High profile German food chemist Udo Pollmer here at German public radio brings the following video to our attention.
In the video biologist and public speaker Allan Savory tells an audience how climate change and desertification has a lot more to do with the elimination of roaming herd animals over grasslands and vegetated areas over the 20th century.
Another tragedy of consensus science
Tragically, it used to be consensus science that the desertification of vast areas of land on all continents was caused by the over-grazing by herds of animals. As they chomped on the vegetation and moved on, they left the soil barren and exposed to evaporation and wind erosion. Animals that had lived there for thousands of years were suddenly deemed by consensus science to be the culprits.
Flawed wildlife management cause as much climate change as fossil fuels!
Savory recalls ordering the destruction of 40,000 elephants in the mid 20th century in order to protect vegetated land. Mass culling of wildlife was the answer to spreading desertification. Much to his horror, he later realized he had made a terrible mistake. The land on which the destroyed elephants inhabited later rapidly deteriorated and became barren – thus even wreaking havoc on the macro-climate.
It turned out that roaming herds, with the dung and urine they left behind, were essential elements in preserving green vegetation and preventing desertification. He concludes that in order for the planet to survive, it needs more land grazing animal herds and not less. At the 18:48 mark he says:
What we are doing globally is causing climate change as much as I believe fossil fuels, and maybe more than fossil fuels. But worse than that it is causing hunger, poverty, violence and social breakdown and war.”
Savory then notes that reversing the damage to the ecosystem can be done at a very low cost. And by taking the measures he recommends, it will lead to taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and putting it back into the ground:
If we do what I am showing you here, we can take enough carbon out of the atmosphere and safely store it in the grasslands soil for thousands of years, and if we do that on just half of the world’s grasslands that I’ve shown you, we can take us back to pre-industrial levels while feeding people.”
What’s interesting is that if the poor management of wildlife (particularly reducing grazing herds of animals) has led to half of the 20th century climate change, and the oceans and solar activity have played significant roles as well – as a large body of science shows – then there really isn’t much left to be chalked up to CO2. Increasingly it is becoming obvious that some climate scientists have obsessed with CO2 while ignoring the remaining universe of factors – see here, here, here and here.
Clearly our understanding of how climate and ecosystems function is far less than some “experts” would have us believe.
Ah total, unadulterated, weapons-grade moron at the German “conservative” paper FAZ really believes
a) Polar bears need ice to survive
b) Something dramatic happens with that ice.
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wissen/erde-klima/eis-am-nordpol-schmilzt-und-raubt-eisbaeren-ihren-lebensraum-14438205.html?google_editors_picks=true
Where do they get these people?
Turns out it’s a biologist.
http://www.faz.net/redaktion/joachim-mueller-jung-11104385.html
Well eat your heart out University of Cologne. You’re handing out degrees like cookies obviously.
So we believe in global warming now?
You do realize that there has been a Roman Warm Time, followed by the Dark Ages, followed by the MWP, followed by the LIA, and that we’ve been warming since the minimum of the LIA 1750 and that warming is therefore news that is, wait a moment, 250 years old?
Comment clearly illustrates typical dense-headedness of alarmists. Almost all skeptics acknowledge warming over 20th century. The debate is about the cause of it, and where it’s headed – not the existence.
DirkH:
Does that mean that biologists need ice to survive?
Should we strand them on melting ice to see what happens?
Biologists do not survive on ice. They survive on warmunist government grants.
I don’t believe that they need ice to survive, but find their martinis unpleasant if the supply is curtailed.
“Should we strand them on melting ice to see what happens?”
That’s right, feed the cute cuddly polie bears. 🙂
This is a conclusion coming from analyses of effects from changes in grazing animals, yet another factor affecting climates over long periods.
It demonstrates again the myopia of CO2 obsession, which Salby also documents in his textbook on Atmospheric Physics, a totally different field of inquiry.
Thanks again to this website for making Salby’s book available. My review of it is here: https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/06/18/fearless-physics-from-dr-salby/
My recent post went missing
Allan Savory seems to be a public speaker first and a biologist not so much.
His ideas got an airing in 2013:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/25/the-climate-mechanisms-of-world-deserts-and-limitations-in-allan-savorys-thesis/
That one has some links to others on the topic.
——————————————————
I do agree with the title of this post.
Watched Savory’s TED talk and fear that I just wasted 22 minutes.
I only wasted 3 minutes 🙂
Thanks to Don and Andy I didn’t need to waste any minutes at all!