[ExI] Greening the Sahara

[Dan]

On Monday, July 20, 2009 9:59:01 PM Mike Dougherty msd001 at gmail.com wrote:
> Isn't the "greener" solution to expend as little resource
> reengineering the desert as possible (and avoid potential
> negative consequence of mega-scale weather alterations)
> and simple use the regional climate for a purpose to which
> it is already ideally suited?

I wasn't using "green" in that sense. That, of course, is an alternative. If one is merely looking to use as little resources as possible for, say, food production, it'd probably be best to vacate all arid and semi-arid regions and just farm those regions that're already better suited for agriculture. (As a tie in to this, remove subsidies for agriculture too, including water reclamation projects that only prop up projects that are actually relatively resource inefficient.)

> Algae farming for example.  What works in Death Valley
> surely could be implemented in the Sahara, no?

I don't think it's off the table. My proposal was to get the whole desert back as a region that could be used by humans for agriculture, forestry, grazing, etc. in the more conventional sense.

Regards,

Dan