Soil carbon -- Putting carbon back where it belongs -- In the Earth | Tony Lovell | TEDxDubbo
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.ย. 2011
- Tony Lovell will explain the reasoning behind how more green growing plants means more captured carbon dioxide -- more water -- more production -- more biodiversity -- more profit. Did you know that a 1% change in soil organic matter across just one-quarter of the World's land area could sequester 300 billion tonnes of physical CO2.
TEDxDubbo focused attention on what we call FACETS -- Food, Agriculture, Climate, Energy, Topsoil and Sustainability. These FACETS are actually potent ideas shared by everyday people with an interest in these disciplines. In many of these topics there is an awareness campaign; the aim of bringing our community together united against catastrophic failures in our food-chain, environment and health. It is worth mentioning that we are also indebted to our natural systems for our economic wealth. Failures in Food, Agriculture, Climate, Energy, Topsoil and Sustainability are not just a local issue -- they are a global concern. tedxdubbo.com/
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This video gives me hope. We must get the word out!
👍 A talk that is well deserved to be shared. This method of regenerative agriculture was originally employed by Ecologist Allan Savory. I too have been arguing this, but keep coming up against simple minds... It is good that now we are able to learn and spread this message with the help of social media 😃✊
@John Peters Great to know!
A great speech, so logical, so hopeful, love it Mr Lovell!
Very very informative presentation. Very clear picture on way forward..love it..!!!
This is brilliant, yet very few people know anything about it. In all of the mainstream debates about climate change and potential solutions I have never once heard anyone mention anything about soil and agricultural practices. Perhaps it isn't "sexy" enough, or maybe it's too complex for soundbites and mainstream journalists. We need someone with a voice like Martin Luther King Jr. to give electrifying speeches about the topic so that it receives the attention it deserves.
+clearwaterlakota This solution is far to cheap and easy to interest the BIG-MONEY slobs (sobs) this gives a net profit and with bio-char lasts for thousands of years, fertilizing and retaining soil moisture, without further input.
+Jim M Not necessarily. Actually this combined with other agricultural changes has the potential to be even bigger money than "big money".
+Red Baron Farm Almost infinite MONEY, if you consider good food worth money, just not immediate. And if you consider that if we don't do this humans will not survive in a way worth living.
Jim M Exactly
The fact is that this method is going against vegan agenda. I know it sounds conspiranoic but... why they never mention this if they "care" about enviroment?
This is the most enlightening TED Talk I've ever seen.
this guy is amazing! all this off the top of his head! no need for notes.....great lecture!
Actually he’s using a teleprompter.
check out the autogenerated subtitles, it makes the video twice as good
In the US, we need to bring back the bison, and all the other animals that were part of the native grasslands.
+Neil Blanchard No need for that - the same effect can be obtained with cattle, they just have to be managed correctly. If we really wanted to increase biodiversity we could do cattle, sheep or goats and then pastured birds...
+nateypecks We can do both, each where appropriate.
There were a few million bison. We have billions of livestock.
bashful228 How do you know how may bison there were? What about all the other grazers that there were and are now almost wipe out? Did you count them all?
Animals should not be kept in concentration camps of the factory farms where they cause damage to the ecosystem. Monoculture and chemical farming is even more damaging to the ecosystem and the damaged ecosystem is a major cause of climate change. The animals could be returned to the farms and rotated with a wide diversity of crops under proper farm management reverse the damage done to the ecosystem.
Don't blame the animals but the farmers and the experts that advise them.
@@dustystahn3855 Regeneration only works if you take modern farming (20th C) out of the equation. CAFO creates unnatural conditions for the animals - instead of defecation and trampling we get slurry lakes that pollute the water table. ( I'm agreeing with you btw! :) )
Tony: Wonderful job. This is great. I met with John Wick at the Marin Carbon Project in California who is also getting good data. Glad to see you are well. Best, John
Good data meaning complete falsehoods? Cattle and sheep are a big driver of Climate CHange. 54% of Australian GHG emissions are associated with the ag sector. 90% of that is from ruminant livestock.
bashful228 You are making a lot of noise. Do you have any real evidence to back up you statements. If so please share them with us so we can as knowledgable as you. There is plenty of evidence contradicting your statements.
