Cont: Global warming discussion V

[Red Baron Farms]

It is still correct that Alan Savory's article is ignorant about the cause of global warming. We know it is CO2 primarily from industry and transport, not any kind of farm management.
It is still correct that Savory and his institute is a bad source on climate science.

I have spent years citing the scientific literature on carbon sequestration in soils to you and have cited a source yet again with many references yet again.
Nordborg, M. (2016). Holistic management – a critical review of Allan Savory's grazing method. Uppsala: SLU/EPOK – Centre for Organic Food & Farming & Chalmers. (PDF), described at Holistic management – a critical review of Allan Savory’s grazing method.

List the LOTS of published papers reporting "sequestering carbon at those rates and even higher" and what are "those rates"?

Read your own sources Reality Check
"The total carbon storage potential in pastures does not exceed 0.8 tonnes of C per ha and year, or 27 billion tonnes of C globally, according
to an estimate in this report based on very optimistic assumptions"

It is based on an estimate and an assumption. Get this through your thick skull. I have repeated this over and over. These studies made valid hypotheses based on estimates and assumptions, not on measurements. That means if I find that there actually are examples of sequestration rates higher than that, these estimates and assumptions forming a hypothesis, no matter how much you want it to be true, it is falsified.

Now I gave you the case studies from Dr Kristine Jones, and she has MEASURED case studies AVERAGING 5-20 tonnes CO2e/ha/yr.

In science MEASURED CASE STUDIES (with controls too) always trump estimates and assumptions.... every time.

Then of course we have Teague's published work which I also gave you multiple times with MEASURED CASE STUDIES that also AVERAGE 11 tonnes CO2e/ha/yr

Low and behold an independant scientist confirming Savory's PROOF of CONCEPT of MEASURED CO2 sequestration is also confirmed twice removed and completely independent of BOTH Jones and Savory.

Now we have three cases where MEASUREMENTS have exceeded the assumed estimates from your study. OOPS now we have not only certainty that at least under certain conditions it can be done, we also can show it on 3 continents and 3 sets of different conditions...

At this point it becomes clear the vast majority of the actual evidence from people in the field is falsifying a clearly biased set of assumptions and estimates. No matter how "generous" they claim the estimates to be, they are less than 1/2 the LOW end of the actual measured sequestration rates found in the field....

Now since you have been confused by this before ...... a really simple analogy would be that proving a model T ford can only average 15 miles an hour and breaks down at least 1 time a month on average is absolutely useless information in trying to make estimated assumptions on how fast and reliable a 2020 ford mustang might be. You just can't really get good data from the model T and use estimates and assumptions to find out either. Instead you need to measure the Mustang! Collect data from there.... In a similar way both Jones and Teague collected data from real crop farmers and ranchers in the field.... with controls..... and their case studies FALSIFY your junk science of inaccurate assumptions and estimates. PERIOD

You are just as bad as any denier found here are ISF, although you pretend to be concerned about AGW and pretend to agree it is real, you are in just as bad a state of denial as anyone spouting Christy nonsense. You have used fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible expectations, and cherry picking in an attempt to deny delay hoping for some unclear reason to halt any action being taken. That is just as bad as denying any action needs to be taken, since the end result is exactly the same.

I have posted those three above, the proof of concept and the two other sources of case studies confirming Savory's claims so many times, I simply and not willing any more to play your silly games. You know them, go get them your damn self.

However, people who are actually using the methods are repeating the results in many cases......
Mitigating livestock greenhouse gas balance
through carbon sequestration in grasslands

This time between 7.3 and 7.9 tonnes CO2e/ha/yr again well within the 5-20 tonnes CO2e Jones MEASURED.

and more:
Can Soil Microbes Slow Climate Change?


" Johnson reported a net annual increase of almost 11 metric tons of soil carbon per hectare on his cropland."


