Chinese solar farms in their deserts suddenly went green due to the constant shade protecting rain water, plus the water from the automated cleaning spray systems. It grew grass, so they put goats there to keep it mowed for free.

Ireland looked like the rain forest in Vancouver 8,000 years ago, but all the trees were cut down. Now it is flat and windy.

The Aral sea, drainage, happened in just a few years.

The South West in the U.S.A., might be going dry.

Virgins seething

The lake's coming home?

Too soon?

No doubt countless tribal peoples had (or have) oral histories describing how their homeland was eaten away by desert.

it's a bit like how the bible's flood story was the result of the oceans overcoming land after the last ice age melted away.

the sahara bounced back and forth between fertile grasslands and desert wastelands over the eons and the ancient egyptians of the first kingdom became a thing at the tail end of last transition from grassland to desert.

i like how the "fall of civilizations" podcast frames it. he describes the people of the region as being disparate peoples occupying various parts of the last grassland sahara who slowly migrated over the centuries towards river deltas like the nile as the desert encroached on their homes bit-by-bit over the generations.

i suspect that climate change is going to happen the same way for us and FAR AWAY future generations will be just as ignorant about how it happened or that it even happened.

Also, with this timeline, it seems plausible that the earliest Egyptian empires may have been around just early enough to actually experience this desertification.

AfaIk, one theory is that the ancient Egyptians moved from deserting regions in the Sahara (following a now dry branch of the Nile) to Egypt, i.e. the origin of the ancient Egyptian culture is in the Sahara region.

I’ve heard people try to claim the garden of eden is a memory of the green sahara, but that’s not provable.

Early civilizations were routinely centered around lush green river valleys, with political strife forcing dissidents out into the dry and sterile periphery. So, I wouldn't say it's a memory of a green Sahara so much as a cycle of cultivation and degradation that has informed human storytelling for millennia.

"Eden" could just as easily be the Indus Valley in modern-day Pakistan. Or the Fertile Crescent of Iraq/Iran. Or the Göbekli Tepe of southeast Turkiye. Or the Nile Delta. Or the modern-day Gaza Strip. Or the rich soils along the slopes of Mount Kenya. Or the bountiful soil of Ukraine. Or yadda yadda yadda.

Maybe all of these places, with migrating peoples constantly looking for the next Promised Land of Fruit and Honey, settling for a time, and being uprooted again.

Is that Radiant Historia?

How China Turned a Desert Green

Reversing Desertification A Green Blueprint for Kenya

Of course, a bunch of these efforts to forestall desertification and reverse the damage is being done with money loaned by Chinese state and private businesses. And (unlike when the IMF or western banks extend loans) we all know that this is how Evil Countries get their hooks in to do the Horrible Thing.

So I'm obligated to ask the question:

AT. WHAT. COST?!

There's an ancient lakebed in Chad that supplies dust that blows across the Atlantic and delivers phosphorus to Amazon rainforests - phosphorus that is needed to support plant growth. Those long-dead organisms are still in the food chain. Life uuh finds a way.

Including the fact that it will be green again

Evolution happens in bursts when species are under pressure and a lot of animals are able to make quick adaptations within a few generations. Some animals don't even need to change because of prior adaptations they never lost and they just thrive.

For example, if a species had previously adapted to arid conditions but was living in a more hospitable region they don't tend to lose their ability to handle arid conditions without some kind of pressure. Access to water doesn't mean they will lose those traits, they just don't need all the water that is available. If the area turns arid they are not impacted by the lack of water like those that don't have those traits. Or they might not currently express their genes in a way that causes that adaptation to arid conditions to show up normally, but they don't necessarily need significant genetic changes to express those traits.

Look at dogs, who can have massive variation from breeding within a few generations.