1st April 2013, 8:45 AM
Edit: All of the below was me being far too uncritical in my assessment of this idea. The guy triggered all the right "buzz words" that made me think it was scientific, but without the backing of actual science. Those photos played a big part in tricking me here. My original post follows and is provided as a historical note to learn from.
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TED talks these days run all over the place. Sometimes they are evidence based thought provoking discussions, and sometimes they might as well be telling me how to penetrate the crystal spheres holding the fixed stars in place. There's also the recently exposed rampant sexism at issue here, and at other venues.
That said, this TED talk is incredible. This man discusses a complete revolution in thoughts about "desertification" of land. Livestock for 10000 years had been damaging land. However, removing livestock ALSO damaged the land, very confusing. Fire burning ALSO damages the land and releases tons of CO2. They were stuck, but as it turns out, going BACK to livestock actually fixed the problem. Now, it is more complicated than that. What he did was use massive herds of livestock but in a completely different way than has been done in the past. He used a complicated algorithm to specifically time how livestock is moved, where it is moved, and synchronize it with other livestock migrations and known patterns of wildlife migration and where plants will be grown. When THAT is done, moving as would happen in nature, the land is revitalized in some frankly SHOCKING turnarounds in a very short period of time.
This is a man who, in pursuing the elimination of livestock, suggested a plan to kill 40000 elephants. It failed miserably, but this seems to be helping to undo that damage.
<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/vpTHi7O66pI" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe>
An amazing talk, but I will say this. I am always wary of simple "one fix for everything" solutions. The effects are documented, he's got solid evidence, but it is a little hard to swallow that this one method will actually be powerful enough to reverse the entire industrial revolution without implementing it on a wider scale.
To be safe, we should still be pursuing other methods and switching to batteries (batteries which, ultimately, need to get their power from something other than fossil fuel power plants or they won't be saving us any CO2 emissions). However, this was a VERY powerful demonstration, so I support it. It also has one stunning advantage, that of saying, "hey, it is actually okay for 3rd world countries to feed themselves with livestock, so long as they do so in such a way as to ultimately green up the land and lock up far more CO2 in grass than the livestock emit themselves". Since it's doing THAT, 3rd world countries are far more likely to actually want to implement it.
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TED talks these days run all over the place. Sometimes they are evidence based thought provoking discussions, and sometimes they might as well be telling me how to penetrate the crystal spheres holding the fixed stars in place. There's also the recently exposed rampant sexism at issue here, and at other venues.
That said, this TED talk is incredible. This man discusses a complete revolution in thoughts about "desertification" of land. Livestock for 10000 years had been damaging land. However, removing livestock ALSO damaged the land, very confusing. Fire burning ALSO damages the land and releases tons of CO2. They were stuck, but as it turns out, going BACK to livestock actually fixed the problem. Now, it is more complicated than that. What he did was use massive herds of livestock but in a completely different way than has been done in the past. He used a complicated algorithm to specifically time how livestock is moved, where it is moved, and synchronize it with other livestock migrations and known patterns of wildlife migration and where plants will be grown. When THAT is done, moving as would happen in nature, the land is revitalized in some frankly SHOCKING turnarounds in a very short period of time.
This is a man who, in pursuing the elimination of livestock, suggested a plan to kill 40000 elephants. It failed miserably, but this seems to be helping to undo that damage.
<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/vpTHi7O66pI" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe>
An amazing talk, but I will say this. I am always wary of simple "one fix for everything" solutions. The effects are documented, he's got solid evidence, but it is a little hard to swallow that this one method will actually be powerful enough to reverse the entire industrial revolution without implementing it on a wider scale.
To be safe, we should still be pursuing other methods and switching to batteries (batteries which, ultimately, need to get their power from something other than fossil fuel power plants or they won't be saving us any CO2 emissions). However, this was a VERY powerful demonstration, so I support it. It also has one stunning advantage, that of saying, "hey, it is actually okay for 3rd world countries to feed themselves with livestock, so long as they do so in such a way as to ultimately green up the land and lock up far more CO2 in grass than the livestock emit themselves". Since it's doing THAT, 3rd world countries are far more likely to actually want to implement it.