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Desertification Solution

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  • #16
    Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
    At present I do not have access to accurate records, but volcanic eruptions can cause peaks in methane that subside.
    Thanks, but that wouldn't explain the timing - at least i don't think it would.
    "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

    "Forgiveness is the way of love." Gary Chapman

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    • #17
      Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
      There's a detailed criticism, with citations, of this guy here:
      https://www.theguardian.com/environm...arming-miracle

      I don't know enough about most of the claims to evaluate it, but there is an exception: there is no possible way that expanding grasslands alone could take us back to preindustrial CO2 levels on its own. There simply isn't enough land on Earth that could support grasslands for that to work. And if someone's sloppy enough to hype an impossibility, my experience has been that that's not the only thing they're sloppy about.
      Why not? Soil reaching pre-1950's depths is considerably deeper than most modern grassland seems to be - and reversing great swaths of desertification should reverse CO2 levels over time, correct? My understanding it that it gets contained in the soil - as that depth grows, why wouldn't the levels of CO2 contained also grow?

      I don't recall this being part of his argument - I'll double check.
      "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

      "Forgiveness is the way of love." Gary Chapman

      My Personal Blog

      My Novella blog (Current Novella Begins on 7/25/14)

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      • #18
        Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
        There's a detailed criticism, with citations, of this guy here:
        https://www.theguardian.com/environm...arming-miracle

        I don't know enough about most of the claims to evaluate it, but there is an exception: there is no possible way that expanding grasslands alone could take us back to preindustrial CO2 levels on its own. There simply isn't enough land on Earth that could support grasslands for that to work. And if someone's sloppy enough to hype an impossibility, my experience has been that that's not the only thing they're sloppy about.
        Found it at 22:00 - he cites 'people who know more about carbon than he does.'

        Talk ends at 22:19.


        So you are dismissing on a citation, mentioned, and not on the actual argument he presented. For that you argue via weblink. (Not a violation given my parameters).

        Sloppy describes your critique perfectly well here. I'd see your point if you attacked a posit of his - but a citation? That's just looking for reasons to dismiss.

        If it's valid for you to dismiss on the 'sloppiness' of mentioning a citation, then isn't it equally valid to dismiss your critique based on the sloppiness of dismissing on a citation instead of an actual posit?
        "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

        "Forgiveness is the way of love." Gary Chapman

        My Personal Blog

        My Novella blog (Current Novella Begins on 7/25/14)

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        • #19
          Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
          No, for those competent in the English language it is ˈ/meTHˌān/

          Apparently you are an exception.
          I was asking a question, Shuny - I wasn't making a statement. The guy in the video pronounced it that way. I thought it was odd, and wondered if it was regional or....

          Sheeeeesh
          The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

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          • #20
            Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
            You really are a scree-um.
            And both kooky and spooky and just a wee bit ooky

            I'm always still in trouble again

            "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
            "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
            "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

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            • #21
              Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
              And both kooky and spooky and just a wee bit ooky
              But is your house REALLY a museum?
              The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

              Comment


              • #22
                Originally posted by Teallaura View Post
                Ether behave yourself or leave my thread - I didn't call you names.
                You behave yourself. You started it by directly mocking me about my "research". Don't throw stones when you're in a glasshouse and don't be pathetically sanctimonious about it. I think we're done here anyway.
                "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

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                • #23
                  Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                  But is your house REALLY a museum?
                  [*Looks around*]

                  Well, um... er... kind of

                  I'm always still in trouble again

                  "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                  "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                  "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Originally posted by Teallaura View Post
                    Found it at 22:00 - he cites 'people who know more about carbon than he does.'

                    Talk ends at 22:19.


                    So you are dismissing on a citation, mentioned, and not on the actual argument he presented. For that you argue via weblink. (Not a violation given my parameters).

                    Sloppy describes your critique perfectly well here. I'd see your point if you attacked a posit of his - but a citation? That's just looking for reasons to dismiss.

                    If it's valid for you to dismiss on the 'sloppiness' of mentioning a citation, then isn't it equally valid to dismiss your critique based on the sloppiness of dismissing on a citation instead of an actual posit?
                    I'm dismissing it based on my knowledge of carbon sequestration, not from the citation i mentioned. So let's go through why it's impossible. How much does grassland sequester when it's mature? "Measured and modelled rates of C sequestration range from 0 to > 8 Mg C ha−1 yr−1." - https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/...7.2004.01201.x (Yes, it's a citation; no, i'm not going to go out and measure it myself, so a citation is what you're getting.)

