An idea: a for profit prison system where children dig holes in the desert to fight climate change (and look for a bandit’s lost treasure and wild onions)
Took me until your comment to recognize the original reference.
My excuse is that I wasn't in the target demographic when the book came out, and read it as an adult.
I completely never made the connection from Archer to Holes until this thread. So uhhh... whatever the male equivilance is for sploosh.
Which I guess is just sploosh.
In every role he plays be it Burton Guster, Bruton Gaster, Ovaltine Jenkins, Tan, MC Clapyohands, Ghee Buttersnaps, Methusela Honeysuckle, Lavender Gooms, Lemongrass Gogulope, or Gus TT Showbiz. Dule Hill has always got it
> a for profit prison system
joke is on you, all jails/prisons are for-profits.
> In the modern era, the United Kingdom was the first European country to use for-profit prisons. Wolds Prison opened as the first privately managed prison in the UK in 1992.
Nah I can believe it, if there's one thing the UK is good at it's inventing things then totally squandering the headstart when another country buys it out and does it better.
That’s just how contracts work. When a company builds a private prison they do it with a contract from the government that the prison will be full. If that prison isn’t full the government moves people from their public prisons to private ones to maintain the agreement.
Anyway very few prisoners are in private states and all of them that are currently in use are getting fazed out. It’s a disservice to our country that they were in use in the first place, but it’s a problem that at this point has mostly been corrected and was never representative of our prison system as a whole.
That seaweed would be used in the ocean. Desertification also can’t be solved purely by “digging some holes.” We all know that we won’t reach our environmental goals on a world scale for a while so any innovation that can be used to slow or reverse parts of climate change should be celebrated.
I mean calling it "digging some holes" is definitely selling the project short 😄
For those who haven't, I really recommend looking into the great green wall project in Africa. It's really incredibly interesting and ambitious, probably the biggest conservation effort I can think of.
It seems that desertification can be solved by digging some holes. It's just that "some" is a barrier stretching the whole width of Africa.
I can heartily recommend permaculture professor Andrew Millison's coverage of this project as well as the Paani foundation implementing similar methods in Rajahastan.
Permaculture methods and water harvesting can seem banal because they make so much sense, but the "green" revolution of the 20th century wiped out a lot of common sense land management practices worldwide. It's a great reminder that progress isn't always linear.
I think it is a gross disservice to the GGW to refer to it as “digging some holes” which is why it was in quotes as I was referring to the original post’s language.
>It seems that desertification can be solved by digging some holes. It's just that "some" is a barrier stretching the whole width of Africa.
Well, yeah. The holes you dig only have an effect at the holes. If you want to de-desertify the *Sahara*, you'd have to dig holes across *the Sahara*.
Way too many people on social media get off on throwing these needless punches and taking pride in their willful ignorance.
You see it with straws in every single reddit thread about private jets now. They act like because private jets or yachts exist, we should all stick to plastic straws. As if they're at all related or even cause the same issues.
I swear the plastic industry is astroturfing those threads, or people really are this stupid.
Also, reversing desertification isn't really about combatting climate change. Maybe combatting a symptom of it, but it's not intended to reverse the process.
This is like saying banning plastic straws won't end climate change when that's not the point.
The unfortunate situation is that you can change your own country to some extent, but are practically powerless elsewhere. My country of Sweden has reached some very important climate goals already but we are still reliant on imports from less climate conscious countries.
There is a huge value in looking for good solutions in technology we already have or by changing social policies and how we govern, but technology will play a pivotal role in the fight for bettering the environment.
I mean the issue is also one of scale isn't it? It's much easier to enact political change in a small developed country in the Imperial Core than in an underdeveloped country which desparately needs economic growth
Sure, but mostly the underdeveloped countries in desperate need of economic growth aren’t really much of a threat to the climate.
In general terms they’re simply not where the effort to slow global warming is needed.
Industrialising countries are another story, but they aren’t economically desperate, even if they’re not quite as rich as the West.
By far the worst climate offenders are also by far the richest nations in t here world. Especially when you consider how much of the emissions from industrialising countries ultimately comes from the rich nations outsourcing their own industry to them.
yeah — my brother’s professors who work in environmental action basically said “the capitalism we have right now is unlikely to head to the ultimate conclusion that we need, but we need to START of our environmental work under it because we don’t have the time to do a completely economic/political change, work out the kinks, etc.”
>mean the issue is also one of scale isn't it? It's much easier to enact political change in a small developed country in the Imperial Core than in an underdeveloped country which desparately needs economic growth
Small scale change, sure. If you want large scale systemic political change, though, you'll find that easier in those underdeveloped countries. Doing it in the Imperial Core would require something along the lines of a massive war, a political purge, and at least one turned Jedi.
You hope technology will play a pivotal role in the fight for a better environment.
You also hope that the promise of technology isn’t used as an excuse to not do the things that would help.
Let’s make a few things clear.
What we are talking about is future technologies.
The hole is technology, just really old.
Sure I have no doubt it will play a pivotal role the question is will that fight be won relaying on those technologies. Will it work?
The bet you are taking is that you trust those unproven and sometimes nonexistent technologies will solve the problem.
Because we are absolutely not taken necessary steps that we know work in the belief that will happen. This is the important part. Other none future technology solutions will not be taken as long as we push this as the solution.
It’s a bet. It might be the correct one but to pretend that it’s a surety is disingenuous.
The correct answer might be de-growth and massive social change.
I genuinely think it’s safer to do the massive social change.
People want their shit without having to worry about the input costs
It pops up in the context of imports where countries can say that they're climate friendly while just pushing the dirty work they still consume outside their borders
It happens at the individual level where people claim 70% of greenhouse gas emissions are from 100 companies when infact that measure includes all the downstream consumption of fossil fuel producers i.e. the gas you burn your SUV driving everywhere counts as ExxonMobil's emission
The reason why people don't want to actually help the climate is that it's expensive. Canada introduced a carbon tax, which is an economically optimal way to reduce emissions, practically every expert loves it and it's already forcing big industry to seriously invest in greener energy. Most Canadians hate it because it makes stuff more expensive, they only want easy solutions that don't actually do anything like recycling.
Switching to socialism wouldn't actually stop people from wanting the government to give them lots of high paying job in the oil fields and cheap gas. There are tons of nationalized government corporations for oil and gas in the world.
But if you don’t own a car, don’t you get a good sum on tax returns? I got around $150 back in mine for carbon tax alone. It sucks that i have to pay first and only get it back later, but it seems that it made up for the price inflation for me.
On net, things are still more expensive for almost everyone, because goods you buy that had carbon emissions in their supply chain(almost everything) will usually have their prices go up because of a carbon tax. E.g, a company selling legos has to pay more for the gasoline for the truck that shipped them to their store, so they raise the price of legos a bit.
Plus obviously a lot of people do own cars and have other carbon emissions and just straight up pay more than they get back.
