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An incredible shift in the weather has turned the Sahara green
(edition.cnn.com)
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
It's not that simple. The green belt for starters is not a single project but many. And it's nowhere this big unfortunately. They are trying to, in the best scenario, prevent the desert from expanding. This event is not caused by a wall of trees, and the effects of the green belt wouldn't appear suddenly from one year to the other. It's probably a temporary weather anomaly or maybe it will become a regular thing like el niño.
It is a wet year, so things are going to be more green than last, but the great green wall is a lot more than simply trees. It’s a ton of agricultural tricks to help retain the little rainfall they do get. So in a year where they get a ton, it will get a lot more green as the water is actually being retained. Iirc they dig a ton of multi levelled crescent shapes to retain the water and plant various levels of crops to use said water. Honestly a lot of it is just breaking up the dry ass ground over there and keeping water in it so plants can start growing. Once it does though, there’s better ground that on a good rainy season will grow plenty more greenery.
But yeah, it’s not JUST the wall. It’s also a very wet year, but the odd two combined make it a lot more green because usually in a rainy season that dry ass ground is so hard most things won’t grow anyways. But after years of cultivation, things can grow there.
This will be great for the green belt for sure. Specially because a lot of efforts have been made to try to retain more rain water instead of it washing of to the ocean.