This is one of the most important posts ever on WUWT, it will be a top “sticky” post for a few days, and new posts will appear below this one during that time.
People send me stuff.
Imagine, shooting 40,000 elephants to prevent the land in Africa from going to desert because scientists thought the land couldn’t sustain them, only to find the effort was for naught and the idea as to why was totally wrong. That alone was a real eye opener.
Every once in awhile, an idea comes along that makes you ask, “gee why hasn’t anybody seen this before?”. This one of those times. This video below is something I almost didn’t watch, because my concerns were triggered by a few key words in the beginning. But, recommended by a Facebook friend, I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did, because I want every one of you, no matter what side of the climate debate you live in, to watch this and experience that light bulb moment as I did. The key here is to understand that desertification is one of the real climate changes we are witnessing as opposed to some the predicted ones we often fight over.
It is one of those seminal moments where I think a bridge has been created in the climate debate, and I hope you’ll seize the moment and embrace it. This video comes with my strongest possible recommendation, because it speaks to a real problem, with real solutions in plain language, while at the same time offering true hope.
This is a TED talk by Dr. Allan Savory in Los Angeles this past week, attended by our friend Dr. Matt Ridley, whose presentation we’ll look at another time. Sometimes, TED talks are little more that pie in the sky; this one is not. And, it not only offers a solution, it shows the solution in action and presents proof that it works. It makes more sense than anything I’ve seen in a long, long, time. Our friend Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., champion of studying land use change as it affects local and regional climate will understand this, so will our cowboy poet Willis Eschenbach, who grew up on a cattle ranch. I daresay some of our staunchest critics will get it too.
To encapsulate the idea presented, I’ll borrow from a widely used TV commercial and say:
Beef, it’s what’s for climate
You can call me crazy for saying that after you watch this presentation. A BIG hattip to Mark Steward Young for bringing this to my attention.
“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,” begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And terrifyingly, it’s happening to about two-thirds of the world’s grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes — and his work so far shows — that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.
Published on Mar 4, 2013
There’s a longer version with more detail below, about an hour long. Also worth watching if you want to understand the process in more detail:
Feasta Lecture 2009
Extracts available at vimeo.com/8291896
Allan Savory argued that while livestock may be part of the problem, they can also be an important part of the solution. He has demonstrated time and again in Africa, Australia and North and South America that, properly managed, they are essential to land restoration. With the right techniques, plant growth is lusher, the water table is higher, wildlife thrives, soil carbon increases and, surprisingly, perhaps four times as many cattle can be kept.
feasta.org/events/general/2009_lecture.htm
Recorded 7 November 2009, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
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Pat Moffitt says: March 10, 2013 at 11:31 am
“….percentage of cattle nitrogen are you ascribing to gut N fixation?…”
Very informative post, Pat. Many thanks.
For context, I’d recommend watching the “How The Earth Ws Made” episode on the Sahara Desert.
Anssi V. says:
March 10, 2013 at 2:25 pm
To Alexander Feht: I have always regarded you as a reasonable and very intelligent guy, but in this case I kindly suggest that you think again. I present you with just one simple point:
1) Quoting from his wikipedia page (you may contest this but that’s another question): “When Savory made a public statement that if he had been born a black Rhodesian, he would have been a guerilla fighter and although he urged white Rhodesians to understand why he would feel this, Ian Smith denounced him as a traitor”
And this proves me unreasonable — how? Traitor he is.
Mugabe is a mass murderer who destroyed his people and his country.
Maybe we have the perfect place to test his theory. UK.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/09/deer-cull-would-destroy-livelihoods
We have 1.5 million deer and “scientists believe” we need to cull half. Yes they are talking about killing off 750,000 deer “to protect the countryside from damage caused by herds of animals eating and trampling plants and crops”.
Here is a great opportunity to test this theory.
