Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
The Sahel, that stretch of harsh territory south of the Sahara desert, is a bleak region. I did some work there, in a couple three countries. I came away with the conviction that if every day, every person in the Sahel planted one fruit tree and killed one goat, in about twenty years it would be worth visiting.
Figure 1. Map of the Sahel region, shown in orange.
Anthony highlighted some science by press release in “Climate change blamed for dead trees in Africa“. The press release is about a paper that won’t be published until this coming Friday. The lead author provided the following quotes for the press release. (emphasis mine)
“Rainfall in the Sahel has dropped 20-30 percent in the 20th century, the world’s most severe long-term drought since measurements from rainfall gauges began in the mid-1800s,” said study lead author Patrick Gonzalez, who conducted the study while he was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for Forestry. “Previous research already established climate change as the primary cause of the drought, which has overwhelmed the resilience of the trees.”
I thought, “Really”? Because I was sure I remembered all kinds of recent articles about the “greening of the Sahel”. In any case, I’ll take any excuse to learn something new. So I went off to see what the rainfall records had to say about the “world’s most severe long-term drought”.
I found three rainfall records that covered the Sahel in the time period from 1901 to the present. Two (CRU and GPCC) are available from KNMI Climate Explorer, and one (Sahel Index) can be downloaded from the University of Washington. I used the same geographical area as used by the University of Washington, from 10-20°N, and from 10°W to 20°E. The results are shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Three different estimates of rainfall in the Sahel region, 10-20°N, 10°W-20°E. Bright red line shows the 9 year Gaussian average of the median of the three estimates. Photo is of the Sahel region, Senegal
I’m sorry, but I’m not seeing either a “severe long-term drought”, or a drop of “20-30 percent in the 20th century”, or a human fingerprint in that record. Modern times are drier than mid-20th century, but not much different from the first part of the century. Rainfall has gone up, and it has gone down, and then back up again. Nor is there any obvious correlation with the general warming of the planet over the same time period. Given the close agreement of the three records, I think we can have reasonable confidence in the data.
I did enjoy his claim that “Previous research already established climate change as the primary cause of the drought.” Climate change causes droughts? Interesting theory. Does climate change also cause not-droughts? I wonder what else is caused by climate change, given that the climate has always been changing.
Finally, I was not mistaken that I remembered articles about the “greening of the Sahel”. Here’s information from the Encyclopedia of the Earth, from National Geographic, and from the Global Warming Policy Foundation regarding how the Sahel has been getting, not drier and browner, but wetter and greener ever since the 1980s.
Conclusions? My only conclusion is that folks are getting desperate for funding, and that the manufacturing of climate pseudo-catastrophes is a booming cottage industry.
w.
PS—I’m dead serious about planting trees and killing goats. The main cause of what desertification occurs in the Sahel is humans, but not by way of CO2. We do it by burning whatever will burn to cook our food, and by letting the goats destroy the rest.
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I’ve always wondered if these areas could benefit from using coppiced woods in order to support their need for forestation as well as wood, etc. Seems that there was a lot of regulation on it in medieval Europe to make it work well over time.
While bottled LPG works great short-term, eventually, they will have to go back to wood. It would be good if there was wood there when that time comes.
wayne says:
December 13, 2011 at 2:14 am
Wouldn’t dream of it, which is why I laughed at the idea that climate change “causes” droughts.
w.
Garrett says:
December 13, 2011 at 2:35 am
Gosh, Garrett, I’d love to do that, but THE PAPER ISN’T PUBLISHED YET. All you have linked to is a corrected proof, I’m sure the paper will follow.
So prior to their issuing their paper, they come out with their press release, stating the paper will be published Friday. And prior to their issuing their paper, I issue my critique of the statements their press release, clearly stating that’s all I’m doing.
In response, fools like yourself think I should have instead consulted their unpublished paper. Brilliant, Garrett. With that keen grasp of logic, I can see why you are an AGW supporter.
I stand by my analysis, with which I note you have not found a single problem. Garrett, the rainfall in the area has been INCREASING FOR A QUARTER CENTURY. There are a host of scientific papers noting and discussing the “greening of the Sahel”. The overwhelming majority of them say what I said—increased rainfall is leading to a re-greening of the Sahara.
