Global warming

Nah, it's reasonable to expect supporting data. Your own common sense seems to fail you at every turn tbh.

The process involves using fossil fuels to pump prime the transition to renewables, once you hit critical mass the fossil fuel get replaced by renewables.

I wouldn't disagree that life will probably have to adapt to a different reality - but there is literally vast and limitless amounts of solar (in all its forms which includes wind and wave) to tap into. Sodium batteries are now approaching the energy density of lithium but using one of the most common elements on the planet.

It's difficult to conceptualise the path forward since the future will look entirely different to what we have now. All the essential elements are already in place and research is making every element of it both more efficient and cheaper. Do you think that a farmer driving his horse and cart a couple of centuries ago could imagine the world we live in now ? He would not have single clue that the world would be so different to the one he lived in.

Linking to hour and a half documentaries by the same org that has actively lied rather than research is really missing the point. Reminded distinctly of people dumping conspiracy theory videos. They're free to submit research for peer review, no Organisation is gonna block it but the most likely reason they don't is they don't have adequate evidence of what they claim.

You do realise peer reviewed studies were being released on COVID from every angle while the virus was in full flight? That's pretty complex and changing. So no, I don't think think an agricultural technique is immune to peer review and Organisations avoiding it tends to be the ones who have zero evidence to substantiate their claims, or have grossly exaggerated them.

Now I'm expecting some quip or a snarky remark. 😂

It sure does depend on context. From https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2017-2-march-april/feature/allan-savory-says-more-cows-land-will-reverse-climate-change

(have you read it yet? 3rd time I've posted the link)

In Southern Utah, a seriously dry part of the US with very brittle soil conditions:

""I think claiming that you're going to reverse climate change by running cattle across the dry lands of the earth doesn't make sense," Bramble told the crowd. "And I would caution you all not to leap on the Savory bandwagon, especially in these parts. This is very dry country. And you need to consider some evolutionary history. There were no large ungulates grazing in this region. The grasses did not coevolve with grazing."

This was him addressing a meeting of farmers to discuss Savory's hypothesis.

So, if you're in favor of adopting Savory's methods to Ireland, quantify what the impact on Ireland's CO2 emissions will be, would you?

You can't, because "Holistic farming" hasn't ever been subject to rigorous analysis, much like holistic anything.

It’s mad that the oil companies, now fighting legal proceedings, are throwing all the people who, fully, bought into their climate denial propaganda under a bus.

Their argument, now, is that they shouldn’t have to face any legal cases because, they say, that the ‘impact of fossil fuel use on the global climate has been open and obvious for decades’.

Some turnaround but, of course, the climate deniers who believe Big Oil’s earlier, paid for, nonsense will still go on believing it.

Neither, because he's a scientist and was rebutting what the Savory institute was selling. He wasn't there to pitch anything (context is everything, after all). Later in the article he says he's improved his own land by not running cattle on it. Same is true in Texas, Arizona, Nevada.

You really should read the article.

Your a piece of work.

Grasslands can sustain a high amount of biodiversity, but it depends on the management, and as you point out the harvesting practices matter too. I'm not advocating for the sort of green desert like the perennial ryegrass field you were looking at. I'm saying we need more farms that look like A and B, rather than C, while still maintaining as much production as possible.

We need to move away from dependence on chemical inputs for fertility, prior to the advent chemical fertilizer, cows were used to restore fertility and restore soil carbon in a crop rotation.

There are lots of ways to increase biodiversity apart from multispecies, native meadows, herbal leys all have their role.

Prof Sheridan did mention in the video that the multispecies had an increase in invertebrates and earthworms in the trials, so it's reasonable to expect that the wildlife that feeds on these should become more abundant, but their trials have only been going on for ten years, so there's a limit to how much research they can do with the resources they have.

I'm not sure exactly. Gabe Brown was able to increase his soil carbon levels from 1.9 in 1991 to 6.1% within 20 years. I did back of the envelope extrapolation that would suggest that we could pull down all the excess carbon in ten to twenty years, if we all farmed in an optimal way for carbon sequestration.

Two problems with that estimate

• One, it's completely over optimistic, but it's worth considering the enormous potential soils have
• Two, that's not going to stop our over consumption of fossil fuels and other resources in every other aspect of life

But there are farmers who have moved the needle in the right direction, and there are papers that suggest that it can make some contribution

Solutions will be different on every farm, but there are a host of solutions to consider

• The multispecies, herbal leys and native meadows I mentioned in my previous post.
• Compost and biological inputs for soil fertility (Korean Natural Farming is awesome)
• Biochar for sequestering carbon and as a kind of microbe and nutrient reservoir in the soil
• Re-intergrating livestock in crop rotations
• Permaculture, agroecology and silvopasture would be near the top of the tree when it comes to practicing agriculture well, but it's a learning curve and we have to start somewhere

I fell down this rabbit hole about ten years ago after watching videos by Alan Savory and Joel Salatin. I was in shock for two or three weeks trying to process how cows could be good for the planet, when it went against everything I had been taught. I realised I didn't know a huge amount about the science of farming, or biology and chemistry knowledge was dumbed down to four elements, N, P and K and a bit of Calcium. Savory's claims may be disputed and in some cases overblown, if the grasslands in certain desert areas didn't co-evolve with ruminants, cows may not be the best tool to restore them, but his ideas do work for some ranchers who have tried them.

But what I learned was that we as humans as a species have placed ourselves outside of nature, we are trying to dominate it with fossil fuels, industrial agriculture, and industrial food, and it's killing us and the health of the planet.

Regenerative farming is about farming with nature, rather than against it, and there's quite a bit of forgiveness in the system if we get it right.

No, they're not "exactly the reason." They contribute. But it all comes down to CO2 in the atmosphere, and most CO2 is sequestered in the ocean. As temperatures rise, more is released, raising the temperature. It's a loop.

There's no one answer to this problem as there's no one cause - cattle emit methane, for example. Burning limestone for concrete releases a lot of CO2. Not just burning fossil fuels.

A little less hysterical posting here would help the discussion along.