Guest post by Dr. Tim Ball – a response to this WUWT post on Allan Savory
Dr Allan Savory proposes stopping desertification and controlling climate change. His focus is a large natural vegetation area called grasslands. His idea of raising cattle to maintain grasslands is founded on the grazing and fertilizing cycle provided by herbivores. Bermuda Grass is an example of a grassland plant species that thrives on being constantly cropped. It grows thick and dense the more it is cut, making it ideal for golf greens. Savory’s ideas all sound attractive and ‘green’ and not without some merit, but are riddled with problems. It is not clear, indeed unlikely, that his proposals would measurably alter natural climate change.
Watching his presentation I imagined all the ‘environmentalists’ recoiling at his suggestions. It is not long since radical environmentalists like Jeremy Rifkin were blaming cattle for most of the evils of western society in his 1992 book, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture. True, Savory showed sheep, but he should also have introduced the idea of restocking some areas with natural herds, such as bison in North America. These areas would become world funded preservation areas of natural species as George Perkins Marsh proposed in his 1864 book Man and Nature. Marsh was also among the first in modern times to idenitfy the relationship between removal of vegetation and desertification.
The major conflict is between domesticated and wild herbivores and the production of foodstuffs. This included growing grains to feed the cattle or overgrazing. Presumably, Savory is suggesting domesticated animals to also expand the food supply. The problem is expansion of the food supply usually creates an increase in the human population, which Savory says is at the heart of the world’s problems.
Savory’s Assumptions
He makes three major assumptions, all arguable. First is the claim the world is overpopulated. It is not! People, apparently including Savory, believe it is because of the neo-Malthusian claim underlying the alarmism of the Club of Rome in the 1970s. Claims of overpopulation primarily came from Paul Ehrlich’s work, but his predictions were so inaccurate it’s a wonder he retains any credibility. The reason the ideas remain is probably because supporters of his ideas are in positions of power today. For example, Ehrlich’s co-author of a truly frightening book Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment is President Obama’s Science Tsar, John Holdren. In addition, graduates of 1979s and 1980s environmental studies programs are now running the bureaucracies using those ideas.
The second error is his identification of land ‘suffering’ from desertification. Savory identifies five regions on a world map (Figure 1). He is using the term desertification as it evolved back in the 1970s, that is as an environmental problem caused by humans. The problem is almost all the regions he identifies are natural climatic regions of desert and grasslands. He says there is “no other cause” than humans for desertification, which is only true because of his definition. In a 2005 work, “The causes and progression of desertification,” Geist identified more than 100 definitions. Any region that loses vegetation becomes a desert, which happens all the time as climate changes. If you don’t know how much change is due to natural causes you can’t determine the human portion. It is the same as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) examining only human causes of climate change without knowing how much it changes naturally.
The third error he makes, is to assume climate change is new and caused by humans. It isn’t. The amount of change is well within natural variability, but the IPCC and its proponents persistently work to prove it is outside and therfore unnatural. Savory is apparently vulnerable to the “human cause” claim because he blames humans for desertification.
Basic Arid Zone Pattern
The trouble is it appears Savory lacks some basic understandings including;
• how deserts are formed and change with climate change,
• how or why the major hot deserts are generally located within 15 to 35° of latitude each side of the Equator and,
• how grasslands are a transitional area of slightly higher precipitation that surround the deserts and lie between the deserts and the forests. Grassland names differ from Steppe in Russia; Great Plains in the US and their northern extension the Prairies in Canada; Llanos in northern South America; Pampas in southern South America; to Savanna and Veldt in Africa.
Figure 1: Areas of desertificcation identified by Allan Savory
Source: Screen Capture from his presentation
The Sahel is just such a transitional region between the rainforest on the coast of west Africa and the true desert of the Sahara. Alarmist stories appeared about the expanding Sahara desert associated with the cyclical Sahelian drought that visited the region between 1968 and 1974. Famine accompanied the drought and overgrazing was blamed. It, and another drought in 1984-85, launched the environmental career of Bob Geldof.
A similar desertification situation was identified in the Thar desert on the Indian-Pakistan border in the 1970s, with claims the area wasn’t totally ‘natural’ but created by overgrazing, especially by the ubiquitous goat. University of Wisconsin climatologist Reid Bryson theorized that removal of vegetation cover increased surface temperatures, which caused increase convection and advection (wind). Resulting soil erosion and winds carried dust to altitude. Here it absorbed sunlight directly, raising upper air temperatures while reducing surface heating. Warm air over cold is an inversion, a very stable situation that prevents cloud formation, thus perpetuating the aridity. As I recall, much money was spent on bringing water into the region to plant grasses and stabilize the surface to break the cycle. The grass promoted was Marram, a well known sand dune stabilizer.
World Hot Deserts and Grasslands
It is impossible to get even crude estimates of the percentage of land surface that is grassland or desert. Land is 149 million km2 of the Earth’s total surface and hot deserts make-up an estimated 15 to 30 percent (Figure 2). The Sahara provides a scale because it is 9.1 million km2, almost identical to the land area of the US. The hot deserts of the world in order (millions of km2) are;
Sahara – 9.1
Central Asia – 4.5
Australian – 3.4
North American – 1.3
Patagonian – 0.7
Indian – 0.6
Kalahari – Namib 0.57
Atacama – 0.36
The word ‘hot’ is in bold because, as Koppen (Figures 4 and 5) recognized in his climate classification system, there are vast cold deserts. The North and South poles are among the driest places on Earth.