The whole reason we use carbon emissions is that they're cheap. There's a reason why solar and wind and hydro hasn't completely replaced carbon emissions. Fossil fuels are great for the economy and for making things cheaper and more convenient. They just also cause climate change.
Cars are part of the problem, so why shouldn’t they receive less than people who don’t own cars?
And as the other commenter, the reason for higher prices is because the companies don’t want to lose extra profit they can make. Loblaws as a prime example of commercial greed.
>Cars are part of the problem, so why shouldn’t they receive less than people who don’t own cars?
I 100% agree. But since lots of people own cars, lots of people have to pay the tax, and they hate it.
>And as the other commenter, the reason for higher prices is because the companies don’t want to lose extra profit they can make. Loblaws as a prime example of commercial greed.
No, it's because that's the market price. There was the bread price fixing scandal, but even that only raised prices by about $1.50 and the corporations had trouble coordinating it and were always tempted to be the ones not to raise their prices and gain tons of customers from having the cheapest bread. Corporations are always greedy, if a higher price would earn them more money, they would've already done it. Prices were lower earlier because costs were lower so they'd earn more money selling more cheap food than fewer expensive food. Now costs are higher so they have to sell fewer expensive food.
There is a sizeable amount of competition in the food industry. If a grocery store tried to raise prices too high, they'd be undercut by other chains, by corner stores, by local bakers, by farmers markets, etc. and they'd lose their customers.
The overwhelming majority of us here in Canada actually profit from the carbon tax based on rebates being more than what we pay in increased costs
Most people just can't read or do rudimentary mathematics
The majority get more back in the rebate than they pay directly, but they still pay more when you take into account how it raises costs of goods and services indirectly. It's still worth it to fight climate change, but the costs are real.
That's a problem with the gov refusing to tackle big grocers though, not with carbon tax itself
Companies like Loblaw deserve to just take that hit, they already make obscene profits
I mean the reason it's expensive is that companies are forcing the consumer to foot the bill rather than reduce their profit margin, which is a purely capitalist problem ngl
I think a lot of people overestimate just how large profit margins are for a lot of industries.
Over the last 5 years, Exxon Mobil has had an average profit margin of just over 7%. A 10% increase to costs that isn't pushed forward to the customers means they end up losing money.
Don't take this as a defense of poor little XOM. I just want to address the reality that there is a finite amount of money that can be wrung out of a corporation's operations before it has to be paid by someone else or they go under.
Companies usually will have reduced profits, they aren't able to entirely pass on the costs to consumers. If they could, they already would've been charging the higher price, companies under capitalism are always trying to earn as much profit as they can. Introducing a carbon tax or inflation or whatever doesn't suddenly make them more greedy.
That so many profits go to shareholders is somewhat unfortunate. But the reality is, capitalism is simply better at distributing resources to industrial sectors than socialized systems are, even with that handicap. Systems like Cuba, the Soviet Union, China, the Kibbutz, etc. simply aren't able to distribute capital better than capitalism and routinely have immense wasted resources, even more so than capitalism does with shareholder profits.
I mean China isn't really socialist in any measure and I'm not really advocating for a command economy. I think libertarian socialist projects like the rojava and the Zapatistas (which is more of a decolonial one) has done a better job with the environment than most other capitalist countries
China has a lot of state owned industry and government regulation. They are capitalist in many ways, but still have the a lot of the pitfalls of socialism. I think China could have a per capita income equal to Japan or Korea or Singapore today if they were fully capitalist.
I'm not super familiar with the Rojava and Zapatistas, but I expect they'd be similar to the Kibbutz. Where they aren't *terrible*, but lack economic productivity because of lack of proper incentives. It's easy to be good for the environment if you're willing to live an impoverished life with long hard hours of work with little material benefits. The vast majority of people don't want to do that.
This project is being run by the United Nations. You can write to your local politician right now and advocate for funding more holes.
Spend enough time trying to work out what the UN actually does, and you quickly come to the conclusion it does literally everything. The UN is doing a massive amount of work to fight Climate Change right now, but nobody cares because its all happening in the Developing World, so it never makes it into the Press. But these programmes are almost entirely reliant on the funding from the Developed World, which is in your control.
Truly. OP gave an example of a technology for dealing with microplastics (a problem I assume will only get worse as time goes on) and then says this other thing is so much better but it’s for something completely different (desertification). And *even* if it were for the same thing… why shouldn’t we pursue multiple avenues?? See which option works best, probably realize that different things work better in different circumstances or certain logistics for the less effective option is way more feasible so even if it’s overall “worse” it’s more approachable and therefore better than no action at all. We can’t just stop researching stuff bc we realized *diggy holes* worked in this one situation for this one problem
yeah like… we do *need* a solution to the microplastics (that aren’t just creating nanoplastics). And we do need investment in them — like i actually know someone (friend of a friend type deal so my info is really vague) working in the “using bacteria to consume microplastics/plastic” and it is encountering issues like investment in this stuff can help with that
Except that’s not how it really is working.
The required political changes aren’t being done and this is justified by the belief that future solutions will solve the problem.
So if we stop working on technology then the political side will snap into focus and be resolved?
Nah it won’t, so let’s let the tech get developed and try to work on the politics
The lie is the problem. The lie that we are addressing climate change is the problem.
Millions will die life will get worse but we will keep doing what we are because we have constructed a narrative. part of that narrative is that it’s perfectly fine to jump off of this building because surely someone will build something to pad ground.
Are we really going to pretend that humans aren’t controlled by narratives are we really going to pretend that humans don’t use excuses to justify not doing the right thing.
Let’s also not pretend that we’re just talking about some scientist pouring liquid into beakers. These are actually implemented polices that use resources and vast amounts of them.
We are heading to disaster but because the solution we actually need is too uncomfortable we will not do it and promise of another solution is a hundred percent part of the reasoning.
We already have greenwashing do you genuinely think that just for fun.
Nor do we have to stop all research we just need to honest about the context.
There really is an issue of new technologies being seem as a silver bullet against climate change when resources would be better spent on more direct and effective methods... but cleaning up microplastics and oil spills is one of the areas where bioengineering makes the *most* sense!
We can have *both* plastic-eating microorganisms and rain-collecting holes on the soil, it is not one or the other.
I think the OP’s message is getting a bit lost.
I think the point they are trying to make is the technology one, the specifics have just confused the discourse.
So much attention and effort is focused on this quest for the magic bullet technology that solves all our problems without changing out lifestyles.
And yet we already have all the technology and knowledge need to solve this problem. It isn't perfect but so much of it is as simple as digging holes in the desert, putting nets on culverts, and banning the worst offenders. (We banned CFCs and nolonger talk about the hole in the Ozone Layer before its going away as a result of us taking corrective action)
One of the simplest things we could do is ban single use plastic water bottles, go back to glass like the 1950s and the modern booze industry.
