Ambitious plan to bring back a green Sinai

[brainbomb]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/08/climate/regreen-desert-sinai-egypt/index.html

Pretty neat stuff. If he pulls it off would be awesome

[Pengwinja]

That’s actually pretty cool.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

I don't understand the fascination with geoengineering projects. They're extraordinarily expensive. They're extremely unlikely to work. And to the extent they do work, they're guaranteed to produce unintended consequences.

If we have the resources for mass afforestation, why not focus on reforesting deforested areas that are more suited for growth than deserts? This would be cheaper and much more likely to succeed.

If we want to plant a bunch of trees, why wouldn't we do so near more densely populated areas? Urban trees would have more immediate benefits and be easier to maintain.

If the goal is to combat climate change, this approach is unlikely to be cost-effective. Mature forests don’t sequester carbon on net because dying trees and plants release most of their CO2 back into the atmosphere. Afforestation provides only a one-time sequestration benefit as the forest matures. So even if all 60,000 square km of the Sinai could be terraformed to achieve the high-end of carbon storage from a Mediterranean forest (about 50metric tons of carbon per hectare), the total C02 sequestration would only be one-time reduction approximately equal to 20% of a single year of US emissions. We would have to maximally restore 33 Sinai-sized desert areas every single year to fully offset current global anthropogenic emissions.

[Pengwinja]

I don't understand the fascination with geoengineering projects. They're extraordinarily expensive. They're extremely unlikely to work. And to the extent they do work, they're guaranteed to produce unintended consequences.

If we have the resources for mass afforestation, why not focus on reforesting deforested areas that are more suited for growth than deserts? This would be cheaper and much more likely to succeed.

If we want to plant a bunch of trees, why wouldn't we do so near more densely populated areas? Urban trees would have more immediate benefits and be easier to maintain.

If the goal is to combat climate change, this approach is unlikely to be cost-effective. Mature forests don’t sequester carbon on net because dying trees and plants release most of their CO2 back into the atmosphere. Afforestation provides only a one-time sequestration benefit as the forest matures. So even if all 60,000 square km of the Sinai could be terraformed to achieve the high-end of carbon storage from a Mediterranean forest (about 50metric tons of carbon per hectare), the total C02 sequestration would only be one-time reduction approximately equal to 20% of a single year of US emissions. We would have to maximally restore 33 Sinai-sized desert areas every single year to fully offset current global anthropogenic emissions.

I think Geoengineering has a lot of potential. Yes, there is usually negatives, but getting to a point where there is only positives would be great.

Reforesting deforested areas is a good thing, but this is trying to make use of land that doesn’t currently have many, if any uses. I think that geoengineering is looking at helping the world, which we have the resources to do, instead of terraforming another planet, which would be much harder.

In general, it’s not supposed to be an area we are focusing all of our resources on, because yes, there are other things that are currently more effective, but I think that not considering it as a possibility at all is a bit extreme.

[JustAGuyNamedWill]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/08/climate/regreen-desert-sinai-egypt/index.html

Pretty neat stuff. If he pulls it off would be awesome

Its turning from yellow to green, Egypt must have a counterattack on Turkey planned!

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

I think Geoengineering has a lot of potential. Yes, there is usually negatives, but getting to a point where there is only positives would be great.

Reforesting deforested areas is a good thing, but this is trying to make use of land that doesn’t currently have many, if any uses. I think that geoengineering is looking at helping the world, which we have the resources to do, instead of terraforming another planet, which would be much harder.

In general, it’s not supposed to be an area we are focusing all of our resources on, because yes, there are other things that are currently more effective, but I think that not considering it as a possibility at all is a bit extreme.

I respectfully disagree.

Proposals like this are a wasteful distraction that deprioritize more cost-effective and achievable things we could otherwise be doing to combat climate change and promote human development.

This is not "reforestation" as no forest has existed in that region for a long time. I'm not sure how we're even making the value judgement that forest > desert. We lack the knowledge to properly anticipate what consequences rapid afforestation will have on climate patterns, water usage, nearby ecosystems, etc. We also almost certainly lack the technology and commitment to see through such a project in the first place.

Genuine change in this space needs to be sustainable and bottom up. If you could, for example, make a handful of olives groves in the region economically viable then maybe, over many decades, you would green some of the Sinai and improve the lives of those living there. This is an extremely different approach than some multibillion dollar endeavour to dam scarce fresh water resources, plant invasion species en masse, and hope that the funders behind the initiative don't get bored with it.

