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Can We Terraform the Sahara to Stop Climate Change?

Real Engineering · explainer · Watch on YouTube

Climate policy, solutions & debateEnvironment, agriculture & food systems

What it is

Real Engineering examines whether greening the Sahara could draw down carbon and slow climate change. It concludes that the effort would be enormously costly and that changes in albedo and other effects undercut the climate benefit.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Recommended in tree-planting and carbon removal threads as a sourced explanation of why greening deserts is not a simple climate fix.

  • 3 people recommended it
  • 2 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2018, last 2021

What HN commenters said

  1. “The conclusion is that it's technically possible (like many things), but the cost far outweighs the benefit.”

    Examines terraforming the Sahara; feasible but costs outweigh benefits

    cpeterso, 2019-04 · Recommendation · in “Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon”

  2. “I recommend watching the video - it explains it better and goes into detail - it cites its own sources.”

    Explains how greening deserts changes albedo and negates benefits

    Latty, 2019-04 · Recommendation · in “Planting 1.2T Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions”

  3. “A nice video about this”

    Why greening deserts may worsen climate change

    jarenmf, 2021-07 · Recommendation · in “Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020)”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: sahara, climate change, carbon removal, albedo, real engineering

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