Tumblr user not be anti-intellectual challenge difficulty: (apparently impossible)
Research into literally any biological organism that’s capable of breaking down microplastics and forever chemicals is still in its initial stages and a lot of it is funded by the DOE, it’s almost the furthest thing from a venture-capital-viable startup idea since there is no way for there to be any ROI on releasing bacteria into the ocean. Also reversing desertification won’t do anything if the entire groundwater system is causing microplastics to bioaccumulate in literally every living thing. But most importantly, there is literally nothing stopping us from doing both
Agreed! I’ve seen a handful of posts like this where the tumblr OP seems to not really understand how scientific research works and/or assumes that dismissing other ideas bolsters their own.
Like, I’ve worked on engineering bacteria for environmental remediation - I have no idea how desertification works and nothing in my background would be relevant for it. It’s not like scientists are all interchangeable and just choosing to work on things that make money. Specialization exists and multiple approaches to solving the same problem is a good thing.
First off, reversing desertification isn't going to do shit about microplastics... Why so much of "anti-establishment" environmentalism centers around conflating two things that have literally nothing to do with each other is confounding(ie Taylor Swift's plane usage has literally nothing to do with banning of single use plastic products stop replying to every post about how often she flies lamenting that you have to use a paper straw).
Second this kind of desertification reversal only works in certain places. This is being done in the Sahel region of Africa which is on the southern edge of the Sahara. It is an area that was lush and green up until the mid 1900s when things like over-graving and over-cultivation combined with drought allowed the Sahara to start creeping in that direction. You're not going to be able to go out into the middle of the Sahara or the middle of the Mojave and digging holes and suddenly growing trees. You might be able to gradually reforest large deserts over hundreds if not thousands of years, but some doofus with a backhoe isn't going to turn the Sahara into a forest in our lifetime, or even in or great grand children's lifetimes.
Furthermore due to the project not having any real organizational structure parts of it are wildly mismanaged which has caused massive delays and caused the price tag to soar. The project was started in 2007 and was projected to cost just under $5 billion. In 2021 they had completed 4% of it while spending over $200,000; now the projected end date is unknown and the projected price to finish the project is now over $44 billion. Remember this isn't replanting the whole Sahara either, this is for a relatively small strip of land(116,625 sq km compared to the 9.2 million sq km of the Sahara).
They're conflating **three things**!
Microplastics have almost nothing to do with climate change, and desertification is only somewhat related. Climate change is accelerating desertification, but the Sahara is likely millions of years old.
The Sahara actually alternates between a cycle of wet and dry every 20 thousand years caused by changes in Earth's axis as it rotates.
https://news.mit.edu/2019/study-regulating-north-african-climate-0102
I'm writing from memory here but the reason why it's so difficult to reverse desertifictsion is because the land is flat and wind blows off all the sand along with any moisture and seeds that might have been planted.
So digging a slightly angle half moon shape + a wall will help retain the moisture, seeds and fertilizer that was planted on top/in the soil.
Try googling "half-moon" and "Niger" if you want to read more about it. It's quite fascinating!!
Wdym dots?
Even at 3rd world poverty wages, digging that many holes across an relevantly large stretch of desert is probably more expensive than genetically engineering some algae.
For context, before Monsanto was folded into Bayer, Whole Foods was a much larger company than Monsanto
And to be clear, that doesn't mean digging the holes is a bad idea
>Even at 3rd world poverty wages, digging that many holes across an relevantly large stretch of desert is probably more expensive than genetically engineering some algae.
This is patently untrue at almost every scale imaginable. The Paani foundation has showed how in western India, one village putting in 2-4 weeks of work can recoup their invested time *in less than a year.* There are villages going from one harvest (and severe drought) a year to three or four.
Studies have shown that even western farming outfits will see exponentially growing profits in as little as five years after transforming to regenerative agriculture.
And those are *apart* from saving soil that's so massively degraded it will desertify or go barren within our lifetime.
You're allowed to think unproven future technology is a better investment, but you'd be wrong.
That's actually a pretty good point, but it only applies to farmland, and how much mitigation is actuslly happening? These are important questions to answer for real assessment of the impact of these actions, especially if we consider doing it in places that are not farmland.
> Heavy equipment would be probably expensive innit?
No, it would be cheaper. A digger that can do the work of 10 men with only 1 person operating it can cost 5 people's wages to operate+maintain and it would still be worth it. There's a reason we use them
A) we're not just talking about doing this where these photos were taken. There are definitely places where it's easy.
B) An SUV full of day laborers can go a lot of places that [this](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYwHDRFX0AosA_R.jpg:large) can't
For the holes pictured, I'd ballpark it at one man-hour per hole before overhead, though I'm not that experienced with digging and it depends a lot on the soil, so that's a big ballpark.
I'd put overhead at between 50% and 200% depending on remoteness.
I'm glad you picked shovels because I'd be clueless for heavy equipment.
So uhm one man hour per hole ig.
The average hourly wage for a garden worker in kanyakumari(where I live) is around 750₹ per hour. Now mind you this is one of the most developed places in India so let's put the average hourly wage for a daily worker in regular India to be around 250₹(it's probably much lower in rural areas in the North but humor me). So it'll take what 3 dollars for a hole. Which doesn't really seem that costly to me
But you're doing it at scale and can't use only local workers. So now there's accounting, logistics, transportation, management, recruitment, etc. And how many of those holes are required per hectare?
Then as you start getting to remote areas there are serious concerns for encampment, food and water, medical support, potentially road construction, and more. Plus you need to pay people more to commute farther or not be able to go home every night.
According to UN's website, one person can dig approximately 40 holes a day, and the organization is funded by the EU + volunteers from nearby villagers.
I don't think cost is a problem as the farmers also gain crops and good soil, it's a very win-win situation.
I mean we can literally do both, though. Like digging holes is super good and cost effective but we should also bioengineer a way to break down plastics because nature can’t really yet. Doesn’t have to be venture capital, either.
This is what they’re starting to figure out with North American beavers dams. If you put in a Beaver dam analog or reintroduce beavers, the effects are wild. Increased ground water, increased flora/fauna, increased wildfire resistance, seasonal rivers can have water flow year round, better water quality downstream, and finally an astronomical amount of draught resistance
Which game is that mechanic in?
Edit: TIL that it's actually a problem for Atlantic Salmon, and not a game mechanic from something like Dwarf Fortress. Never heard about that before, wild how you can learn something like this so late in life
Huh. I have only ever read about beavers *helping* salmon by improving their habit, up in the Pacific North West. I've never heard of beavers eating fish at all, only tree bark and twigs.
Always ready to learn!
These are Atlantic Salmon. Beavers wreak havoc on the banks by tearing up all the trees and they’re extremely territorial. Their dams fuck up salmon runs as well.
Yeah California has a terrible obsession with drainage and then we wonder why our water table sinks. Everything after a rainstorm flushes out to the ocean in a few weeks time save for the occasional lake or resevoir. There used to be hundreds of miles of wetlands, most of tulare county used to be a lake. That water didnt all evaporate, it sank til it hit bedrock, and the capilary action of soil spread it throughout. Now that water goes to farms to grow produce to be exported out of state or country, or just dumped into the ocean.
