Trees and Climate Change in Egypt

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Trees and Climate Change in Egypt

Post by Hafiz »

Climate change will kill us all if not fixed and will also kill trees and plants as well. However there is paradox with climate change maybe, at this stage, making bigger but more fragile/weaker trees. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08 ... ger-weaker. On the other hand in Lebanon, milder and wetter than Egypt, the Cedar that ‘fed’ Egypt for thousands of years with buildings, coffins, ships and furniture is experiencing a crisis and will need new science to develop an adaptive type/variety. https://phys.org/news/2018-11-lebanon-c ... cedar.html

(Of course there are people in this forum who deny the above – I await a single source from them from a single refereed science journal of the 8,000 or so in the world to prove them right – I won’t hold my breath. The Sun/Daily Mail/Express etc newspapers are not a reliable source unless you are brain dead. Why is it that London has most of the garbage newspapers in the world – Australia excepted but including Rupert’s local gas machines that recently removed a PM.

Trees were important to ancient Egypt:
“The ancient Egyptians seized upon a species called Ficus sycomorus, whose pollinator wasp was either locally extinct or had never arrived. By rights, this species should not have yielded a single ripe fig. But through a stroke of luck or genius, farmers worked out that they could trick the tree into ripening its figs by gashing them with a blade. Before long, the figs were a mainstay of Egyptian agriculture. Farmers even trained monkeys to climb trees and harvest them.
Egypt's fig trees fed both bellies and beliefs. The Pharaohs took dried figs to their graves in order to sustain their souls on their journey into the afterlife. They believed the mother goddess Hathor would emerge from a mythic fig tree to welcome them into heaven.” http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170116 ... an-history

Here is Hathor emerging from a fig tree to welcome the pharaoh’s soul into afterlife
Image

Egypt is ill prepared and ill governed and climate change will expose all the fissures in countries including anatomical ones. The Egyptian report to the UN in 2016 on Climate Change is cretinious (apologies to our Great friends from Crete) and avoids all hard decisions – as the Junta always does. It identifies that cities and their concrete and asphalt face real risks as heat islands but suggests only planting trees on road sides and ignores the fundamental challenge of basic city redesign, building and housing redesign, shading systems, water vapor systems in public areas, the redesign of pavements to allow for rain to be absorbed into the ground, roof-top solar energy collection, insulation and glass redesign, the development of green belts, the redesign of public areas to reduce their hard surfaces by 2/3rds etc.

The world leading Max Planck has done the first regional estimate of climate change for the Middle East and it predicts worse than awful with heat and long term drought. https://www.mpg.de/10481936/climate-cha ... rth-africa Other studies on sea water temperature for the region are fatal for coral reefs, outdoor tourism, fishing and even desalination may be threatened and the Delta inundated and farming regions beyond it threatened by salinity in the creeping water table. https://www.eniday.com/en/human_en/clim ... ddle-east/

In another study the great Max Planck makes the point that air quality, already awful, will be made worse by dust from climate change and this will affect plant growth, animals and drive more air conditioning/create more lung and eye diseases. https://www.mpic.de/en/news/press-infor ... leted.html

Local research of even the lowest quality on climate change is less than zero but complacency is stratospheric. Generally its simple Simon says grab a plant from somewhere and stick it in somewhere. The obvious social upheavals are ignored which would follow and would make the Brotherhood threats akin to those from Mother Teresa by comparison.

Because specific effects and their timing and location are impossible to predict planning is hard and requires qualities Egypt has never had – clear objectives, patient management, careful examination of risks, a long term view, clear priorities and action and decisive leadership. A cost benefit analysis is like the plague to Egypt.

Egypt and much of the region are already on the edge of habitation and change might push them over before you even consider Nile flows (Ethiopia and Sudan drawings), evaporation in Lake Nasser and in flood irrigated fields, the cracking of infrastructure, new diseases and pests and difficulties of doing work out in the open.

Figures either don’t exist or aren’t reliable and the general UN 2007 report on agriculture and climate change in Egypt had to use 1996 figures on land under cultivation. To describe this report as grossly inadequate leaves something unclear so lets just say it way authored by local ‘academics’ and you will get my meaning. Read it, it’s a riot of mad outdated economic theory, Ricardo, authored by scientists. The contribution of the Egyptian Society of Environmental Sciences can’t be read by me because my software says its report is corrupted and we think that artificial intelligence hasn’t arrived. https://www.ipcc.ch/apps/njlite/ar5wg2/ ... hp?id=8517

That Egypt lacks the skill pool in this area to address the threat could just as easily be said of its law, medicine, economics, management, architecture, tourism, archaeology, cooking, farming including animal husbandry, technology and IT, energy, oil, gas etc but what it has instead are thousands of lazies running everything who are loyal to, or related to, the Junta and its dim and brutal leadership.