Dear Sir, Water content on land surface controls our climate. Climate change related points are all linked with water only not gases. So simply develop a net work of water supply system so that every inch of the earth’s surface is kept moist throughout the year. Keep land parts of the earth saturated all the time as used to be in old days. Sea level will be lowered automatically. Nature will do rest of the works by itself. If we want vegetation faster we can do plantation. Plants will help the earth to hold water on and in land. Plants will control evaporation of water as transpiration. Evaporation of water will regularize ‘rain cycle’ and reduce temperature. Rain cycle will keep temperature of our atmosphere within a range constantly. Thus, climate will go back to the time before urbanization, deforestation and desert formation. By maintaining the moisture contents on and in land we can stabilize climate as we desire. We must stop draining all water to the sea that belongs to land as underground water and snow on mountains and poles. Let water remain in and on land as used to be in old days. Hold water as underground water by draining water on land. Regular rain cycle will add water on mountains and poles as snow besides lowering temperature of our atmosphere. Constant moisture on land will revive rains throughout the year. Sea surface temperature is not hot enough to develop upward air current to lift humid air up for precipitation. The humid air above the sea surface must move towards heated land to get it lifted up. AS A SOLUTION TO POWER CRISIS: Before discharging water we can tap hydropower as much as we can along a single running water column by installing turbines in series. Power will be available to pump water anywhere. NATURE has a method of providing UNLIMITED ENERGY, it is up to us to tap it or not as WIND or HYDROPOWER as a single installation. We have the knowhow of the science of the methodology, yet we are not tapping maximum possible hydropower for clean energy to end the power crisis for good, never to face the power crisis again.At present we are tapping minimum hydropower by installing only one turbine at the bottom of a running water column by applying the property of standing still water column that the pressure effect is highest at thatposition; it isa blunder in hydropower engineering. By applying the property of running water column and series connection; along the same uniform path, flowing water column(river/flood/canal/ piped) can uniformly and independently run any number of turbines installed in series without decreasing their efficiency and the power of the rushing water column. Uniform and uninterrupted kinetic energy is constantly available at every section of the runningwater column because of the constant force of gravity and its effect on a fluid, running water. So each of the turbines installed in series between the intake and discharge points of the running water column can perform uniformly and independently. Thus by applying the property of ‘running water column’ and ‘series connection’ we can tap many times more (out of the available unlimited) hydropower than done at present from the already existing installations, so there is no need of new power projects. Electricity will be terribly cheaper. Thus both the burning problems, CC and power crisis, are solved. CONGRATULATIONS AND THANKS. For details, please click on my name (devbahadurdongol.blogspot.com).
________________________________
… approximately 12:20 (min:secs) in and he presents his solution … proceeding to watch the balance now …
.
Part of Savory’s argument is that excluding grazing by cattle creates new areas of desert. He has various before and after pictures to demonstrate his point of view. He has various experimental plots which demonstrate his point. He argues that we should use cattle to mimic nature, thus reversing desertification. He may be right. If he is right in some circumstances, he is certainly not right in all circumstances.
No-one has drawn attention to numerous deer-exclusion studies in several (humid) countries, or to kangaroo-exclusions studies (including in semi-arid rangeland areas) in Australia. In relation to kangaroos exclusion studies, these almost invariably lead to lush regrowth, sometimes with the sudden re-appearance of many endangered plant species, improved plant cover, and changes to species composition.
There are usually between 20 and 30 million kangaroos of harvestable species in Australia at any one time.
Kangaroos don’t just mimic nature. They keep trying to ‘do’ nature. But their top predators (dingoes) have been exterminated from most of the continent, and (Aborigines) have been driven from large areas of the continent. Added to this the introduction of artificial watering points dotted around the countryside, and the introduction of nutritious grasses for cattle grazing are much appreciated by the kangaroos.
There is little doubt that grazing by large herds of kangaroos can have significant, landscape scale impacts. By preferential grazing means, and in the absence of population controls, they tend to eliminate some species of plants altogether. Traditionally, kangaroo population control was mostly by way of catastrophic mass mortality in times of prolonged drought. They also develop very heavy parasite loads when overcrowded.
