Green Options

In the Sahara, life hangs in the balance. As nomadic lifestyles vanish, urbanization threatens one of the desert’s last elephant populations. Conservationists must work fast to quell human-elephant conflict in the most arid habitat on Earth.

Of all places to start a greenhouse, the Sahara Desert would likely rank pretty low for many. But someone is working on a plan to make food growing happen there. The Sahara Forest Project aims to use massive greenhouses to direct the sun’s rays for heat and energy, which is planned to regulate the air, filter water and create an environment for plant growth.

Via: greenpacks.org

The two tribes lived there in a plum lakeside community when the Sahara Desert, as we know it, was a lush, green country, but were separated by effects of climate change over a time line of 1,000 years.

The mystery of the lost tribes of the green Sahara has been unraveled by a joint team of archaeologists and palaeontologists who were out on a dinosaur-hunting expedition in the Ténéré Desert in present-day Niger but instead stumbled on a large, Stone Age graveyard.

Now whatever little may be known about the Kiffian and Tenerian tribes, thought to have lived in the Sahara between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago are bone harpoons, earthen pots, among other artifacts.

What do they do with chocolate products they can’t sell? Off to the landfill to decompose and create methane. Wish they could just send it to me. Two young Britons, Andy Pag and John Grimshaw, have traveled more than 4,000 miles across the Sahara using such chocolate as fuel.

The two decided to prove the viability of different kinds of feedstock to produce biofuels, especially biodiesel and ethanol. They’ve done that, traveling from Poole, England to Timbuktu, Mali, 4,473 miles, using 396 gallons of fuel made from three tons of discarded chocolate.

The truck was salvaged from a scrap yard, repaired and fitted for the long trip. It will remain in Timbuktu, a donation to a local charity. The crew will also set up a small processing unit to convert waste oil products into fuel.