Converted to CO2e that is ~ 40 tonnes CO2e/ha/yr. About double the average reported by Jones and 4x what was reported by Teague, but nearly the same as the high outliers. Jones also took the raw results and measured that only 78% was stable humic polymers and I don't see where or if Johnson did that.

However, It shows the biophysical capacity of microorganisms in the soil to sequester high rates of carbon. Even higher than Savory claims and completely destroying the junk science assumptions and estimates baloney you continue to rest your hat on.

Then we have yet another:
Impacts of soil carbon sequestration on life cycle greenhouse gas emissions in Midwestern USA beef finishing systems

The paper studies a few systems, but the one most closely resembling what Savory is discussing actually sequesters 13.1753 tonnes CO2e/ha/yr, so once again it is confirmed right in that 5-20 tonnes CO2e /ha/yr Jones found decades ago.

There is approximately 3.5 billion ha of grazing land already. approximately 80% of it is currently over grazed or under grazed.

10 tonnes CO2e/ha/yr x 3.5 billion = 35 billion tonnes CO2e/yr

Global emissions are in that range as in 2018, global fossil CO2 emissions totaled 36.6 billion tons.

That is not counting restoring desertified land as Savory advises, nor does it count restoring farmland currently being used unwisely for commodity crops to fill a highly wasteful and unsustainable industrialized commodity system.

It’s Time to Rethink America’s Corn System

So again, stop trying to use falsified ESTIMATES and ASSUMPTIONS to claim Savory's work is debunked.

We all know Nordborg doesn't agree with Savory, but you got the wrong side being debunked man. Follow the actual evidence, not some silly highly biased assumptions.

As for your OWN strawman. It is easily shown to be a false construction on YOUR part by simply actually reading Savory's plan instead of quoting him out of context and even putting extra words in his mouth to pretend he thinks it is only farms. shesh...that's so ridiculous it makes me mad. Here is the actual plan

A Two-Path Strategy is Essential for Combating Combat Climate Change

1) High Technology Path. This path, based on mainstream reductionist science, is urgent and vital to the development of alternative energy sources to reduce or halt future emissions.
2) Low Technology Path. This path based on the emerging relationship science or holistic world view is vital for resolving the problem of grassland biomass burning, desertification and the safe storage of CO2, (legacy load) of heat trapping gases that already exist in the atmosphere.

Full plan here:
A Global Strategy for Addressing Global Climate Change
by Allan Savory

So I am going to say it yet again, put up or shut up, your denialist attempts to prevent any action being taken to fix global warming is both noted and rejected out of hand.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

The problem with any plan is that as soon as a plan is put forward, it is immediately attacked by the deniers. That includes a lot of disinformation about the plan. The plan becomes the thing to plan against.

I must agree there 100% See the above few posts for evidence even here at ISF that exact thing repeatedly happens!

It's even worse out there "in the real world".

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

Not to derail, but how would you recommend an attempt to convert deniers who believe that warming is part of the natural climate cycle? The "it's been warm before, it's been cold before" crowd.

Pointing out the near 100% consensus, introducing the basic concepts, offering non-Facebook articles, etc is not resonating.

I guess it depends on where you live.
Once the US midwest starts turning into a desert I suspect the people there will be start being convinced.
Australia is getting a bit of a hint now.
Here in the Netherlands I guess once we start losing land we'll be convinced etc.

 

[Pixel42]

Not to derail, but how would you recommend an attempt to convert deniers who believe that warming is part of the natural climate cycle? The "it's been warm before, it's been cold before" crowd.

Pointing out the near 100% consensus, introducing the basic concepts, offering non-Facebook articles, etc is not resonating.

An analogy might be helpful. For example, forest fires have always happened - lightning causes them - but that doesn't stop them also being started by idiots fooling around with matches. If a fire starts in a forest where there hasn't been any lightning in months, and where a bunch of idiots were seen fooling around with matches at the exact time and place it started, they wouldn't just shrug and "forest fires have always happened" would they? They would hold the idiots responsible for the consequent loss of life and property.

 

[Reality Check]

Read your own sources Reality Check...

