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
Anthony,
Thanks very much for this. It’s phenomenal and I’m disrupting my ‘regular programming’ in my environmental history class today to show the video you’ve linked. Definitely worth a top-up in flung funds to your website!
Well, if “people send you stuff”, it might be a good idea to tell us what it is all about (without having us linking to long and boring online conferences), and not make that unknown “stuff” the subject of a 482 comments item.
I’ve read about 100 replies, can’t read them all, has even one CAGW believer crossed the bridge?, Or was this a “Bridge Too Far” or a “Bridge to Nowhere”?
Recall the slaughter of the midwest buffalo. The bad lands are missing the once large herds of buffalo. Areas that are grazed by cattle are green with grasses. Areas that are not continue to be just ugly bad. The Great American Desert is managed with crop rotation and irrigation and grazing animal herds.
Paul Wanamaker says:
March 10, 2013 at 10:03 pm
If he really said that he’s clueless. 6,000 cars run for how long? One year? Ten years?
In addition, my numbers say no. Assuming 2,000 kg of net primary production per hectare per year for grassland, and a car going 20,000 miles and getting 20 miles per gallon, that works out to about 2,300 kg of fuel burned by the car.
Now that’s ONE SINGLE CAR. With about the same weight of fuel as the hectare of grassland.
What am I missing here? 6,000 cars? Is there a mistake in my math?
w.
Re: “6000 cars”.
My guess is that Savory based that comparison on somebody’s estimate of total CO2 emissions from all the worlds’ passenger cars. Here are some possibly questionable figures from Europe & the US:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_emissions#Carbon_dioxide_.28CO2.29
I’d like to see his calculations for the hectare of grassland. There might be some order of magnitude errors either in the car or vegetation data. Without seeing his work, looks like possible decimal misplacement, even accepting the suspiciously high estimate of grassland acreage burned annually.
Utter BS.
Sorry Ace, you said
Quote
Mimicing nature’ in a holistic way can not mean having a human population of 10 billion or 20 billion or 30 billion or wherever optimum human population it is that endless growth advocates think we should be aiming for.
Unquote
As I said, hyperbole.
And you did not answer my question, which form of science is your god?
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/GlobalMaps/view.php?d1=MOD14A1_M_FIRE
The link provides a rough impression of the number of fires burning around the globe – might be useful for (coarsely) estimating the correctness of figures provide by Savory. Please note though, that the color of the “fire” pixels denotes the number of fires, and not their size.
Electric fence systems for controlling elephants ( or smaller animals) can be purchased here.
http://www.gallagher.co.nz/electric-fence-systems.aspx
There is no doubt that drylands can be turned into pasture. People are already doing it. The problem is there are political, economic and cultural obstacles.
What I found amazing was that so many people in positions of power had no idea that rotational grazing is sustainable. I now have a better understanding why the greenies want us to be vegetarians. They think livestock are bad for the environment.
Climate Ace says:
March 11, 2013 at 2:23 am
Using Mugabe’s subsequent career as an ex-post facto excuse is illogical.
Only if you decide to be blind to the truth.
Mugabe has been praised in the beginning as Mandela is praised now. The truth is, however, that both murdered innocent people to achieve their goals, from the very beginning of their political careers (not to mention that both were financed by the USSR). And that is all I need to know.
@markx:
I don’t remember criticizing anybody for being sure of themselves.
Using foul language, breaking the rules of this blog with impunity — yes.
Being sure of themselves? Hardly a sin.
Joe says: March 11, 2013 at 9:15 am
Re: http://www.srmjournals.org/doi/abs/10.2111/06-159R.1 (Briske et al … Rotational Grazing on Rangelands: Reconciliation of Perception and Experimental Evidence D. D. Briske et al)
Nice work on Briske et al, Joe, and well worth doing apparently … I did for one did not drill down to the next level so I appreciate seeing that … quite astounding they would misrepresent to that degree, bringing the big hammer of combined status and authority down with scanty data … I guess academia likes to maintain the status quo…..