Figure 2. Major hot deserts generally straddling the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.
In his system, Koppen identified “B” climates primarily as those with insufficient ‘effective’ precipitation to support trees (BS for Steppe climate) then grass (BW desert climate). He further divided BW climates into BWh (coldest month average above 0°C) and BWk (at least one month average below 0°C). When doing a Koppen classification you begin by eliminating the B climates. Savory lumps them together as shown in Figure 1.
Estimates for grassland are more variable than for deserts varying from 15 to 40 percent of the land surface, excluding Antarctica and Greenland. Savory showed, unknowingly, why defining grasslands is so difficult. He showed clumps of grass with bare ground in between, implying they were examples of desertification. The problem is such conditions are natural and exist over very large areas with grasses known as tussock.
The sun is directly overhead the equator twice a year and is never more than approximately 23.5° from the vertical. This results in maximum heat energy and therefore high year round temperatures. It creates what was known as the “heat equator”, which, because of land water differences is not coincident with the actual Equator. Belem on the Amazon in the interior of Brazil has a range of 1.6°C from the warmest to the coolest month.
High temperatures result in high evaporation and rising warm air. The vertical air currents mean very little horizontal surface wind, a problem in sailing days. English sailing ships recorded the conditions and from their records George Hadley, in 1753, figured out his circulation cell (Figure 3). Clouds develop daily and result in heavy rainfall almost daily. Duitenzorg, Java, averages 322 days a year with thunderstorms.
The warm air rises to the tropopause where it is now cold, dense and dry. Deflected away from the Equator it descends. As it descends increasing pressure creates adiabatic warming. By the time it reaches the surface it is hot and dry. The amount of moisture is the same but chances of condensation and cloud formation is virtually zero. Average relative humidity for the Sahara is approximately 19%. Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas and low levels in desert region mean the ground and air heat and cool very rapidly. Cloud cover in the Sahara varies from about 10% in winter to 4% in summer.
The highest shade temperatures in the world occur such as 58°C in Libya and 56.7°C in Death Valley, California. At In-Salah, Algeria, the temperature dropped from an afternoon high of 52.2°C to an overnight low of –3.3°C, a range of 55.5°C in about 12 hours. These conditions mean the air holds less water vapour, but the air temperature drops well below the dew point temeprature thus creating condensation.
Figure 3. Hadley Cell circulation has air rising at the equator and descending between 15 and 30° latitude. A similar cell exists for the Southern Hemisphere.
Heated air at the equator creates low pressure, the Equatorial Low, while descending air creates high pressure in the subtropics, the Subtropical Highs.
The pattern of high rainfall at the Equator and deserts in the Low Latitudes is disturbed by the land/water distribution and influence of ocean currents. The greatest disturbance occurs in eastern Africa and Asia so the desert zone extends through Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and western China. Low latitude landmass in the southern hemisphere is restricted but includes southern Africa, Australia and South America. In South America the Andes Mountains block the extension of the deserts across the entire continent. However, where they exist on the coast they are among the driest on earth.
Savory refers to the rock paintings of herd animals in the central Sahara. They occur there because of climate change when increased rainfall supported grasslands. During the last Ice Age the Polar climate zones expanded pushing the mid latitude temperate climates toward the Equator. Traditional climate referred to the wetter periods in the desert zones that were coincident with Glacials as Pluvials. When the Earth warmed to Interglacials, as now, the desert regions experience Interpluvials.
Swings between Pluvial and Interpluvial are macro climate changes, however smaller changes are occurring all the time. As a result, the pattern of climates shown in Figures 4 and 5 are averages and constantly changing.
Figure 4: Koppen classification The Americas.
Figure 5: Koppen classification Africa, Eurasia and Australia
The Sahel is shown as BSh or hot grassland right across Africa on the south side of the Sahara (BWh). In addition to the longer term climate changes, cyclical changes in precipitation cause drought cycles such as the one from 1968 to 1974. Australia is another large classic region of desert (BWh) surrounded by semi-arid grassland (BSh).
Importance of Condensation
Savory draws attention to the potential of condensation moisture in the semi arid areas. This is not new, as people for centuries have gathered condensation moisture. I grew up near the dry chalk lanscape of Salisbury Plain and learned early about “dew ponds”. Gilbert White, a renowned 18th century English naturalist, described the ecology around Selbourne. He described a dew pond near the village as “…only 3 feet deep and 30 feet in diameter, that contained some 15,000 gallons of water which supplied 300 sheep and cattle every day without fail.”
In many dry regions people put xerophytic plants close to large rocks, which provide sufficient overnight condensation to maintain the plant. On a larger scale, ancient Greeks built large pyramids of rock from which condensation trickled down to a network of clay collection pipes. Called air wells, they are a well known technique. There were 13 such pyramids up to 12 meters high near the ancient Greek city of Theodosia on the Black Sea.
