Sam Slide

South of Wolf Rock 🐬

More than 1.8 billion individual trees have been mapped in the Sahara Desert and the Sahel. This demonstrates the physical reality behind a greening surge across large land areas of the world, identified by NASA satellite studies. These areas were all previously regarded as bare soil or grassland. This greening narrative counters long term warnings of desertification throughout Africa and the Middle East. For decades this was the theme of most conversations surrounding global warming and climate change. We were told the desert is winning and the world faced a Code Red for Humanity. But according to the landmark study supported by NASA, researchers used artificial intelligence and high-resolution satellites to count every single tree in a 1.3 million km² area of the West African Sahara and Sahel. The area studied is 1.3 million km² in Western Sahara/Sahel). The total count was 1,837,565,501 trees at roughly 13.4 trees per hectare, even in hyper-arid zones. If we missed 1.8 billion trees in just one corner of the Sahara, what else is the Code Red narrative failing to see? Source: Martin Brandt (University of Copenhagen) & NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Sheffield Canal, 1970s

RFA Argus due to be towed out of Portsmouth for the last time at 1645 today. Photo: A. Amor