If you’re all outraged because of my analysis, go read all those papers and come back and tell us why they are all wrong.
w.
Caleb says:
December 13, 2011 at 3:58 am
Goat-herders can certainly help, but I’ve done the job, and it’s a bitch to control say a dozen goats. Just when you have 11 of them whipped into shape, you look over to see the 12th one is consuming a fruit tree … in your neighbors yard …
w.
Stacey says:
December 13, 2011 at 4:14 am
Yeah, the current crop of climate “science” papers gives me what I term as a “target rich environment” …
w.
Steve Keohane says:
December 13, 2011 at 5:17 am
As usual, the precipitation is only part of the problem. Plants need a combination of the right amount of water and the right temperature, and in the Sahara it’s hot. In addition, there’s the question of the timing of both the rain and the heat.
w.
Re: Pethefin. remember, Obama was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize immediately after taking office. For not being Bush, basically. They also awarded one to the founder of the PLO and inventor of modern terrorism. The Peace Prize is worse than a joke.
squareheaded says:
December 13, 2011 at 7:12 am
When I refer to “humans”, I generally tend to use “we”.
If you refer to humans as “they”, I gotta admit, I’m watching the movie “Zombieland” on TV right now, and at the moment anyone who calls humans “they” kinda makes me nervous …
So while I’m not at all impressed by many things that we humans have done over the centuries, saying it was done by “those humans” rather than “we humans” doesn’t get the goats out of the Sahel …
w.
Garrett says:
December 13, 2011 at 9:27 am
I got your point, as did most folks. We just thought you were spectacularly wrong.
Funny how you missed the point I was making. I’ll try to make myself more clear.
Rainfall in the Sahara is increasing for the last quarter century. A host of studies, along with the data shown in Figure 2, prove that the Sahel is greening. As a result, anyone who claims the trees are dying because of human interference with the climate needs first to explain that. The authors have not done so in their press release. Instead, they claim human emitted CO2 is to blame. However, they try to cover their tracks by saying its “climate change” that is causing the drought. That gives them plausible deniability.
But the real issue was that the authors are trying to do science by press release, trying to get their ideas fixed in the public mind in advance of the paper. I find this unethical.
And rather than bust the scientists for doing science by press release, you are on my case for answering the ludicrous statements they made in the press release.
You seem not to have noted that I didn’t say that their paper was wrong. I said that the statements in their press release were wrong. Perhaps you are too dense to see the difference, but the rest of the folks reading this seem to have grasped that with no problem.
Take on another task, my friend, you don’t have enough horsepower for commenting on science by press release. Or you could just send me the paper itself, I’m not paying thirty bucks for something that is not even a finished paper. Then I can deal with claims in the paper rather than the claims in the press release.
Garrett, I’ve had it up to here with science by press release. I consider it an unethical move, because (as you point out) people can’t respond to the paper itself, since it hasn’t been published.
So I responded to the press release, to try to counter some of its more egregious mis-statements … and now you want to prove that you are a jerk by continuing to bitch that I talked about the press release …
w.
Emphasis supplied
“It is remarkable to think that these treeless desert lands were, half a million years ago, humid tropical forest lands, with now-extinct primates and a rich diversity of plants and animals— a far cry from the impoverished biota that populates the interior of northwestern Africa today.
If the reader is wondering what happened to the rainforest, the unsurprising answer is… global climate change. It is not a new phenomenon: climate change is the rule, not the exception. And climate change was the rule long before humankind came to dominate our earth or to infuse our atmosphere with greenhouse gases. Climate change, extinction, and speciation have been acting in concert for many millenia. Past climate changes in the climate of northern Africa certainly caused local extinction pulses. These have been well documented by paleontologist Scott Wing, who has written of the Koobi Fora flora and fauna— a now vanished humid tropical world in northern Africa.”
Bruce M. Beehler, Ph.D.
“Lost Worlds: Adventures In The Tropical Rainforest”
p. 201
Yale University Press
New Haven, 2008
( Dr. Beehler is vice-president of Conservation International and a leading authority on birds of paradise )
Willis Eschenbach says:
December 13, 2011 at 12:01 pm
If you refer to humans as “they”, I gotta admit, I’m watching the movie “Zombieland” on TV right now, and at the moment anyone who calls humans “they” kinda makes me nervous …
Ha ha. How about “some humans”? “The humans” do not make deserts, or let goats run loose to destroy their neighbor’s crops.
