Comments for Jonathan Teller-Elsberg

Comment on Following up with Allan Savory on using cattle to reverse desertification and global warming by BorderJumpers

BorderJumpers — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:47:08 +0000

Just an FYI, wanted to share a blog we did today (please feel free to cross-post) about our travels in Gaborne, Botswana. We blog everyday from all over Africa at a website call Border Jumpers (http://www.borderjumpers.org) and for the Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet (http://blogs.worldwatch.org/nourishingtheplanet/).

Here is the link: "1,000 Words About Botswana"
http://borderjumpers1.blogspot.com/2010/03/1000-words-about-botswana.html

Bernard Pollack and Danielle Nierenberg (aka borderjumpers)

Comment on Following up with Allan Savory on using cattle to reverse desertification and global warming by Gerald M. Levitis

Gerald M. Levitis — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:50:24 +0000

About reductionist and holistic thinking: pure science tends to succeed by isolating one or a few variables in an experiment and not having to deal with everything at once; this tends to work nicely by reducing the otherwise overwhelming number of factors to be considered and making the results/models mathematically describable. Holistic descriptions and plans are more like engineering in the real world, where all factors can interfere with results. Einstein once pointed out that the more mathematical a description of a relationship in the world, the less closely it matches the world, Or as someone else said, "All models are wrong; some models are useful." Physics is most amenable to isolating a few variables/factors without losing a fairly good match with reality: A spaceship traveling in a vacuum really does follow a curve predicted by Newtonian physics to a close approximation, unless it goes fast enough to requite relativistic computation. Biology matches less well, and real-world ecosystems/societies/psychologies are just to complex to model very well. GML

Comment on Fascinating lecture: "Keeping Cattle: Cause or Cure of Climate Change?" by Allan Savory

Allan Savory — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:13:22 +0000

Jonathan,
thanks for looking at my lecture given at Trinity College, November. By the way the other video you refer to is an excellent one on the work of John Liu in China mainly. His results are truly impressive and such results can always be expected where there is adequate precipitation to sustain enough woody vegetation to ensure full soil cover from trees and their litter. Those same techniques unfortunately do not give the same result in most of the world's deteriorating and desertifying grasslands and savannas where rainfall is too erratic and low to support adequate trees and there one has to understand that tree planting and resting the land from livestock have almost an opposite effect. To reverse the desertification so serious over much of China, Africa, Australia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, United States, etc it is essential people understand the vast difference in response to fire, resting land in either form and to how large herbivores related in the past to both vegetation and soils - as I explained in that lecture. And also to halt the massive annual burning of the world's grasslands one needs to understand how to replace the current role of fire with the more natural role of large herbivores in the presence of pack-hunting predators. By the way the areas of the Earth's land surface I refer to are by far the largest and most ignored in the climate debate - our Achilles Heel. Thanks again for helping spread new thinking so essential to our survival.

Comment on Fascinating lecture: "Keeping Cattle: Cause or Cure of Climate Change?" by tony lovell

tony lovell — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:16:09 +0000

The Savory Institute website is http://www.savoryinstitute.com/

The holistic management approach described bt Allsn Savory works well in ALL environments, it is just that the results are so dramatic in seasonally dry regions because the impacts of inappropriate management in these regions are so devastating. Change the management and the land heals amazingly quickly.

In most cases you do not need more land - usually carrying capacity is increased and costs of production decreased along with restored biological health, boosted biodiversity, healthier eco-systems.

Imagine if we had a process to remove billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere safely, quickly and cost-effectively - while at the same time reversing desertification, boosting biodiversity, enhancing global food security and improving the lives of hundreds of millions of people in rural and regional areas around our planet?

We do - it's called changed grazing management and soil carbon.

Please take a look at the presentations on http://www.soilcarbon.com.au/ to learn more.

Comment on What's the plural of "thermos"? by Thermal Cook

Thermal Cook — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 07:08:07 +0000

Thermal, thermos or retained heat cooking is a great method to use every day. If you can use a crock pot or like food and the great taste of a slow cooker but don't care to leave the power running for the 3-12 hours it takes to use them then take a look at one of the many retained heat or thermal cooking methods and get the same benefits but with as much as 80%-90% of the power or fuel savings.

A great example of the benefits would be cooking a pot of beans. In this example: http://thermalcooker.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/348/ a method is shown how using your own pot, a basket, some blankets and sleeping bag can cook a pot of beans that normally would simmer on the stove for 3-4 hours but instead cook through using nothing but the heat retained in the beans after sitting on the stove for only a half hour or so.

There are many methods of thermal cooking and a good number of them are mentioned on the thermal cooker thermal cooking blog: http://thermalcooker.wordpress.com/category/thermal-cooking/

Comment on Fascinating lecture: "Keeping Cattle: Cause or Cure of Climate Change?" by jte

jte — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:17:21 +0000

I think the key is the ratio of animals to the land. Instead of having 1,000 head of cattle move intensively over 1 acre per day (for example), you could have 100 head moving intensively over 1/10 acre per day. Then the total amount of land being used by the herder/farmer would be proportionately smaller.

Anyhow, the American west, Australian outback, southern Brazil and Argentina, and much of Africa do have masses of big acreage zones. In the American west, that land is relatively cheap–and much, maybe even the majority, is publicly owned through the BLM.

The question in my mind is, how much food value could you get out of converting 1/2 of all Midwest (USA) corn acreage back to prairie and running large herds of cattle or bison? Half of all US corn already goes to animal feed. Cut out the middle man. But I don't know if you end up with a net gain in available calories–not that that's the only pertinent question, but it's the one on my mind.

Comment on Fascinating lecture: "Keeping Cattle: Cause or Cure of Climate Change?" by Gerald M. Levitis

Gerald M. Levitis — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:14:49 +0000

I don't know how well this would work in a wet climate, but for the African plains, with long seasonal droughts, it makes sense, ecologically. For a farm/ranch, it would require more land for the animals to use, one plot at a time, so it requires lots of cheap land, I suspect. Jerry

Comment on HCR Avatar analogy—and "pass HCR" contingency fund by jte

jte — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:33:07 +0000

Pete, right, passing health care is far from impossible. (But then, if it had been impossible, the Na'vi wouldn't have saved the Tree of Souls.) I do think passing health care requires uniting most if not all the "tribes" associated with the Democrats. That's what's possible but sadly far from guaranteed.

Comment on HCR Avatar analogy—and "pass HCR" contingency fund by pete

pete — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:23:34 +0000

Passing health care is not something that could be classified as doing the impossible and uniting the tribes. If you want that try ending the federal reserve and taking down the bankers.

Comment on HCR Avatar analogy—and "pass HCR" contingency fund by Gerald M. Levitis

Gerald M. Levitis — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:34:33 +0000

Nice idea. Perhaps the Dems can do something useful instead of following David Brook's advice on today's NYTimes Op-Ed page to be "Weak and Feckless" (his actual term) as the best way to proceed now. GML