth's natural processes. Regardless of your position on the Sahara desert, it's been growing since Roman times. Personally, I'm in favor of the use of technology to affect the planet, but it seems to me that the…
I respect the right of Africa to try and reforest, but logically the most likely outcome is that the Amazon will start to die from the lack of the 30 million tons of dust and sand that fall on the Amazon each year from the Sahara. Should Africa's desert be preserved to feed the Amazon? That's a question humanity seems ill equipped to answer.
There is plenty of evidence that the Amazon was largely a geo-engineering project, seems like that one worked out.
Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert
#14It seems crazy to me that after we've had so many unintended consequences preventing earth's natural processes using technology, the same crowd is now celebrating using technology to prevent yet another of earth's natural processes. Regardless of your position on the Sahara desert, it's been growing since Roman times. Personally, I'm in favor of the use of technology to affect the planet, but it seems to me that the…
Do hand-dug berms planted with native and non-invasive plants count as technology? And is increasing desertification one of earth's natural processes or is it an effect of technology, specifically technology we've used to pull massive amounts of carbon out of the ground and add it to the atmosphere? Not trying to be hostile, just questioning some of your assumptions.
Technology means the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes. It is a technology. If this is good or bad, is a rather Victorian notion called the appeal to nature.
Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert
#15It seems crazy to me that after we've had so many unintended consequences preventing earth's natural processes using technology, the same crowd is now celebrating using technology to prevent yet another of earth's natural processes. Regardless of your position on the Sahara desert, it's been growing since Roman times. Personally, I'm in favor of the use of technology to affect the planet, but it seems to me that the…
Why does that seem crazy to you? Some artificial interventions in the earth's natural processes are bad for humans (global warming, increased rate of desertification) and some interventions are good for humans (increasing land available for sustainable food production, killing malaria carrying mosquitos).
There isn't some "human interventions good/human interventions bad" duality. Some are good some are bad. We should stop doing to bad things and do more of the good things. We should continuously audit for new effects caused by our actions are adjust accordingly to achieve the best outcomes for human life.
Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert
#16Reminds me of the proposal to flood the Qattara sea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35957814
Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert
#17It seems crazy to me that after we've had so many unintended consequences preventing earth's natural processes using technology, the same crowd is now celebrating using technology to prevent yet another of earth's natural processes. Regardless of your position on the Sahara desert, it's been growing since Roman times. Personally, I'm in favor of the use of technology to affect the planet, but it seems to me that the…
I respect the right of Africa to try and reforest, but logically the most likely outcome is that the Amazon will start to die from the lack of the 30 million tons of dust and sand that fall on the Amazon each year from the Sahara. Should Africa's desert be preserved to feed the Amazon? That's a question humanity seems ill equipped to answer.
The green wall isn’t in the Sahara. It’s across sub-Saharan Africa, trying to keep the Sahara from spreading, not cover it with trees.
Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert
#18It seems crazy to me that after we've had so many unintended consequences preventing earth's natural processes using technology, the same crowd is now celebrating using technology to prevent yet another of earth's natural processes. Regardless of your position on the Sahara desert, it's been growing since Roman times. Personally, I'm in favor of the use of technology to affect the planet, but it seems to me that the…
> using technology to prevent yet another of earth's natural processes.
Agriculture prevents a lot of earth's natural processes and has been doing so for millennia. We, as humans living in a relatively advanced civilization prevent earth's natural process just by living an urban area. I really don't see your point.
Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert
#19It seems crazy to me that after we've had so many unintended consequences preventing earth's natural processes using technology, the same crowd is now celebrating using technology to prevent yet another of earth's natural processes. Regardless of your position on the Sahara desert, it's been growing since Roman times. Personally, I'm in favor of the use of technology to affect the planet, but it seems to me that the…
Do hand-dug berms planted with native and non-invasive plants count as technology? And is increasing desertification one of earth's natural processes or is it an effect of technology, specifically technology we've used to pull massive amounts of carbon out of the ground and add it to the atmosphere? Not trying to be hostile, just questioning some of your assumptions.
Hard to imagine a framework for thinking about this where "hand-dug" matters, but unfortunately I think it comes down to things like this.
Re: How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Sahara desert is 3.5 million square miles. That will never be re-forested.
Never is a pretty long time. One of my favorite authors: Doris Lessing, wrote a book called: "Mara and Dan" which has a very interesting take on climate change. I would recommend all of her books to anyone who wants to stretch their perception of our world.
Okay, sure, if you look at geologic timescales then eventually Africa will move and the region of northern Africa will cease to be desert.
Within a human timescale, I think "never" is an acceptable term.
Atmospheric circulation means that the latitude of the Sahara is blasted with cool dry air from the upper atmosphere. Humans planting trees might slow the spread of the desert, but will not vanquish it.
To disrupt the effects of atmospheric circulation (ie Hadley cells) creating deserts at those latitudes, you'd need mountain ranges and oceans.