"What's up doc?"
Posted on 08/02/2009 6:38:05 PM PDT by reaganaut1
Desertification, drought, and despair—that's what global warming has in store for much of Africa. Or so we hear.
Emerging evidence is painting a very different scenario, one in which rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in the driest parts of the continent.
Scientists are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall.
If sustained, these rains could revitalize drought-ravaged regions, reclaiming them for farming communities.
This desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago.
Green Shoots
The green shoots of recovery are showing up on satellite images of regions including the Sahel, a semi-desert zone bordering the Sahara to the south that stretches some 2,400 miles (3,860 kilometers).
Images taken between 1982 and 2002 revealed extensive regreening throughout the Sahel, according to a new study in the journal Biogeosciences.
The study suggests huge increases in vegetation in areas including central Chad and western Sudan.
The transition may be occurring because hotter air has more capacity to hold moisture, which in turn creates more rain, said Martin Claussen of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, who was not involved in the new study.
"The water-holding capacity of the air is the main driving force," Claussen said.
He added that the greening trend is supported by other satellite data.
Not a Single Scorpion
While satellite images can't distinguish temporary plants like grasses that come and go with the rains, ground surveys suggest recent vegetation change is firmly rooted.
Throughout North Africa, new trees, such as acacias, are flourishing, according to Stefan Kröpelin, a climate scientist at the University of Cologne's Africa Research Unit in Germany.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
Unfortunately for them, this particular story cannot be spun negatively.. The Sahara even lacks that old standby of climate-change hysteria, cute animals threatened by a greening climate. So they are forced through gritted teeth to report it straight.
Science detached from politics. What a concept.
They also left out the fact that greening the Sahara is a negative feedback.
Oh no not rain in the desert. This could be the end. /sarcasm
"What's up doc?"
"Global warming"(aka "climate change") is just a tin pan that the elitists bang on to scare the sheep into the pen. Ever notice that whatever the crisis is at the moment, the solution is always the same?
Tells me that it's all about the "solution", and not about the crisis.
it if all due to The Øbamanation's poop he left in Cairo. It was transplanted in the Sahara to jump start the transformation. Now, if we could only get him... 
to pee in the ocean to complete the cure for global warming!
Hey? I'm doing... 
my part!
Acacias are more like thorn bushes than trees. They are adapted to dry conditions. They resist evaporation and hoard water, making them able to survive on little. They stand up well to constant drying winds. They are small and stunted.
I have seen them everywhere on desert islands like Bonaire, NA. They remind me of our own prickly ash, useful mainly to goats and burros, of which there are lots in areas full of acacias. They make good livestock fences. I do seem to recall some sort of seed pods, which perhaps are an animal/bird feed. They will hold the soil, however, such as it is in these sorts of places, where it is mostly sand that needs to be sifted to remove the donkey dung before being amended in order to be used for anything.
But, maybe this is just to get started on NatGeo remaking its credibility.
Thanks for this post! I am sending the link along to some friends of mine.
>>>This desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago.<<<
~~~During the last ICE age.~~~
I was thinking the same thing. The last ice age was also a great time to live in the American West, too - huge freshwater lakes, forests in the hills.
However, the headline talks about “climate change,” which is constant and would occur without humanity. The nice thing about climate as a propoganda weapon is that, as the cliche goes, everyone talks about it, and in a nice twist, only centralized leftist policy can do anything about it.
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