Great talk. This is what keeps me going.
Hope is what we need to enable us to change the way we think. Thank you very inspirational .
Thank you!
So there is a real alternative to pound by pound biochar solution? Less technical solution? Thats big! Thank you. I was having serious problems with imagining using biochar method without actually making things worst. So we better start fixing old and nurturing new prairies. Create more humus. More fungi. More life. Its permaculture solution. I like it.
+setsappa1 i have no idea what biochar is but obviously if we just do what nature always did, it will work. if we focus on doing our own thing to "fix" anything, we will realize that our solution just made more problems... this will continue until we accept that nature knows best
Bio-char is essentially creating charcoal and burying it. Just adding organic matter seems an easy step to take. Bio-char has all sorts of negatives.
setsappa1 biochar is fucking stupid lol just plant covers baby!
Thomas Wills n
@@ElazarusWills Biochar stores and nourishes that organic matter. Otherwise it burns up into CO2 into the air.
Explain what "negatives" there are?
Great talk. It gives us hope. Children could watch this and increase their chances of a healthy environment.
actually, adults should watch this so they can act now! - waiting for our children to act is too late ... waiting for someone else to fix our problems is part of the reason we are not stepping up to act and make change to fix things.
Amazing.
Breakneck tour of the carbon cycle, everyone should know this stuff. Amazing, thank you 🙏
this is what I and others like Joel Salatin have been saying for years- use the land to sequester carbon.
Hi John, Allan Savory planted the seed on this idea ... what Tony had done is research the numbers and presented it in statistical manner ...
@@etienne_oosthuizen yes, Holistic. Large Herds MOVING MOVING... not stationary
you can also sequester carbon in food forests or even fields with organic crops, gardens etc. That is not limited to land used for lifestock. Maybe grass land and normal forests (wood only) can sequester more. But a conventional farm with fields (so normally onle one plant) has potential as well and they lose top soil. If they BUILD soil a lot of that will be carbon, and it does not take up any more space, the field just got better. it also reduces the need for fertilizer, improves water retention, will soften the impact of draughts and downpours etc. So win / win.
Yes, but the hoof action and the urine and manure are also part of the success formula
All those are "tools" to accomplish a task, a gigantic task I might had!
For managing large, gigantic areas that is most probably the ideal tool.
But we're also faced with the need to manage our own small farms and/or backyards, where those tools can't apply!
respect!
Great straight forward talker, down to earth and talking with facts.
We need someone with a voice like Martin Luther King Jr. to give electrifying speeches about the topic so that it receives the attention it deserves.
@@happinessyogateacher maybe for some, i don't usually enjoy listening to emotional type speeches.
Now that was really interesting
I do find that the most interesting solutions to climate change are coming from Australia
He makes a good point and is truthful on most matters however he uses the 500 ppm value which won't happen for another 60 to 70 years based on his linear model, while we are currently at 380 ppm. That's a huge difference. Also, he ignores the fact that most carbon is sequestered in the form of soil concretions and ocean concretions rather then as living organic matter. CO2 is heavy and is very water soluble, so when it rains it gets rinsed out of the atmosphere and into our soil and our oceans, which is much more significant than the uptake of Carbon via photosynthesis. Finally, while photosynthesis is essential for the production of root exudates which are essential for feeding many of the non free living soil microbes, most of the organic matter of plant production is soil is labile carbon and not recalcitrant carbon. This means that labile carbon decomposes quickly and cycles back into the air as CO2, while recalcitrant carbon which are the Humic molecules of soil can last for thousands of years. It's also the Humic molecular carbons that have aromatic chemistry qualities and which change the color of soil and the structure of soil, therefore also help soil hold more moisture. This is much more permanent than just adding dead organic matter from grass roots. However we do need the roots and the diversity of vegetation to heal soil.