Kangaroos have also evolved some fairly sophisticated (one in the pouch and one in the womb, ready to go if required) physiological techniques for dealing with Australia’s famous boom and bust climate. Boom and bust, incidentally, is a quintessential element of Australia’s deserts.
It would be virtually impossible to graze kangaroos rotationally with management intent. They are impossible to muster or drove because they break back to their home territories and, superman-like, they can jump most fences in a single bound. (Qualification: kangaroo behaviour varies with species and also with the conditions in which they find themselves).
Oh, and we have a wild kangaroo harvesting industry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_industry
TRM says:
March 10, 2013 at 6:43 pm
Maybe we have the perfect place to test his theory. UK.
In case you didn’t know, they need to cull the deer before they can chop down the forests, wood for power stations that have recently been converted into “green sustainable” sources of energy.
It is not easy to find much published research supporting Savory’s certainty on the value of his methods (the contribution of desertification to global temperature changes is a separate issue which I have not yet pursued).
But this is a pretty detailed publication refuting it:
http://allenpress.com/pdf/i1551-5028-61-1-3.pdf
Rotational Grazing on Rangelands: Reconciliation of Perception and Experimental Evidence. Briske et al 2008 (Multinational Author list looks to be highly qualified to assess this: see below)
And (this figure… not shown here) and its description make a pretty good case for the problems of this working in dry times;
Authors are D. D. Briske,1 J. D. Derner,2 J. R. Brown,3 S. D. Fuhlendorf,4 W. R. Teague,5 K. M. Havstad,6 R. L. Gillen,7 A. J. Ash,8 and W. D. Willms9
1 Professor, Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-2138, USA; 2 Rangeland Scientist, USDA-ARS High Plains Grasslands Research Station, Cheyenne, WY 82009, USA; 3 Research Scientist, USDA-NRCS Jornada Experimental Range, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003-0003, USA; 4 Professor, Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078, USA; 5 Professor, Texas A&M University System, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, Vernon, TX 76384, USA; 6 Supervisory Scientist, USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003-0003, USA; 7 Head, Kansas State University, Western Kansas Agricultural Research Centers, Hays, KS 67601-9228, USA; 8 Program Leader, CSIRO, Sustainable Ecosystems, St. Lucia, Queensland 4067, Australia; and 9Research Scientist, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Lethbridge, AB T1J 4B1, Canada.
I’m curious how the BLM land is doing under the herds of wild mustangs. That might be a good reality check for this theory. I’d guess pretty well ’cause the ranchers complain they’re taking good land… Maybe they have cause and effect reversed.
Despite the ” Anti” sentiments this is a great post and perhaps to much to comment on in detail.
My first rule, which applies to many things including “undocumented” natural cures is
If it works, it works. or as my mother taught me, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
If you refer to Saharan petroglyphs dated to about 10,000 years ago, man has been herding animals for a very long time and the very surprizing thing is that despite tha,t he still seemingly has much to learn.
Savory has two strikes against himself, one that he killed 40,000 elephants ( how many survive in Sri Lanka and Thailand), and that he uses the discredited Globull warming memes.
From the responses here I see a continuation of that which afflicts humanity. science finds answers but does not get it to the people that can and do make a difference, the vast mass of poor and uneducated farmers. Its locked in libraries, hidden behind paywalls and a final line of defence, copyright and patent.
Judging from the raft of excellent comments and science posted above, is it not to much to ask, stop griping, stop complaining, get the info and the action to the people. Use brains to use what works in what environment, it makes sense.
Lastly do not forget the role of the humble gopher, that beast was the agent that made the American Midwest and Bisons so prolific. The success and performance factor yield increases show, beyond doubt, we can improve yields, improve the environment and make a positive impact on the climate, if the latter is possible.
Despite the ” Anti” sentiments this is a great post and perhaps to much to comment on in detail.
My first rule, which applies to many things including “undocumented” natural cures is
If it works, it works. or as my mother taught me, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
If you refer to Saharan petroglyphs dated to about 10,000 years ago, man has been herding animals for a very long time and the very surprizing thing is that despite tha,t he still seemingly has much to learn.