Savory is correct, condensation is the forgotten moisture, as I described a few years ago and more recently repeated here. The issue was the difference between official predictions of poor yields and the actual average or better yields on the Canadian Prairies. “In the late summer of that 1980s year, daytime temperatures were high, generally 27-28°C, which meant it could hold lots of moisture. At night, temperatures dropped to record lows around 3-5°C and moisture deposition was heavy. In a three-week period this yields upward of 50 mm of precipitation equivalent. Farmers know that amount of moisture can be critical to “fill out” a crop. It has several advantages over normal precipitation. It occurs at night when heat stress on the plant is reduced. Evaporation is reduced. Distribution is more even and widely distributed than rainfall. Unfortunately, it is not moisture counted in the weather statistics used by all the experts. Ironically, it’s moisture farmers know about because, until it evaporates, it can delay harvesting.”
Savory’s method can take advantage of the moisture, but it will only produce grasses in the natural grassland regions he defines. To change true desert (BWh) to grassland requires much larger volumes of water than condensation provides.
It is not clear how his proposal will stop climate change. Presumably, he assumes changing the surface will change the albedo, which will change the energy balance. The problem is there is not much difference in albedo between desert, which ranges from 15 to 45, and grassy fields with ranges10 to 30. The desert range is wide because deserts are only partially sand dunes. The dune areas known as Erg are higher albedo, but are a small percentage of a desert. The much larger, lower albedo, area is the hamada or rock strewn areas that are 70 percent of the Sahara.
Savory’s comment about the importance of microclimates is more critical than he realizes. Most vegetation, and certainly the grasses, grow in the 1.25 m below the Stevenson Screen, the official weather station. The climate below that level is markedly different, as Geiger identified in his marvelous 1950 book, The Climate Near the Ground. Any attempt at planning or changing conditions in this portion of the Biosphere requires far more information than is currently available.
Change is the norm. Climate change is normal and current changes are well within natural variability. Allan Savory’s proposal to stabilize grassland areas has some merit, but requires much more understanding and context, especially about climate patterns and climate change mechanisms. Of course, as the world cools in the next few decades the colder climate zone will expand and the desert zone will shrink naturally. The grasslands will benefit from cooler wetter conditions as the natural cycles continue.
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john robertson says: March 25, 2013 at 10:21 am
I’m with A.D.Everard on this one.
Considering the audience Savory was addressing I thought his presentation was high art.
He should be in sales.
………
Savory offered before and after pictures, are any WUWT visitors in a position to provide a status report on those lands today?
And I’m with you both on that!
Amazing how many people jumped into the “carbon” debate when that was not the main message, just a selling point. And I think that whatever his ‘belief’ he was very wise to ‘go with the flow’ on the AGW issue … why the hell would he want to fight two battles at once?
Having said that, I’d love to see a fair bit more detail and some measure of results and seasonal climatic conditions than just seeing before and after photos….. and I’m pretty sure there are probably a fairly narrow range of conditions where this does work.
The problem is expansion of the food supply usually creates an increase in the human population, which Savory says is at the heart of the world’s problems.
I think Dr.Ball left out “according to Savory” after “The problem…”
Someone asked for verification of Allan Savory work. rpielke kindly provided it on the original thread:
Dr. Tim Ball you are always a clear and decisive voice in the presentation of science.
“… but he should also have introduced the idea of restocking some areas with natural herds, such as bison in North America.”
We don’t want bison reintroduced. The carry brucellosis, a disease that causes abortions in domestic cattle.
If you are a rancher, that is you run cattle 365 days a year on annual grass with no, or virtually no, supplementary feeding,then Allen Savory is the man to hire. His ‘Savory System’ works, but, of course, the basic requirements of grass and water and suitable topography to be fitted into his ‘wagon wheels’ needs to exist from the start. You might need am awful lot of pumps and piping as well as the fencing. I never heard of him regenerating land that was not basically suitable for ranching to start with. Until the recent article on this site I was also unaware that he had become a ‘desert reclamation’ expert. For me Willis is the far greater expert since he recognises the curse of the goat.
How honest is the man? His claim to have killed,was it, 40,000 elephants, which he now regrets is pure theatre. It is on all fours with a clerk in the Defence Department apologising for starting the war in Iraq. Perhaps what he means is that he supported the action at the time and that it is now politically correct to take the blame. There is no blame. The culling, which with only a short break went on for two decades, was essential for the welfare of the elephants. I have no intention of carrying that argument through since it needs people with real expertise in the area and they tend to keep their own counsel these days because of the dreaded consensus..
The WWF made several projects that resulted in the killing (or culling, as they call it) of many thousands of elephants, rhinoceros and hippopotamuses. One was done by a former Rhodesian mercenary by the name of Clem Coetze in 1986, that “culled” 44.000 elephants and got a medal from DeHaes, a WWF director. In 1986 the WWf launched its campaign “Sae Nell, the elephant” and set up a camp in the border with Rwanda and sent there huge amounts of paramilitary equipment: machineguns, bazookas, non recoil cannons, hand grenades, assault rifles for “saving the elephant”. However, the elephants to be saved were in Murchison Park, 1000 miles from the WWF camp. The area where the WWF had taken so much armament was the refuge of the Rwanda Patriotic Front, the rebels that launched the worse and more horrible mass killing of human beings known by mankind.