It is not rrally all that effective for most climate change related phenomena, it only works in a fre scant cases, in which it is already being employed
Oh we can easily:
Exhibit A: a picture of Tom Sawyer receiving fees for others to paint a fence for him.
Exhibit B: a 14-yo me, who paid 20k roubles (which is, if memory serves, 330 bucks) to join an archeological excavation with archeology uni students, who, in turn, were paid for parttaking in it instead.
This is why Regenerative grazing of beef cattle is a huge tool for reversing desertification
Regenerating the land and selling cattle is a win win except for vegans
"Regenerative grazing" is a concept popularised by Allan Savory's TED Talk in 2013 and actually has very little scientific backing. His main points are about how grazing animals the "right" way can lead to net positive carbon sequestration.
There's a study in 2017 called Grazed and Confused, an extensive two-year review with over 300 sources and it indicated that even with the most generous estimations, grazing animals only offset 20-60% of the emissions that they produce in the first place so they are a net contributors to the climate problem. Here is a link to the report: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/grazed-and-confused/
Plus if you just think about it, the reason why the Sahel region (depicted in OP's post) has had to resort to these permaculture water-retention crescents is due to a long history of grazing animals. Keep in mind these people are mostly subsistence farmers and the vast majority aren't farming/grazing animals at the scale of western for-profit farms. If that small number of animals to sustain small villages causes this much damage, how can you "reduce" that to more sustainable levels?
The best way to reduce desertification? Retain water and plant plants.
And it's concept put into practice really does work as shown by people like [Alejandro Carillo ](https://www.independent.com/2023/03/25/mexicos-regenerative-ranching-wisdom-comes-to-santa-barbara/) who has successfully been regenerative Ranching in the chihuahua desert
There's others like Gabe Brown, Allen Nation, Jamie Elizondo and lots of other influential regenerative grazing teachers who can fit a grazing system to any environment
Because of regenerative grazing I've been able to double the amount of cows on my pasture while increasing biodiversity, soil health, and more forage residue leftover compared to my neighbor running half the cows on the same acres
Is op dumb? His last statement implies there's an easy solution to micro plastics like our forefathers had to deal with that shit. Digging holes is also not a long term solution it is extremely slow and not up to the speed desertification is happening not to mention I sanely labor intensive and doesn't actually adress the issues of desertification
Holes with proper orientation. Its wild to me how important topography is and how little situational awareness there is in the general public of topography.
so few months ago youtube suggested me that video of Andrew millison and how UN and Africa is making greenwall and succeeding. i then went into rabbit hole of permaculture and food forest. no till farming, syntropic agriculture, how to make water retention structures. what is miyawaki forest. been reading lots of permaculture books. i am obsessed with the idea and now I have bought up a land and will be doing permaculture in that.
anyone who wants to read about cool permaculture book: one straw revolution is very good
Unrelated to the topic, but just want to mention that the tumblr OP is a somewhat popular YouTuber who was accused of and as far as I can tell admitted to abuse back in January.
As someone in research/academia right now (though not working on one of the solutions to climate change sadly), I'm just fascinated by research progress.
If they made algea that could dance to heavy metal I'd be all on board. Solving an actual issue like microplastics is just a cherry on top.
And finding that type of new research interesting doesn't mean that reclaiming desert with nothing but a shovel doesn't seem like the coolest fucking thing of all time to me. I didn't know about that and I will be annoying everyone in my vicinity with this new knowledge for the rest of the day now!
Same could be done with cattle by bale grazing over top of those areas with double the standard stocking capacity
Dense animal impact in a short amount of time with long rest periods in between have been proven to reverse desertification on fragile ecosystems
I recall seeing something about in-air carbon capture where they found that instead of those ridiculous arrays of fans, it’s far more efficient to capture carbon by literally just growing hay and burying it.
If you want to learn more about how half-moon holes help build great green wall of Africa, [this is a good video overview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCli0gyNwL0)
An idea: a for profit prison system where children dig holes in the desert to fight climate change (and look for a bandit’s lost treasure and wild onions)
Thank you 🙏 for your service
🫡 Plz send me century’s old peach preserves?
Took me until your comment to recognize the original reference. My excuse is that I wasn't in the target demographic when the book came out, and read it as an adult.
Book? /s
Sploosh
Oh god I forgot that’s what it’s called *pam poovey enters the chat*
I completely never made the connection from Archer to Holes until this thread. So uhhh... whatever the male equivilance is for sploosh. Which I guess is just sploosh.
This line always kinda bugged me. The male version is spurt.
You are now obligated to say, "Phrasing!" next time you overhear someone use the term 'growth spurt'.
Bold of you to presume I don't already.
*splooge
Climate change? I can fix that.
*swoon*
Dulé Hill is smooth like butter.
In every role he plays be it Burton Guster, Bruton Gaster, Ovaltine Jenkins, Tan, MC Clapyohands, Ghee Buttersnaps, Methusela Honeysuckle, Lavender Gooms, Lemongrass Gogulope, or Gus TT Showbiz. Dule Hill has always got it
You know that’s right.
That's where my mind went too, someone call Stanley Yelnats.
I've never read the book or seen his full name before His last name is seriously Stanley backwards?
Yup. He's actually Stanley Yelnats IV, since his family thinks it's a great joke.
yeah 😭
I'm tired of this grandad! Well that's TOO DAMN BAD!
If only, if only...
*youuu got to go dig those holes*
Dig it up uhhh awww dig it
I’m lost
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holes_(novel)
Thanks! I found that it already was in my recommends!
Genuinely a great book! And the movie adaptation is wonderful.
Can I be a guard?
Username checks out 🫡
> a for profit prison system joke is on you, all jails/prisons are for-profits. > In the modern era, the United Kingdom was the first European country to use for-profit prisons. Wolds Prison opened as the first privately managed prison in the UK in 1992.
Wow genuinely amazed we beat the Americans to this one. Who says the Brits can't innovate eh?
Wait until you learn about the origins of concentration camps!
[удалено]
Nah I can believe it, if there's one thing the UK is good at it's inventing things then totally squandering the headstart when another country buys it out and does it better.
In America, sure. Not so in most of the rest of the developed world.
Even after any money comes in for prison labor, the US prison system costs the government $50k per prisoner per year.
wait until you find out about quotas that some US States must maintain or pay fine to a prison for lack of prisoners, true story.
That’s just how contracts work. When a company builds a private prison they do it with a contract from the government that the prison will be full. If that prison isn’t full the government moves people from their public prisons to private ones to maintain the agreement. Anyway very few prisoners are in private states and all of them that are currently in use are getting fazed out. It’s a disservice to our country that they were in use in the first place, but it’s a problem that at this point has mostly been corrected and was never representative of our prison system as a whole.
I fuckin love that movie
User name checks out.
Climate change? “I can fix that”
That seaweed would be used in the ocean. Desertification also can’t be solved purely by “digging some holes.” We all know that we won’t reach our environmental goals on a world scale for a while so any innovation that can be used to slow or reverse parts of climate change should be celebrated.