Savory has two strikes against himself, one that he killed 40,000 elephants ( how many survive in Sri Lanka and Thailand), and that he uses the discredited Globull warming memes.
From the responses here I see a continuation of that which afflicts humanity. science finds answers but does not get it to the people that can and do make a difference, the vast mass of poor and uneducated farmers. Its locked in libraries, hidden behind paywalls and a final line of defence, copyright and patent.
Judging from the raft of excellent comments and science posted above, is it not to much to ask, stop griping, stop complaining, get the info and the action to the people. Use brains to use what works in what environment, it makes sense.
Lastly do not forget the role of the humble gopher, that beast was the agent that made the American Midwest and Bisons so prolific. The success and performance factor yield increases show, beyond doubt, we can improve yields, improve the environment and make a positive impact on the climate, if the latter is possible.
Environment and climate are both very complex. It is too simplistic to state ” climate causes deserts”. Both climate and environmental conditions do. Planting trees and grasses do recover deserts. Look at Dubai, as they greened the dessert, the place became wetter and the gren sreads even more.
Willis Eschenbach says:
March 9, 2013 at 2:53 pm
Hoser says:
March 9, 2013 at 12:33 am
And goatskins make great flight jackets. So let’s not kill off all the goats.
http://www.gibson-barnes.com/page-293859/Types-Of-Leather.html
You guys are obviously swimming in “Big Cattle Money”, ya poor demented things.
davidmhoffer
You said: “He then makes all manner of claims (like 6,000 cars co2 production being offset by a single hectare of grassland)”
Well, NO HE DIDN’T SAY THAT! He said that:
“burning a hectare of grassland gives off more and more damaging pollutants that 6000 cars. And we are burning every year in Africa more than one BILLION hectares of grasslands.”
He’s not talking about sequestering in that case. Yes he’s talking about c02 production, and he’s talking about how damaging burning is to grassland because it leaves the soil unprotected.
You may disagree with him about how many hectares are burned, or how much co2 is produced, but if the amount is anything close to what he’s saying then it certainly dwarfs anything the industrialized countries are doing. I personally don’t think the co2 makes a fig of difference, but the changes in micro to macro climates over such large areas certainly could, and the mechanisms he is talking about to improve the soil make a lot of sense.
Thank you Climate Ace, wonderful example of warmist hyperbole and mindless exaggeration. 30 billion indeed. lol
Also which science is your god? Hide the decline, fire the editor, incarcerate the infidels…………!!!!!!!!!!!!
Science is not an ends but a means, a journey as the excellent video above posted by John shows.
The earth is still evolving.
get it
What is the correct temperature, how much desert should there be, how much tropical rain forest. You as a man of SCIENCE, must have the answers to those simple questions.
GL
‘It is too simplistic to state ” climate causes deserts”. It is too simplistic to state ” climate causes deserts”. Both climate and environmental conditions do. Planting trees and grasses do recover deserts. Look at Dubai, as they greened the dessert, the place became wetter and the gren sreads even more.’
I agree. Everything in a one hour presentation is over simplified. So are the responses.
The basic statements I made stand:
‘Climate causes deserts’
‘Deserts affect climate.’
Humans can expand or contract deserts by their activities at the edges.
Deserts tend to persist because of feedback effects such as nutrient loss by wind and water. Deserts tend to persist because the rate of soil formation is less than the rate of soil loss. Deserts are created below certain rates of precipitation combined with certain rates of evaporation combined with year-to-year variability of precipitation.
Particular comments also stand: what might work for cattle in savanna rangelands which previously hosted animals similar to cattle will probably not work in rangelands where kangaroos were the previously the main grazing animal. The impacts of cattle exclosure, deer exclosure and kangaroo exclosure are so different that a posture based solely on getting rid of exclosures to reverse desertification in all cases is simply untenable.
Sounds good, though it needs a lot of cooperation from owners of the cattle, good markings etc.
I have bad experience with goats. I inherited from my father a half acre of a vineyard. The local goat shepherd broke down the fences to let the goats feed on the vineyard and after three years of this, the vines were dead. It means that no cultivation can happen where these herds are grazing. Strong fences are needed.
