imagine a dry desert with NeverEnding sand dunes transforming into a lush green Tropical Paradise right in front of your eyes this is what could happen if we terraformed the Sahara Desert a project like this could completely alter the world it could help solve global warming but it could also destroy our oceans and make the planet even hotter terraforming the Sahara Desert would have a good side and a potentially terrible side in this episode we'll take a look at what the single biggest challenge would be during this Mega project and whether or not doing this could
save or destroy the world this is what if and here's what would happen if we terraformed the Sahara Desert so what would our terraformed Sahara Desert look like well there are two different ways this could play out but one thing is for sure whatever we end up with would look very different than what we have today the first option is replacing the vast desert with rows and rows of trees but the Sahara Desert is about 9.8 trillion Square met if you're having trouble understanding just how big that is it's roughly the same land mass as
the United States so how many trees are we talking here well let's assume one tree would be planted for every 10 square m so if we look at the entire desert that would mean 980 billion trees would need to be planted how does this compared to the Amazon rainforest I'm sure that has way more trees than this desert right well if we follow through with this plan the Sahara Desert would have more than twice as many trees as the Amazon the rainforest only has a measly 400 billion trees and the trees in the Sahara would
be pretty specific varieties if you're dreaming of pine forests or giant redwoods forget it we'd have to use trees that don't need a lot of water in order to thrive trees that can grow on just 500 mm of water per year okay now let's fast forward a bit if we transformed the Sahara Desert even further we would be creating a subtropical climate adding vegetation that would help remove carbon from our atmosphere not only that but these plants would provide food creating ecosystems and they could be used as powerful medicinal Tools in this climate we'd see
plants like aloe vera known for its healing properties and treating Burns and skin conditions and passion flour which is often used to reduce anxiety and improve sleep quality and believe it or not this climate would also be ideal for a plant most people don't usually associate with with medicine yeah I'm talking about cannabis cannaboids derived from this plant have shown incredible evidence in treating skin conditions chronic pain neurological disorders the list goes on and on the problem is that a lot of people can't get past the stigma of cannabis and embrace the cannaboid based medicine
as a legitimate prescription medical solution if we want to take full advantage of this crop we'd need to educate the public about its benefits and integ ated into the standardized medical system 72% of patients say they'd consider using medical cannabis if their family doctor recommended it luckily for us one Canadian company is already doing that I'm talking about Aviana a publicly traded biopharmaceutical company that's leading the way in R&D and commercializing cannabis-based treatments they've developed over 30 proprietary products across a range of formats including oral topical and transdermal treatments all designed to address unmet medical
needs in over 20 countries their work is supported by their scientific platform and four key pillars medical cannabis products pharmaceutical products active pharmaceutical ingredients and a medical cannabis care platform called my.cc cannabis division of Shoppers Drug Mark Canada's leading Pharmacy retailer was acquired by avyan who then established the platform my.cc cannabis products this platform offers patient support educational resources and even Insurance adjudication to help patients and Physicians incorporate cannabis into their Healthcare routines aviana's dedication to research and clinical development is really putting cannaboid based medicine on the map as a key player in modern medicine
with the Adan Market as its proof of concept they're also setting the stage for a future where cannaboid based treatments become a normal part of everyday Health Care globally and with 314 growth year-over-year they'll be around for a long time to learn more about how Aviana is changing the world of pharmaceuticals we'll click on the link in the description below but let's take a break from talking about all these new plants because that won't be the only change that comes with a terraformed Sahara Desert creating forested areas of the desert would be part of the
plan too but planting a full Forest of 980 billion trees is unrealistic tree a an organization that works on planting trees in Africa plants one tree every 19 seconds now even if you supercharge that rate to one tree every second it would still take 31,000 years to to plant the full 980 billion trees we've calculated I think we'll be living on Mars way before that anyway a giant forest in the Sahara would do little to transform the lives of the people living there about 2 and a half million people live in the Sahara desert today
many are nomads traveling from one place to the other the Sahara is also home to 100 species of reptiles 70 species of mammals and 90 species of birds Mass aforestation would disrupt the way of life of these people and Destroy these desert species if there's going to be a transformation these countries would be more likely to support one that also transforms the lives of their people and is consistent with their current lifestyle so let's look at our second option instead of just one giant forest we could have a bit more variety in the terraformed Sahara
Desert we could have some Forest but intersperse them with farms and grasslands this would mean that people within these communities could help develop this new Sahara they could participate in cultivating these Farms allowing for new economic opportunities with this scenario terraforming would involve planting native species that are more likely to withstand the change in climate this would increase the genetic diversity and give this desert a better shot at thriving and turning into into a forest but this Sahara wouldn't just be a lush green land for us to enjoy this much Greenery requires a ton of
infrastructure to bring in one very important thing water how much water would we need in order to pull this off well let's look at our first terraforming concept the one that only involved trees scientists have estimated that this Forest would need around 4.9 trillion cubic M of water per year for reference that's more water than the entire Globe uses in 365 days so we would need to double the Earth's water consumption in order to provide for this Saharan Forest where would all this water come from well surprisingly enough one of the sources of water could
be right under the sandy desert soil there are giant aquafers in Africa with huge groundwater reserves could we use this water to transform the desert into a subtropical Haven well we could but it would dry up in about 30 years this aquafer is also being used to support multiple countries water needs so if we tapped it just for this Forest that would mean that countries like Sudan Libya and Egypt could all be without water there would have to be another solution the ocean well there are two problems with using ocean water you know the first
first one it's salty that's why Sailors complain water water everywhere but not a drop to drink then there's a second problem getting the water to where it's needed addressing these issues could totally transform our initial plans we'd have to build massive desalination plants that would get the salt out of the ocean water so now reimagine that desert landscape with forests developing farmlands and grasslands but near the ocean it's now dotted with enormous desalination facilities what you wouldn't be able to see would be the thick underground pipes transporting the Water Into the Heart of the desert
