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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Sub-saharan drought
Message-ID: <1253@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 6-Dec-84 17:56:09 EST
Article-I.D.: dciem.1253
Posted: Thu Dec  6 17:56:09 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Dec-84 20:34:37 EST
References: <610@amdahl.UUCP> 
Reply-To: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 30
Summary: 


> The sahara desert has been growing to the south for the last several years.
> It has brough severe drought with it.  Before that time, the population
> in the afflicted areas was growing at a high rate, due to the increases
> in simple medical knowledge.  This meant not only that more babies were being
> born, since they were being carried to term, but that they were also living
> to the age where they could make their own babies.
> 
> Once the famine set in, the birthrate dropped.  This is a fact, not subject
> to vote or opinion.  The drop occurred because the rate of miscarriages
> increased sharply.  Pregnant women don't carry to term when they suddenly
> stop having enough food to eat.  Additionally, many of the offspring who are
> born are both mentally and physically deformed.  They don't live long.
> And after starving long enough, say, a year, fertility drops WAY down.

One theory is that at least part of the drought can be attributed to
poor land-use practices exacerbated by overpopulation.  The ravaged
soil no longer absorbs water, and has a changed albedo that discourages
the formation of rainclouds -- or some such.  The point is that the
southward march of the Sahara is probably in part induced by the poeple
who suffer from it.  Fencing off a part of the desert in Algeria(?)
led to that area becoming revegetated, as was readily apparent from
the early manned satellites.  Once upon a time, that part of what is
now a sand desert served as the granary for the Roman Empire (I know,
a lot of climate change has happened since then).
-- 

Martin Taylor
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