[HN Gopher] The Great Green Wall
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The Great Green Wall
Author : bryanrasmussen
Score : 87 points
Date : 2022-07-15 08:17 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.greatgreenwall.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.greatgreenwall.org)
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| China has been doing something similar to try to slow the spread
| of the Gobi desert.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSn6S-H7m-8
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(China)
| fourthark wrote:
| And they have more of an incentive to think in the long term
| and follow through.
| gumby wrote:
| Why should they have more of an incentive to think for the
| long term?
| affgrff2 wrote:
| Why do I feel so pessimistic about this?
| lbriner wrote:
| Because you are a pessimist?
|
| Even if it only half works, it is worthwhile, which is why lots
| of anti-climate change action is worthwhile. Add up all the
| little bits and maybe it delays catastrophic climiate change
| long enough to get some new ways of solving it, or long enough
| for a younger generation to take it more seriously, maybe it
| makes the rise in temperatures slightly more bearable, the sea
| rises slightly less or the species extinctions fewer in number.
|
| Certainly a better investment than the 4x4s, overseas holidays
| and technology that lots of rich people spend their money on!
| switchbak wrote:
| Or maybe all the straw banning and feel good recycling
| efforts (and similar efforts with little actual impact on
| CO2) consume our energy and attention and allow us to feel
| good about doing something.
|
| Meanwhile we've not made any significant headway in tackling
| the problem, and things continue to get worse.
|
| If we want to solve this, we're going to have to have
| sustained focus and effort devoted to solving the hard
| problems. That means regulation, international cooperation,
| changes in how we live our lives, impact on corporations,
| etc. There is no easy way out of this.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| FWIW straw bans and recycling are typically not really
| about carbon at all, more about the impact of waste.
| Recycling can sometimes have a meaningful carbon impact,
| but it can also be carbon positive in many cases.
|
| But I really dislike the attitude of "well this thing isn't
| going to solve climate change, and the real problem is
| industry/agriculture/government/etc, so we shouldn't bother
| doing it." Of course we should. We should all try to make
| incremental changes to respect the environment more.
|
| It's just lazy reasoning to try to justify continuing to
| live a lifestyle that damages the environment without
| having to question it.
| switchbak wrote:
| I'm not sure if you think that's what I'm proposing, my
| last sentence makes it clear I'm not.
|
| I'm a fan of recycling and basically any other well
| intentioned goals. I'm not a fan of them when they're
| cynically abused by big corporations to make people feel
| as if they're "saving the world" so they can go on living
| a life that continues to push us over the edge.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| Maybe because it's too little too late and it can't stop the
| ever growing pressures of overpopulation. But then since each
| degree of climate change adds a significant 7% humidity to the
| atmosphere, I have a faint hope that one year a torrential rain
| will turn the sahara into a green savanna again.
| danaris wrote:
| Neither our planet in general, nor its comfortably-livable
| surface area, are overpopulated in the aggregate.
|
| We have enough resources to provide for everyone here now,
| and everyone likely to be here within the next several
| decades--at which point, according to the best predictions
| I've seen, overall population growth should be slowing or
| stopping.
| gdhkgdhkvff wrote:
| Because being cynical is the easiest route to feeling smart. It
| takes no effort to dismiss something.
|
| It's a mindset that unintentionally optimizes short term
| comfort at the expense of long term growth.
|
| Do you need to be fist pumping and leading the charge? No. But
| unbound cynicism is really a sad way to live.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| > Because being cynical is the easiest route to feeling
| smart. It takes no effort to dismiss something.
|
| This was a difficult lesson I learned only in the past five
| years or so.
|
| I realized I was aping my asshole father.
|
| Being more open to people and ideas has been way more fun.
| powerhour wrote:
| > Being more open to people and ideas has been way more
| fun.
|
| I recently had the same realization. I haven't fully
| squelched the cynicism but I am trying hard to assume the
| best of people, that they're posting in good faith, and to
| take them at their word. It's definitely more difficult but
| I feel it is more satisfying.
|
| Further, I try to avoid this scenario:
| https://xkcd.com/386/ I find it not only exhausting but
| also unproductive.
| tjr225 wrote:
| How old are you?
| jeromenerf wrote:
| I find the initiative somehow formidable, commending hope and
| thus the fear of seeing it fail.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Is the project independantly assessed by anyone ? (UN, press,
| etc... ?) Of course I'm on the "doubting" side (bad habit), but I
| can't wait for being wrong about doomism once in a while
| hunglee2 wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to
| HN. We're trying for a different quality of discussion here.
|
| If you want to write something substantive and relevant about
| that, or anyone/anything else, that's of course fine.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| finiteseries wrote:
| _American and British naval forces fired over 110 Tomahawk
| cruise missiles, while the French Air Force, British Royal Air
| Force, and Royal Canadian Air Force undertook sorties across
| Libya and a naval blockade by Coalition forces. French jets
| launched air strikes against Libyan Army tanks and vehicles.