The report above fails even a fail essay in 1st year MBA (a bit like Sisi’s US essay) – what is the problem – what are the options – what are the priorities - what are the cost-benefits solutions to the problems – how quick do you need to act and what are the damages of failure. Its vegetative yet soon 10-20 million who depend on farming will face a crisis the effect of which will be violent unrest/revolution/mass migration. https://unfccc.int/files/national_repor ... report.pdf

Egypt has few trees, a high demand for wood, large imports of timber and ‘grand/silly’ plans for self sufficiency in this area. Imports into Egypt are approximately the same as all the rest of MENA including large Iran and Morocco. It seems a screaming anomaly driven by the fake construction boom and the sources of supply are mainly Canada and Brazil requiring hard currency. http://ettf.info/sites/ettf/files/ISC20 ... Elshal.pdf

Attempts to grow trees for commercial and climate purposes have faced the standard problems – poor science, corruption and locals illegally cutting down trees. In addition there is something about the culture and society which is dismissive of botany as a 10 second trip to the awful Cairo Botanic Gardens will make clear. Unlike many cities in the region – Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco etc Egypt’s cities are squalid and lacking trees and many there are 80 years old and planted by the vicious Imperial power. There is not a single treed boulevard in Egypt unlike the other places mentioned above which offer shade to pedestrians and beauty. The New Imperial Capital – SisiVille/NasserVille/SadatVille/CorruptVille known as SiNaSaCorVille – appears no better than the immediate past.

Dated research shows that indigenous trees in very dry areas are already on the way out of existence. In the contested Gabal Area in the South East the spectacular Dragon Tree faces early extinction – probably from climate change but also from the effects of lazy Egyptian scientists. https://www.academia.edu/36819839/Impac ... n_of_Egypt

There are scores of scores of ‘savior’ botanists with new tree solutions to the future of the world and they are operating in delusional Egypt and this should surprise no one. Just prior to 2013 in Luxor the invasive and fast growing Chinese Jatropha was trialed to save the world by absorbing carbon – apparently it was a Nobel prize success – prize in the mail. https://www.climatechangenews.com/2013/ ... te-change/. In the west ‘greenies’ paraded naked in the street to celebrate this ‘immense’ success. Its to be fed with effluent.

This reprocessed effluent project was announced to the world 10 years ago as ‘the salvation’ of Egypt and like all salvations came to little but gets relaunched on a minuscule scale in an area that required bold, thoughtful and large efforts.. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... ate-change

This approach has little merit and no tract record because three decades in to Climate Change there is not a single ‘carbon farming/capture’ project in the world that has succeeded and none of scale but the ambitious and insatiably narcissistic are attracted to this el dorado that warms their mother earth innards. Such lazy creatures just want to move a Chinese tree to Luxor and not do the decade of hard work on breeding new types let alone species. The rest of the time they squabble amongst themselves like something the Wife of Bath couldn’t imagine, as you will find out from this article.

An Australian equivalent in a better regulated environment has been full of corruption and under achievement and extreme difficulties in proving the carbon absorbing efficacy of the trees. Big business loves it for obvious reasons.

Sisi has announced a million fruit trees initiatives which will fail because they are planted in cities and towns with poor soils, worse water tables, salinity, shocking air pollution and no integrated plan on how they are to be looked after and by whom. Its like all of his plans, a slogan and 1 illiterate sentence press release, in this case its draped in the Prophet’s veil and is to feed the 10 million poor – 1/10th of a tree per poor person with 3-4 years before 1st fruiting. https://ww.egyptindependent.com/egypt-l ... uit-trees/. They would be better in creating new varieties that could resist some of the filth but that would require a brain and hard work. Another For the Love of Egypt project idiocy. By way of comparison Australia in a salty, dry environment has about 30 times that number, 1/4th the population 1/30th the number of farmers and little irrigation, and increasing with good science and great botany.

At a similar time the Imperial Government launched a 1001 trees campaign. Yes you got it, a major government campaign to plant 1,001 trees – pathetic. After 6 years they had planted less than 1/3rd so even pathetic targets do’t get met – that’s less than 1 tree for every 6 days. https://cairoscene.me/Buzz/1001-Tree-Pr ... hird-Phase

In recent decades there has been wide planting of commercial stands of eucalyptus for wood harvesting in irrigated desert locations and fed by expensive pipes of human effluent – no not the regime. In principle a good idea for a drought tolerant and salt tolerant type but with huge negative effects on soils and no undergrowth because of the eucalyptus distinctive surface hugging root structure. In Australia assertive and complementary local native bushes can provide undergrowth to prevent wind erosion of the soil in the tree stands but where the e are a monoculture, as in Egypt, that is usually a danger sign for trouble ahead including external invasion by the species and soil damage. It’s a trivial and pathetic project. https://inhabitat.com/egyptian-research ... th-sewage/.