+Michael Martin Melendrez So we need to really jump start grass production to get the recalcitrant carbon in the ground!
@@nateypecks you didn't understand what he said.
@@bashful228 oh... ok. So, where does the recalcitrant carbon in the soil come from if not from SOM?
To explain what he suggest we do. Mimic the natural way that grazing animals used to graze with our livestock to improve the land which is how we stabilize the climate.
Brilliant
Does anyone know what the numbers of ruminants are, and what the relative portions of different ruminant species are? How many wildebeast are there? Do they produce the same amount of methane as cows? How many cows are there? How many antelope are there? How much methane do they produce, and so on with moose, musk ox, et. al.?
Professor outta University of Georgia nails this...
One of your points was the problem of getting lost in big numbers with lots of zeros. Really should have converted all your numbers down to gigaton units of graphite, and provided a few more visualizations of what that would look like. Also, the IPCC number of 5+ gigatons of soil sequestration per year by 2030 came out of their dim view of what soil can do, probably with no understanding of Savory-style timed grazing, which requires no "subsidies" or carbon trading to net a living for grazers.
that is a very good solution, but it is only one solution of many that should be applied to address global warming. The quantity of Carbon Dioxide in the soil will be saturated at one time, once it is saturated it is not possible to insert more carbon, it is not just plants pumping in carbon from the atmosphere to the soil. Once saturated it is a cycle where carbon in the atmosphere and soil keeps the same.
There will never be one solution or climate change, we need all the solutions possible being applied in order to address the problem.
You are right that at some point there is only so much carbon that can pumped into the soil. The good news is that number is more than all the carbon in the atmosphere, since soils hold much more carbon that the atmosphere. So as long as we also are careful to use regenerative energy sources, we can reach our goal long before we saturate soil with "too much" carbon.
Afonso Roncete
"""" The quantity of Carbon Dioxide in the soil will be saturated at one time, once it is saturated it is not possible to insert more carbon"""" You are not factoring into your thinking that Soil physically builds up over time.. The surface level of land will keep rising and thus while the current soil will reach saturation point as new soil is created on top of the current soil the actual amount of carbon
being stored increases.. Because there is more Top soil being created by
plants...
They're defending ruminant livestock, you have to see through the spin to the motivation.
Nope, it tends to plateau to a very slow sequestration rate.
A very disingenuous answer. No timescale mentioned, no science just hype.
Weird question, has the loss of soil carbon also cause a reduction in hydrocarbon sink cycle
A good and very smart bit of cattle propaganda. I agree with a lot of elements in this, especially the soil parts.
I did find problems though. For instance, those photos of the various parts of that river left out how much of an impact ocean currents and air currents blowing moisture over from the ocean affects those various different parts of that river.
What's more, he framed the cattle debate as an either or proposition, when that is not how climate scientists frame it. Of course cattle are am important aspect of the Earth. The cattle aren't the problem, the problem is with us and how we manage the cattle. There are way too many of them, thus the amount of methane and CO2 they are releasing is way out of proportion to the balance he speaks of. Worse still is how much fossil fuels are consumed to artificially maintain such an out of proportion balance in the cattle populations in the world.
He has a whole section on how large populations of those types of animals could only survive by constantly migrating to new food sources. We cut out their need to migrate by using tonnes of farmland to grow their food and fossil fuels to ship it to them. We also use tonnes of fossil fuels to plant it, extract it, to make the pesticides for it, to make the fertilizers for it. What's more, those farming practices of keeping single crops going on certain plots of land damages the soil over time.