Derails into a bit idiocy about the word estimate in a scientific paper. If assumptions and estimates invalidates science then most of science is wrong! If assumptions and estimates invalidates science then Savory's assumptions and estimates make him wrong !
Nordborg, M. (2016) makes generous assumptions and calculates an estimate that debunks Savory's idea that his HM^tm can reverse global warming.

Alan Savory's article is ignorant about the cause of global warming (it is CO2 not his fantasy of farm management).
A farmer/ecologist and his agricultural institute is a bad source of climate science and there is his obvious ignorance and no published papers!
Savory's idea is debunked in a Skeptical Sceince climate myth article which cites many papers including Nordborg, M. (2016).
RealClimate (climate scientists!) comment on his TED talk: Cows, Carbon and the Anthropocene: Commentary on Savory TED Video. Savory's claim of retuning to pre-industrial levels requires an estimated 240 Petagrams (Pg) of carbon in the atmosphere to be removed (the estimated carbon in vegetation is around 450 Pg). Then there is the removal of an estimated 8 Pg of carbon emitted by us in 2014 each year which increases.

The rest of the post is mostly unsupported assertions and some errors. You cited 1 paper by Dr Christine Jones with no "MEASURED case studies AVERAGING 5-20 tonnes CO2e/ha/yr"!.
Liquid carbon pathway unrecognised by Dr Christine Jones. As I pointed out that is a close to an opinion piece by Dr. Christine Jones in the now defunct Australian Farm Journal. As you knew back in March 2019, she states with no sources

Under appropriate conditions, 30-40% of the carbon fixed in green leaves can be transferred to soil and rapidly humified, resulting in rates of soil carbon sequestration in the order of 5-20 tonnes of CO2 per hectare per year.

You list only the papers that show an increased soil organic carbon content on ranches using HM compared to other ranches. Nordborg, M. (2016) looks at the entire body of evidence for HM which shows that HM is not significantly better.

P24.40: Mitigating livestock greenhouse gas balance through carbon sequestration in grasslands (PDF) is a poster presented at a conference. It states the well known science that carbon sequestration through farming (in grasslands here) has the potential to mitigate global warming. Savory's debunked idea is reversal of global warming.

 

[lomiller]

Thats all well and good but 3 or 5 C, but what is the plan?
Does anyone have a workable plan?

Person 1: I know it’s not healthy to weight 800 lbs, but no one can tell me what I can do about it.
Person 2: Eat less and exercise more
Person 1: If only someone had a plan!
Person 2: …

 

[lomiller]

We (as in overall civilization) will wait until the last minute when the problem gets so big we can't ignore, the smart people we (again as overall civilization) have been ignoring will pull a miracle out of their butts to fix it and then we (see above) will go "See? No big big deal, we were all worried sick about nothing."

One of the problems with climate change is that by the time we see the consequences it’s far too late to do anything about them. The scale of the ToE energy imbalance is almost to massive to comprehend. It dwarfs anything we are familiar with. Trying to deal with the extra energy after the fact would be like trying to drain an Olympic swimming pool with a teaspoon.

 

[lomiller]

Not to derail, but how would you recommend an attempt to convert deniers who believe that warming is part of the natural climate cycle? The "it's been warm before, it's been cold before" crowd.

Pointing out the near 100% consensus, introducing the basic concepts, offering non-Facebook articles, etc is not resonating.

The right wing bubble no longer cares about facts. When people have already decided facts won’t change their beliefs convincing them of anything rational is basically impossible. Here are a couple fact you can try though.

The last time temperatures were more than 1 Deg C warmer than current norms was 3-5 million years ago before there were any humans on the planet.
The last time temperatures warmed as rapid they are doing right now was 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs died out.

