AAAS ScienceNOW: Finally, a geo(bio)engineering climate change idea that makes sense. Except maybe for the part about locusts.
What a concept. It sure beats the hoisting of huge solar power collectors and sun shades into space to shade the planet, beam energy down, or both and thus thwart climate change. At ScienceNOW Mason Inman writes up an idea in press at the journal Climate Change. Were the Sahara reforested, perhaps with desert-hardy eucalyptus trees and similar fast-growing timber, the whole region would cool, it would get rainier (and maybe wet the Sahel?), and turn so much airborne CO2 into wood that it would counter most of the entire fossil fuel emissions of mankind’s industries. Eventually, the forest would produce so much wood that they could provide fuel for biomass-burning power plants.
Nothing is free however, and we’re not talking only about the multitrillion Euro cost of the desalination plants, presumably nuclear powered, it would take to provide the irrigation and attendant infrastructure. A sudden, humid new ecosystem in North Africa would doubtless bring environmental surprises, perhaps including insect outbreaks. It might work in the Outback of Australia, too. So it says.Presumably with its own backfires or other surprises.
It does seem unlikely to occur, but has a comfier feel to it than most, other mega-engineering projects such as to seed the seas with iron, construct monster chemical aerator things to pull CO2 from the air, dust the stratosphere with sulfur, or the aforementioned satellite power and sunshade schemes.
Other Desert Greening, and Ungreening, News:
- NBC- Adrienne Mong: Trying to Green the Growing Gobi Desert ; On a project of a much more modest, and perhaps achievable, scale.
- Krakow Post – Beata Michalik: A Desert Revival ; Who’d a thunk it? – Poland has Europe’s largest desert. Plans are afoot, it says here, to revitalize it by removing non-desert vegetation.
Charlie Petit
