Science Forums 2

[Eclipse Now]

Originally Posted by Moontanman

We did not create the Sahara desert and any wholesale climate or ecological change should be viewed with extreme caution if at all.

We did not create the Sahara, but we certainly added to it's area!

In the vast east-to-west swath of semiarid Africa between the Sahara Desert and the forested regions to the south lies the Sahel, a region where farming and herding overlap. In countries stretching from Senegal and Mauritania in the west to Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia in the east, the demands of growing human and livestock numbers are converting more and more land into desert.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, is losing 351,000 hectares of rangeland and cropland to desertification each year. While Nigeria’s human population was growing from 33 million in 1950 to 132 million in 2005, a fourfold expansion, its livestock population grew from roughly 6 million to 66 million, an 11-fold increase. With the forage needs of Nigeria’s 15 million cattle and 51 million sheep and goats exceeding the sustainable yield of the country’s grasslands, the northern part of the country is slowly turning to desert. If Nigeria continues toward 258 million people as projected by 2050, the deterioration will only accelerate.

Earth Policy Institute Book Bytes - Countries Losing War with Advancing Deserts

Or try this...

There are similar concerns about the expanding Sahara on the southern edge of the desert as well. President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria has proposed planting a Great Green Wall of trees, a band five kilometers wide stretching 7,000 kilometers across Africa, in an effort to halt the desert’s advance. Senegal, which is on the western end of this proposed wall and is losing 50,000 hectares of productive land each year, strongly supports the idea. No one knows how long this project would take, but Senegalese environment minister Modou Fada Diagne observes, “Poverty and desertification create a vicious cycle.… Instead of waiting for the desert to come to us, we need to attack it.”

https://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch08_ss3.htm


If we don't take drastic action soon the way Africa is going it will only be able to feed one quarter of its people by 2025.

Africa may be able to feed only 25% of its population by 2025

Dated fossil pollen indicates that today's Sahara desert has been changing between desert and fertile savanna. Studies also show that prehistorically the advance and retreat of deserts tracked yearly rainfall, whereas a pattern of increasing amounts of desert began with human-driven activities of overgrazing and deforestation.

A chief difference of prehistoric versus present desertification is the much greater rate of desertification than in prehistoric and geologic time scales, due to anthropogenic influences.

Desertification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Check this out... that's Nouakchott, the Capital of Mauritania.

Back when it was cool to drain swamps or cut forests for new land the argument was always because we knew what was better.

Forests: What tosh! It was because we thought the world was so big nothing we could do would EVER use up all those forests. There were "no limits to growth". It was because of poverty and needing wood to fire cooking stoves, and not having nice electric or gas cookers. It was because of war and refugees and poverty and expanding populations that the vast majority of forests were cut down, at least until certain countries found other energy sources and were able to let the local forests regrow.

As for swamplands, yes, there may have been some wetlands that we thought we knew what was best. (New Orleans, etc). However, ecologists are starting to understand integrated systems far more effectively.

One system that we'd have to investigate is the dust storms that blow off Africa feed nutrients into our oceans. If we increased local humidity too much, would some of our oceans lack the nutrients they need to thrive, affecting the fish population? Tough call, because the way the world currently needs fish protein most fisheries are in collapse anyway. If we could feed most African's from their own land, including maybe some inland fish farming and integrated 2nd generation ethanol / aquaculture waste processing / vegetable farming / energy solutions, then we'd feed more Africans, reduce poverty, reduce deforestation that you've mentioned a few times AND reduce global warming.



Do you not like Africans or something? What have you got against them converting some of the hundreds of thousands of hectares of desertification they've lost each and every year for decades back to usable land?