I only point the pronouns out because so many use them to implicate all the humans in whatever dastardly deed has been done by one or some of them. Using this slight of language, taxes on all the humans are argued, and individual freedoms are deposed.
Saying it was done by we humans implies to me there is a collectivist will somewhere that I am supposed to join to order to right our species’ wrongs. I have never in my life felt the least bit obligated to join such an event, and there is a plenitude of them advertised around the world.
If the goats are finally removed from the Sahel, and I did not participate, can anyone say that “we humans” have solved the problem? I am a human I like to think.
Do not the owners of the Sahel then have a new problem (where to graze their goats) now that the preferred use of their property has been forbidden by the humans?
So while I’m not at all impressed by many things that we humans have done over the centuries
I’m sure you are impressed by some of what some of them have done, and will be impressed by some of what some of them will do, should you live long enough.
I personally try to be careful not to take credit for anything any other human has done. I didn’t do what they did, and it seems arrogant to me to say “we humans” have accomplished anything worthwhile. Neither do I take responsibility for “we humans'” sins.
Before God, whose opinion is the only one I really care about, I will only have to answer for what I personally have or haven’t done. He isn’t going to ask me why, as part of the human race, I let goats run the Sahel, and he isn’t going to give me a reward for inventing and distributing the polio vaccine.
saying it was done by “those humans” rather than “we humans” doesn’t get the goats out of the Sahel …
“We humans” does? Those are powerful words, if that is the case 🙂
All said and done, I have appreciated a number of your posts. You at times make us humans look so much better, as a whole!
The Sahara is Timbuctu’s Mediterranean beach. Lake Chad makes for a tolerable climate indicator for the western Sahel, and its growth seems to be somewhat inversely correlated to rainfall–greater evaporation beats higher rainfall. But it has grown a little lately in spite of the grazing and irrigation which take their toll on the lake. Curiously terminal lakes worldwide show a high degree of correlation independent of latitude, arguing against the importance of the ITCZ.
And yeah, the Sahara is plush with rock art depicting a savanah full of grazers during the last ice age. Holocene river systems are covered with sand, as are Greco-Roman/Phoenician cities.
–AGF
How reliable are these “measurements from rainfall gauges” ? In the 1970’s we have visited a large number of rainfall gauges in a certain Asian country, they were typically placed close to the house of the village teacher or chief. Some had covered the installation with a roof so it would not get dirty, another had replaced the glass jar with a clay pot, etc. etc.
After reading Caleb’s peon to goats, I have to rethink my own anti-goatism. It seems to me I’ve seen enough to believe in their (potential) weed-fighting-fertilizing capabilities.
A goatherd was hired to bring her goats into a Denver city park to de-weed and fertilize a few dozen acres of open space. The other end of the park was landscaped for baseball and tennis courts, lots of trees and everywhere else, planted in grass which was regularly-mowed.
About 30 goats were trucked in each morning, and released into a moveable pen where they would spend the day under the watchful eye of the goatherder; when they had clear one plot, and trampled in their own fertilizer, they were moved to the next. A few months later the area was cleared of weeds, and the native species were already reestablishing themselves in the first few green squares of soil.
I chatted with her once, while we watched the bio-engineers doing their highly selective work. They went right for the most noxious weeds, and left the grasses, which are their last choice. Unaffected by plants that make other livestock sick, they gobble up the larkspur, locoweed, and hemlock. A few of the weeds I saw in the “before” picture of that area: Canadian thistle, sweet clover, cheat grass, mullein, and yucca. I couldn’t believe it, but they even ate the browning, crisp stalks of curly dock. They loved dandelions, knapweed and spurge.
What species of goat they have in Africa, and what they would eat, I have no clue, but the situation might be similar. I have read about, and travelled a little in Africa, and from what I can gather, it seems unlikelye that goats are finishing off the trees int he Sahel. Combined with some potentially droughty conditions (lower rainfall and lowering water table, etc), the people are probably delivering the coup de grace when they lop off tree limbs for fodder, firewood and temporary huts and enclosures.