                    So, we can say you have to to be very generous to assume the whole idea would do anything much at all. But we'll be that generous and go with 5Mg/hectare annually, on the high end of the range. There's 4.88 billion hectares of desert in the world; i'll be generous again and call it 5 billion. So if we converted every inch of that to grassland (now that's excessively generous), we get 25 x 10^15 grams.

                    Global carbon emissions are over 10 Gigatonnes. So that's over 10 x 10^15 grams. So you might cancel out our CO2 emissions if you convert fully half the world's desert to grasslands. Won't cancel out the methane, CFCs, land use changes, etc., so may not help as much with the climate as we'd like, but would be huge for ocean acidification. In any case, you'd need to more than cancel out emissions to actually get levels back down on any significant time frame. So, if we want to get them back down to preindustrial in under 2 centuries, we need to convert all the desert.

                    How likely is that? Not at all. Even if this actually makes some of the desert green, it simply doesn't rain in the Atacama. Now amount of goats is going to change that. Same with the interior of Saudi Arabia and large areas of the Sahara. So the idea is simply nonsensical - the fact that he won't do basic math and check his own claims before making them is, as i've said, sloppy.

                    I'm not sure why you went off on me for saying that, but in the future, i'd appreciate the benefit of a doubt. I'm pretty careful about not putting my 2 cents in unless i have some idea what i'm talking about.

                    Or, to keep with the theme, i'm not altogether ooky.
                    "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                      I was asking a question, Shuny - I wasn't making a statement. The guy in the video pronounced it that way. I thought it was odd, and wondered if it was regional or....

                      Sheeeeesh
                      Savory is native to Zimbabwe - that is probably why he pronounces it that way.
                      "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

                      "Forgiveness is the way of love." Gary Chapman

                      My Personal Blog

                      My Novella blog (Current Novella Begins on 7/25/14)

                      Quill Sword

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
                        I'm dismissing it based on my knowledge of carbon sequestration, not from the citation i mentioned. So let's go through why it's impossible. How much does grassland sequester when it's mature? "Measured and modelled rates of C sequestration range from 0 to > 8 Mg C ha−1 yr−1." - https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/...7.2004.01201.x (Yes, it's a citation; no, i'm not going to go out and measure it myself, so a citation is what you're getting.)
                        I have no issue with you using citations - I actually asked because i don't understand why this should be true over time.

                        HOWEVER - sauce works equally well on goose and gander. My objection to you using a citation to dismiss has to do with the poor argumentation it represents. The argument he makes is that livestock can be used to reverse desertification - the citation he gives about carbon sequestering supports ONLY the argument that 'desertification is a bad thing and we should do something about it'/ He EXPLICITLY states it's not his field of expertise and that he is relying on others he believes 'know a lot more about carbon' than he does. This is an extremely poor basis to toss out argumentation based on both evidence and his actual expertise (biologist).

                        It does, however, perfectly parallel your own critique - you explicitly state that desertification et al is not your field of expertise and that you are relying on the work of others (via weblink) to refute Savory's work.

                        Carbon sequestration is a non-issue for the argument itself - whether or not carbon will get stored in the soil isn't the basis for his argument that intensive grazing (with resultant pooping and trampling) mimics the natural cycle of large herbivores driving into herds by predators that then move on so to not eat the aforementioned poop. It only provides additional reasoning - that I would normally assume you accept - to try and reverse desertification. heck, it doesn't even specifically support his means of doing so.

                        I will point out that you were one of the people fairly appalled by my idea that I was best served by evaluating what I knew - political behavior - than to try to master a field I had no experience with - meteorology - in determining who I should believe about global whatever we're calling it now. You seem to be applying the same exact methodology I did - but I do not see the validity of dismissing on an insignificant (to the argument proper) issue - which would be like me dismissing because scientists in the had fields haven't a clue what the difference between conservative and liberal is (and they usually don't once we take it out of vernacular and into jargon).

                        I see both terms grossly misused constantly (democracy gets even worse treatment) yet that only tells me they are ignorant of MY field - not that they are sloppy in their own fields.

                        So, we can say you have to to be very generous to assume the whole idea would do anything much at all. But we'll be that generous and go with 5Mg/hectare annually, on the high end of the range. There's 4.88 billion hectares of desert in the world; i'll be generous again and call it 5 billion. So if we converted every inch of that to grassland (now that's excessively generous), we get 25 x 10^15 grams.

