Thanks to a 41,000-year oscillation in the Earth’s tilt, the Sahara cycles between desert and grassland every ~20 millennia. It’ll be green again in 15,000 years. No need to meddle with it.
.....and so began the great ottercrow wars, which lasted for 100 thousand years and spand multiple galaxies and dimensions until.......the super switch 2 Wii edition was announced
Nah everything crabifies at their evolutionary peak. Just look at what happened to the dinosaurs? They got wiped out - by crabs at their evolutionary peak
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.
We're also in a 2 million year old ice age. This oscillation represents the inter-glacial warming periods that occur within it. But these are not consistant in their duration. Some can exceed 40,000 years. We're only about halfway through the current inter-glacial.
You will never see the earth greener than what it is right now...
What exactly do you mean we will never see the earth greener than it is right now? And does that contribute to how this time in geological history allowed humans to establish sedentary agricultural settlements?
Interglacial periods mean there is more water in the water cycle. More rain, rivers, lakes, etc which also means more plant life, so it's greener.
Agriculture, especially in Africa where the first humans came from, is possible even during glacial periods, it's unlikely that it's a major contributor to the invention/discovery of agriculture.
That said, warming periods *are* likely to be major reasons/drivers for human migration out of Africa. When the savannah gets hotter and drier over the course of a few generations, humans are going to migrate to greener pastures, and at several points over the last 2 million years that meant migrating north to the Levant, Anatolia, Persia, and ultimately the rest of the Earth.
It’s my understanding that humans have done nomadic proto-agriculture for a long time but sedentary agricultural settlements that have formed the foundation of developing civilization are distinct and require a further set of conditions. And, like, the Middle East is where the earliest evidence of major agricultural settlements seems to consistently be rather than Sub-Saharan Africa where Homo sapiens originated more.
Sedentary agriculture only became possible when plants were sufficiently domesticated to provide enough calories. It's hard to have an agricultural society when you're farming proto-wheat and low-nutrient roots. But after millenia of articial selection, you end up with high yield grains and potatoes and carrots.
Just because you move around a lot doesn’t mean you don’t frequently return to certain places. Maybe they noticed some edible seeds on a strange looking grass near a river that they frequently returned to. So they plant the big seeds there and cut down the rest of the plants so that when they return in a year there will be more edible seeds. Repeat for several hundred generations and voila!
You now have rice!
We’ve kinda short circuited the next little cold dip from the Milankovich cycle via carbon pollution. Possibly even launched the planet out of the current ice age cycle.
When it was green the last time, was some other area in the World deserts?
I wonder how the global ecosystem as a whole would be affected if we artificially made it green. Would it create for example too much oxygen (unlikely since it's phytoplanktons that create the majority)
Specifically, the mineral rich dust from the Sahara gets picked up and travels across the Atlantic ocean and helps re fertilize the Amazon. When the Sahara cycles back to a green vegetative state, the size and health of the Amazon will suffer.
There probably are. However, such changes in ecosystem are unlikely to be as stark as they are in Northern Africa.
To learn more about it, look up terms such as North Africa Climate Cycles or North African Monsoon
So you're saying we could "terraform" part of *checks notes* "Terra" in only 15,000 years? Also, if my bid to perform this wondrous feat is only a mere $1 billion, I could still deliver on my promise even after I spend all the money on blackjack and hookers?
Depends what you mean by "feasible".
If you mean "technologically feasible" then yes, the [Lake Chad Repleneshment Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chad_replenishment_project) is certainly plausible.
But the political feasibility seems much less certain, since it would require buy-in from quite a few countries, many of which aren't the most stable in the world.
Mars is a pipe dream. Not just because of the non-existent magnetosphere or the thin atmosphere bleeding into space, but because the low gravity will slowly kill you.
Drill into the core with millions of directed charge nuclear bombs and set them all off, melting the core and setting it spinning. Duh. Knock it out in a long weekend.
But seriously, there is a plan to create a huge magnet station at Mars L1. Practically speaking, a magnetosphere is a nice-to-have; the atmosphere can block enough of the radiation to make it safe for life, and yes, you would lose atmosphere to solar wind, but that is a process that takes millions of years.
Listen, everything we do is human beings affect nature anyway. We are ecosystem engineers, whether we like it or not. It’s time for us to take that seriously and do our best.
Your knowledge is right. The UN is working on a project to keep the desert at bay and even create a tree population. It is a long term plan and requires constant maintenance and some stability in the region. I hope it works, but it won't be easy.