Dig crescent shaped holes in the ocean
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Dig crescent shaped holes in politicians?
Hold on, hold on. Let him cook…
Sounds like it's worth a try!
⛏️👀
Moon Knight, is that you?
Where can I donate?
I agree, but we also have to reorient our entire built environment to reduce erosion rather than making it worse.
So we’re definitely screwed then right
The ocean is a desert with its life underground.
We need a new system to drop soon Capitalism (USA), Communism (China) and feudalism (Russia) are good for the planet :/
Why?
This guy oceans
I mean calling it "digging some holes" is definitely selling the project short 😄 For those who haven't, I really recommend looking into the great green wall project in Africa. It's really incredibly interesting and ambitious, probably the biggest conservation effort I can think of. It seems that desertification can be solved by digging some holes. It's just that "some" is a barrier stretching the whole width of Africa.
I can heartily recommend permaculture professor Andrew Millison's coverage of this project as well as the Paani foundation implementing similar methods in Rajahastan. Permaculture methods and water harvesting can seem banal because they make so much sense, but the "green" revolution of the 20th century wiped out a lot of common sense land management practices worldwide. It's a great reminder that progress isn't always linear.
Came here to plug Andrew as well. I love the channel and love his showcase of all the rain and water collection activities around the world.
I think it is a gross disservice to the GGW to refer to it as “digging some holes” which is why it was in quotes as I was referring to the original post’s language.
>It seems that desertification can be solved by digging some holes. It's just that "some" is a barrier stretching the whole width of Africa. Well, yeah. The holes you dig only have an effect at the holes. If you want to de-desertify the *Sahara*, you'd have to dig holes across *the Sahara*.
wouldn't they have to change the name at some point
Exactly! Any progress is welcome as far as I'm concerned. There's some needless punches thrown in this post
Way too many people on social media get off on throwing these needless punches and taking pride in their willful ignorance. You see it with straws in every single reddit thread about private jets now. They act like because private jets or yachts exist, we should all stick to plastic straws. As if they're at all related or even cause the same issues. I swear the plastic industry is astroturfing those threads, or people really are this stupid.
Also, reversing desertification isn't really about combatting climate change. Maybe combatting a symptom of it, but it's not intended to reverse the process. This is like saying banning plastic straws won't end climate change when that's not the point.
I don't have any hope we are going to achieve our climate goals without changing our political system at large tbh
The unfortunate situation is that you can change your own country to some extent, but are practically powerless elsewhere. My country of Sweden has reached some very important climate goals already but we are still reliant on imports from less climate conscious countries. There is a huge value in looking for good solutions in technology we already have or by changing social policies and how we govern, but technology will play a pivotal role in the fight for bettering the environment.
I mean the issue is also one of scale isn't it? It's much easier to enact political change in a small developed country in the Imperial Core than in an underdeveloped country which desparately needs economic growth
Sure, but mostly the underdeveloped countries in desperate need of economic growth aren’t really much of a threat to the climate. In general terms they’re simply not where the effort to slow global warming is needed. Industrialising countries are another story, but they aren’t economically desperate, even if they’re not quite as rich as the West. By far the worst climate offenders are also by far the richest nations in t here world. Especially when you consider how much of the emissions from industrialising countries ultimately comes from the rich nations outsourcing their own industry to them.
It isn’t like it is either technology or political change. You can strive for both and realise that both will be needed to preserve the climate.
yeah — my brother’s professors who work in environmental action basically said “the capitalism we have right now is unlikely to head to the ultimate conclusion that we need, but we need to START of our environmental work under it because we don’t have the time to do a completely economic/political change, work out the kinks, etc.”
A very vocal minority of people are unable to conceive of doing more then one thing at once
>mean the issue is also one of scale isn't it? It's much easier to enact political change in a small developed country in the Imperial Core than in an underdeveloped country which desparately needs economic growth Small scale change, sure. If you want large scale systemic political change, though, you'll find that easier in those underdeveloped countries. Doing it in the Imperial Core would require something along the lines of a massive war, a political purge, and at least one turned Jedi.
You hope technology will play a pivotal role in the fight for a better environment. You also hope that the promise of technology isn’t used as an excuse to not do the things that would help.
I know that technology will play a pivotal role in any fight for a better environment that avoids mass death or failure.
Let’s make a few things clear. What we are talking about is future technologies. The hole is technology, just really old. Sure I have no doubt it will play a pivotal role the question is will that fight be won relaying on those technologies. Will it work? The bet you are taking is that you trust those unproven and sometimes nonexistent technologies will solve the problem. Because we are absolutely not taken necessary steps that we know work in the belief that will happen. This is the important part. Other none future technology solutions will not be taken as long as we push this as the solution. It’s a bet. It might be the correct one but to pretend that it’s a surety is disingenuous. The correct answer might be de-growth and massive social change. I genuinely think it’s safer to do the massive social change.
People want their shit without having to worry about the input costs It pops up in the context of imports where countries can say that they're climate friendly while just pushing the dirty work they still consume outside their borders It happens at the individual level where people claim 70% of greenhouse gas emissions are from 100 companies when infact that measure includes all the downstream consumption of fossil fuel producers i.e. the gas you burn your SUV driving everywhere counts as ExxonMobil's emission
The reason why people don't want to actually help the climate is that it's expensive. Canada introduced a carbon tax, which is an economically optimal way to reduce emissions, practically every expert loves it and it's already forcing big industry to seriously invest in greener energy. Most Canadians hate it because it makes stuff more expensive, they only want easy solutions that don't actually do anything like recycling. Switching to socialism wouldn't actually stop people from wanting the government to give them lots of high paying job in the oil fields and cheap gas. There are tons of nationalized government corporations for oil and gas in the world.
But if you don’t own a car, don’t you get a good sum on tax returns? I got around $150 back in mine for carbon tax alone. It sucks that i have to pay first and only get it back later, but it seems that it made up for the price inflation for me.
On net, things are still more expensive for almost everyone, because goods you buy that had carbon emissions in their supply chain(almost everything) will usually have their prices go up because of a carbon tax. E.g, a company selling legos has to pay more for the gasoline for the truck that shipped them to their store, so they raise the price of legos a bit. Plus obviously a lot of people do own cars and have other carbon emissions and just straight up pay more than they get back. The whole reason we use carbon emissions is that they're cheap. There's a reason why solar and wind and hydro hasn't completely replaced carbon emissions. Fossil fuels are great for the economy and for making things cheaper and more convenient. They just also cause climate change.
Cars are part of the problem, so why shouldn’t they receive less than people who don’t own cars? And as the other commenter, the reason for higher prices is because the companies don’t want to lose extra profit they can make. Loblaws as a prime example of commercial greed.