I’d certainly like to believe Savory was on to something here.
The western U.S. and central Africa are very different. In Africa huge herds of grazing animals were present in the past. In the western U.S. huge herds of bison grazed in the central plains, but large numbers of grazing animals were absent in the intermountain and southwest areas of the country. Bison began retreating into higher elevations, in a limited number of locations, due to the hunting (slaughter) of bison that was being conducted in order to reduce the food supply of native Americans.
Reductions in grazing animals on public lands have been shown to improve the health of the land, production of water, soil retention and wildlife numbers. Another benefit is the increase in recreation attributes when grazing numbers are reduced. Some lands in the west were not grazed by large animals prior to the arrival of European man. The fire regimes that existed prior to this are quite different now. Public land management agencies have a goal, within the constraints of human occupation and development, to return as much land to a more natural fire regime as possible.
Overgrazing in the western U.S. began in the post Civil War period. It was unconstrained until some land was brought into better management near the turn of the 20th century in the form of national forests and national parks. Each have been reducing, or eliminating in the case of national parks, for decades. The results of the severe overgrazing post Civil War are still with us. Range science is considerably more complex than Allan Savory speaks to in this presentation. The science has established the need for reducing grazing numbers. As a retired forester, who studied grazing management in college, I have knowledge and experience to make my observations of range management more informed than those who do not know the principles of the science as well as working with range conservationists and watching landscapes change when grazing numbers have been reduced. Much of this knowledge has been very hands on as I’ve built some grazing improvements (water guzzlers, trick tanks, fences etc.) and walked and ridden a lot of ground. Reductions in grazing numbers on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Nevada combined with the fencing of riparian areas has stabilized stream banks, increased water flows, retained soils and have benefited large mammal species such as deer and elk, fish numbers increasing in streams and other indicator species in ecosystems. I’ve seen the similar results on the Cibola and Inyo National Forests during my career with the U.S. Forest Service. The reduction of animal numbers and protecting riparian areas has worked all over the west on national forest land and the Public Land System managed by the BLM. Desertification can be traced back to the overgrazing in the late 19th century.
So called “wild horses,” which are really feral animals existing in ecosystems that evolved after the North American ice sheet began to retreat 10-12 thousand years ago without the horse. These feral animals are causing reductions in the numbers of native animals such as big horn sheep, pronghorns, sage grouse and songbirds. The combination of excessive numbers of cattle and the introduction of the feral and exotic “wild” horse is causing ecological havoc. This is another factor in the decline of many western ecosystems.
All of this is documented in scientific literature as well as long term observations of countless numbers of people. Mr. Savory appears to be the proverbial savior riding in on his big white horse. Much of his presentation regarding the western U.S. are opinions that don’t agree with the science and success of grazing management in that area.
OT, but worthy of its own post:
Bjorn Lomborg: Green Cars Have a Dirty Little Secret
Producing and charging electric cars means heavy carbon-dioxide emissions.
“A bridge in the climate debate – How to green the world’s deserts and reverse climate change.”
Okay….if measured temperature is a sine wave…..what’s his goal? Create a cosine-wave form?
I’m not sure it matters which old goats take our money.
Be it those in congress or the bankers or the ones being herded in the desert.
cn
Privately owned grazing land in the great plains (where I’m most famiiar) is generally well-managed and more producive now than thirty years ago and the destructive practices of sixty to seventy years ago are almost entirely avoided. When you own the land you have every incentive to take care of it, to make it more productive & more valuable. The fragile Sandhills area in Nebraska is in top condition because of rotational grazing and other best practices. Private stewardship works so well, its so simple. Communal ownership is a huge problem because nobody is willing to take care of and invest in land they don’t own. Mexico’s communal ejido system is a disaster. By the way, you can still buy Tordon. You can buy it on Amazon. It is restricted as to the sites and applications that are permitted but it is still available as a general-use herbicide.
Cows need about 20 gallons of water per day, depending on the moisture content of their feed. They eat about 2.5% of their body weight per day. A thousand pound cow would need at least 25 pounds of grass.