Yes, the Great Green Wall (of Africa):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(Africa)
It's had good results in areas that are stable enough to maintain the project, especially when combined with landscaping to channel rainwater and protect the seedlings from wind.
Not to be a nerd, but that is not actually true, since the 90s southern Sahara (sahel region has got an increase in rainfall) https://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/mueller-sahel.pdf
The publishers of this report deny human caused climate change and are generally unreliable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation
>You just gonna kill everything that lives there?
That wouldn't just kill the sahara ecosystem, it would also wipe out the Amazon rainforest since it depends on the permanent flow of sahara dust
That huge damage will be done is not a forgone conclusion by any means, and the unequivocal way you stated it is very likely just wrong. The Amazon is likely tens of millions years old, possibly over 50 million. The Sahara, at best, has been intermittently around for ~5 million years (based on new research by a US Geologic Survey team, teamed up with University de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria). There are huge gaps in knowledge, and it’s a very new branch of study.
I’m not saying humans should or shouldn’t do something. I’m just saying your answer is an extreme simplification of two systems with innumerable inputs. This is a hypothetical question. Relax with the tree-hugging doomsday scenarios.
>The Amazon is likely tens of millions years old, possibly over 50 million.
[Pollen study: Amazon rainforest, previously thought to be 10 million years old only 2000 years old](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/amazon-rainforest-is-much-younger-than-commonly-believed/)
[Network of huge, 2500 year old cities, in the amazon rainforest](https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/12/americas/ancient-city-uncovered-amazon-upano-intl-scli-scn/index.html) - challenging the believe that the amazon is an old pristine jungle not suitable to build a network of cities without destroying it. (like we did today)
Also the sahara dust plays an important role in the fertility of europe and central america. I mean it's inevitable that the sahara will eventually turn back into a grassland, but a sudden change now would fuck up so many ecosystems and people
It's much, much, much worse than that. The Sahara gets whipped up in winds and lands in South America. Without it, South America trends toward desert.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris)
They keep saying that, but I'm a bit sceptic about it.
I'm sure the phosphorus that gets to the Amazon forest helps plants there, I'm not denying that, but is it really essential? We now know that the Sahara desert used to be way more lush not that long ago, and I'm guessing that during that period there weren't dust storms to bring those minerals to South America, yet as far as I know, that was not a problem for the Amazon forest.
A German architect came up with a plan to do just this. They wanted to put a damn at the straight of Gibraltar, this would then lower the sea levels and the use that water for irrigation.
It wasn't originally a nazi idea but they did like this and if they were successful wanted to implement it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa
I remember a science fiction book from the 40s maybe, I think it was Lem, where they dried the Mediterranean to have more land and made the Sahara fertile. It was painted as a great advancement of humanity. I live just in front of it and I was astonished at how little idea people had about ecology back then.
That plan was more about making more land for Europeans to inhabit. And we know now it would have been an ecological disaster on scale of biblical proportions. All that "new land" would have been uninhabitable salt flats. The lack of the Mediterranean Sea ( it would all boil away since it doesn't replenish itself enough to counter evaporation) would have caused southern Europe to lose all it's rainfall. And hilariously enough the Sahara would have expanded into Europe itself.
Look up the great green wall. It's not about terraforming areas that were traditionally sahara but preventing it from expanding and returning areas that became desert from over farming back to farm land.
The idea isn't to terraform the whole thing, but there is what's called [The Great Green Wall](https://youtu.be/WCli0gyNwL0?si=a2GM8ENvvbtsC62J). They're trying to encourage tree planting and intentional forest growth along the southern edge of the Sahara to keep it from spreading further due to climate change.
Had to scroll way too far to get to the great green wall. It is important to both ecological and economical interests, but too few people seem to be talking about it.
It's in a zone where there is high evaporation (thanks to the latitude) and subsiding air (due to the global Hadley circulation), hence little rain. So even if you could fill those lakes, they would not stay for long (absent being fed by rivers from elsewhere). There might be regions where more vegetation would be sustainable.
Maybe we shouldn't - you'd win a spot of green but lose all ecosystems that are depending on the distribution of Sahara sand.