| The intervention did not employ foreign ground troops._
|
| _The effort was initially largely led by France and the United
| Kingdom, with command shared with the United States._
|
| _Both Libyan officials and international states and
| organizations called for a no-fly zone over Libya in light of
| allegations that Muammar Gaddafi 's military had conducted
| airstrikes against Libyan rebels in the Libyan Civil War._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...
| ping00 wrote:
| Sorry, not sure why you expanded on this particular event.
| Could you explain if I missed something? :)
| finiteseries wrote:
| I doubt you've missed HN having a slightly higher standard
| of commentary than other social media sites, and non
| moderators' parts in keeping it that way.
|
| Being irrationally Americentric while simultaneously
| condescending to Europeans in characterizing the Libyan
| intervention as "US" gets both basic recent history wrong,
| and promulgates US > EU sentiment worryingly present on HN.
|
| I'm doing my part, would you like to know more?
| m0llusk wrote:
| The idea of limiting the expansion of the Sahara desert with
| mass tree plantings started gaining traction back in the 1950s.
| The people most closely associated with this idea are British.
| Qaddafi died when he was mutilated by other Libyans.
| calibas wrote:
| Other Libyans who happened to be backed by NATO.
|
| Qaddafi was no saint, quite the opposite, but that shouldn't
| give Western countries a free pass to go directly interfere
| in Libyan politics. It has very little to do with helping
| Libyans, and much more to do with the fact that Libya happens
| to be located on the largest oil reserves in Africa.
| [deleted]
| Biologist123 wrote:
| This project is not thought to be going well.
|
| https://www.lifegate.com/africas-great-green-wall-a-bursting...
|
| Having worked within the sector, there was a clear lack of
| interest in or budget for monitoring - so claims of success must
| be met with requests for verifiable evidence, which is never
| forthcoming.
| tinco wrote:
| Wouldn't a project of this size be easily monitored with
| publicly available sattelite imagery? If there was funding, you
| could structure it purely based on the imagery, for example a
| country could receive ~1M$ for every 10px of green that was not
| green at the start of the project. And another ~1M$ if those
| pixels are still green 5 years later, and perhaps some
| diminishing recurring payment afterwards to ensure the projects
| survival.
| Biologist123 wrote:
| The problem is this:
|
| 1. Tree survival is an issue before the trees become
| "visible" from space.
|
| 2. Project funding typically lasts 3-5 years at a max.
|
| 3. In the organisations which run this type of project, there
| is an "I'll be gone, you'll be gone" staff problem: flawed
| projects are funded and staffed by people who know they won't
| carry the can for project failure.
|
| 4. To be very realistic, funders of these projects don't
| care. Indeed, corruption might be a feature rather than a
| bug.
| tinco wrote:
| Ah that's unfortunate. I'm sure there's technological
| solutions to point 1, but that's pretty irrelevant if the
| other three points are true. It seems a bit ridiculous if a
| project funding is 3-5 years, if it's supposed to be a
| permanent solution.
|
| Are corrupt funders really such a large share of money for
| these projects? Is it industrial companies using non-profit
| funding to grease wheels for their endeavors?
| gumby wrote:
| Allegedly it has already had an effect on rainfall but I
| haven't found anything refereed on the topic (not that I tried
| too hard -- not my day job).
|
| Also the effect is allegedly improved monsoon in some places
| (at the cost of drought elsewhere). I'd think that the cost
| alone would have given rise to some interesting papers, were it
| actually happening.
|
| All that being said, I'm still encouraged by some efforts,
| though they remind me of protectors trying to repair the
| ramjets at the edge of the ringworld.
| monetus wrote:
| This has been ongoing / in the works for a long time and the
| methods they are embracing now are more likely to succeed in the
| long term. A mono-culture of out-of-place trees, it is not. It is
| country by country so there are some problems around coordination
| and equal funding iirc
| lettergram wrote:
| 8000-10000 years ago the entire desert this wall is supposedly
| going to block was green.
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-really-tu...
| twic wrote:
| Yes, that's when Atlantis was there:
|
| https://medcraveonline.com/IJH/is-atlantis-related-to-the-gr...
| singularity2001 wrote:
| Then came the first instance of catastrophic human steered
| overgrazing
| ch4s3 wrote:
| All of the comments supporting this are by people who have
| failed to so much as google this topic. The Sahara used to
| get monsoon rains until about 11kya to 5kya[1] when the axis
| of the earth shifted a bit.
|
| [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-
| really-tu...
| nerdponx wrote:
| How much desertification in Africa is caused by humans?
|
| My impression has been that the Sahara, North Africa, the
| Middle East, and eastern Mediterranean were all gradually
| becoming dryer anyway. Is that wrong?
| juunpp wrote:
| Yes, that was my understanding too. I don't have a solid
| ref for this now, but as far as I can tell, the entry here
| should be relatively accurate:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_humid_period
|
| It is true that the Holocene extinction and other events
| are caused by humans, and that, in the larger scheme of
| things, life on Earth would thrive better without us. But
| it is a fallacy to pretend everything is caused by us, and
| such claims only make conversations about real change
| caused by us more muddy than they need to be.