Normal warming, that causes mile thick ice sheets to melt and become forest and grassland looks like this:
https://xkcd.com/1732/

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Derails into a bit idiocy about the word estimate in a scientific paper. If assumptions and estimates invalidates science then most of science is wrong! If assumptions and estimates invalidates science then Savory's assumptions and estimates make him wrong !
Nordborg, M. (2016) makes generous assumptions and calculates an estimate that debunks Savory's idea that his HM^tm can reverse global warming.

Alan Savory's article is ignorant about the cause of global warming (it is CO2 not his fantasy of farm management).
A farmer/ecologist and his agricultural institute is a bad source of climate science and there is his obvious ignorance and no published papers!
Savory's idea is debunked in a Skeptical Sceince climate myth article which cites many papers including Nordborg, M. (2016).
RealClimate (climate scientists!) comment on his TED talk: Cows, Carbon and the Anthropocene: Commentary on Savory TED Video. Savory's claim of retuning to pre-industrial levels requires an estimated 240 Petagrams (Pg) of carbon in the atmosphere to be removed (the estimated carbon in vegetation is around 450 Pg). Then there is the removal of an estimated 8 Pg of carbon emitted by us in 2014 each year which increases.

The rest of the post is mostly unsupported assertions and some errors. You cited 1 paper by Dr Christine Jones with no "MEASURED case studies AVERAGING 5-20 tonnes CO2e/ha/yr"!.
Liquid carbon pathway unrecognised by Dr Christine Jones. As I pointed out that is a close to an opinion piece by Dr. Christine Jones in the now defunct Australian Farm Journal. As you knew back in March 2019, she states with no sources


You list only the papers that show an increased soil organic carbon content on ranches using HM compared to other ranches. Nordborg, M. (2016) looks at the entire body of evidence for HM which shows that HM is not significantly better.

P24.40: Mitigating livestock greenhouse gas balance through carbon sequestration in grasslands (PDF) is a poster presented at a conference. It states the well known science that carbon sequestration through farming (in grasslands here) has the potential to mitigate global warming. Savory's debunked idea is reversal of global warming.

More strawmen? Anyone can burn down a strawman Reality Check, but you are just telling stories.

"Mitigating livestock greenhouse gas balance through carbon sequestration in grasslands "
Yep that's true. That's one side of the carbon cycle.

"Savory's debunkedHolistic management idea is reversal of global warming." By also reducing emissions by using new technology in Nuclear, solar, wind etc...

Please try to keep up. He is saying that the only solution requires fixing BOTH sides of the carbon cycle. This is the holistic view. You reduce emissions and you increase sequestration.

That is in general what RCP 2.6 shows too.

As for your junk science, forget it. It is falsified. We can and have repeatedly done far better than Nordborg, M. (2016) claims is possible. Nordborg is simply wrong, and going down the line why nordborg is wrong is just a red herring meant to obfuscate. But any skeptic with critical thinking skills should be easily capable of shooting down Nordborg with relative ease even those without agricultural backgrounds. That's how bad the junk science is! It makes self supporting assumptions then conclusions based off those same.

The paper admits for example:
"For ’improved grazing‘, Conant et al. (2010) found
an average carbon sequestration rate of 0.35 tonnes of C per ha and year, based on 45 data points
(Table 4.3). This is seven times lower than the 2.5
tonnes of C per ha and year reported by the Savory Institute "

So Conant who is simply using "improved grazing" is getting results 7 times smaller than Savory's "Holistic managed planned grazing".

But then says later, "Based on
this review, holistic grazing could be an example
of good grazing management, but nothing suggests that it is better than other well-managed grazing methods. "


So seven times greater sequestration rate of carbon in the soil in no way suggests it is better?

No what that paper did was simply throw out all the high numbers and declare them outliers. Here is the quote:
"Some measures identified in the review by Conant
et al. (2001) resulted in carbon sequestration rates
in the same order of magnitude as reported by the
Savory Institute, e.g. 3 tonnes of C per ha and year
as a results of improved grass species (Table 4.3).
Such high sequestration rates should be considered maximum values that can be achieved in fertile
soils with favorable climate conditions, and not average values that are representative for a variety of
soil and climate conditions."