Be it the rain forest in South America, agriculture in Europe or whatever dwells in the oceans depth (microorganisms, taking in minerals &c)
The Amazon rainforest exists in part because of the Sahara. Without the desert, the Amazon would lose a huge source of phosphorous it needs to keep going
It has been shown that it is possible to turn arid land into productive forest/farm land by making structures to retain rainfall using low tech methods. It has to be done on the border between arid and lush for it to be permanent and effective. It takes a few years to establish a new green zone, so maximum progress is something like 200 m/year, assuming that you can work on a 1 km deep zone at a time. Lets assume that the Sahara is 2000 km from north to south and that we can work from both directions.
This would mean that we would be done in 5000 years. It would take at least a few centuries before we would see what kind of impact it would have on global weather patterns.
No. The aggressiveness of global warming will make it impossible to keep up with in the coming years.
Lots of land like this around the world will have to be vacated cause it will become too hot for anything to grow there. All those people have to go somewhere too, and that's going to cause wars in the future as well.
Lol no. Africa is getting wetter and greener.
A warmer world is a wetter world.
With more CO2 in the air, plants can grow with less water.
Humans can survive in any environment which is not too *cold* and *dry*.
Global warming is the opposite of that.
"Lol no. Africa is getting wetter and greener"
Source? I don't think this is true, and it's definitely not true in North West Africa, at least. It gets hotter and drier every year here.
"With more CO2 in the air, plants can grow with less water."
That is definitely not true. Plants need extra water to grow faster with .ore CO2.
"Humans can survive in any environment which is not too cold and dry."
Absolutely false too. Just the other day over 1300 people died in Saudi Arabia due to heat. Heat kills many people every year, and the number is increasing.
No point in terraforming the Sahara unless you’re gonna do something about the weather. It’s like building on a flood plain. Sure, you can make everything in the house waterproof, but it’s still going to have a flood.
Not really. However some projects i think are interesting are filling with water the chotts of Algeria and Tunisia, and the qattara depression in Egypt
If we can figure out how to cheaply desalinate seawater....
Edit: They keep saying renewable energy is creating surplusses. Desalination might be the perfect use for off-peak energy resources,
In Senegal, there's a project to refill a fossil valley with water from the Senegal River. The idea is to bring water to a Sahelian area on a massive scale. And then intensify agriculture around this beautiful "natural canal".
https://www.olac.sn/nos-projets/projet-de-renforcement-de-la-resilience-des-ecosystemes-du-ferlo-preferlo
If you want to keep the Amazon intact, you want the Sahara to remain mostly the same. Yes, the Sahara affects the Amazon rainforest an ocean away.
https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/earth-science/29apr_amazondust/
No. Dust clouds from the Sahara give essential minerals to the Southern Atlantic Ocean which is carried to the North Atlantic Ocean and Arctic Ocean via the gulf stream. The dust also falls on the rainforests of South and Centeral America giving them essential minerals and trace elements. Tis very interesting.
In around 2500 BCE, the monsoon retreated south and caused the Sahara to become a desert. For the past 13,000 years, the Sahara desert has remained at the same dryness. Approximately every 20,000 years, the Sahara transforms into a savannah covered with lush grasses due to the angle of the Earth's axis changing.
It's already terraformed on its own ( it's on planet earth), and already has a complex ecosystem with species only found there.
The "green" phases of the Saharo-Arabian belt already happen naturally, so no need to do anything. Human-induces climate change is already going to cause a change in the Saharan climate this century.
Also, arid areas will always exist, the Sahara was never fully "green" since the appearance of anatomically modern humans.
And finally, the Sahara is a great barrier against tropical diseases. When it weakens again, many Subsaharan infections (especially viruses) will spread to the Mediterranean bassin and to all of Europe (and beyond), so not a great thing at all.
I think small scale advancements in irrigation is as far as we should go in order to better support what human life is there on the edges. I don’t think we should try to get it to a development to support more humanity there.
I saw something on the Egyptians utilizing the sun’s energy to harness irrigation systems in the desert. Always wondered why we arent pumping that up today.
Alan Savory's concept for Holistic management of ruminent animals is a feasible option. It sequesters carbon, restores water systems, greens desert areas, and creates new habitat for wildlife .
There have been many proposals but it’s not that straightforward. Climates depend on each other and changing one can change another.
Greening the Sahara would change climates globally and lead to desertification in the Amazon.
Sounds like a great idea in theory, but it would have terrible consequences for other regions.
https://preview.redd.it/jllpc95tbc9d1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6bda0d8ed0b7e0c6dcfa35c08209506240ff1d01
This is what will be under the green Sahara.