|
| At any rate, don't take "facts" from a magazine.
| lettergram wrote:
| That's not true at all lol, complete BS. For one, the amount
| of grazing required for that is absolutely larger than
| anything we have today.
|
| We exited an ice age, which created conditions which helped
| to create pastures. Climate change has been happening far
| longer than humans have impacted it (not saying humans aren't
| impacting it).
|
| Further, grazing makes fields more robust if done property.
| Grasses will grow faster to compensate and the poop enhances
| the conditions to create fields.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > the amount of grazing required for that is absolutely
| larger than anything we have today
|
| Who's to say that there wasn't more grazing (by area) back
| then?
|
| > Further, grazing makes fields more robust if done
| property.
|
| I'm not a farmer, but I know that this depends a lot on
| what is doing the grazing. Sheep for example apparently
| graze the grass down really far, and prevent the growth of
| bushes and tree saplings that are otherwise important for
| balancing the ecosystem.
|
| In the US in the 1800s, there was outright armed conflict
| between sheep and cattle ranchers over this issue:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep_Wars
|
| And as far as I know, England and Scotland lack trees
| specifically because overgrazing prevented forests from
| regenerating after being cut for timber:
| https://youtu.be/nAGHUkby2Is
| towaway15463 wrote:
| You need people to herd animals. There weren't nearly the
| same number of people back then. The people who were
| around would have been largely nomadic especially if they
| were herding animals since they would need to move their
| herds to different grazing land depending on the season.
| Those aren't conditions that create overgrazing which
| occurs when you have a lot of people with a lot of
| animals using limited pasture land that's broken up by
| property lines and agriculture.
| pineaux wrote:
| Actually, this is not the real problem. It's not the
| herding of animals that's creates the overgrazing. It's
| the large scale killing of predators. This creates huge
| herds of grazers that absolutely destroy the landscape.
| This is how the savannah and the great plains where
| created. To protect their herd and children; natives
| killed the lions, saber tooths, wolves, hyenas, big cats
| and bears. In effect creating the great grassy plains.
| Not saying that humans created all the large grassy
| plains; just saying they have become substantially bigger
| since humans are around.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I would need to see a source for this, because it doesn't
| sound plausible to me. Populations were lower of course,
| but look at how much of the population is concentrated in
| city centers today.
|
| I would hardly be surprised if rural population density
| was significantly higher than in the past, with more
| farms as well as more grazing herds, even if they were
| much smaller than what we have today.
|
| But I also don't really know if this squares with the
| sheer amount of meat and dairy that modern humans
| consume. How much does factory farming offset the need
| for open grazing land?
|
| Basically, this is a subject area where intelligent
| clever people get themselves into trouble by thinking
| they know more than they do. I'd rather see what the
| experts say.
| gpapilion wrote:
| One reason cited for lack of new sequoia growth in the
| Sierra Nevada is introduction of sheep towards the later
| period of Spanish colonization, and continued through
| early 1900s with the US taking over.
| [deleted]
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| They say that 15% of the work is complete. Is there any way to
| see this on Google Earth?
| justinzollars wrote:
| Doing this is the opposite of being a doomer. I love the concept
| of terraforming the desert and desert walls. This is positive,
| inexpensive and we should do much more of this.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not sure it will work but I like that it's proactive
| and unlikely to have any negative effects other than
| opportunity cost.
| Comevius wrote:
| Planting trees without any sense of how they would become a
| viable ecosystem is pointless. Forests are complex ecosystems.
| Businesses do this because it's the cheapest sustainability
| strategy. These are economic project that not only don't put a
| single dent on climate change, they make it worst. The easiest
| solutions are often the worst.
| overtonwhy wrote:
| A bunch of wild claims with zero references to back them up.
| Poster is making massive assumptions about how these
| organizations operate. They clearly are talking out of their
| ass if you research the established organizations working in
| this field https://www.internationaltreefoundation.org/our-
| work
| googlryas wrote:
| How does this make climate change worse?
|
| Isn't it possible for a complex ecosystem to develop without
| knowing exactly how it happens? My compost heap hosts a
| fairly complex ecosystem - more complex than I understand,
| and I created it merely by heaping my yard waste and food
| scraps in the corner of my lot.
|
| If someone gave you $15B, how would you use it to put a dent
| in climate change?
| c54 wrote:
| I couldn't find details about the logistics and design of the GGW
| itself. I know the similar Chinese project largely failed because
| they planted a monocrop of trees in perfect grid formation, which
| turns out doesn't create a self-sustaining forest.
|
| Is this mistake getting fixed with the GGW? Are they planting a
| diversity of native drought-tolerant species over a varying
| timeline to allow for trees of different ages?
| kleton wrote:
| Indeed, there is a "technical brief" on their site, which has
| no technical details but a lot of information about how they
| can get funding from World Bank and other NGOs.
|
| https://static1.squarespace.com/static/564a15a0e4b0773edf86e...
| the_gipsy wrote:
| That's the point of the website. Not getting armchair expert
| leaning in to give orders.
| picsao wrote:
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