Oh really? Is that what we should think? We shouldn't investigate how and why the better results and figure out how to repeat them as Savory has done for the last 30-50 years? That would be horrible. Yes that's sarcasm at how utterly silly the Nordstom paper is. Ridiculous really.

Meanwhile the rest of the soil scientists at the USDA and many other places have been diligently investigating the biophysical causation for the "outliers" Conant occasionally found and the AVERAGES Savory, Jones, Teague, Johnson etc found. And it is NOT due to biomass.

That's not even how the carbon gets sequestered. This is why Conant missed it. He made assumptions based on increased biomass, instead of measuring the completely unknown (at that time) LCP liquid carbon pathway. And what regenerative farmers are doing is converting their highly degraded soils INTO fertile soils..... where of course they sequester those higher rates. It's not hard for a critical thinker to figure out Conant's mistake. However, Conant is at least a real scientist willing to admit measured results. Whereas Nordbog pretends they never happened and couldn't possibly happen again, even when they have been demonstrably repeated.. BS Sure if you throw out all his results and pretend they never happened, of course you can also pretend it is impossible to do too. But that's not where the evidence leads.

 

[Armitage72]

One thing is to point out HOW we know the climate has always changed: Climate Scientists. They did the work, the math and science and all that.

I've seen people seriously claim that climate scientists are deliberately hoaxing climate change so they can get rich collecting research grant money to study it. This shows a disturbing lack of understanding of both science and research grants.

 

[Mr Clingford]

I've seen people seriously claim that climate scientists are deliberately hoaxing climate change so they can get rich collecting research grant money to study it. This shows a disturbing lack of understanding of both science and research grants.

Indeed. Potholer did a vid recently exploring exactly this point.

 

[theprestige]

Person 1: I know it’s not healthy to weight 800 lbs, but no one can tell me what I can do about it.
Person 2: Eat less and exercise more
Person 1: If only someone had a plan!
Person 2: …

Person 1: I know it’s not healthy to weight 800 lbs, but no one can tell me what I can do about it.
Person 2: Stop eating, start running. Ten miles a day. Begin immediately.
Person 1: If I do that, I will destroy my knees and probably have a heart attack. If I'm lucky, I'll live long enough to starve to death. Do you have a better plan?
Person 2: So you're denying that you need to lose some weight?

 

[The Atheist]

I've seen people seriously claim that climate scientists are deliberately hoaxing climate change so they can get rich collecting research grant money to study it. This shows a disturbing lack of understanding of both science and research grants.

Yes, that's ridiculously common one, and stolen straight out of antivax play books.

There's also a campaign to screech about how much money people are making from carbon credits and green energy grants, while completely ignoring the trillions people are making from destroying the planet.

The Age of Aquarius left us not with enlightenment, but minds attuned to illogic and unreason.

 

[whatsthedreamnow]

Thanks all for the responses. I'll report back with results.

 

[cullennz]

I'm talking about the price to *consumers*, not the price of the carbon credit for companies. Carbon credits would be issued, not sold.



Not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse or not.

Sorry mate but you might have to explain to me how that works.

Call me Mr thicky but here companies pay dudes with a few trees to still spew out the same crap. And just pass it on to the customer.

If you know a different version I am all ears.

 

[Roboramma]

Sorry mate but you might have to explain to me how that works.

Call me Mr thicky but here companies pay dudes with a few trees to still spew out the same crap. And just pass it on to the customer.

If you know a different version I am all ears.

Let's say I've got a company whose offices are poorly insulated. I've looked at the costs of rennovating and installing better insulation, but given the cost of heating, it won't pay off in a reasonable amount of time, so I don't spend that money.

Then some form of carbon tax is implemented. Now the heating cost goes up, but the renovation cost remains basically the same. Sure, I could just pay the higher heating cost and pass that on to my customers. But I also have the option of doing the renovations, which will pay off for me in a shorter period of time and are potentially an economical choice in this new environment.