Back in 1975, the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation, create by WWF U.S. president Russel Train, (later nominated as chief of the EPA!) hired Ian Parker, a licensed white hunter to kill practically all elephants in Rwanda.The argument was that Rwandans could not protect simultaneously the mountain gorillas and the elephants, so the elephants “had to go”. One of Diane Fossey’s assistants told the press that the reason was that the land where the elephants lived was ideal for pyrethrum growing, from where the “non polluting” insecticide piretrin was taken. A few years later much cheaper synthetic piretrin was discovered and the pyrethrum crops stopped to be profitable.
A similar fate suffered the rhinoceros in Zimbabwe. During its Operation Stronghold in 1986, the WWF paid mercenaries to kill the last herd of black rhinoceros in the world for making room for cattle ranches in the Valley of Zimbabwe under a plan by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that was restructuring Zimbabwe’s economy. The plan was provide meat for the European Economic Community. After thousands of rhinoceros and elephants, along with 5000 buffalos were killed, in 1989 in the cattle fair in Bulawayo the cattle was discovered to be infected with foot and mouth disease and the entire program was cancelled. Zimbabwe was left without elephants and rhinoceros, a heavy burden on its shoulders, and a dictator that still rules there.
Mr Savory surely knew about all this, as everybody else in Africa.
Just a passing thought…
Allen Savory’s apparent sweeping inclusion of every arid spot on earth as victims of some man-induced desertification did ring a false note. Yes, even the Sahara had been more hospitable at one point in history, according to the proxies and evidence left to us, but there is no evidence that it’s current condition is in any way an artifact of man. The same can be said of most of the areas he indicated.
However, I got the impression that he was speaking very, very carefully in order to not alienate “believers” or “deniers” (let it be said now that I am very firmly in the denier camp, if it includes people who do not believe that CO2 or any human activity is driving the climate on Earth…whether or not we’re driving the climate changes witness on every planet and moon with an atmosphere—well, I don’t think so, but…). I got a very strong impression that he thought that the idea was more important than complete accuracy; and look at his audience: these were not scientists, after all. And the people he’s got to convince, of course, are politicians. It would be very easy to lose the audience, and the chance at selling what does appear to be a useful idea for certain parts of the planet, by getting too technical and bogging down in the details.
His presentation was concise, interesting, and if it gets some of the AGW zombies to actually do something useful, I don’t really care if he claims that we ARE responsible for the 2 degree C warming on Mars…he’ll still have achieved something worth while.
Dr. Ball: Your criticism of Savory’ presentation seems excessive. Climate change has little to do with the central tenets of Savory presentation: Despite conventional wisdom, appropriate use of grazing animals can reverse desertification in some locations. Significant questions still remain:
1) What has been causing desertification: 1) inappropriate use of grazing animals, 2) natural variation in precipitation/climate, 3) some other factor, or 4) excessive publicity of changes in a few locations.
2) What fraction of the land damaged by desertification can be restored to more “normal” and productive conditions using his methods.
I don’t remember Savory making any quantitative claims as to how much desertification has or will contribute to climate change. Where his methods work, they can eliminate whatever contribution desertification does make to climate change. Even if that contribution is trivial, his methods will still have reversed desertification and increased food supply – a valuable contribution.
The natural variation in deserts you discuss (Glacial/Pluvials to Interglacial/Interpluvial) occurs on timescales much to long (tens of thousands of years) to be relevant to the current problem of desertification.
However, it is interesting to note that the desertification of the Sahara about 6000 years ago was a naturally-occurring climate change disaster whose cause (orbital change) is well understood. Unfortunately, today’s climate models are unable to reproduce this disaster.
@J Broadbent — You say “my experience suggests the best of the con-men generally lead with a confession of guilt.” Apparently you have never met a Wall Street Banker.
“Savory refers to the rock paintings of herd animals in the central Sahara.”
…and magic mushroom man, whose head is buzzing out like a big bumble bee:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v297/warmachine82/Tassili4.jpg?t=1231622457
Allan’s Savory’s thesis was quite simple.
Eradication of carnivores has allowed herbivores to graze in large open spaces for as long as they want, and whenever herbivores do so, they cause desertification of grasslands. Modern ranching allows herbivores to do this very thing, or it confines them for so long in one place that the grasslands are grossly overgrazed and die out. In order to stop desertification of grasslands, modern ranchers need to be a proxy for carnivores, which is to make sure that herbivores keep tightly bunched up and always moving.
Almost everything else Savoy said was surplusage. His CO2 commentary was surplusage. His overpopulation commentary was surplusage. To critique Savory’s thesis by critiquing his surplusage, was disingenuous.
This is an interesting photograhic presentation of what can be achieved by grazing management.
http://www.sba.asn.au/sba/pdf/BioCCS-rangeland-management.pdf
All the academic discussion in the world can’t nullify results like these in my mind.