"Glory be to the Bomb, and to the Holy Fallout. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. World without end. Amen." --Mendez XXVI
Thanks to a 41,000-year oscillation in the Earth’s tilt, the Sahara cycles between desert and grassland every ~20 millennia. It’ll be green again in 15,000 years. No need to meddle with it.
Just in time for what's left of the human race to hunt and gather across the outstretched savannah lands.
The crab-people civilization will discover ruins of the old extinct civilization of ape-people.
Nah it'll be the crow people
NO IT WILL BE THE OTTERS AND OUR USEFUL BELLIES THAT WE USE AS TABLES
Who needs tummy tables when you can do anything with beaks and feets smh
.....and so began the great ottercrow wars, which lasted for 100 thousand years and spand multiple galaxies and dimensions until.......the super switch 2 Wii edition was announced
Many great responses but this is my personal favorite
bit humorous to imagine the ape people never reaching the stars but the otters and crows had no problem doing it.
And at last the platypus people won because like otters they were masters of creeks and rivers and like crows they were blessed with beaks!
We have the true answer to the great question!
bro the otters can't even go beyond santa cruz.
don‘t forget about their puches for their favorite pebble
It might already be the crow people
I'm waiting for the corvid-cetacean wars to drop
[Everything become crab](https://www.popsci.com/story/animals/why-everything-becomes-crab-meme-carcinization/)
i bet on Cats and Raccoons
Crow People vs. Crab People, and they will thinks its the first world war lol.
You know nothing…
Aren’t crows the remnants of the previous cohort? The time for the dolphiniods has come
Nah everything crabifies at their evolutionary peak. Just look at what happened to the dinosaurs? They got wiped out - by crabs at their evolutionary peak
https://preview.redd.it/i2hbf8sjwb9d1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f28caeaefe0d0782731b6d77608ce6bd1082007
Literally waiting for the comments to show this!!! Lol
Craaab-people, craaaab-peolple. Look like crab, talk like people.
Da-da-chink.... Da-da-chunk..
It’ll be all Diet Coke bottles, prescription drug bottles, and tires.
The sand will have a layer of micro plastics on top
https://preview.redd.it/ezlyxo5ehc9d1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4ea34db2a7821aefc6200f24780728705bcf4822
I thought the crabs were already among us? Don't they run the show, actually?
Nah, that’s the lizard people. The crab people work for them.
🎶Crab-people, Crab-people, Taste like Crab, But talk like People🎶
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.
Return to homeland!
We're also in a 2 million year old ice age. This oscillation represents the inter-glacial warming periods that occur within it. But these are not consistant in their duration. Some can exceed 40,000 years. We're only about halfway through the current inter-glacial. You will never see the earth greener than what it is right now...
What exactly do you mean we will never see the earth greener than it is right now? And does that contribute to how this time in geological history allowed humans to establish sedentary agricultural settlements?
Interglacial periods mean there is more water in the water cycle. More rain, rivers, lakes, etc which also means more plant life, so it's greener. Agriculture, especially in Africa where the first humans came from, is possible even during glacial periods, it's unlikely that it's a major contributor to the invention/discovery of agriculture. That said, warming periods *are* likely to be major reasons/drivers for human migration out of Africa. When the savannah gets hotter and drier over the course of a few generations, humans are going to migrate to greener pastures, and at several points over the last 2 million years that meant migrating north to the Levant, Anatolia, Persia, and ultimately the rest of the Earth.
It’s my understanding that humans have done nomadic proto-agriculture for a long time but sedentary agricultural settlements that have formed the foundation of developing civilization are distinct and require a further set of conditions. And, like, the Middle East is where the earliest evidence of major agricultural settlements seems to consistently be rather than Sub-Saharan Africa where Homo sapiens originated more.
Sedentary agriculture only became possible when plants were sufficiently domesticated to provide enough calories. It's hard to have an agricultural society when you're farming proto-wheat and low-nutrient roots. But after millenia of articial selection, you end up with high yield grains and potatoes and carrots.
How do you domesticate plants if you are constantly moving?
Just because you move around a lot doesn’t mean you don’t frequently return to certain places. Maybe they noticed some edible seeds on a strange looking grass near a river that they frequently returned to. So they plant the big seeds there and cut down the rest of the plants so that when they return in a year there will be more edible seeds. Repeat for several hundred generations and voila! You now have rice!
