
Living in China’s Expanding Deserts - bananaoomarang
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/24/world/asia/living-in-chinas-expanding-deserts.html
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M_Grey
_But farming is also becoming more difficult. Huang Chunmei, who grew up in
the town of Tonggunao’er and now farms there, said the water table was two
meters, or about six feet, below ground during her childhood, and “now, you
have to dig four or five meters.”_

This is the bottom line; you can plant trees all you like, but this is not a
matter of simple erosion due to overuse or clear-cutting. Rather, the climate
systems of the region are changing, and presumably they suffer from the same
overuse of subterranean water that everyone else does in the
developed/developing world.

I feel terribly for these people, desperately slapping band-aids on a sucking
chest wound, especially since the story of this century seems to be that the
people on the front lines of climate change are the people who contributed
least to the creation of the problem in the first place. It's also hard to see
a happy outcome for them, since they're first on the metaphorical chopping
block; even if the world suddenly woke up and took notice, it would be too
late for them.

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sliverstorm
Sidenote, while a band-aid won't help a sucking chest wound, an occlusive
dressing to halt the progress of the pneumothorax can be improvised with a
piece of plastic laid over the wound and tape on three sides.

~~~
stephencanon
In next week's episode of "HN or WFA", we'll either show you how to setup a
new bootstrap site or how to take spine precautions when dealing with the
victim of a fall in the backcountry.

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464192002d7fe1c
WFA?

I ask, because if there's a site that routinely discusses stuff like this
(advanced yet practical medical stuff) i'd be very interested in reading it.

~~~
sliverstorm
WFA, I assume he's talking about Wilderness First Aid, a medical
certification.

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donpdonp
The background video clips were done incredibly well in the post. The clips
added to the setting of what was going on in the text without being
distracting. Kudos to the NYTimes for that.

~~~
cjensen
Really? On my five-year old Mac Mini scrolling was erratic and the text that
was supposed to come up for a bit just flashed and went away before it could
be read.

Having the videos be in clearly defined regions instead of wanking about with
the scroll function would have been much more sensible.

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trhway
while land in Russia, in particular East, is becoming more usable/livable with
no population growth :) Through the history empires have risen and fallen in
sync with climate changes, and climate change has already initiated redrawing
of the maps in the Middle East and North Africa and looks like it is just the
beginning of the new round of maps redrawing around the world.

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zerowellies
Do you have more information on how Russia's Eastern regions are becoming more
habitable? I know they have a development fund to incentive people from other
regions to move and develop small businesses (especially in agriculture).

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anubisresources
They're much better for agriculture than they used to be (though still pretty
poor in Siberia). The change in productivity is wholly due to climate change.
Warmer weather leads to a longer growing season, rain instead of snow, etc.

A lot of this land is nutrient packed as well. Siberia could be prime growing
land if it gets warm enough. Similar to Ukraine today.

Saying that, there are a number of concerns about soil resilience in Siberia.
If soil resilience doesn't improve, Siberia will remain very poor for
agriculture.

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doorty
Guess climate change isn't a Chinese conspiracy after all*

*[https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/26589529219124838...](https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/265895292191248385?lang=en)

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snuze
I would like to see research of which nations stand to gain the most due to
climate change. My guesses are Russia and Canada. Perhaps in the future,
Canadians will want to build a wall to keep out Americans, assuming they don't
want that already. ;)