How many cattle does Savory lose in his first year grazing dense herds on totally grassless range land?
My recollection of my granddad’s farm in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas was that his cattle needed a water tank. Despite a rather humid, lush, grassy environment, the stock tanks were kept full, and got plenty of business.
Regarding Savory’s slide show, Zimbabwe gets upwards of 10″ of rain in (our winter) months of Dec, Jan and Feb, an amount which tapers off to near-zero in the summer months. It might be nice to know when he shot his pictures.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-16/camel-cull-carbon-credit-plan-fails/4467032
Convincing the aboriginal people that there is only one way.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-26/wa-desert-feral-camel-cull-program-under-threat-as/4336776
Climate Ace says:
March 11, 2013 at 2:23 am
…”No-one knew then that he would go on to destroy his country, starve his people, wreck an economy,….”
————————————–
Anyone taking even a cursory glance at the history of post-colonial Africa had a pretty good idea of what Mugabe’s Zimbabwe was going to look like.
Be that as it may, Mugabe’s philosophy was NEVER one of peace and democracy. Even before he was imprisoned he was promoting the overthrow of the white government and to replace it with a dictatorial communist regime lead by HIM and his “peeps”…Shona I think. No one else was going to fare very well under Mugabe, black or white, so yes, anyone who looked at the man also knew how things were going to turn out.
The rest of your post concerning Mugabe’s imprisonment for nothing more than promoting democracy is laughable.
@ur momisugly Bill Parsons, I think that you are confusing the two species (or sub-species) of cattle. There’s Bos taurus taurus, the ‘European’ cattle, best suited to more moderate climes, and then there’s Bos taurus indica, a breed of cattle best suited to hot, dry climes.
From Wikipedia (I know) “Sanga cattle is the collective name for indigenous cattle of South Africa. They are sometimes identified as a subspecies with the scientific name Bos taurus africanus.These cattle originated in East Africa, probably western Ethiopia, and have spread west and south. Sanga are an intermediate type, formed by hybridizing the indigenous humpless cattle with Zebu cattle brought from Asia. Although the timeline for their history is the subject of extensive debate, some authors date Sanga cattle to 1600 B.C. They are distinguished by having small cervico-thoracic humps instead of the high thoracic humps which characterize the Zebu.”
These cattle are thought to be a taurus/indica cross. They are able to survive where ‘European’ cattle would perish in days.
I think that the encroachment of deserts is a very real problem caused by humans, just like other climactic effects other than catastrophic warming, which I am obviously skeptical of.
I don’t know. I think it would be beneficial to reverse desertification and perhaps even make new lands habitable. But, trying to play God with the climate just can’t end well. We should save lands that have been claimed by deserts, but we really shouldn’t go messing with the Sahara or any of that IMO.
I want to bridge with the proponents of climate, but right now we’re way too far apart d the squabbling won’t end until there’s a technology that comes along that satisfies all parties involved. Even if we do agree that deserts should be reclaimed and made more green, it’s not going to change the debate in any meaningful way as no side is going to give in.
Stephen Brown says:
March 11, 2013 at 2:16 pm
You’re quite right about the difference between cattle. Generalizing shouldn’t work. So he should not have generalized – or maybe that is just part of the presentation that I tuned out. Finding the right species of cow for the right climate is no doubt part of Savory’s strategy. But he talks only about running dense herds across areas of African veldt without grass. Even with adapted breeds – hybrids of local indigenous cattle – I am skeptical. The moderator asked the same question – “how does that work the first year?” His answer left much to be desired.
Willis Eschenbach says:
March 10, 2013 at 10:01 am
Yeah, Willis, I’ve noticed that Mosher has been getting more smarmy these days, and it is more irritating than usual. He’s previously been a bit more fair-minded than that. While I don’t expect him to suffer fools as gladly as you do, he doesn’t have the kind of expertise that qualifies him to be more smarmy that most of the posters at this site. Perhaps he has caught the disease of the true believer.
So, eat more beef and save the world.
That should get the greenies spewing.