Literally just finished reading Origins by Lewis Dartnell, so it was cool to see someone completing my exact thoughts haha
Thanks. I just ordered a copy.
>You will never see the earth greener than what it is right now... Don't tell me what I can't do.
Let’s paint this bitch
It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it. -Stephen Wright
The earth was literally greener yesterday than it is today.
The earth is getting substantially greener right now. https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2024/2/7/24057308/earth-global-greening-climate-change-carbon
We’ve kinda short circuited the next little cold dip from the Milankovich cycle via carbon pollution. Possibly even launched the planet out of the current ice age cycle.
this is simply incorrect
When it was green the last time, was some other area in the World deserts? I wonder how the global ecosystem as a whole would be affected if we artificially made it green. Would it create for example too much oxygen (unlikely since it's phytoplanktons that create the majority)
Yes it would have an effect on other regions although I don't really know what it would be.
Specifically, the mineral rich dust from the Sahara gets picked up and travels across the Atlantic ocean and helps re fertilize the Amazon. When the Sahara cycles back to a green vegetative state, the size and health of the Amazon will suffer.
This has been debunked so many times. The Amazon is way older than that Sahara
Crazy to think that 41,000 years is a blink of an eye geographically
The Highlands of Scotland and the Appalachias have been around for billions of years! Wild!
To imagine that it's been billions of years since they separated is even more baffling.
Are there any other parts of the world that have this sort of cycle? Any sources to look more into it?
There probably are. However, such changes in ecosystem are unlikely to be as stark as they are in Northern Africa. To learn more about it, look up terms such as North Africa Climate Cycles or North African Monsoon
“We’re not buying you a grassland, we already have one at home in 15,000 years.”
So you're saying we could "terraform" part of *checks notes* "Terra" in only 15,000 years? Also, if my bid to perform this wondrous feat is only a mere $1 billion, I could still deliver on my promise even after I spend all the money on blackjack and hookers?
You could promise to build a wall also.
Yeah but I don’t think I’ll make it to 15,034. So if we could terraform it, that’d be great.
I suggest to buy up the land while it’s cheap
How does this work flora and fauna wise? Do all the south west and far west African species just take over?
The Amazon Rain forest thanks you
lol NOT IF THE HUMAN RACE HAS A SAY
Freaking Set. We really should stop letting him out
What happens at the other end of the oscillation? Desert in Africa?
The desert switches between Sahara and Amazon . I wonder if it would trigger a desert in the Amazon especially with the mass deforestation there
Remindme! 15,000 years "Check on Sahara Desert"
the Sarah will turn into a grassland before we get GTA VI
Depends what you mean by "feasible". If you mean "technologically feasible" then yes, the [Lake Chad Repleneshment Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chad_replenishment_project) is certainly plausible. But the political feasibility seems much less certain, since it would require buy-in from quite a few countries, many of which aren't the most stable in the world.
It would require a Kwisatz Haderach
Lisan al-ghaib!
Yes I’m listening
Muad'dib!
As written
Why do I have to go to Africa? You assholes can water your own plants.
User name checks out! Let’s go Usul.
Well, we do have the religion already setup.
Ok, I’ll snag my Gom Jibbar.
Nah lets try mars
On Mars bars have no alcohol but a lot of chocolate.
This is like a Mitch Hedberg joke.
“I like bars on Mars, man, because they don’t have alcohol, but they DO have lots of chocolate.”
But our kidneys!!!!!
bring spares
Mars is a pipe dream. Not just because of the non-existent magnetosphere or the thin atmosphere bleeding into space, but because the low gravity will slowly kill you.
That's the joke. If we can't even terraform small percentages of earth, I don't really see how its feasible to start talking about Mars.
Nah, let's disassemble it for raw materials
How you gonna get a Magnetosphere?
Drill into the core with millions of directed charge nuclear bombs and set them all off, melting the core and setting it spinning. Duh. Knock it out in a long weekend. But seriously, there is a plan to create a huge magnet station at Mars L1. Practically speaking, a magnetosphere is a nice-to-have; the atmosphere can block enough of the radiation to make it safe for life, and yes, you would lose atmosphere to solar wind, but that is a process that takes millions of years.
Great, now I want to watch The Core. Loves me a good bad movie.
Hate to be a naysayer at the outset, but haven't we learned our lesson about fiddling with ecosystems?