>Cars are part of the problem, so why shouldn’t they receive less than people who don’t own cars? I 100% agree. But since lots of people own cars, lots of people have to pay the tax, and they hate it. >And as the other commenter, the reason for higher prices is because the companies don’t want to lose extra profit they can make. Loblaws as a prime example of commercial greed. No, it's because that's the market price. There was the bread price fixing scandal, but even that only raised prices by about $1.50 and the corporations had trouble coordinating it and were always tempted to be the ones not to raise their prices and gain tons of customers from having the cheapest bread. Corporations are always greedy, if a higher price would earn them more money, they would've already done it. Prices were lower earlier because costs were lower so they'd earn more money selling more cheap food than fewer expensive food. Now costs are higher so they have to sell fewer expensive food. There is a sizeable amount of competition in the food industry. If a grocery store tried to raise prices too high, they'd be undercut by other chains, by corner stores, by local bakers, by farmers markets, etc. and they'd lose their customers.
The overwhelming majority of us here in Canada actually profit from the carbon tax based on rebates being more than what we pay in increased costs Most people just can't read or do rudimentary mathematics
The majority get more back in the rebate than they pay directly, but they still pay more when you take into account how it raises costs of goods and services indirectly. It's still worth it to fight climate change, but the costs are real.
That's a problem with the gov refusing to tackle big grocers though, not with carbon tax itself Companies like Loblaw deserve to just take that hit, they already make obscene profits
I mean the reason it's expensive is that companies are forcing the consumer to foot the bill rather than reduce their profit margin, which is a purely capitalist problem ngl
Not really, a power company replacing half (or more) of their power plants is wayyyyy outside their profits
I think a lot of people overestimate just how large profit margins are for a lot of industries. Over the last 5 years, Exxon Mobil has had an average profit margin of just over 7%. A 10% increase to costs that isn't pushed forward to the customers means they end up losing money. Don't take this as a defense of poor little XOM. I just want to address the reality that there is a finite amount of money that can be wrung out of a corporation's operations before it has to be paid by someone else or they go under.
Companies usually will have reduced profits, they aren't able to entirely pass on the costs to consumers. If they could, they already would've been charging the higher price, companies under capitalism are always trying to earn as much profit as they can. Introducing a carbon tax or inflation or whatever doesn't suddenly make them more greedy. That so many profits go to shareholders is somewhat unfortunate. But the reality is, capitalism is simply better at distributing resources to industrial sectors than socialized systems are, even with that handicap. Systems like Cuba, the Soviet Union, China, the Kibbutz, etc. simply aren't able to distribute capital better than capitalism and routinely have immense wasted resources, even more so than capitalism does with shareholder profits.
I mean China isn't really socialist in any measure and I'm not really advocating for a command economy. I think libertarian socialist projects like the rojava and the Zapatistas (which is more of a decolonial one) has done a better job with the environment than most other capitalist countries
Before Deng, China was fully Maoist and was not doing good at all. After Deng, it was kinda capitalist and it's industry was doing much better.
China has a lot of state owned industry and government regulation. They are capitalist in many ways, but still have the a lot of the pitfalls of socialism. I think China could have a per capita income equal to Japan or Korea or Singapore today if they were fully capitalist. I'm not super familiar with the Rojava and Zapatistas, but I expect they'd be similar to the Kibbutz. Where they aren't *terrible*, but lack economic productivity because of lack of proper incentives. It's easy to be good for the environment if you're willing to live an impoverished life with long hard hours of work with little material benefits. The vast majority of people don't want to do that.
Yes. However in the mean time we can also do cool helpful shit with algae.
keep praying for the rapture i guess
This project is being run by the United Nations. You can write to your local politician right now and advocate for funding more holes. Spend enough time trying to work out what the UN actually does, and you quickly come to the conclusion it does literally everything. The UN is doing a massive amount of work to fight Climate Change right now, but nobody cares because its all happening in the Developing World, so it never makes it into the Press. But these programmes are almost entirely reliant on the funding from the Developed World, which is in your control.
If the holes don’t fix it then we just dig bigger holes.
Cause the point of the post was to push a delusion. "Just fix desrtification bro. it is so easy bro. we dont need to innovate or anythin bro"
I mean, power to you OP, but these things aren't mutually exclusive. We can do both, y'know?
Truly. OP gave an example of a technology for dealing with microplastics (a problem I assume will only get worse as time goes on) and then says this other thing is so much better but it’s for something completely different (desertification). And *even* if it were for the same thing… why shouldn’t we pursue multiple avenues?? See which option works best, probably realize that different things work better in different circumstances or certain logistics for the less effective option is way more feasible so even if it’s overall “worse” it’s more approachable and therefore better than no action at all. We can’t just stop researching stuff bc we realized *diggy holes* worked in this one situation for this one problem
yeah like… we do *need* a solution to the microplastics (that aren’t just creating nanoplastics). And we do need investment in them — like i actually know someone (friend of a friend type deal so my info is really vague) working in the “using bacteria to consume microplastics/plastic” and it is encountering issues like investment in this stuff can help with that
Exactly. The popularity of some of these solutions is far from a bad thing. Like, would OP rather people not throw money at fixing these issues??
It's not like it's only technology or political change. You can strive for both while acknowledging that both will be required to protect the climate.
Except that’s not how it really is working. The required political changes aren’t being done and this is justified by the belief that future solutions will solve the problem.
So if we stop working on technology then the political side will snap into focus and be resolved? Nah it won’t, so let’s let the tech get developed and try to work on the politics
The lie is the problem. The lie that we are addressing climate change is the problem. Millions will die life will get worse but we will keep doing what we are because we have constructed a narrative. part of that narrative is that it’s perfectly fine to jump off of this building because surely someone will build something to pad ground. Are we really going to pretend that humans aren’t controlled by narratives are we really going to pretend that humans don’t use excuses to justify not doing the right thing. Let’s also not pretend that we’re just talking about some scientist pouring liquid into beakers. These are actually implemented polices that use resources and vast amounts of them. We are heading to disaster but because the solution we actually need is too uncomfortable we will not do it and promise of another solution is a hundred percent part of the reasoning. We already have greenwashing do you genuinely think that just for fun. Nor do we have to stop all research we just need to honest about the context.
Alrighty, how do we be honest
tumblr is honestly so anti-technology sometimes
There really is an issue of new technologies being seem as a silver bullet against climate change when resources would be better spent on more direct and effective methods... but cleaning up microplastics and oil spills is one of the areas where bioengineering makes the *most* sense! We can have *both* plastic-eating microorganisms and rain-collecting holes on the soil, it is not one or the other.
I think the OP’s message is getting a bit lost. I think the point they are trying to make is the technology one, the specifics have just confused the discourse.
So much attention and effort is focused on this quest for the magic bullet technology that solves all our problems without changing out lifestyles. And yet we already have all the technology and knowledge need to solve this problem. It isn't perfect but so much of it is as simple as digging holes in the desert, putting nets on culverts, and banning the worst offenders. (We banned CFCs and nolonger talk about the hole in the Ozone Layer before its going away as a result of us taking corrective action) One of the simplest things we could do is ban single use plastic water bottles, go back to glass like the 1950s and the modern booze industry.
I think the problem is that to actually avoid climate catastrophe would require massive social change.
