This summer's weather: "This is what global warming looks like"

It's like the hydrogen/electric/hybrid cars. We could have had fuel-cell cars and planes 30 years ago, 40 even, but big Oil couldn't figure out a way to make a profit from water, so they bought all the patents so it would never be built. It's all about the $$$, and I don't see that ever changing. Dystopia is the way of the future, not the Star Trek utopia.

 

Yupyupyup. And its not like the little guy (us, not the corporate bigwigs) can make a change. Unless we revolt ala kill the Tzar Revolution 1917 style. -_-
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If you destroy an ecosystem, you'd REALLY fuck us. Mountains are there for a reason. Deserts are there for a reason. Leave them the fuck alone. -_-

 

I'll never forget my physics class back in grade 11. We watched a show on Nova about polarities and its effects on earth. Love it. People, we are expendable on this little planet in this big big galaxy. We are a part of life, of evolution. We will change and adapt to the changing planet. You change it? We're all fucked. Chill and just enjoy life. XD

 

Oh, I think we are all fucked anyways. 200 years of heavy industry and pollution? That was the climb up the big hill of the rollercoaster. Right now, we are just tipping over the top and starting the long, fast descent before the big loop. 1950 was the time to start the kind of initiatives that we've got going today. Whether we survive the coming decades depends on if our reliance on technology can save us or not.

 

I'm actually taking an environmental science class this summer and it has been an eye opener in many areas.
I never really looked at the environment as a total connection with every human on this earth. It's kinda scary to tell you the truth.

Desertification is really bad and is listed as the number one problem in the drylands ecosystem.

I just finished my third week of classes and it's pretty interesting.

 

There certainly is a big difference, one that this darling Desert Rose Project completely fails to address. The report contains dubious hollow claims and absent solutions ("Note that if all the deserts of the earth were reafforested, they would fix the carbon equivalent to 50 years of American CO2 output, and so would significantly reduce the global warming process") which are authored by a trained physician with no apparent or claimed expertise in environmental or climate science. which 50 years? In how much time? How much slowing? How much desert all we talking about, all of it or all the new desert? Why west Africa (maybe because no powerful white people live there)? Soil quality (dump sewage on it!)?

Mention of the plan is also brought to us in the same breath as growing more algae, as if that can be done in a vacuum. Most every plan I've ever heard for growing new algae involves looking at the limiting nutrients for algae in marine environments and then dumping those nutrients in large quantities into the environment in order to cause CO2 sucking algal blooms as if that didn't create any new problems.

Plans that provide a short-cut solution by exploiting ecosystem features while destroying the parts we care about are guaranteed not to solve the problem of humanity's destructive tendancies, just move it around. I would be happy if it were just about undoing some of the destructive things we've done to the environment, but these plans are so much more.

 

Cut the crap. I want to hear proof that reversing the damage done by an expanding ecosystem means destroying that ecosystem completely. I'd call that jumping on the slippery slope. Filling the deserts with forestable areas does not equate to 100% eradication of the original desert ecosystem. Of course it would continue to be preserved, just in smaller areas.

I live in a high desert climate. The plants and animals here are pretty hardy and if they can take extreme hot, extreme cold, extreme water and lack thereof, then they can take being confined to smaller areas. That's a pretty huge given if you ask me.
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You do realize that you can simulate the ideal algae environment on land, right? And that acres of unused land can be used for algae farming? My own campus, which is five hours from the ocean, has a device that fosters algae growth that they use constantly.
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Then how come we aren't dead yet? 80% of the Amazon is gone, as well as 60% of South American forests, either for agricultural conversion or pharmaceuticals. The Owens Valley dried up in just a few decades after the people of Los Angeles milked it dry. Yet plants, animals and even humans have taken up residence there. And try this on for size: the Kudzu vine, originally from Asia, got transported to the Atlantic Gulf and plagued several US States by killing off plants. Now plants are building a resistance to it (albeit slowly). Nature can change rapidly in the face of adversity. That is the heart of Natural Selection. Nothing that I've seen in this thread counteracts that claim.

 

Is it not the case that the majority of endangered species today are endangered because of the shrinking size of their habitats? It is not at all a given that desert species could survive the deserts becoming smaller - they each require a given amount of room because of the lack of resources in the desert. Perhaps some of them would adapt to forested areas, but then they would have to compete with other species more specific to that ecosystem..

If this climate change is going to happen, we might as well plant more trees in the recently destroyed portions of the rainforest and farm more of Canada. I think it would work out better in the long run.

 

That would be more valid if the deserts themselves weren't expanding.

I have to disagree. The rule of thumb I have learned from various documentaries, survival guide and even my firearm safety class growing up was that if you see a cluster of plants, that means water and animals. Out in the desert expanses there really is nothing. It's like an animal version of the Midwest during the 1850s, albeit on a smaller scale. You just these small villages of sorts if you want to think of it that way, separated by desert miles around.

It's likely, in the areas you reforest, that you avoid plant and animal populations completely. But to be sure, a study on the density of these populations would of course have to be conducted.