I think Savory’s message is very valid and puts the focus on local climates, but it dos not deny natural climate change. It is the global average that is misleading. It is the combination of landscape changes plus solar and ocean cycles that have caused most of the climate change. From a biologist’s perspective all organisms react locally. Always. And when we focus on local climate change we quickly realize global warming is not global at all. Changes to the surface always change the air temperature. In some places the maximum rise and the minimums fall. Those are often areas where the land has dried out most often due to over grazing, loss of vegetation and disruption of the hydrology. Other places the maximum has declined and the minimum rose. That is most often associated with urbanization or irrigation. Those examples clearly show that local landscape change can overwhelm CO2 effects and clearly account for climate change on spatial and temporal scales that CO2 driven models can not.Likewise water vapor, droughts and floods are driven mostly by El Nino cycles and clearly account for climate change on spatial and temporal scales that CO2 driven models can not. The list of local dynamics is much longer and to truly understand climate change we need to shift the focus to more local and regional perspective. In that sense Savory’s message is powerful. The criticisms seems to be that Savory keeps the focus on humans but from the perspective of holistic grazing that is where the focus must be placed. We should not be afraid of blaming local climate change on humans when it is real. The Dust Bowl was a combination of human and natural cycles, and has nothing to do with CO2, and it is that combination that best explain climate change.
Gail Combs says:
March 25, 2013 at 11:33 am
Someone asked for verification of Allan Savory work. rpielke kindly provided it on the original thread: Here is a paper that presents an analysis of one of the locations discussed in his talk
Beltrán-Przekurat, A., R.A. Pielke Sr., D.P.C. Peters, K.A. Snyder, and A. Rango, 2008: Modelling the effects of historical vegetation change on near surface atmosphere in the northern Chihuahuan Desert. J. Arid Environments, 72:10, 1897-1910, doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2008.05.012.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/r-2973.pdf
Thanks Gail… I see this is largely climate/vegetation modelling showing the effects of vegetation changes on albedo, soils moisture etc … I was rather looking for some good field trials with control areas and detailed records of seasonal changes
Thanks for your well thought out and well presented post. I hoped someone would write a post such as this because I thought the optimistic fervor for Savory’s methods were overdone. Now, it is possible to examine Savory’s presentation and Ball’s presentation and make scientifically based
judgments. Good work and thank you.
Studies of temperatures in Arizona and Mexico have shown that lost vegetation from severe overgrazing and other practices had caused the soil surface to dry. This drying process increased temperatures by as much as 7°F compared to adjacent lands that had not been so mistreated. 20. For example Balling, R. C., Jr (1998) Impacts of land degradation on historical temperature records from the Sonoran Desert. Climatic Change, 40, 669–681
“It is not long since radical environmentalists like Jeremy Rifkin were blaming cattle for most of the evils of western society…” the radical environmentalists and militant vegans have never let up on that fallacy.
As for acheiving radical changes in a desert environment, there are areas along the coast in the Pacific Northwest where sand dunes have become “endangered” by humans’ activities decades ago to pin them in place by planting grasses. Plant the grass, some of it dies due to lack of water, so plant more grass. Eventually the grasses were able to capture enough water to become self sustaining. The dead grass decomposed, converting the sand to soil.
Seeds from less hardy plants were able to sprout and grow, and their deaths further enhanced the soil. Now some of that former coastal desert has become marshland and forest.
And wouldn’t you know, now people are whining about the loss of the sand dunes they complained about burying their beach cottages.
So yes, it’s possible to convert land that was dry, empty desert for thousands of years into forest, just by starting with planting some hardy grasses. There only has to be enough moisture in the air to condense on the plants at night. As more and different plants grow they change the near ground level climate.
Another effect such change has is the land downwind doesn’t get the moisture the former desert once let pass by on the breeze.
As for overpopulation, if the land surface of Earth was covered in a four level building, with 50% of the middle two floors devoted to living space, the other 50% for things like hallways, green spaces, HVAC, water, electric, sewer etc, and each human given 200 square feet of space…
That would hold around (if I remember the math correctly) 270 trillion people. The entire top floor could be for raising food, bottom level for whatever doesn’t need sunlight. Want to have more room? Put the entire human population into Texas and every human alive would have nearly 2,000 square feet to rattle around in. The Earth’s land area would hold around 81 billion 2,000 square foot units on a single level. Haven’t touched the ocean space at all.
What those numbers do is point out that science fiction depictions of super populated planets, be it Earth, Trantor, Coruscant, etc. have got it all wrong. 100 level world girdling building? Better have your story include 13,500 trillion inhabitants (using only 50% of the levels) if you are going to have them constantly packed like a Japanese commuter train during rush hour. Is Star Wars’ Coruscant supposed to be covered in mega scrapers? Does it have a quadrillion inhabitants to justify so much floor space?
There was this short lived TV series a few years ago titled “The Event”. Turned out the premise was some aliens who looked like humans were planning to move their entire population of around 2 billion to Earth to escape an impending supernova and they had to kill off most of Earth’s population to ‘make room’. Big time Hollywood math fail, as usual.
I’d love to read a good SciFi tale set on a world with realistic population numbers for real high density living, whether the entire world is covered by buildings or a few billion are packed into one small spot like a 30 level building covering Texas.
Dr. Ball, a great analysis! Thank you!
From Mahmood 2010 IMPACTS OF LAND USE/LAND COVER CHANGE ON CLIMATE
AND FUTURE RESEARCH PRIORITIES
We also conclude that a regional focus is much more appropriate in order to better understand the human effects on climate, including LULCC. It is the regional responses, not a global average, that produce drought, floods, and other societally important climate impacts.
davidgmills says on March 25, 2013 at 6:23pm:
..
