The Great Green Wall
greatgreenwall.org
greatgreenwall.org
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/564a15a0e4b0773edf86e...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSn6S-H7m-8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(China)
And in the US plenty of projects (from interstate highway to James Webb telescope) pass through more than three administrations.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-really-tu...
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.
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
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.
Recent decades have seen population estimates forced to be raised by orders of magnitude in many places.
It did not happen in Africa.
In North America, megafauna (dire wolf, saber-tooth cat, cheetah, horse, camel, mammoth, mastodon, giant sloth, 30+ genera) were killed off not by human activity but by a comet strike c.10818 BCE. It did in the Clovis culture, too. There were simultaneous extinctions in South America and Africa.
For many decades anthropologists and archaeologists earnestly insisted the Americas were barely populated, pre-Columbus. Now we have found major earthworks projects in both North and South America that required societies in, at minimum, tens of millions to have built and maintained.
We know appallingly little about the recent history of our species beyond ~6000 ya, with only tiny, isolated digs at older sites.
A major earthwork in Java, Gunung Padang (previously assumed to be a natural feature because of it size), dated to 22 kya has had excavations halted since 2014.
My impression has been that the Sahara, North Africa, the Middle East, and eastern Mediterranean were all gradually becoming dryer anyway. Is that wrong?
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.
[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-really-tu...
https://medcraveonline.com/IJH/is-atlantis-related-to-the-gr...
We do know that up until ~20kya there were millions of square miles of rich river valley land, now under the sea, that could have supported tens or hundreds of millions population. And, in most of the world, we have no idea how many people lived there throughout most of prehistory, with isolated exceptions.
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?
You can't put a dent on climate change until you find a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That's what matters. Trees have to last a 100 years to be effective carbon stores.
https://chadkohalyk.com/2021/03/24/nakamura-tetsu/
The one thing my pessimist outlook (and something that might be reflected in other takes here on HN) is that Nakamura was adamant about focusing on local needs. He gave short shrift to global programs and NGOs. What made him different, and what I think made him successful, was that he _listened_ to the people.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.