The breeding of new adapted types might be the way to go but that would require a botanical brain, a belief in Darwin (rejected by al Azhar) and in Mendel (a Catholic monk so he must be wrong), careful 5-10 year research and lots of western money to be squandered on a new failure.

According to the myopic National Geographic (a much ruined brand) the government of Egypt and the FAO are doing good, as they always are, in trees which is more than the folksy journalism of the NG Magazine that seems to have abandoned science and paid Hawass millions for little. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/peop ... to-school/ The great and exacting to read NG that I remember as a child is dead (I can remember as a kid reading a complicated article on very early French high tech solar power using moving mirrors to reflect heat to a single pylon containing oil to be boiled to drive a turbine – still radical decades later). As ever important and vital matters are funded by the west, and often managed, as in this case whilst the flesh of the country is devoured by the 200 non-tax-paying families.

This Moringa tree is meant to be the NG answer to cultivation in a dry climate with commercial benefits and the government is duplicating research on something already exhaustively studied elsewhere and not in a real life situation but on a 16 acre research institute near the Pyramids employing lots of lazy stupid scientists who can easily get to work from their razor wired housing compounds nearby. https://sites.google.com/site/moringaresearchfarm/. This initiative like with most major problems that Egypt foes is based on western money (IPNAME) with Egyptian money diverted to bitter and better new capital city, another failed Toshka like farm failure and virtuous purposes like the army, navy, airforce, police, courts, bureaucracy, new giant museums, supreme antiques and all the worst wastes of money in the world.

As with all things vital to the future of the Human Race, the World Bank is there with strategic and brilliant strategies – in this case teaching kids in the bankrupt Egyptian school system about climate change. Lets hope the teachers remember to turn up.

The World Bank think it a brilliant success and here is an ariel view of their vegie patch in a polluted city with lead galore to stunt brains and pollute food. It’s the World Bank at its best. Here is what the World Bank says with no mention of source: “The Shagara project was carried out for the first time at a school in Egypt’s in February 2013. It met with phenomenal enthusiasm from the students and teachers, some applying what they learned at school back at home.” Rot and its now dead but the World Bank officer in charge promoted. It will change nothing with our money except the career direction of the World Bank idiot. It claims to be growing trees - rot - its vegetables and related plants so the World Bank officer lies.

Image

Its almost like a conspiracy in the Egyptian media to avoid frank news of climate change as can be seen from this article on whether the Stradivarius violin will be affected – what about the richer Guanari? https://dailynewssegypt.com/2019/02/27/ ... te-change/

The argument of the Junta that the populace are unsuitable for democracy because of their ignorance ignores the fact that the Junta uses the media to keep people ignorant. A casual read of Indian, Indonesian, Ethiopian, Kenyan and Tunisian media – places much poorer than Egypt – all show more informed debate on a wide range of matters domestic and international. The ignorance and obeisance of the Egyptian is a planned move to keep them under.

Expanding farming land to address Climate Change won’t work because all previous efforts in this area back to Nasser have failed spectacularly. Reclamation like Toshka hasn’t worked either for crops or trees and official figures. which overstate achievement, state that half of current arable land is reclaimed but it produces only 7% of production. That means that the reclaimed land, reclaimed at immense cost, produces 1/7th the output of ‘normal’ land. Most would now give up on reclamation and focus on plant species and increased output from existing land – but no – Sisi has embarked on a new 1.5 million fedans project which will bankrupt the Exchequer and disappoint all as have the previous 7 land projects of the army/government. Fixing salinity which reduces productivity in 1/3rd of the best land could be a good first step for a sane government.

Where is a sane government or at least one not dripping in blood as it heads in the wrong direction at the speed of light.


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Re: Trees and Climate Change in Egypt

Post by newcastle »

Another depressing- but accurate - summary of the prospective fate of Egypt.

In the absence of any opposition, and with the general lethargy of the masses, I see no change unless and until matters deteriorate to the point where there is another uprising.

If, when and how this might occur is anyone’s guess.

Mine is that it is some distance away.
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Re: Trees and Climate Change in Egypt

Post by Major Thom »

See my post headed Fauna in General Discussions
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