Almost everything else Savoy said was surplusage. His CO2 commentary was surplusage. His overpopulation commentary was surplusage. To critique Savory’s thesis by critiquing his surplusage, was disingenuous.
—
I agree that even though most of the points in Dr. Ball’s article seem valid, they do not really discuss Savory’s main points, and slightly misrepresent his assumptions and even his methods.
To be more precise (this also addresses some comments), what Dr. Ball refers to as “Savory’s method” is not “adding cows”, nor merely making changes in animal husbandry, nor is it “rotational grazing”. Savory does not claim rotational grazing to be something new or something that he invented (in his system, grazing is just one of several major tools). Neither does he claim that animal husbandry would change natural deserts into pastures, he talks about reversing desertification (which Savory thinks is a major root cause underlying many social, economical and ecological problems)
What he does claim (even though this is less apparent if one only listens to his TED talk), is that:
1) When formulating policies and making decisions, one needs to use a framework capable of dealing with complex “soft” systems (human organizations) AND complex “natural” systems (soils, plants, animals and the ecosystem processes involved), usually both at the same time. He has created one such decision making framework by adapting some best practices of military planning to biological systems, and calls it Holistic Management.
2) Mimicking nature at the scale and frequency required to reverse desertification is only possible with properly managed livestock.
People appear to be focusing much more on the second point, sometimes oversimplifying it, or saying that “duh, rotational grazing is nothing new, nothing to see here, move along”. However it is the first point that is the crucial one in “Savory’s method” – even though he does not discuss it much in his talks.
http://www.savoryinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Good_Governance_2007_20_1.pdf
This paper discusses some possible uses of the Holistic Management framework in state-level governance (it’s not just a framework for “managing cattle” though it can certainly be used for that as well). The whole paper is worth a read (there are also some good insights about problems of governance common to most countries), but pages 27-29 give a concrete example of the differences between conventional framework and Savory’s holistic framework (it may be necessary to read the entire paper to fully understand the details).
By the way, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLzqJF5GhnQ
is a nice and presentation by Hans Rosling – creator of the Gapminder tool.
In it he uses Gapminder to analyze various issues, including perhaps the funniest debunking of the “overpopulation” myth I’ve seen.
A brilliant man – however, near the end of his speech (starting from 48:30 to be more exact) he says certain things relating to “climate change” which many WUWT regulars might regard as ignorant to say the least. Does this somehow invalidate what he has done with Gapminder? No? Then why does the same not apply to Savory? Surplusage is surplusage is surplusage, IMHO.
Anssi V. says:
March 26, 2013 at 5:10 pm
Anssi, thanks for the link. I tried to read that bafflegab and flat gave up.
Seriously. There’s more BS in there than there is anything worthwhile. In any case, it follows Willis’s Rule of Holistic Solutions, which states
Most holistic solutions turn out to be halfasstic solutions.
I did read through his description of “Holistic Management” framework. He says;
Anssi, you claim the framework is “not just a framework for managing cattle” … but since one of its three main additions is to the universal framework is “grazing and animal impact” I fear it won’t be much use in managing anything but cattle.
When we take that out, what’s left? Well, your always-helpful “holistic goal”. And some “filtering questions” that ensure that you’re not going off course …
Really? That’s his brilliant plan? Do what we usually do but add a “holistic goal” and some “filtering questions” and we’re all good?
Color me totally unimpressed, Anssi. The man may indeed have some good ideas for reversing desertification … but beyond that he’s just waving his hands and saying “holistic” and “filtering questions” as if they were magical incantations.
w.
Willis, thanks for your comments.
I understand and to some extent even agree with your point about that article containing “more BS in there than there is anything worthwhile” – though, as most topics in the article deal with “soft” systems (human organizations, referring to his definitions on page 5), I would personally prefer to cut the guy some slack and say that a lot of things are “debatable”, not necessarily “BS”. Certainly there are numerous factual errors as well – guess I’m lucky to have a good “ear passthrough” filter to get past them without too much annoyance 🙂
Unfortunately, as much as I would wish to, I cannot send 10000 super-intelligent Willis clones around the world to positively influence the present idiotic policies and power structures. There is no doubt that the world would become a much better place (no sarcasm in there, I genuinely admire your work a lot). No, I’m afraid one just has to deal with the fact that most people currently involved with making policies, or making decisions of any significance, are not able to think well. This is partly because most have never been taught or learned to do so, and partly because they don’t really have to: Their salaries and careers do not depend on the quality of their thinking, actually if they happen to be civil servants, they are likely to be better off (career-wise) if they hide their ability to think, and go with the flow. So we get a steady flow of policies largely motivated by (for example) personal careers, personal greed, personal ambition and popular ideologies like eco-fanaticism — any deeper goals and objectives supposedly guiding policymaking are typically made or at least largely influenced by the marketing or PR department of the organization in question, so they’re useless for practical use. Am I exaggerating too much? 🙂
What has this got to do with the holistic framework? It is an attempt to create a workable “quality standard” for policymaking and decision making. It tries to force the decision/policy makers to actually think more deeply what they are doing. This, IMHO, has certain similarities to the work of The Foundation and Center for Critical Thinking (which has at times been mentioned in Judith Curry’s blog), in that the Center attempts to create workable “quality standards” for thinking. I find them complementing each other rather well (actually combining the two is something I’m personally interested in).