                        Global carbon emissions are over 10 Gigatonnes. So that's over 10 x 10^15 grams. So you might cancel out our CO2 emissions if you convert fully half the world's desert to grasslands. Won't cancel out the methane, CFCs, land use changes, etc., so may not help as much with the climate as we'd like, but would be huge for ocean acidification. In any case, you'd need to more than cancel out emissions to actually get levels back down on any significant time frame. So, if we want to get them back down to preindustrial in under 2 centuries, we need to convert all the desert.

                        How likely is that? Not at all. Even if this actually makes some of the desert green, it simply doesn't rain in the Atacama. Now amount of goats is going to change that. Same with the interior of Saudi Arabia and large areas of the Sahara. So the idea is simply nonsensical - the fact that he won't do basic math and check his own claims before making them is, as i've said, sloppy.
                        It's the 'you not answering what he ACTUALLY said part that I find sloppy - this ISN'T at all a part of his actual argument - it's a supporting point for the reason to do something about desertification - and he explicitly stated he was relying on the work of others for that.

                        If it's sloppy for him to rely on the work of others outside his own field, it's equally sloppy for you to do the exact same thing with your weblink.

                        I'm not sure why you went off on me for saying that, but in the future, i'd appreciate the benefit of a doubt. I'm pretty careful about not putting my 2 cents in unless i have some idea what i'm talking about.

                        Or, to keep with the theme, i'm not altogether ooky.
                        First, I apologize if it sounded like I was jumping on you - I didn't mean it that way.

                        Two things bugged me - first and foremost was that it was perfectly obvious to me that you were doing the exact thing you were condemning - relying on others for work you couldn't easily do yourself. The other was why the heck you were counter arguing against global warming as a bad thing - because that's the only point he was bringing up about carbon sequestering. He'd stated that holistic management was the only tool to reverse desertification - he said nothing of the sort about global warming. The mention of carbon sequestration was purely to support the call to action - something I'd normally expect you to agree with (action if not means).

                        Okay, later i realized there was a third that did kinda irk me - maybe that's why I sounded hostile when I didn't mean to - which was you using my methodology when you'd been one of the people to condemn it.
                        "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

                        "Forgiveness is the way of love." Gary Chapman

                        My Personal Blog

                        My Novella blog (Current Novella Begins on 7/25/14)

                        Quill Sword

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                        • #27
                          Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                          You behave yourself. You started it by directly mocking me about my "research". Don't throw stones when you're in a glasshouse and don't be pathetically sanctimonious about it. I think we're done here anyway.
                          You didn't do any research - that was obvious. I called you on it.

                          It's MY thread. So nyahh!
                          "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

                          "Forgiveness is the way of love." Gary Chapman

                          My Personal Blog

                          My Novella blog (Current Novella Begins on 7/25/14)

                          Quill Sword

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                            [*Looks around*]

                            Well, um... er... kind of
                            'Kind of'?
                            "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

                            "Forgiveness is the way of love." Gary Chapman

                            My Personal Blog

                            My Novella blog (Current Novella Begins on 7/25/14)

                            Quill Sword

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Originally posted by Teallaura View Post
                              My objection to you using a citation to dismiss has to do with the poor argumentation it represents.
                              You're completely misinterpreting what i was doing there. In this post, you complained that the critique Starlight linked was from the Sierra Club, and therefore could be dismissed. I was just linking a critique with links to the scientific literature, so that you could evaluate the critique rather than simply dismissing it due to your issues with the source. It was separated from my personal critique, which was about the sloppiness of the guy in the TED talk.

                              Before writing multiple paragraphs about what you think is going on, it's often easier to ask what i'm trying to get across.

                              In any case, your argument is now shifting to saying that the whole carbon sequestration part of things was outside his main point, and therefor unimportant. I disagree. TED talks are seen in person by lots of wealthy, influential people. They're often watched online by millions more. I'd say that, if you're given that audience, it's essential that you get everything right.
                              "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

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                              • #30
                                Originally posted by Teallaura View Post
                                Savory is native to Zimbabwe - that is probably why he pronounces it that way.
                                Yeah, I figured, but I've known chemists (one if our Church) who pronounces methane with the "mee" sound. (I've been in the natural gas business off and on for over 20 years, and am quite familiar with the Thane family. ) I was just asking a simple question.
                                The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

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