When there are no options to choose from, you are probably right that carbon tax or carbon credits won't change things, and costs will just be passed on to consumers. But when there are other, lower carbon, options that were not initially chosen because of, for instance, upfront costs, that tax can make those other options the more economical choice.

In my example the cost over the long term could actually go down, which would suggest that cost to consumers wouldn't be expected to go up at all.

 

[cullennz]

Fair call but personally think a tax cut carrot to turn solar and find other alternatives beats the stick that will just end up hitting consumers.

 

[BrooklynBaby]

A little info for climate nuts:

"In fact, extreme weather has occurred with monotonous regularity for millions of years. Below is an infinitesimal sampling of the endless multitude of catastrophic weather events in Earth’s past, many of which occurred long before the Industrial Revolution.

● The Great Hurricane of 1780 killed 30,000 people in the Caribbean.

● Epic dust storms in the 1930s caused catastrophic ecological damage to the Central Plains of the U.S. and Canada.

● Massive flooding that hit Tokyo, Japan, in 1910 destroyed more than 400,000 homes.

● Consecutive years of extreme weather took the lives of one-third of the population during the Russian Famine of 1601-1603.

● In 1927, weeks of heavy rains in Mississippi caused flooding that covered 27,000 square miles, leaving entire towns and surrounding countryside submerged up to a depth of 30 feet.

● A catastrophic hurricane that hit sparsely populated Sea Island, Georgia in 1893 killed 2,000 people.

● The Blizzard of 1888 was so extreme that snow and ice covered the entire northeastern U.S., from Maine to the Chesapeake Bay.

● On Sept. 8, 1900, a Cat-4 hurricane obliterated the island of Galveston, Texas, killing an estimated 10,000 residents.

● In 1889, heavy rains that lasted for days caused massive flooding in Jamestown, PA, killing 2,200.

● Caused by a protracted drought, the Bengal Famine of 1770 killed 10 million people in South Asia.

● And, for those who believe in the Bible, Genesis 7:12 reports that rain fell upon the earth for 40 days and 40 nights, an extreme weather event by any definition."

https://www.americanthinker.com/art...the_doomsayers_dont_want_voters_to_know_.html

 

[Matthew Best]

???

 

[Cosmic Yak]

A little info for climate nuts:

"In fact, extreme weather has occurred with monotonous regularity for millions of years. Below is an infinitesimal sampling of the endless multitude of catastrophic weather events in Earth’s past, many of which occurred long before the Industrial Revolution.

● The Great Hurricane of 1780 killed 30,000 people in the Caribbean.

● Epic dust storms in the 1930s caused catastrophic ecological damage to the Central Plains of the U.S. and Canada.

● Massive flooding that hit Tokyo, Japan, in 1910 destroyed more than 400,000 homes.

● Consecutive years of extreme weather took the lives of one-third of the population during the Russian Famine of 1601-1603.

● In 1927, weeks of heavy rains in Mississippi caused flooding that covered 27,000 square miles, leaving entire towns and surrounding countryside submerged up to a depth of 30 feet.

● A catastrophic hurricane that hit sparsely populated Sea Island, Georgia in 1893 killed 2,000 people.

● The Blizzard of 1888 was so extreme that snow and ice covered the entire northeastern U.S., from Maine to the Chesapeake Bay.

● On Sept. 8, 1900, a Cat-4 hurricane obliterated the island of Galveston, Texas, killing an estimated 10,000 residents.

● In 1889, heavy rains that lasted for days caused massive flooding in Jamestown, PA, killing 2,200.

● Caused by a protracted drought, the Bengal Famine of 1770 killed 10 million people in South Asia.

● And, for those who believe in the Bible, Genesis 7:12 reports that rain fell upon the earth for 40 days and 40 nights, an extreme weather event by any definition."

https://www.americanthinker.com/art...the_doomsayers_dont_want_voters_to_know_.html

Looks like someone's going to have to explain the difference between 'climate' and 'weather'.
Again.