Perhaps the holistic framework will prove to be a failed attempt, but at least Savory is seriously and actively trying to do something constructive about what he perceives to be a root cause underlying many serious problems. Certainly, if one sees nothing wrong with the current way of how humans think and make decisions / policies (for some reason “EPA” and “IPCC” come to mind..), then there is no need to look any further into Savory’s work. If on the other hand one sees room for improvement, then the constructive approach would probably be to offer constructive criticism, with the intention to make a better framework, instead of trying to shoot it down.
A couple of more clarifications and replies to Willis’ comments about holistic framework:
– Holisticgoal (more recently called holistic context) is a short descriptive statement about what one (=the managed whole in question) really wants, and what one values most in life. It has a certain defined structure. As the name implies, it is intended to provide a well defined context for shorter term goals and objectives. It needs to be comprehensive, but short and concise enough to “fit inside the head” so that one may actually use it, for example with the filter questions. There is a sample Holistic context on the last page of the article I linked in my previous post, it’s a draft holistic context for an entire country but still fits on a single a4.
– The seven filter questions are basically a checklist – the idea is to make sure certain crucial aspects common to all decisions have been considered, and that the decision is in line with the holistic context.
– The “two additional tools” is not the whole story – what Savory said exactly was “Briefly, the holistic framework enhances the universal one with three main additions” – there is more, but Savory chose to mention only “tools that make reversal of desertification possible in the world’s seasonal rainfall environments” – which are the additions that are most relevant to “Good Governance in Africa”
– According to Savory, the holistic framework is simply adapted from a military planning procedure from Sandhurst Military College. I’ve been so far living under the impression that such schools do not teach magical incantations, but perhaps I’m just ignorant..:)
Hope this clarifies, all the best,
Anssi
Anssi, thanks for all of your comments, which were full of interesting points.
And thanks for your links to the Savory Institute documents, one of which says:
They’ve trademarked the phrase “holistic context”? Really? So I can no longer write “holistic context”, I now have to write “holistic context™”?
That alone should tell you they’re blowing smoke, Anssi.
My problem is this. “Holistic” means nothing or everything depending on the context. Mostly it means nothing.
For example, I can stand up out of my chair. I can stand up smoothly or clumsily, I can stand up quickly or slowly.
But can I stand up out of my chair “holistically”?
Please tell me how. I don’t know how to do that.
The dictionary is no help.
That’s great, but if I can’t stand up holistically, how can I manage holistically?
I suppose it’s theoretically possible to manage unholistically. You just ignore the fact that things are connected to each other. Do you know one person who manages that way? I don’t. Good managers know that the first rule is “Everything is connected to everything else. Which in turn connects to everything else. Except when it doesn’t”.
I fear “holistic” is just the latest shibboleth for a politically correct world, just like “sustainable”. I mean, the only thing better than a sustainable solution is a holistic sustainable solution, right? My favorite line from the Savory Institute documents so far is:
I mean, that’s too good to touch, any comment would defile the beautiful logic of that.
Anssi, I think Savory’s ideas at the core are solid. He’s saying the same thing as the farmers and ranchers on this thread will tell you, or as the Polyface Farm people will tell you, or as any decent biologist will tell you.
Ecosystems become both more productive and more stable with increasing biodiversity.
My problem is that he’s taken the claims about six bridges too far. It’s not magic. It won’t make much difference to CO2. It won’t make the barchan dunes of the Sahara suddenly flower. It’s nothing new to the best farmers throughout history, they’ve always kept animals in the mix.
And sadly, overselling his ideas devalues the underlying excellent message, which is that wise land management for maximum production involves a carefully selected and utilized mix of plants and animals.
Many thanks,
w.
I have come to the conclusion that we all have a little blame global warming and its consequences and guilt even more politicians who do not slow down.
Thanks Willis, as always you provide very interesting observations and ask good questions. I’ll try to answer at least some of them to the best of my ability, but I increasingly feel that I’m nearing the limits of my knowledge and starting to venture too much into speculation and guesswork – therefore I feel that it would be better if Savory could answer questions himself. I’m just trying to clarify what I think can easily clarified – and that is indeed starting to reach its limits.
As to the trademarking of the phrase “holistic context”, I would probably agree with you wholeheartedly, if I had not watched the steady dilution of the term “permaculture” over the past 15 years or so. It used to be a term defined by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the late seventies; Mollison attempted to trademark it several times, but failed. I remember you just recently mentioning some nice word for a concept that keeps expanding and expanding in its meaning? Can’t find the post/comment now, I think it was mentioned somewhere in your recent comments.. Anyway, “permaculture” is nowadays precisely such a thing. If you look at its wikipedia page, you can see that just about anything big and small, as long as it can be somehow associated with human living, can be called “permaculture”, and it keeps expanding and expanding. Perhaps most disturbingly, the whole “permaculture movement” appears to have been given an “embrace and extend” treatment by the eco-vegan-hippie crowds. There is now, for example, “parental permaculture” and even “vegan permaculture” explicitly mentioned on the wiki page. “Vegan permanent culture” – what an oxymoron… The saddest thing is, this dilution of the concept has severely undervalued the underlying excellent message, which in the case of “permaculture” also happens to be (I can quote your words directly in here) – “that wise land management for maximum production involves a carefully selected and utilized mix of plants and animals.”