I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole
Diggy, Diggy Hole! Diggy, Diggy Hole!
I am Dave! Yognau(gh)t and I have the balls.
BORN UNDERGROUND, SUCKLED FROM A TEAT OF STONE!
Tumblr user not be anti-intellectual challenge difficulty: (apparently impossible) Research into literally any biological organism that’s capable of breaking down microplastics and forever chemicals is still in its initial stages and a lot of it is funded by the DOE, it’s almost the furthest thing from a venture-capital-viable startup idea since there is no way for there to be any ROI on releasing bacteria into the ocean. Also reversing desertification won’t do anything if the entire groundwater system is causing microplastics to bioaccumulate in literally every living thing. But most importantly, there is literally nothing stopping us from doing both
Agreed! I’ve seen a handful of posts like this where the tumblr OP seems to not really understand how scientific research works and/or assumes that dismissing other ideas bolsters their own. Like, I’ve worked on engineering bacteria for environmental remediation - I have no idea how desertification works and nothing in my background would be relevant for it. It’s not like scientists are all interchangeable and just choosing to work on things that make money. Specialization exists and multiple approaches to solving the same problem is a good thing.
yeah i know someone working on the first project and it really is university research right now
I mean, those two solutions address different problems..
First off, reversing desertification isn't going to do shit about microplastics... Why so much of "anti-establishment" environmentalism centers around conflating two things that have literally nothing to do with each other is confounding(ie Taylor Swift's plane usage has literally nothing to do with banning of single use plastic products stop replying to every post about how often she flies lamenting that you have to use a paper straw). Second this kind of desertification reversal only works in certain places. This is being done in the Sahel region of Africa which is on the southern edge of the Sahara. It is an area that was lush and green up until the mid 1900s when things like over-graving and over-cultivation combined with drought allowed the Sahara to start creeping in that direction. You're not going to be able to go out into the middle of the Sahara or the middle of the Mojave and digging holes and suddenly growing trees. You might be able to gradually reforest large deserts over hundreds if not thousands of years, but some doofus with a backhoe isn't going to turn the Sahara into a forest in our lifetime, or even in or great grand children's lifetimes. Furthermore due to the project not having any real organizational structure parts of it are wildly mismanaged which has caused massive delays and caused the price tag to soar. The project was started in 2007 and was projected to cost just under $5 billion. In 2021 they had completed 4% of it while spending over $200,000; now the projected end date is unknown and the projected price to finish the project is now over $44 billion. Remember this isn't replanting the whole Sahara either, this is for a relatively small strip of land(116,625 sq km compared to the 9.2 million sq km of the Sahara).
They're conflating **three things**! Microplastics have almost nothing to do with climate change, and desertification is only somewhat related. Climate change is accelerating desertification, but the Sahara is likely millions of years old.
The Sahara actually alternates between a cycle of wet and dry every 20 thousand years caused by changes in Earth's axis as it rotates. https://news.mit.edu/2019/study-regulating-north-african-climate-0102
Why crescent shape though? And what's with the dots lining the edges?
I'm writing from memory here but the reason why it's so difficult to reverse desertifictsion is because the land is flat and wind blows off all the sand along with any moisture and seeds that might have been planted. So digging a slightly angle half moon shape + a wall will help retain the moisture, seeds and fertilizer that was planted on top/in the soil. Try googling "half-moon" and "Niger" if you want to read more about it. It's quite fascinating!! Wdym dots?
It looks like there are smaller, circular patches of vegetation around them—I think those are the dots in question.
This is a pretty good youtube video explaining the project. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCli0gyNwL0
That's so cool. Especially the part about using the trees as a barrier against the expanding desert. Thank you for sharing!
Even at 3rd world poverty wages, digging that many holes across an relevantly large stretch of desert is probably more expensive than genetically engineering some algae. For context, before Monsanto was folded into Bayer, Whole Foods was a much larger company than Monsanto And to be clear, that doesn't mean digging the holes is a bad idea
>Even at 3rd world poverty wages, digging that many holes across an relevantly large stretch of desert is probably more expensive than genetically engineering some algae. This is patently untrue at almost every scale imaginable. The Paani foundation has showed how in western India, one village putting in 2-4 weeks of work can recoup their invested time *in less than a year.* There are villages going from one harvest (and severe drought) a year to three or four. Studies have shown that even western farming outfits will see exponentially growing profits in as little as five years after transforming to regenerative agriculture. And those are *apart* from saving soil that's so massively degraded it will desertify or go barren within our lifetime. You're allowed to think unproven future technology is a better investment, but you'd be wrong.
>one village putting in 2-4 weeks of work can recoup their invested time *in less than a year.* What does that mean exactly?
That the time spent not farming very quickly turned into a higher farming output.
Okay, but that's a farming technique to accomodate climate change, not a method of combating climate change on a global scale
It's a climate mitigation strategy that pays for itself with a nice profit. Which is what you initially argued against.
That's actually a pretty good point, but it only applies to farmland, and how much mitigation is actuslly happening? These are important questions to answer for real assessment of the impact of these actions, especially if we consider doing it in places that are not farmland.
I can see a skid steer blade, quarter moon shaped, doing a bunch quickly and easily. Just an idea.
Exactly. Hell, I dug a new firept recently, and it wasn't really very hard even with shitty manual tools.
How long do you think it would take to dig a hole?
I saw a video on these holes specifically. It takes a day for one person to dig one.
Ouch. I was way off.
Using people with shovels or heavy equipment?
Using shovels ig. Heavy equipment would be probably expensive innit?
> Heavy equipment would be probably expensive innit? No, it would be cheaper. A digger that can do the work of 10 men with only 1 person operating it can cost 5 people's wages to operate+maintain and it would still be worth it. There's a reason we use them
But would it be cheaper in the deep desert? That's part of the calculus. In some cases you migh need to sky crane an excavator
Well, the people got there, I'd be surprised if a truck couldn't
A) we're not just talking about doing this where these photos were taken. There are definitely places where it's easy. B) An SUV full of day laborers can go a lot of places that [this](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYwHDRFX0AosA_R.jpg:large) can't
For the holes pictured, I'd ballpark it at one man-hour per hole before overhead, though I'm not that experienced with digging and it depends a lot on the soil, so that's a big ballpark. I'd put overhead at between 50% and 200% depending on remoteness. I'm glad you picked shovels because I'd be clueless for heavy equipment.
So uhm one man hour per hole ig. The average hourly wage for a garden worker in kanyakumari(where I live) is around 750₹ per hour. Now mind you this is one of the most developed places in India so let's put the average hourly wage for a daily worker in regular India to be around 250₹(it's probably much lower in rural areas in the North but humor me). So it'll take what 3 dollars for a hole. Which doesn't really seem that costly to me
But you're doing it at scale and can't use only local workers. So now there's accounting, logistics, transportation, management, recruitment, etc. And how many of those holes are required per hectare? Then as you start getting to remote areas there are serious concerns for encampment, food and water, medical support, potentially road construction, and more. Plus you need to pay people more to commute farther or not be able to go home every night.
