this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026

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249

China has planted so many trees around the Taklamakan Desert that it's turned this 'biological void' into a carbon sink (www.livescience.com)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by schizoidman@lemmy.zip to c/world@lemmy.world

53 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/58909207

Mass tree planting in China is turning one of the world's largest and driest deserts into a carbon sink, meaning it absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits, new research reveals.

"We found, for the first time, that human-led intervention can effectively enhance carbon sequestration in even the most extreme arid landscapes, demonstrating the potential to transform a desert into a carbon sink and halt desertification," study co-author Yuk Yung, a professor of planetary science at Caltech and a senior research scientist in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Live Science in an email.

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[–] Sepia@mander.xyz 104 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Yeah, that's great 'news.'

Just two months ago, in December 2025, the same news has been published by the same outlet and written by the same author (see here).

Reuters new agency reported about that already in November 2024.

And this is by far not everything. The web is full with it. This same story has been appearing in the various outlets for several years now, mostly citing a 'new' study or 'Chinese state media' reports so that there is a reason to present it as 'new.'

And it's not the first time that OP is repeatedly posting the same 'news' over and again, just with a different framing, and obviously only to make China look good and to promote its propaganda.

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 29 points 1 week ago (1 children)

First time i hear of this great news and happy for once to hear a little bit about propaganda that is not from USA and pro environment.

Now : Tiananmen Square massacre has been an atrocious tragedy and China's help in ruSSia invasion of Ukraine is horrible.

[–] TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

While I applaud any government for attempting to better the environment, I really wish this project was done with more forethought.

Unfortunately they have done this forestation primarily with fast growing poplar and willow trees, making a vast monoculture that wont likely last in such a harsh climate for more than a decade.

Without the natural biodiversity that supports a living Forrest ecology, it only takes one disease or pest to wipe all that effort. In the end it might do more harm than good when considering the amount of ground water something like this will take out of the water cycle.

[–] Seleni@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, but both tree species tend to live fast and die young, so they can be used to provide first-generation forest protection until the second-generation trees can grow up.

[–] rbos@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 week ago

Yeah. Pioneer species providing shade, soil retention, and water slowing. Very important.

[–] HumanDent@lemmy.zip 28 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Lol, I was gonna say this account has made 3.4k posts in 7 months. It's just an unlabeled bot to throw on the pile of blocked accounts.

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Nice observation : at least 10k comments should back these 3k+ posts, allas, only about 50 (so 0.05k) comments there ... a bit concerning i say.

[–] HumanDent@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

My rule of thumb is if a user has more than one post a day on average, I block them. At least on my other account I did that.

I don't think regular people post that frequently. If they do, it's likely just manual irritating spam.

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

you wrote :
" ... the main issue is that Lemmy is a fraction of the size of Reddit ..."
let me guess that you are feed up with censorship at Reddit ... i left it about 3 years (4?) ago ... after they blocked access through "api" so that Teddit was blocked.

[–] HumanDent@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Haha, yea. I also left Reddit when the API change happened.

I thought I was breaking the Voyager app with the number of accounts and communities I was blocking on my original account, so I made this new one. I needed to force close the app whenever I tried viewing the whole blocked list...

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Currently i only block about 125 users and out of these 11 have been banned ... at one point, maybe a year ago, i may have blocked 500 ... never used an application though.
Too much an intensive use (of social madium) may lead to stress and tendency to downVote, i went through that.

[–] HumanDent@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I rarely down vote, but apparently I've blocked 7148 users/communities/instances on my first account.

[–] FenrirIII@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I post a lot some days, nothing others. Am I blocked?

[–] HumanDent@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago

Haha, probably. I'm sorry about that.

The issue I think is mostly due to people thinking they need to crosspost or post the same content in multiple communities like this is Reddit. Since Lemmy is so small, people are likely to see both posts back to back in their feeds, so it's just redundant and spammy. That's mostly why I block accounts that post a lot.

It would be a really nice quality of life feature for Lemmy to add filtering so this kind of thing could be dealt with without blocking.

[–] yucandu@lemmy.world 27 points 1 week ago (3 children)

That sounds awesome, can an independent third party news agency go into China and take pictures to confirm?

[–] perestroika@slrpnk.net 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

My viewpoint: turning it into a carbon sink is likely true. A desert is near carbon neutral in its natural state anyway. Not much grows and not much decomposes. Adding even a bit of vegetation turns it into a carbon sink, but the number next to the minus sign will be very small, considering the total area.

Takla Makan is big (for those acquainted with Europe, about the size of Germany). Planting great numbers of bushes, shrubs and trees along the edges and the river beds will contain its shifting and spare settlements on the edges from the nuisance, but the desert remains a desert.

There is no need to confirm, they've published more than a bit about it. China has been working on containing the desert since 1978. A road was built across the desert more recently, in 1995, and a railway around it. They intend to drill a 11 km research hole to study the local region of the Earth's crust. They intend to produce solar power.

Locals... well, this is Xinjiang. Locals mostly aren't Han (ethnically Chinese) but various Turkic peoples, including the seriously repressed Uyghurs. They would probably fear a mass of Han Chinese moving in more than a mass of sand, but they are most likely OK with the trees, because sand pesters them just as badly. So far, it looks like not much is happening in that part of Xinjiang, because there is not much to build an economy on. Solar power is nice, but if sand buries it, it's not so great. Currently, if you build a solar power plant to a random place in Takla Makan, there is a considerably above-zero chance of the desert burying it. Fencing it with lots of trees (irrigation needed) will allow a project to perhaps operate long enough.

[–] icelimit@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

For context the deepest hole ever drilled was 12km.

[–] a4ng3l@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Am on mobile rn and can’t easily search myself but such a large endeavour could be visible from google maps maybe? Even between 2 snapshots ?

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[–] Insekticus@aussie.zone -2 points 1 week ago (9 children)

And while they're at it, make sure that the people who completed such a feat were adequately paid for their time and given the rights and good working conditions.

What?... it was indentured minorities? Ah yeah, I figured.

Probably fertilized the soil with the blood of the Uyghurs they've got in concentration camps.

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[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

But at what cost?

[–] RalfWausE@feddit.org 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

COMMUNISM!

[–] Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago

So technically no cost?

[–] CanadaPlus 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

... How do they grow with no water?

Edit: Ah, the "around" bit means the edges. This is more to stop it from spreading.

I suppose irrigated tree farming could be used to fix carbon, too, although I'm not sure how it stacks up relative to other approaches, and you'd need abundant fresh water near a desert.

[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago

CCP greenwashing.

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