So my personal take on the “holistic context” trademark issue is that they are not blowing smoke – Savory is simply trying to minimize the risk of dilution of its meaning. Perhaps it is indeed an unwise strategy that will backfire (like it did backfire in your case), but the risk of dilution is very real – especially since Savory has decided to continue using the word “holistic” – one of the words that attract the new-agey/environmental/hippie crowds like honey attracts bees – I personally think that the use of the word “holistic” was/is a big mistake precisely because of these new agey connotations (but then again they were not that much into “holistic” when Savory thought of proper names). Kind of ironic – my understanding of Savory’s original intention is that he has wanted to keep a reference to Smuts (as a kind of recognition of his work I suppose), but it turned out to be the law of unintended consequences biting back…
Which brings us to the meaning of “holistic”. I’m afraid I’m not able to tell you how to stand up out of your chair “holistically”, just as I’m not able to tell you how to do it “coldly” – or perhaps I could but the meaning would be very much subject to interpretation then. There probably is a fancy linguistic term for it which I’m ignorant of – all I can only say that these adverbs are (to my knowledge) not applicable in that particular context. If you insist, I would suggest contacting the (modern) Dance faculty of some prestigious Theatre Academy – they might be able to show you how do it 😉
What I can do, is to (at least try to) clarify what he actually means when saying that “A holistic context™ is required for management to be holistic.”
I think what he means, if put a bit more precisely – at least this is the only way I can make any logical sense of it – sounds a lot less new agey:
“The (actual) use of a (properly formed) Holistic_Context is a necessary, though not sufficient, requirement for management to be regarded as using Savory’s_methodology”
where
– I replaced “managing holistically” by “Savory’s_methodology” (as it in this context refers to a decision making framework called “Holistic Management” developed by Savory, described e.g. in here)
– I replaced holistic context™ by “Holistic_Context” (which refers to a descriptive statement that has a well defined format and role in Savory’s_methodology)
The replacements are an attempt to be more precise, to avoid certain unnecessary and distracting connotations, and underscores are meant to emphasize that these refer to a specific term, even if expressed as a two-word phrase.
At least one reason why Savory keeps on nagging about Holistic_Context, is that (according to him) many range scientists keep on claiming that they have tested “Savory’s methods” while not having actually done so; instead they have (according to Savory) simply tested some or other form of rotational grazing, without following Savory’s_Methodology.
The importance of Holistic_Context in his methodology is somewhat difficult to explain without examples; I actually tried to write an example comparing the results of actual filter questions to an example decision case with three different contexts, but it almost tripled the size of this post so I left it out – you do not seem that interested in the specifics of Savory anyway. Maybe I’ll convert it to a spreadsheet for some later use when I have more time.
But yes, to sum up, the use of the term “holistic” is altogether unfortunate – you are quite right in observing that it has gone down the same drain as “sustainable” (though not by Savory’s actions). I did get a good laugh about “[t]he only thing better than a sustainable solution is a holistic sustainable solution” – so true 🙂
Last but not least –
Willis wrote:
“He’s saying the same thing as the farmers and ranchers on this thread will tell you, or as the Polyface Farm people will tell you, or as any decent biologist will tell you.
Ecosystems become both more productive and more stable with increasing biodiversity.”
That is all quite true – no doubt about it. What I might question is the relevance of it: Knowledge of something does not necessarily imply acting out that knowledge.
Numerous martial arts experts possess theoretical and practical know-how about how to kill a person instantly. It would be insane to claim that mere possession of such a know-how would automatically make someone actually kill other people – almost everyone understands that without giving it a second thought. There are many conditions, convictions, instincts, rules, regulations and sanctions, that are preventing (most) actual deaths.
Numerous farmers and ranchers (and perhaps many biologists) do possess theoretical and practical know-how about how to create and maintain stable and productive ecosystems. Would it be logical to claim that mere possession of such a know-how would automatically make them put it into good use? Farmers all around the world, especially small scale farmers, are increasingly in trouble with a growing bulk of policies, rules, regulations and accompanying sanctions to enforce them. Gail Combs posted some good examples of these in here. Joel Salatin of the Polyface Farm has written a book about it. And even if farmers would somehow manage to avoid the bureaucratic pitfalls, they may still have considerable economic incentives to act against their better knowledge and will, just to make the ends meet. Meanwhile, the likes of Monsanto are allowed, sometimes invited, to influence even nutritional recommendations (for the worse) to create markets for their products.
Therefore I’m convinced, that the biggest and ugliest “environmental problems” are not to be found in the oceans or in the atmosphere, nor even in the soil. They are found in the rules, regulations, policies, laws and treaties – or more precisely, in the processes, practices and structures that are creating, maintaining and enforcing them.
I believe that 1) Open and transparent science, 2) free flow of information and knowledge (including transparency of policy-making organizations), and 3) critical thinking — are crucial for bringing about any significant change in those processes, practices and structures. I also believe that Holistic Management (Savory’s_methodology) has some very good potential to improve some of those processes and practices. That, IMHO, is its biggest promise, and the main reason why I continue to be very interested in its development.
All the best,
Anssi