Scientists Concoct a $2-Trillion-Per-Year Plan To Geoengineer The Sahara Desert

This sounds like a Bond villain's evil plot to alter the world and then take control. Haha

It should be pointed out that they are only considering greening a small part of the Sahara Desert, which is larger than the continental-USA in extent. Further, large parts of the Sahara Desert were much wetter, greener and lusher than they are today, in the quite recent past, and the Amazon Jungle has existed without interruption for much much longer than that. As for a plague of locusts, have you done much environmental catastrophism scaremongering lately?

Reporting this speculation (Death of the Amazon, locusts, and even the cost) as facts is unworthy of PopSci, and more appropriate for a checkout rag. How's this for an "inevitable comment": This is trash reporting, pure and simple!

One generations plants the trees, the next enjoys the shade.

Some geoengineering plans are better ideas than others. I would rather use the cheap and simple method of dimming the sun a little more using an aerosol.

By the way, what I am about to tell you is independently verified by a respectable university (Rowan) and commercially available (six contracts have been signed so far). There has been a breakthrough in energy technology - a US company is able to get 200X more energy from hydrogen than it takes to get it from water.

The story was broke by Reuters last week. The company is BlackLight Power Inc and it's website is www.blacklightpower.com .

By the way, I am not affiliated with this company, nor do I have a financial interest in it. My bio is at www.myspace.com/dobermanmacleod .

What kind of nonsense is this :D. Put some solar powerplants (preferably dished stirling engine based pleasee) in Sahara instead :X

I wonder if they'll find the CSS Texas over there...

LOL

"There is no doubt that global warming is a clear and present danger, and geoengineering may be part of the solution to that problem. But I think this is one case where I have to agree with the inevitable comments and say this cure sounds worse than the disease."

Then why bother with the article in the first place?

Global warming is a clear and present danger? S.Fox is hook line and sinker for that propoganda. Check out the interview BBC did with Gerd Leipold "Greenpeace Leader Admits Arctic Ice Exaggeration" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC7bE9jopXE

and start laughing.

mclean
I did research on African countries a few years ago and what I discovered was that most of the imformation about Africa back in the 1700's and 1800's is found in the travel journals of people from europe. These journals have been bound into books that contain pictures of the countryside in the african countries they were traveling in. Those pictures taken in the 1850's of the countryside in Ethiopia are mind awakening to the devistation that has taken place in the last one hundred and fifty years. What is now moonscape in Ethiopia was then lush forest extending forever in ever in all direction. I could not believe my eyes. Those africans were able to devour every scrap of wood in only a hundred an some years. The journals I found are in the graduate library at Michigan State Library. Go take a look.
From what I've seen of pictures taken by rich europeans in the 17 & 18 hundreds pure sand hasn't been blowing that long and what has been blowing across the ocean has been more likely a broad range of soils, molds, insect larve, vegatation particles and million of other particles. This varity will continue to grow once more with the inrichment of northern africa and will bring more good and bad across the waters, as always; but it will help decrease the ocean waters temperture and hence reduce hurricanes coming across the ocean.
This is an example of what we humans should be doing rather than watching pretend news from FOX NEWS CORP. We need to consider these larger projects and get our tiny ass thoughts out of our way.

2 trillion a year? The cost is really dependent on the scale, is it not? Maybe if you wanted carbon neutral water desalination and wanted to water square miles.

The Sahara used to have rivers and forest, they are painted on the rocks. Reforesting huge swathes of it would only be reversing man's desertification of the area over the last few thousand years.

The real problem I see is how you keep Africans from taking advantage of new forest the way they destroyed the old ones. Possibly through the use of other drough tollerant, but productive for human trees (almonds come to mind).

Oh, and the last time I checked, locust were a good thing (converting areas of shrubbage to delicious, nutritious protein treats with little actual loss to established shrubs and trees).

Unfortunately for some,The grid scientist with different news,and definitely different views,and a completely different degree than you, says this is the type of idiotic waste of our finances that we laugh about everyday.
Deserts are made by man,but not in this century for that one. Why,just a pyramid being toned to a draw tone on the correct grid node would bring forth all of the rain they would need.
Science boys have been put in a loop,I assure you and need not solve GW either,as that is periodic and will abate.
But Pop Sci folks need to be smarter than that,now dont they?
If they would take the taskings of a Grid Scientist,they could solve their quandary of not understanding earths life systems.
The worlds people have been had,actual Earth Science has been buried.
We should never listen to or pay a theorist,or pay carbon credits for a theory that has no basis in reality,no matter also how many letters or government numbers behind their name on their business card.

i hope the writer of this ridiculous article realizes the Sahara is expanding south at a rate of about 48 km per year.

The only comment I have is that reporters need to report and leave there opinions out of it. I can't stand it when I watch the news and some reporter has to put there two cents in. I just feel news should be presented in an unbiased manner. As for the story itself, it sounds like a good plan with some kinks that needs to be worked out.

Proposing to grow a mono-culture forest of one species of tree?

And not a very wildlife-friendly species of tree at that!

I know it sounds snarky, but maybe Monsanto is funding the proposal.

Next!

Two trillion per *year*? While I can't disprove that figure, I find it impossible to believe, absent strong, clear, convincing evidence.

I have read many times over the years that the Sahara used to be largely tropical rain forest, though faint memory seems to tell me that was on the order of 9,000-10,000 years ago. Wonder if the Amazon rain forest has been around that long. I also wonder just how dependent the Amazon basin actually is on dust from the Sahara.

As for Africans using forests with no eye towards the future, of course they will -- some of them. If that's the only way I could cook food, so would I.

When the Sahara was a wetter place, the rest of the world was a colder place, well, sort of. The problem here is that global warming generally makes the atmosphere more laden with moisture, for the reason that warmer water in the oceans evaporates more easily.

What is debatable is whether that evaporation rains out over oceans or moves far in-land to rain out. This question depends on prevailing winds, jet streams, and the great oceanic conveyor system of currents. Unfortunately, today we can only guess at what any of those factors were back in the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago.

My guess is that the globe presently moves into the start of a new Little Ice Age (since 1998.) The reason this happens is because the greenhouse gas C02 which humans emit is only a trace element in the atmosphere to begin with and even if it doubles, triples, or quadruples in the 21st century it will do nothing significantly to alter the global cooling already underway in the last decade.

All those "scientists" whose careers and grants depend on the global warming blunder are spinning every bit of data and interpretation as fast and far as they can to bat down the reality that the world is actually getting colder, but when they fail using really desperate tactics it should be evident even to the unwashed masses of humans world wide that anthropogenic global warming was a self-serving fairey tale from the get-go.