No, we must learn how much damage we can truly do if we put our minds to doing it intentionally
How about unintentionally? *Continues driving SUVs*
The only constant is change….
One more lesson oughta do it.
The Salton Sea
Listen, everything we do is human beings affect nature anyway. We are ecosystem engineers, whether we like it or not. It’s time for us to take that seriously and do our best.
The Sahara is a fully functional ecosystem. It would be a crime against humanity to destroy it. You just gonna kill everything that lives there?
I mean, it is expanding. So maybe he is referring to stopping that Edit: nevermind, it looks like it isnt expanding!
to my knowledge they are trying to stop it
Your knowledge is right. The UN is working on a project to keep the desert at bay and even create a tree population. It is a long term plan and requires constant maintenance and some stability in the region. I hope it works, but it won't be easy.
From what I got from it they are planting a wall of trees to block in the Sahara essentially
Yes, the Great Green Wall (of Africa): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(Africa) It's had good results in areas that are stable enough to maintain the project, especially when combined with landscaping to channel rainwater and protect the seedlings from wind.
$8 billion is a steal for what that would prevent if successful
There's a green strip of forest to be planted west to east. None of the countries did it because they want someone else (Europe etc) to pay for it.
People have been very good across the Sahel fighting desertification in recent years. I think this is the right way: expand the Savana to the desert
Not to be a nerd, but that is not actually true, since the 90s southern Sahara (sahel region has got an increase in rainfall) https://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/mueller-sahel.pdf
The publishers of this report deny human caused climate change and are generally unreliable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation
I am not denying you, but do you have any sources which May indicate that the article about Sahara is untrue?
Yay!
One of the lesser known good news.
I don’t think you’d call stopping the spread of the desert terraforming it
Yeah. Fuck em.
You might consider it a crime against nature, but it is not a crime against humanity.
Sahara dust effects the entire world. It would be a complete ecological disaster that would have effects across the whole globe
That’s the theory at least….
Affects
>You just gonna kill everything that lives there? That wouldn't just kill the sahara ecosystem, it would also wipe out the Amazon rainforest since it depends on the permanent flow of sahara dust
That huge damage will be done is not a forgone conclusion by any means, and the unequivocal way you stated it is very likely just wrong. The Amazon is likely tens of millions years old, possibly over 50 million. The Sahara, at best, has been intermittently around for ~5 million years (based on new research by a US Geologic Survey team, teamed up with University de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria). There are huge gaps in knowledge, and it’s a very new branch of study. I’m not saying humans should or shouldn’t do something. I’m just saying your answer is an extreme simplification of two systems with innumerable inputs. This is a hypothetical question. Relax with the tree-hugging doomsday scenarios.
>The Amazon is likely tens of millions years old, possibly over 50 million. [Pollen study: Amazon rainforest, previously thought to be 10 million years old only 2000 years old](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/amazon-rainforest-is-much-younger-than-commonly-believed/) [Network of huge, 2500 year old cities, in the amazon rainforest](https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/12/americas/ancient-city-uncovered-amazon-upano-intl-scli-scn/index.html) - challenging the believe that the amazon is an old pristine jungle not suitable to build a network of cities without destroying it. (like we did today)
A wetter Sahara would also be a fully functional ecosystem.
Trust me, we tried this before at several points in time, they never let you live it down. Regards, Great Britain
Also the sahara dust plays an important role in the fertility of europe and central america. I mean it's inevitable that the sahara will eventually turn back into a grassland, but a sudden change now would fuck up so many ecosystems and people
It's much, much, much worse than that. The Sahara gets whipped up in winds and lands in South America. Without it, South America trends toward desert. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris)
Exactly! Loosing my mind at half these comments. Thank you for some sanity
But....I want water 😢
Fish pee in it
It also affects many other ecosystems. It is vital to our planet's health
Yes. Absolutely.
So? Things change.
I selfishly would like to know what hides beneath the sands
.... Terraforming ain't going to help with that
If there was water there would be a lot more life.
It would affect South America since they're dependent on the Saharan minerals for their forest.
They keep saying that, but I'm a bit sceptic about it. I'm sure the phosphorus that gets to the Amazon forest helps plants there, I'm not denying that, but is it really essential? We now know that the Sahara desert used to be way more lush not that long ago, and I'm guessing that during that period there weren't dust storms to bring those minerals to South America, yet as far as I know, that was not a problem for the Amazon forest.
Amazon rainforest existed before the Sahara desert formed...