Thanks for the post. I also want to commend – and recommend – the comments of Crosspatch for a plausible explanation of the climate changes occurring in this area. NOAA has a good explanation of the ITCZ, which they urge us to pronounce “Itch”. Sort of like a sun rash.
Frosty 12/13/11 @ur momisugly 2:23 a.m.
posts references to Allan Savory and the Savory Institute’s multi-decadal, on-the-ground experience of natural carbon sequestration through reintroduction of grasslands via effective herd management. Looking at the desertification maps, it IS alarming that such vast areas, globally, are losing to the atmosphere CO2 that formerly was building plants. Good job in tackling THAT loss, on so many levels.
There is also a Savory Institute website with drop-down video menu, mostly short clips from meeting with Texas ranchers, one longer clip from a 2009 presentation in Ireland. The techniques through which Mr. Savory’s African ranch land went from dry baked to lush forage have subsequently been introduced in NZ and USA, as well Ireland, with remarkable results.. Not only the grass coming back, but the consequence with water cycle, and topsoil accumulation. Like a miracle, it is, though patience and planning are part of the cure. Catastrophic hysteria would be counter-productive to so common sensical an approach.
According to his presentation in Ireland, under President Jimmy Carter Mr. Savory provided instruction to our Ag Dept., with the subsequent comment from the Aggies “we’ve been doing it all wrong.” My question: how many ranchers presently are aware of and trying out Savory’s holistic management techniques, or are we doomed to the feedlot mentality. Mr. Savory has an engaging approach to private property management,
Mr. Savory, it seems, is one of those heretics, like Mr. Watts, who keeps on in spite of, for the sake of, the herd.
London gets a little over 600 mm of rain a year; that’s foggy, rainy London.
Having crossed the Sahara I can testify tithe accuracy of this summary as to the cause of desertification.
PS—I’m dead serious about planting trees and killing goats…..
__________________________________________
Sigh, I really love goats but they will destroy an area if allowed to over graze.
Photo: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/blog/wordpress_uploads/2009/10/2610542294_a7fbf8d580_o2.jpg
John Marshall says:
December 13, 2011 at 2:18 am
My previous blog blamed the PDO and AMO but I forgot the local’s love of goat meat. I also forgot that goats are browsers not grazers and can climb to areas in a tree beyond human ability, I know because we kept goats a few years ago and remember on goat walking along the edge of a fence top to get to an apple tree to feed. So perhaps they should kill all the goats and keep sheep, who can’t climb trees, and still plant fruit trees.
________________________________________
Nah, just wipe out half the national herd….
And to think I was just discussing what were good recipes for my old bill goat with a local restaurant owner a half hour ago.
Frosty says:
December 13, 2011 at 2:23 am
I think you’re dead right on the goats….
Allan Savory [2][3] has developed a grazing management system which has proven to reverse desertification in Zimbabwe, during a 10yr drought. [4]
The technique (time controlled grazing) is to mimic natural herd movements that grasses evolved to cope with, by fencing off sufficient grazing for one or two days, and moving the herd on to a new fenced area. Pasture is fertilised by the herd, has time to fully recover to it’s most nutritious stage before allowing the herd back on the same patch…..
______________________________________________________
Yes, that technique works very very well. It also allow you to actually increase the total number of animals an acre will support.
The other part of the program is to graze different species in rotation to keep the re-infestation from worms down.
My farm is divided so I graze each pasture one week per month. A “Sacrifice area” where animals are kept while worming (wait 48 hrs before turning out) or if the pastures are not usable is also recommended.
The increase in topsoil helps hold moisture and thus prevent run off of precious water.
Interesting debate – I do not usually read comments.
Firstly, I am a paid up (student) member of AAAS and I can confirm the paper referenced by Garrett has not been published and does not seem available on the Science website when I do a search.
Secondly, I live in southern Australia and a few years ago we drove accross the Nullabor to Western Australia and then north through the middle. Was stunned and amazed to see thousands of goats running wild, eating their way through everything. Apparently culled once a year by helicopter for goat meat but otherwise left alone. So, not only does Australia have Indian Mynahs (ghastly birds, seen them see off magpies), cane toads, camels, wild horses, wild pigs, wild cattle but now wild goats.