Perhaps the biggest question here is how much forestation/reforestation is done. No, I don't think 100% is the right idea (nor do I recall saying it and I doubt that was the original intent of the planners either). The planners are going to start out with perhaps a few acres of coastline bordering the Sahara. If it works, they'll expand. Were it me, I'd try to cover 60%-80% of the Sahara (that still leaves over a million square miles of desert. If the same thing were tried in the Mojave here in the states, I'd say a modest 40% (and the rest is already protected anyway).

 

Speaking of crap, space as a resource is not exactly equivalent to nutrient resources. I'm not sure why this needs to be pointed out . And the link you didn't post about the program you specifically recommended doesn't exactly make it clear whether or not they're talking about reforesting deforested areas or eliminating deserts as a whole. It reads like they're talking about the latter to me. They're definitely operating from a conceptual framework that deserts are biomes that we needn't concern ourselves with the health of. That conceptual framework is, as kindly as I can put it, misinformed. At the very least filling the desert with forestable areas does equate to 100% eradication of the original ecosystem where you decide to plant those forests.

I'm not the one pulling a bait and switch here. If you want to restore the ecosystems eroded by desertification or other clearly anthropogenic causes, I've already addressed that: go right ahead. But plowing over desert land with trees (ignoring for the moment the impossibility of actually achieving such a feat) is not a valid solution to our wrecking ecosystems, regardless of how much desert you think is sufficient to be left behind.

It's as if I didn't qualify my statement by saying that it was about the plans I'm familiar with. If you've got a great plan from growing algae outside of it's natural environment in large enough quantities to meaningfully reduce carbon dioxide levels without further destroying 'expendable' eco-space, lay it on me.

 

First thing to get out of the way: I can't post links yet, otherwise I would. There's a reason I told you to look it up yourself. Don't use that as an attack. Second, if it reads to you that they'll eradicate 100% of the forests, then I'm sorry. I don't even agree to that (see post 31). Third, I would like to point out that "100% eradication of the original ecosystem where you decide to plant those forests" need not be mentioned and is simply diverting the argument. I shan't acknowledge that one further.

Fourth, the validity of this solution is surely up for debate, not just here on the TFP but in the international community, and while you disagree with the solution, I agree with it. I have no problems with you disagreeing with it, but at the same time I'm going to fight tooth and nail on it even if my beliefs turn out wrong. It's like with the Manhattan Project. People thought it was a good idea; others disagreed, and it turns out the ones who disagreed were right all along. If enough people agree to try this out, it's going to happen, and if it ends in disaster, those of us who wanted it, myself included, will deal with the guilt.

Here's what I've heard the plan is:
1. Take patches of farmland/old fish hatcheries/other areas of agricultural development land no longer in use.
2. Retrofit them with irrigation lines and breeding grounds perfect for algae.
3. Cheaply mass produce the algae, either for biofuel use or for transport to secure areas in need of carbon capture.

It's obviously more complex than that, but I'm not in renewable sciences; I'm a GIS major. My field deals in the study of environmental characteristics and the analysis thereof. Had I gone into renewable or civil engineering, I'd be a lot more well versed on this subject.

 

I see back in #31 you said:

Which reads to me that you're operating under the impression that deserts are mostly barren wastelands. This is simply not the case, despite the relatively arid conditions in many deserts they are still covered with plant an animal life. Take the Mojave:


Now, to be fair some parts of some deserts are more or less barren wastelands. Take for instance the driest part of the sahara, it still has plants - not many, but they're there and not only on oases. Even If we restrict our potential plantings to areas that are truly devoid of any plant and animal life, the size of what's there is hardly the point. You're talking about most arid, inhospitable climates on earth, with soil quality and nutrient density so low than not even mother nature, which has solved boiling sulphur springs and volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean, can crack that shell and you want to go there and plant trees? On the advice of a man with no apparent formal training in environmental, climate or botanical sciences? Surely you can understand why that plan is not impressing me at all (huge understatement).

I majored in biology at uni, I keep up with my reading. I don't feel at all out of my depth here but, perhaps, I should defer to the expertise of genuinegirly. Am I being unfair in simply thinking this impossible to succeed, is there something I should go read. Is the site I linked to before a bad explanation, have you heard anything similar, something which appears more reasonable?

 

The image I'm looking at is of sagebrush. Needless to say there will be burrows of all sorts containing various mice, snakes, etc. During the mornings and evenings Mule Deer will be moving from place to place. These are all things I know growing up in similar regions to the Mojave. I am not under the impression that most of it is barren. However, I find it hard pressed to believe that in either desert the population density of any animal is more than 5, thanks to how expansive these deserts are. And that's why I have no problem with what I believe.

Also, I noted that you and I are referencing the same document, and that we both have different interpretations of it. I guess I can only really leave it at that; I fail to see what's so impossible about it. Yes, it takes resources and money, but I feel there's plausibility there.

 

Just out of curiosity, does anyone else remember the doom and gloom we are in the fast lane to the next ice age stuff from the 70's? (I think it was the 70's...)
I have vague memories that they were saying we should be covered in glaciers by now.

 

That has pretty much been debunked.

In the 70s, it was only a handful of scientists who predicted global cooling and it was spread by another handful of media types; even at that time, the majority of climate scientists predicted global warming.

 

Thanks.
I've mentioned that in the past and got strange looks from people.
Glad to know it wasn't a hallucination or a remembered dream.