[Pengwinja]

I respectfully disagree.

Proposals like this are a wasteful distraction that deprioritize more cost-effective and achievable things we could otherwise be doing to combat climate change and promote human development.

This is not "reforestation" as no forest has existed in that region for a long time. I'm not sure how we're even making the value judgement that forest > desert. We lack the knowledge to properly anticipate what consequences rapid afforestation will have on climate patterns, water usage, nearby ecosystems, etc. We also almost certainly lack the technology and commitment to see through such a project in the first place.

Genuine change in this space needs to be sustainable and bottom up. If you could, for example, make a handful of olives groves in the region economically viable then maybe, over many decades, you would green some of the Sinai and improve the lives of those living there. This is an extremely different approach than some multibillion dollar endeavour to dam scarce fresh water resources, plant invasion species en masse, and hope that the funders behind the initiative don't get bored with it.

Well, if I’m being honest you’re probably right. I don’t really know much about this area so my knowledge is usually surpassed by others. I thought you were just dismissing the idea of that branch of science as a whole, but I was misinterpreting what you were saying.

I don’t think that the project is bad in itself, however, it is a push, and it would be cool if it was pulled off, although it’s unlikely it will. If there is bad motives behind it, and it isn’t actually for a net gain, it probably won’t end well. Slowly improving does seem like the best net outcome.

[brainbomb]

In order to pull this off first

1. We send johnny appleseed to remote saudi arabia
2. He meets with locals and tells them his plan to plant trees to spruce up the area
3. He finds Cat Stevens
4. They make an album about the trees together

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

I don’t think that the project is bad in itself, however, it is a push, and it would be cool if it was pulled off, although it’s unlikely it will.

The deeper point here is that there are, realistically, scarce resources available to do things like combat climate change and encourage economic development.

Doing this afforestation project, even if it somehow worked perfectly, would still be the wrong thing to do if the same commitment of time, resources, talent, etc. could have produced even better results if spent somewhere else. That's almost certainly the case if the real goal here is to reduce global emissions (there are cheaper abatement opportunities) or if the goal is to spur economic development in the region (mega-projects have a terrible track record).

Slowly improving does seem like the best net outcome.

This underscores the danger of indulging geoengineering fantasies.

The reality is that the only way out of our climate pickle will be incremental improvements: solar panels getting cheaper every year, a cultural shift against conspicuous consumption, escalating taxes on emissions, etc. The problem is that, to date, we have delayed the pace of these gradual improvements to such an extent that such actions seem trivial.

Mega-scale "solutions" like mass afforestation, direct air capture carbon sequestration, emitting sulfur particles to reflect sunlight, etc., are pipe dreams. There is no group or organization with the right incentives to finance these initiatives at scale. Even if they could happen, each would beget a bewildering set of unintended consequences. And dwelling on these non-starters collectively makes us more complacent about making those smaller common sense changes that actually are making a difference.

[Pengwinja]

This is a bit off topic, but is there a way to turn heat into mechanical, or any other forms of energy? I’m not going to pretend I’m knowledgeable about the subject, so if someone knows that something like that is theoretically possible (or I’m a blundering idiot), please tell me

Anyways, all the things you said about incremental improvements I agree with, so I don’t have much to say about it.

I think that some of the large scale “solutions” are indeed ridiculous, but I think that fully dismissing an idea is (usually) a bad idea. Focusing on the theoretical, however, won’t get us anywhere, so doing what we can with the resources at hand is probably our best bet.

[learnedSloth]

This is a bit off topic, but is there a way to turn heat into mechanical, or any other forms of energy? I’m not going to pretend I’m knowledgeable about the subject, so if someone knows that something like that is theoretically possible (or I’m a blundering idiot), please tell me

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_engine

[DiplomacyandWarfare]

Obviously it is possible to harvest energy from heat, that's the main idea behind a steam engine. Or in any case, you can move things (including rotors) with heat, and you can harvest, say, electricity from a rotor. The main problem being that a steam engine doesn't work if it's in a room full of steam (I'm not much more knowledgeable about this subject than Pengwinja, even but basic physics suggests that convection doesn't work if there's no heat differential). The same principle (I'm not going to go into the math and physics of it right now) essentially means it's very difficult to harvest any net energy from ambient heat when the environment you're using is at the same temperature.

the Esquire is right though, this sort of experimental anti-climate change tech is mostly just a publicity stunt. More reasonable things to pursue would be more efficient fossil fuels or non-experimental green energy (focus on cost-efficient solar panels, not space-efficient).