Stephan Schwab

Sad that you see that as outstanding follow up when it is more akin to @GeorgeMonbiot throwing his toys out of his cot. Strange that neither he, nor you (& many others) can understand the simplest point that we needed to focus on. With regions of the world, FAR larger than the UK, Europe and the Amazon turning to desert, even National Parks, as I showed how can anyone not see that this land (about 2/3 of Earth's land) is releasing billions of tons of soil into the air as dust and into oceans as silt, while releasing mind-boggling amounts of carbon & water into the atmosphere. As long as desertification continues it makes it impossible to address climate change - even if we stop fossil fuel use tomorrow and no matter how much methane cows belch. Look at it as though it was a large pot at 45 degrees pouring water (carbon) out - Any debate about how much water (carbon) the pot can store is simply academic and time-wasting. We have to just level the pot as a child can see. This is a management not a science problem as I made clear in opening the debate and I am sorry it so threw Monbiot who had not come prepared to debate anything but carbon, capitalism and social injustices. As I pointed out in the infamous TED Talk, and have said for over half a century, desertification can ONLY be reversed using livestock and the holistic planned grazing process (or better when developed). Monbiot disputes that and, offered the chance to explain how we can manage to reverse desertification using any technology, as he said threw and confused him. He had as he says come prepared only to discuss academic papers proving what I said for decades - every way humans have ever run livestock has led to desertification. That is why it took over 10,000 years to work out how to use them in management to reverse desertification that could not be done with technology, fire or re-wilding. xitter.gq/AllanRSavory/sta…

Thank you. You understood what @GeorgeMonbiot & many people missed when he put out a smoke screen to avoid debate. Desertification in seasonal rainfall environments (brown areas below in picture) is due to loss of biodiversity caused by slow chemical oxidation that replaces rapid biological decay of billions of tons of annually dying grass. It was clearly explained here ten years ago bit.ly/1gm0HIZ Started when humans killed off most large animals that maintained decay by trampling and with their moist gut containing micro-organisms digesting and excreting. Native Americans & Aborigines saw the damage when they killed off 80% of the genera of large animals & tried to prevent slow oxidation from killing life - by using fire (rapid oxidation) that began desertification on different continents about 60,000 years ago. As I showed, in what is now an American National Park, an irrigation-based Native American civilization was destroyed by desertification before Spaniards arrived with sheep & centuries before fossil fuels. Areas of the land 100 times larger than the UK, including national parks in US, Africa, Australia, etc are every year sending carbon & water from soil to atmosphere. The desertifying National Parks I showed tell us with scientific certainty that the cause of desertification is the way in which all governments and large environmental organizations @WWF @IUCN @TNC @AP and universities develop management policies. As long as most of the world’s land including vast National Parks larger than the UK is releasing water & carbon because of desertification, droughts, floods & climate change will continue no matter what we do. With an Oxford Think Tank having published a report saying climate change will globally wipe out all cities economies & businesses & billions of people will die in violence is why I said “To shorten this debate let us assume: The World’s soils can sequester no carbon. Cattle give off 20 times the methane they do. Every human becomes vegan”. I conceded Monbiot’s entire line of reasoning at the outset so that we could focus the debate on the way policies are developed that is causing climate change (there is no other cause known). And I then stated what I contend (the very basis of the debate) which was: --That we have to address the way in which policy is developed dictating management at scale. --And when we do that it will require millions more cattle, sheep, goats, camels, even if they are only eaten by vultures. I then asked Monbiot to now tell us how he (or any scientist) would reverse global desertification using technology? The entire future of humanity hangs on that question and I am willing to debate it with any scientist in the world to save billions of lives and offer young people hope. The rest is history as everyone saw – Monbiot spent the entire time discussing carbon, methane & irrelevant papers by authors who never mentioned oxidation or any aspect of my life's work calling them "peer reviewed" when none were by any of my peers. Here is oxidation (several years of slow chemical breakdown) killing grass and soil life in the Aldo Leopold Memorial Forest on the Rio Grande river in the US - and just the desertifying areas of Africa over a hundred times the size of the UK (which is same size as the desertifying little island off the African coast. We need to start taking climate change seriously.