Is Desert Ever a Good Thing for the World's Climate?

[Bystander]

"There are two types of global Earth climates: icehouse and greenhouse. Icehouse is characterized by frequent continental glaciations and severe desert environments. Greenhouse is characterized by warm climates. Both reflect the supercontinent cycle. We are now in a little greenhouse phase of an icehouse world."
From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercontinent_cycle
Speculative, but "state of the art" for immediate purposes.

 

[EnumaElish]

Perhaps, Prospero thought, the minerals on the sea floor and the sodium, potassium and calcium in the air above the water were coming from the same source: tiny grains of dust. That dust might ride the winds for thousands of kilometers before finally settling down onto the ocean. If true, it would mean that 30 to 80 percent of the mud on the sea floor actually came from distant lands!

https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/dust-creates-deserts-sky

 

[zoobyshoe]

https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/dust-creates-deserts-sky

So, that's it: dust from the Sahara makes the Amazon rain forest possible:
http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard...s-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazon-s-plants
When there is more rain in that part of the Sahara, there is less dust that travels to the Amazon.

 

[JonDE]

Probably most have heard of the Salton Sea, the biggest lake in California, which was created by accident in 1905:I've always had that at the back of my mind when thinking about transforming a desert.To get a forest started you basically have to pump tons of water into the dry area. There aren't rivers to divert into most deserts so you'd have to get creative. So, you build desalinization plants on the sea coast of the Sahara and pump the water through a pipe into the interior and let it flow out. You might have to do that for years until you create a wet spot suitable for starting a forest, I don't know, but I wasn't thinking in terms of waiting for the rain patterns to change or of ever being completely dependent on them.

I can't think of anyone with the money to do something like that who has any incentive to even try, but it seems it would be possible if there were such an entity.

Wasn't there someone that tried to transform the Sahara desert already? I have this nagging story in my mind that I can't remember the details of. Either he was rich or a prominent scientists, or both, in which he actually had working farms in the Sahara. I remember his efforts being cut short by one of the world wars, when I think his materials were all repurposed.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Wasn't there someone that tried to transform the Sahara desert already? I have this nagging story in my mind that I can't remember the details of. Either he was rich or a prominent scientists, or both, in which he actually had working farms in the Sahara. I remember his efforts being cut short by one of the world wars, when I think his materials were all repurposed.

I haven't heard of this and wasn't able to find anything by googling, but I don't doubt it. It's not an uncommon idea, and there are probably always people at work trying to reclaim the edges of desert for farming.

Just ran across this from 2009:

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/irrigation-system-can-grow-crops-with-salt-water

I am guessing this must not have worked somehow in practice because there's no other news about it. If it is viable it would be the perfect way to irrigate a desert because you could pump sea water inland without the great expense of de-salting it first. Still, you have to clean whatever has been filtered out of the water out of the pipes, and then what do you do with it?