Another point, sheep are used in olive groves for the purpose of fetilizing. Sheep are not destructive the way goats are. Goats eat anything they can reach, low lying branches and small tree shoots.
p.s. I do not like the title: “reverse climate change” as too much emphasis is given to CO2 in the talk. would prefer the Pielke pov of land change affecting climate, and it is not clear from the title.
Its an impressive presentation, but then so was Al Gore’s. Its a good story, with plenty of drama – such as the before and after photos. But surely, you need to start with a degree of scepticism when the answer just sounds so simple.
He makes a few basic misconceptions. He assumes that if the ground is dry the day after heavy rain, then its all either ‘run-off’ or evaporated. No, a good proportion will have infiltrated to add to the groundwater (1/3?). The dry river bed he shows (a wadi) very probably has significant amounts of groundwater flowing a few metres below the surface (not quite like a river since groundwater flows between the grains of rock/sand at perhaps 1 m/day). That groundwater will be feeding springs or streams somewhere, perhaps quite distant, and can be accessed by wells.
He gives the impression that all desert is a result of desertification. In the Earth’s current climate scenario, a big proportion of the world is just desert. No amount of land management will change that.
He answers the host’s question about where the livestock get food. But what about water? You can’t just put a few hundred head out to graze without water.
His before and after photos? Well some land can change that dramatically each season, or between cycles of drier years and wetter years.
I’m not saying I don’t believe, but I would need to research his claims more carefully before accepting them as ‘wow, that’s it!’. I will start googling.
He lost my interest when he started talking about Global Warming and CO2. Much of the rest is covered previously by others without the CAGW references.
It is so obvious why has this been missed?
GL
‘Thank you Climate Ace, wonderful example of warmist hyperbole and mindless exaggeration. 30 billion indeed. lol’
You are making a fool of yourself. You do it by the use of inane, useless, terms such as ‘warmist’. I have not used hyperbole. I have used plain, direct language. You get the numbers wrong by an order of magnitude. Check the post. I said between 20 and 30 ‘million’ and I provided a link.
‘Also which science is your god? Hide the decline, fire the editor, incarcerate the infidels…………!!!!!!!!!!!!’
I appreciate good science, good literature, good wine, good food and good company.
‘Science is not an ends but a means, a journey as the excellent video above posted by John shows.’
Savory’s particular experiences are worthwhile and some of his particular ‘lessons’ are, IMHO, worth applying within limited contexts. But they do not serve as a scientific basis for the sort of global extrapolations Savory makes. Savory’s views might help explain in a limited way why some of the world’s rangelands are turning into desert. They do not, and can not, explain the existence of most of the world’s deserts. Not even Savory would be able to graze cattle in the Atacama and turn it into grazing land because cattle do not eat gravel.
‘The earth is still evolving.’
I don’t accept your premise that earth is a living organism. Therefore it cannot, in my view, be ‘evolving’.
‘get it’
I get it that you are rude and lack intellectual rigour.
‘What is the correct temperature, how much desert should there be, how much tropical rain forest. You as a man of SCIENCE, must have the answers to those simple questions.’
Why is it that when someone says that something is ‘simple’ I get a gut reaction that they are the ones who are both simple and wrong? Those questions are complex, not simple.
anna v
In relation to goats, I thought that Willis made an excellent point: goats are excellent climbers. Put them in an olive grove and they would do grievous damage to the olive grove.
I was really saddened by this video because it shows someone who had the humility to realise he had been wrong who had the intelligence to base his ideas on practical evidence … then totally ignoring the evidence about CO2 NOT BEING A PROBLEM.
“I would go as far as to say it is a bigger problem than CO2 …”. With 92% of world governments (by emissions) thinking CO2 is such an insignificant problem that they need not control it in any way, he is saying this is not a problem.
My gut feeling is that on the grazing he is right (seeing the evidence points that way). But how can you take anyone who is so deluded about CO2 seriously?