Sand Dunes Rising

Hello Everyone!

Today I'm going to talk about another, not yet talked about consequence of global climate change. There's been a lot of talk about melting ice caps, rising sea levels, droughts, and problems with crops, but so far one hasn't seen much information on the issue of growing, expanding, and re-mobilizing sand dunes.

As it turns out there is not as much research on the formation of sand dunes, but some estimates hold that it will only take one degree of global warming in order for ancient sand dunes in Asia, North America, Europe, and Africa to "remobilize" and for the existing sand dune systems to grow and expand.

Of course, some people might look upon this as an expanded opportunity to use their recreational vehicles. But once it starts getting into farmland, into forest areas, into important aquatic ecosystems, and even human settlements it isn't such a good thing. In some parts of Africa, the struggle with Dune expansion has gotten to the point where children are literally shoveling the sand out of the house, the family garden, and such on a daily basis. Often this occurs Sahelian towns that were once part of Africa's greatest civilizations and major trade routes. A poignant lesson to those who harbor no doubt that our civilization will be more or less untouched by climate change.

Furthermore recent research on the atmospheric transport of desert dust from one area to another may cause more problems than were previously known, even in locations such as alpine mountains.

In addition to the threat of expanding deserts to crops, to biodiversity, and perhaps even some settlements, there might be subtler problems in the way deserts influence human culture.

One theory of human culture states that people who live in a desert area by and large, develop very different cultural mores than those who inhabit forest areas. Basically the idea is that desert people tend to be more warlike, more patriarchal, more authoritarian, and more fatalistic. Now one must be careful extrapolating between such theories and the effect of global warming on modern humans. After all, correlation is not necessarily causation. And extrapolating between primitive people and modern people might not be simple. Furthermore, this theory looks at only tropical forests and not the more northern ones, among other possible habitations.

On the other hand it's hard to rule out the possibility that desertification could have some negative effects on the culture, and that rather than helping humanity "adapt" to climate change, could make matters worse.

That's it for now.

Say Goodnight Readers!