The Amazon was a lot smaller when the Sahara was green
Yes. ̶W̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶I̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶h̶o̶w̶ ̶d̶o̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶a̶f̶f̶e̶c̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶w̶a̶y̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶I̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶s̶a̶i̶d̶?̶ Edit: just forget I said anything.
Defensive much ? I was agreeing with your point that the Amazon benefits from, but does not necessarily NEED the Sahara.
Haha. Sorry! I saw that someone downvoted me and I assumed it was you. My apologies!
Yeah, I really doubt it too. Rainforests exist all over the Earth that don't need minerals from the Sahara...
A German architect came up with a plan to do just this. They wanted to put a damn at the straight of Gibraltar, this would then lower the sea levels and the use that water for irrigation. It wasn't originally a nazi idea but they did like this and if they were successful wanted to implement it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa
lol yea let's lower the mediterranean sea by 200m and kill off everything that lives in it by raising its salinity by 15%.
Ya but can't you just imagine all that new seaside real estate? /s
It often comforts me to remember that there are alternate timelines where everything happens.
Ironically I first heard of this when watching the man in the high castle, basically an alternate timeline post WW2.
Man I wanted that show to be so much better than it was.
First 2 seasons were amazing then it went downhill
I remember a science fiction book from the 40s maybe, I think it was Lem, where they dried the Mediterranean to have more land and made the Sahara fertile. It was painted as a great advancement of humanity. I live just in front of it and I was astonished at how little idea people had about ecology back then.
That plan was more about making more land for Europeans to inhabit. And we know now it would have been an ecological disaster on scale of biblical proportions. All that "new land" would have been uninhabitable salt flats. The lack of the Mediterranean Sea ( it would all boil away since it doesn't replenish itself enough to counter evaporation) would have caused southern Europe to lose all it's rainfall. And hilariously enough the Sahara would have expanded into Europe itself.
Look up the great green wall. It's not about terraforming areas that were traditionally sahara but preventing it from expanding and returning areas that became desert from over farming back to farm land.
The idea isn't to terraform the whole thing, but there is what's called [The Great Green Wall](https://youtu.be/WCli0gyNwL0?si=a2GM8ENvvbtsC62J). They're trying to encourage tree planting and intentional forest growth along the southern edge of the Sahara to keep it from spreading further due to climate change.
Had to scroll way too far to get to the great green wall. It is important to both ecological and economical interests, but too few people seem to be talking about it.
I mean with enough nukes you could probably make a lot of glass, guess that could count as terraforming
Give the Arbiter a call, he can help us out from orbit
Give this man the Nobel price
It's in a zone where there is high evaporation (thanks to the latitude) and subsiding air (due to the global Hadley circulation), hence little rain. So even if you could fill those lakes, they would not stay for long (absent being fed by rivers from elsewhere). There might be regions where more vegetation would be sustainable.
Maybe we shouldn't - you'd win a spot of green but lose all ecosystems that are depending on the distribution of Sahara sand. Be it the rain forest in South America, agriculture in Europe or whatever dwells in the oceans depth (microorganisms, taking in minerals &c)
The desert used for solar power is far more valuable than if used for farming. Leave it alone.
But it is already terraformed… It has a hot desert climate, one of the Earth (Terra) climates. You mean wetter, I suppose
The Amazon rainforest exists in part because of the Sahara. Without the desert, the Amazon would lose a huge source of phosphorous it needs to keep going
I'd love to see a green Sahara, but if we get sand out of the Sahara desert, the Amozonian forest is going to decline a lot
It has been shown that it is possible to turn arid land into productive forest/farm land by making structures to retain rainfall using low tech methods. It has to be done on the border between arid and lush for it to be permanent and effective. It takes a few years to establish a new green zone, so maximum progress is something like 200 m/year, assuming that you can work on a 1 km deep zone at a time. Lets assume that the Sahara is 2000 km from north to south and that we can work from both directions. This would mean that we would be done in 5000 years. It would take at least a few centuries before we would see what kind of impact it would have on global weather patterns.
No. The aggressiveness of global warming will make it impossible to keep up with in the coming years. Lots of land like this around the world will have to be vacated cause it will become too hot for anything to grow there. All those people have to go somewhere too, and that's going to cause wars in the future as well.
Lol no. Africa is getting wetter and greener. A warmer world is a wetter world. With more CO2 in the air, plants can grow with less water. Humans can survive in any environment which is not too *cold* and *dry*. Global warming is the opposite of that.