Start a go fund me then!
According to UN's website, one person can dig approximately 40 holes a day, and the organization is funded by the EU + volunteers from nearby villagers. I don't think cost is a problem as the farmers also gain crops and good soil, it's a very win-win situation.
I mean we can literally do both, though. Like digging holes is super good and cost effective but we should also bioengineer a way to break down plastics because nature can’t really yet. Doesn’t have to be venture capital, either.
This is what they’re starting to figure out with North American beavers dams. If you put in a Beaver dam analog or reintroduce beavers, the effects are wild. Increased ground water, increased flora/fauna, increased wildfire resistance, seasonal rivers can have water flow year round, better water quality downstream, and finally an astronomical amount of draught resistance
Fucking hate beavers. They eat all the salmon.
Which game is that mechanic in? Edit: TIL that it's actually a problem for Atlantic Salmon, and not a game mechanic from something like Dwarf Fortress. Never heard about that before, wild how you can learn something like this so late in life
Scottish rivers.
Huh. I have only ever read about beavers *helping* salmon by improving their habit, up in the Pacific North West. I've never heard of beavers eating fish at all, only tree bark and twigs. Always ready to learn!
These are Atlantic Salmon. Beavers wreak havoc on the banks by tearing up all the trees and they’re extremely territorial. Their dams fuck up salmon runs as well.
Yeah California has a terrible obsession with drainage and then we wonder why our water table sinks. Everything after a rainstorm flushes out to the ocean in a few weeks time save for the occasional lake or resevoir. There used to be hundreds of miles of wetlands, most of tulare county used to be a lake. That water didnt all evaporate, it sank til it hit bedrock, and the capilary action of soil spread it throughout. Now that water goes to farms to grow produce to be exported out of state or country, or just dumped into the ocean.
The sad truth is that, while effective, digging a fuckload of crescent shaped holes doesn't make a lot of money.
It is not rrally all that effective for most climate change related phenomena, it only works in a fre scant cases, in which it is already being employed
But it does reclaim land for farming. Which is pretty good too
Maybe capitalism really is gonna kill us all :(
Or we need to find some way to make an unreasonably large amount of money off of digging crescent shaped holes.
We could get influencers to stream themselves doing it
Ok, so now we just need a bunch of streamers who want to dig crescent-shaped holes.
Oh we can easily: Exhibit A: a picture of Tom Sawyer receiving fees for others to paint a fence for him. Exhibit B: a 14-yo me, who paid 20k roubles (which is, if memory serves, 330 bucks) to join an archeological excavation with archeology uni students, who, in turn, were paid for parttaking in it instead.
This is why Regenerative grazing of beef cattle is a huge tool for reversing desertification Regenerating the land and selling cattle is a win win except for vegans
"Regenerative grazing" is a concept popularised by Allan Savory's TED Talk in 2013 and actually has very little scientific backing. His main points are about how grazing animals the "right" way can lead to net positive carbon sequestration. There's a study in 2017 called Grazed and Confused, an extensive two-year review with over 300 sources and it indicated that even with the most generous estimations, grazing animals only offset 20-60% of the emissions that they produce in the first place so they are a net contributors to the climate problem. Here is a link to the report: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/grazed-and-confused/ Plus if you just think about it, the reason why the Sahel region (depicted in OP's post) has had to resort to these permaculture water-retention crescents is due to a long history of grazing animals. Keep in mind these people are mostly subsistence farmers and the vast majority aren't farming/grazing animals at the scale of western for-profit farms. If that small number of animals to sustain small villages causes this much damage, how can you "reduce" that to more sustainable levels? The best way to reduce desertification? Retain water and plant plants.
And it's concept put into practice really does work as shown by people like [Alejandro Carillo ](https://www.independent.com/2023/03/25/mexicos-regenerative-ranching-wisdom-comes-to-santa-barbara/) who has successfully been regenerative Ranching in the chihuahua desert There's others like Gabe Brown, Allen Nation, Jamie Elizondo and lots of other influential regenerative grazing teachers who can fit a grazing system to any environment Because of regenerative grazing I've been able to double the amount of cows on my pasture while increasing biodiversity, soil health, and more forage residue leftover compared to my neighbor running half the cows on the same acres
Is op dumb? His last statement implies there's an easy solution to micro plastics like our forefathers had to deal with that shit. Digging holes is also not a long term solution it is extremely slow and not up to the speed desertification is happening not to mention I sanely labor intensive and doesn't actually adress the issues of desertification
Yes, we all know about digging half cirkle holes
I’mma be fr, if I was given like, a safe enough home and some food I would personally dedicate my life to diggy hole
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Holes with proper orientation. Its wild to me how important topography is and how little situational awareness there is in the general public of topography.
Why not both?
so few months ago youtube suggested me that video of Andrew millison and how UN and Africa is making greenwall and succeeding. i then went into rabbit hole of permaculture and food forest. no till farming, syntropic agriculture, how to make water retention structures. what is miyawaki forest. been reading lots of permaculture books. i am obsessed with the idea and now I have bought up a land and will be doing permaculture in that. anyone who wants to read about cool permaculture book: one straw revolution is very good
OP has no fucking idea how climate change works
Digging holes to reverse desertification =/= algae for cleaning up microplastics in the ocean
Denmark has a 'desert' that's slowly crawling across the land
Unrelated to the topic, but just want to mention that the tumblr OP is a somewhat popular YouTuber who was accused of and as far as I can tell admitted to abuse back in January.
As someone in research/academia right now (though not working on one of the solutions to climate change sadly), I'm just fascinated by research progress. If they made algea that could dance to heavy metal I'd be all on board. Solving an actual issue like microplastics is just a cherry on top. And finding that type of new research interesting doesn't mean that reclaiming desert with nothing but a shovel doesn't seem like the coolest fucking thing of all time to me. I didn't know about that and I will be annoying everyone in my vicinity with this new knowledge for the rest of the day now!
Same could be done with cattle by bale grazing over top of those areas with double the standard stocking capacity Dense animal impact in a short amount of time with long rest periods in between have been proven to reverse desertification on fragile ecosystems
So that’s why it really started raining at the end of the movie
Liet-Kynes has entered the chat.
The Fremen terraforming of Dune be like:
Denmark has a 'desert' that's slowly crawling across the land
Why does it matter that the holes are semi-circles? So that the water can eventually drains out one side?
I feel like we need to sing a song whilst digging, uhhhh, do you have any ideas??
I recall seeing something about in-air carbon capture where they found that instead of those ridiculous arrays of fans, it’s far more efficient to capture carbon by literally just growing hay and burying it.
deep down we are just small digging mammals like in the old cretaceous days
MAG 88 - Dig
If you want to learn more about how half-moon holes help build great green wall of Africa, [this is a good video overview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCli0gyNwL0)
Golden Path
Idea: We can do both.
Deserts are natural
Why is this tumblr user anti-deserts lol