to run desalination plants and pump the water we would need a ton of energy so we would need to install rows of solar panels in the desert that would harvest the sun's energy this could provide electricity for all these new developments if we were to install these desalination plants and use some water native to the Sahara Desert we could make this work but the price tag would be ridiculously high desalination technology has come a long way but estimates put the energy costs of doing this at almost $2 billion do per year and then there's the
cost of infrastructure building it all out maintaining it running it not to mention all the planting solar panels and whatever else we'd need to do to make this a reality uh the bottom line is it will cost trillions of dollars to get this project started and maintain it with this much cash required paying for this would be a complete Global effort you'd need dozens of different wealthy countries in order to make this work maybe throw in a couple billionaires willing to donate for good measure as well but let's assume we did get the money together
to do this now how would the plan unfold this effort would be a complex project requiring cooperation and coordination across multiple countries in Africa we'd also need the help of multiple Aid organizations engineering firms Land Management experts and more it's safe to say this would be an all Hands-On deck sort of effort the economies of these countries and the lives of people all over the world would be transformed by this type of project even if the technology to build desalination plants or lay the underground pipes came from the West a project of this scale would
create a massive number of jobs to set up the infrastructure plant the vegetation and maintain the entire system in addition as the area developed it would draw in tourists other professionals like doctors and researchers would also travel here for New Opportunities to support and study the transformation leading to more growth for comparison we can look at the great green wall initiative this is a project working on building a green wall of trees across the southern border of the Sahara Desert this aimed to create 10 million jobs so a project aiming to terraform the entire Sahara
Desert could easily have the potential to create millions and millions of jobs once we finally terraform the Sahara what happens next how does this play out decades into the future well let's take a look and see in order to find our answer let's take a look back at the great green wall in 2007 the green wall concept came together with a goal of an 8,000 km wall to be completed by 2030 about 250 million hectares of degraded land was to be restored in the Sahara about 17 years later only 44 million hectares have been restored
that's less than 20% of the goal but this slow progress is mostly due to a lack of money so let's assume money is no object that the Western Nations come together and pledge vast sums of money to terraform this desert how quickly could we set up the infrastructure and get forests to grow and begin to cultivate farmlands well when humans don't intervene and nature takes its course a forest could develop over 600 to 1,000 years if humans plant trees and then leave it up to Nature the time period for a forest is now estimated at
around 100 years this sounds way too long I'm pretty impatient so let's look for another solution with lots of human intervention and even more money we can make this happen a whole lot quicker let's take a look 10 years 10 years into this project the focus would be on infrastructure the world would work at warp speed creating the desalination plants needed to make water we'd also map out the locations for forests farmland and grassland we'd also have to prepare the soil with any nutrients needed to support any native species as this infrastructure began to get
laid out we'd probably begin planting probably near the coastal areas 20 years in the second decade you'd want to extend this piping further into other parts of the Sahara the planting of trees and development of farmland and grasslands would continue and as more and more vegetation is laid down the soil will begin to transform the vegetation will change the cycle of rainfall and a transformation away from Desert to more tropical May begin would this massive forestation project solve the problem of global warming would it remove all the carbon we needed from the atmosphere well since
trees help capture carbon which humans produce a lot of yeah it would certainly help but would that be enough uh some scientists have looked into scenarios where emissions continue to rise rapidly and even a brand new giant forest might not be able to help keep up with our emissions so in theory this Forest could help but that's only if we stopped emitting so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere 50 years 50 years into this project the Sahara could turn into a massive greencape but this wouldn't be all good news there could be three spillover effects
that create a serious problem for the planet the first problem an unexpected effect on global temperatures while pulling carbon out of the atmosphere reduces the Greenhouse Effect and helps cool the Earth forests and grasslands themselves could also change something they could absorb the sun's energy more than the sandy desert does today causing the Earth to get hotter but the jury is still out on whether this would happen or not there's evidence to suggest clouds tend to form more over forests and clouds are great at reflecting the sun's heat so maybe a green Sahara would be
good after all but there's another unexpected side effect when it comes to our terraform Sahara and it's something that affects parts of the world that are millions of kilometers away the second spillover effect impacts ocean life you might think of sand as these annoying grains of rock the stuff that gets stuck in your shoes after being at the beach but the sand in the Sahara has a very special purpose through sand and dust storms these grains make their way to the Atlantic Ocean and this sand contains valuable nutrients that feed life found in the water
it contains things like nitrogen phosphorus and iron these are the nutrients that are essential to the ocean food chain and if all this desert sand suddenly became a forest uh then the essential part of that food chain would be gone huge amounts of ocean life could die out or go extinct but the story of the Saharan sand doesn't end in the Atlantic there's a third spillover effect NASA satellites have revealed how this Rich mineral carrying sand is carried by winds all the way to the Amazon rainforest some of these Rock minerals are rich with phosphorus
and phosphorus is essential for plant growth approximately 22 million kilog of phosphorus gets deposited into the rainforest every year from the Sahara binding up the sand would have a terrible consequence for the Amazon rainforest one quar of all the carbon dioxide absorbed by land is taken in by the Amazon rainforest Greening the Sahara would ultimately rob it of its nutrients and eventually leave it to die terraforming the Sahara Desert would be a big ambitious project that could transform the lives of people who live there while it would make a positive dent in absorbing emissions it
could have catastrophic Global consequences and terraforming anything is a messy confusing and times dangerous task but let's up the stakes just a little bit instead of trying to terraform Earth why don't we explore another planet could we terraform Venus well that sounds like a story for another what if