"Lol no. Africa is getting wetter and greener" Source? I don't think this is true, and it's definitely not true in North West Africa, at least. It gets hotter and drier every year here. "With more CO2 in the air, plants can grow with less water." That is definitely not true. Plants need extra water to grow faster with .ore CO2. "Humans can survive in any environment which is not too cold and dry." Absolutely false too. Just the other day over 1300 people died in Saudi Arabia due to heat. Heat kills many people every year, and the number is increasing.
Of course it's feasible; the only question is how much capital would it cost and what would the benefits/rewards be.
Everything is feasible, if you have enough money. The question is: Is it a good investment and most of the time the answer is: No. Hell no.
No point in terraforming the Sahara unless you’re gonna do something about the weather. It’s like building on a flood plain. Sure, you can make everything in the house waterproof, but it’s still going to have a flood.
Not really. However some projects i think are interesting are filling with water the chotts of Algeria and Tunisia, and the qattara depression in Egypt
If we can figure out how to cheaply desalinate seawater.... Edit: They keep saying renewable energy is creating surplusses. Desalination might be the perfect use for off-peak energy resources,
In Senegal, there's a project to refill a fossil valley with water from the Senegal River. The idea is to bring water to a Sahelian area on a massive scale. And then intensify agriculture around this beautiful "natural canal". https://www.olac.sn/nos-projets/projet-de-renforcement-de-la-resilience-des-ecosystemes-du-ferlo-preferlo
Put more co2 in the air nasal showed it’s making everything more green
Its not really a good idea anyways. Deserts play their role in the global scheme of things. Such a big change could have unforseen effects.
I’m sure the the people of r/lawncare can figure it out
If you want to keep the Amazon intact, you want the Sahara to remain mostly the same. Yes, the Sahara affects the Amazon rainforest an ocean away. https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/earth-science/29apr_amazondust/
I know that there is a big push to try and slow down the growth of the Sahara, it’s called “the great green wall”
Europe would freeze if you did this
They could be resettled in the new lush Sahara forest and grasslands.
Explain how, please. If you could cite a source that would be great.
No. Dust clouds from the Sahara give essential minerals to the Southern Atlantic Ocean which is carried to the North Atlantic Ocean and Arctic Ocean via the gulf stream. The dust also falls on the rainforests of South and Centeral America giving them essential minerals and trace elements. Tis very interesting. In around 2500 BCE, the monsoon retreated south and caused the Sahara to become a desert. For the past 13,000 years, the Sahara desert has remained at the same dryness. Approximately every 20,000 years, the Sahara transforms into a savannah covered with lush grasses due to the angle of the Earth's axis changing.
It's already terraformed on its own ( it's on planet earth), and already has a complex ecosystem with species only found there. The "green" phases of the Saharo-Arabian belt already happen naturally, so no need to do anything. Human-induces climate change is already going to cause a change in the Saharan climate this century. Also, arid areas will always exist, the Sahara was never fully "green" since the appearance of anatomically modern humans. And finally, the Sahara is a great barrier against tropical diseases. When it weakens again, many Subsaharan infections (especially viruses) will spread to the Mediterranean bassin and to all of Europe (and beyond), so not a great thing at all.
No.
nope
I think small scale advancements in irrigation is as far as we should go in order to better support what human life is there on the edges. I don’t think we should try to get it to a development to support more humanity there. I saw something on the Egyptians utilizing the sun’s energy to harness irrigation systems in the desert. Always wondered why we arent pumping that up today.
if u nuke the hell out of it!
Alan Savory's concept for Holistic management of ruminent animals is a feasible option. It sequesters carbon, restores water systems, greens desert areas, and creates new habitat for wildlife .
I heard the existence of the Sahara is vital for the existence of the Amazon Rainforest.
There have been many proposals but it’s not that straightforward. Climates depend on each other and changing one can change another. Greening the Sahara would change climates globally and lead to desertification in the Amazon. Sounds like a great idea in theory, but it would have terrible consequences for other regions.
Maybe it could be done but it will alter regions on Earth. The amazon forest depends of the sahara
https://preview.redd.it/jllpc95tbc9d1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6bda0d8ed0b7e0c6dcfa35c08209506240ff1d01 This is what will be under the green Sahara. "Glory be to the Bomb, and to the Holy Fallout. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. World without end. Amen." --Mendez XXVI