I commonly wonder why all the greenies ignore these real problems and focus only on a suposedlly little increase in warming. And where is it anyway? Will pay good money for some warmth – looks like we may have the heaters on for Xmas day!
squareheaded says:
December 13, 2011 at 1:05 pm
My goodness, take a breath there. You are hyperventilating over a meaningless issue. Or at least it’s meaningless to me. You correctly note that I use the terms “those humans” and “we humans” interchangeably, but you don’t note what that means. It means I am using the terms to mean “people”.
Most people correctly deduce that I must mean “people are the deforestation problem” when I say “we humans are the deforestation problem”. They deduce that because they’ve never been to the Sahel. Most folks are happy to conclude that “we humans” can’t mean them specifically, because they’re not running goats in Senegal. So they assume correctly that I’m using the term in a general sense to mean “people”.
But not you. You make it into something somehow highly offensive, as though I were claiming that you personally denuded parts of the Sahel, or as though what I said were a slur on your goat-herding abilities, or something. My friend, you are going a long ways around to get offended … why not just take the more charitable interpretation like everyone else, and assume that I’m not talking about you?
w.
PS—I corrected the formatting in your post to what I think you intended, that the quotations be italicized.
My thanks to those who have commented. I encourage lurkers to do so as well.
I am certainly aware that the problem is not just goats, it is overgrazing. Nor is there one cause. It is in part the ancient “problem of the commons”. It also has to do with local attitudes that holds that a man with fifteen worm ridden scrawny goats is richer than a man with ten large, well-fed goats. It is exacerbated by the use of firewood for cooking.
Finally, a number of people have mentioned ranching in the “Polyface” or similar style. It can be done, but to make it work the rancher has to 1) own the land, and 2) be able to afford the electric fencing and allied equipment to make it work, and 3) be shown how to do it.
And oh, yeah, I know goats of old, I spent part of a summer herding those buggers around in the mountains of New Mexico. I assure you that if they want to get out of an enclosure of some kind, they can do feats of agility and balance that would make old man Wallenda smile down from his eternal high wire …
Best to all,
w.
Bill Parsons says:
December 13, 2011 at 2:52 pm
After reading Caleb’s peon to goats, I have to rethink my own anti-goatism. It seems to me I’ve seen enough to believe in their (potential) weed-fighting-fertilizing capabilities…..
kMc2 says:
December 13, 2011 at 3:07 pm
Frosty 12/13/11 @ur momisugly 2:23 a.m.
posts references to Allan Savory and the Savory Institute’s multi-decadal, on-the-ground experience of natural carbon sequestration through reintroduction of grasslands via effective herd management….
My question: how many ranchers presently are aware of and trying out Savory’s holistic management techniques, or are we doomed to the feedlot mentality. Mr. Savory has an engaging approach to private property management….
_____________________________________
The information from Allan Savory is out there in the form of pamphlets available from the USDA coop ext office. I have a filling cabinet full of the information as well as books including a really great one on grasses in North Carolina.
The idea of using goats to clear my pastures instead of herbicides is straight from the extension office. Bill Parsons is correct goats do a great job of controlling things like sweet gum saplings, poison ivy, black berry, wild rose, green brier, Johnson grass, witch grass and other weeds I have yet to identify.
The big problem is not only getting the information out but the COST of the fencing needed to control the animals because a herd dog and a child are not going to keep a goat from the tender young shoots. (My goats are presently behind a five foot fence to protect my winter rye but the billy just climbed out of the pen so into the cook pot he goes as do any other climber/jumpers)
BTW feed lots have nothing to do with pasture management. Tax payers subsidizing grain makes feed lots cheaper that pasture. Get rid of the subsidy and you will see the grazers back out on pasture. However the food prices will also go back up to what they should be. The price of cars and housing has increased since the 1970’s when we went off the gold standard but food prices have not kept pace. Worse the price increase went into the pockets of the middle men and not the farmers.
Since the Ag cartel is international, farmers the world over have been [self snip] by the buyers.
Getting Used to Life Without Food http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/william-engdahl/2011/06/29/getting-used-to-life-without-food-part-1
Very interesting comments. Much fodder for thought. I really do enjoy the discussions that this site encourages.
It was interesting to hear the comment suggesting goats are a form of bank account, in areas where there are no banks. Sure, they die in droughts, but if the farmer is on his toes he can slaughter and get a bit of jerky and a hide. Are we smarter? What will we get if hyper-inflation hits? Even a $10,000.00/week pension won’t buy us a cupcake. In which case I’ll be hiding my goats up in my attic.
I would like to hear more about how the Israeli changed the environmental situation on the West Bank, and how they halted the over-grazing. What would be most interesting to learn is how they replaced the lost protein supplied by goat meat and goat milk.
Surely the farming of over-grazed areas could be improved, but goats do eat stuff and put up with dryness sheep and cows can’t, and therefore, properly managed, should allow local populations to eat as we eat. By that I mean, with milk and cheese and meat to supplement grain and greens and fruit.
What really bugs me, (and these are fighting words,) are the comments of some people who probably waddle when they walk, who never have gotten off their duff at the crack of dawn to do chores in awful weather when every iota of human nature wants to stay in bed, and whose chief form of exercise is to spew coffee all over their computer screen when one of us cracks a good joke. Willis is a tough cookie, and has earned the right to rebuke, because he likely could withstand the rigor of life in the Sahel, but some of you others say, “Let them do without goat” in a manner very much like a French woman who legend states said, “Let them eat cake.” (And we all know what happened to her; don’t let it happen to you.)
I brought up the Anasazi because they had no goats. Furthermore they were keenly aware of nuances of environmental laws which Nature, (and not the UN,) enacts. However, in the end, they blew it.
How do explain that, all you goat-haters out there?
My own explanation will likely draw the ire of those who put Native Americans up on a somewhat absurd pedestal, and think they are so in harmony with Nature that they burst into tears if you litter. In fact they are exactly like you and I, in that they have to survive what Nature clobbers us all with. In many situations they remember stuff we’ve neglected to remember, but when the MWP gave way to the LIA, they too got overwhelmed.
Someone asked about Chaco Canyon. If that site was merely abandoned, nature alone would not have destroyed the amazing roofs they had on their huge Kivas. In fact they might still be standing. They were the largest roofed structures in North America,until after the year 1800. Trees were dragged over 70 miles to supply beams. (No oxen, and no wheels.)
Judging from much-smaller modern Kivas, Kivas were a sort of Grange, where people met to discuss practical and pragmatic subjects, and also to pray about practical and pragmatic subjects. People divided into what they were best at: some farmers, some truckers hauling timbers, some stone masons, some irrigation engineers, and some who could give a best guess about the weather. The latter started out as the humble meteorologists of the Anasazi Culture, but warped into the Climate Scientists. They went from giving a best-guess at what the weather would be, to claiming they could control the weather.
The Anasazi were so tough they fought their way through a 100-year-drought. Credit probably should go to their irrigation engineers. (Their Climate Scientists were likely very busy dreaming up explanations for why rain didn’t come, blaming everyone but themselves.) However all was not well in Anasazi culture. The cliff-dwellings are the best locations, above the valley floor where cold air pools and poorer people dwelled; the fact they pulled their ladders up at night may indicate they were in fact “gated communities,” holding the wealthy. (It is hard to blame invading Navajo, Apache and Ute, because they were not around for another hundred years. )
When the rains returned, it was an unmitigated disaster. They were gully-washers, and cut down right into the soft sandstone of stream beds. It destroyed the amazing irrigation systems, because it was a case where rain actually lowered the water table, not just inches, but many feet. The places where water was suppose to go into the irrigation systems were now stranded high and dry. There was no way to irrigate the crops.
Everyone looked angrily at the Climate Scientists. After all, they claimed they could control the weather.
There is evidence that the Kivas and other structures did not fall due to earthquakes or invaders. Rather, the local people, outside the gated communities, got royally pissed off at the Climate Scientists. Turmoil ensued. And, after this turmoil was done, they did what smart people do when their land cannot support them. Like Okies in the Dust Bowl, they sang, “So long, it’s been good to know you,” and departed for parts unknown.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Please note that, while no goats were involved, Climate Scientists were.
Blame Climate Scientists; not poor, innocent goats.
Or, if you don’t want history to repeat itself, focus on the pragmatism of irrigation engineers, and the honesty of meteorologists who can admit their mistakes.