No, the climate scientists aren't saying there needs to be a ban on cattle. They say there needs to be a dramatic reduction in cattle. They should be returned to the way this guy describes as the correct way of growing. Where they migrate and graze. Basically, to a level where they aren't needing to be supported by fossil fuels. At that point, their offgassing will return to more balanced levels that can be dealt with by nature.
Surely it isnt always as simple as 'reduce biodiversity - reduces biomass'. Say you reduce biodiversity in an ecosystem, but one opportuntistic species prevails....but i suppose they wouldnt be able to maintain a healthy population without a biodiverse environment providing food, shelter etc....i suppose they only occasion that might occur is in cities, with rats or other rodents. hmmm. now just thinking outloud. i suppose it does actually always make sense in a natural setting. very good point.
in respect to soil there is a really good reason why biodiversity is critically important - Soil is healthy when it has microbial and fungal activity within it (not covered in this talk) something called 'the soil food web' ... if there is only one kind of plant there are only limited interactions with the soil - and soil needs multiple kinds of interactions with different kinds of roots (plants actually feed the microbes by exuding liquid carbon into the soil to feed specific microbes - each plant feeds different microbes (even though each they can alter to a degree the liquid carbon they produce to suit different microbes!!)). The roots also interact with the mycorrhizal network and the greater diversity of plants assists in more healthy the soil ... it is a wonderfully complex system - human knowledge around especially fungal (mycorrhiza) interaction has built since this talk.
Men to
Better plan. We collect all the leaves for 2 years. Then. We grind them up make a slury pump them back into old dry oil wells and cao them.
I guess you support Adolf Trump?
Simpler to understand with this good presentation. But for anyone, there’s still so much more to study/ to put into perspectives
I think you can see how to make it on Avasva . This is just an advice ;)
Excellent but much to quick.
Sounds like Hugh Hackman
He outlines why people get deceived; because they only consider one line of reasoning. This is very effective part of the talk
But...
Then he goes in to produce that exact same fallacy
Because it has been shown numerous times over that the most productive ecosystems in terms of carbon based biomass on the earth are estuaries, and rainforests
Forestry is by FAR the better way to sequester carbon. Maybe the grass looks like it has more roots than a tree, but a trees roots go much much deeper, and they are much much more dense than grass roots
I guarantee this 'holistic management' meme has almost entirely been funded by big cattle ranchers
I would rather give money and custom to forestry rather than people who want to get rid of the trees
I guess you don't really know about grass. It has roots that can go many feet deep if it is managed properly. Trees are great. I've been contributing to tree planting every month since 1986. But grass spreads over huge areas of land and feeds animals, and animals feed people. Grass-fed beef is delicious and nutritious, and the cows get to live a nice life on good soil munching good plants. And as for funding "by big cattle ranchers," well, that'll be the day. LOL I would love it if they all started operating using regenerative agriculture. We would see a drop in CO2 levels, healthier animals, healthier soil, and healthier people.
Savory pays people in the regenerative movement to do endorsements for him. his ego knows no bounds and his lies are so big people accept blindly.
I think both forest management and grassland management, and also better management of croplands are in order. He showed on that map the forest zones and the grassland zones; it doesn't have to be either forestry or grassland, but rather techniques adapted to what grows best in that region.
16:28 Key idea LARGE HERDS MOVING ABOUT
Biosequestration of carbon is the answer. We have a cultural blind spot we call "waste" and the failure to incorporate this material into our economic model is why it keeps failing.
If plants only breathed in, and not in and out, then it would take them roughly 575 / 15 = 40 years to take back the excess 270ppm and not 12 years as he stated. Or I missed something...
+Stephane TheTechie
I think he was running the calculation from 550ppm - assuming we will reach that figure. 550 minus 270 = 280 = pre industrial level.
+finlarg Spot on.
+finlarg Wouldn't that be 18 years then?
Stephane TheTechie I'd need to watch the video again, which I plan to do soon, as it contains so much interesting information.
+Stephane TheTechie its so unimportant if its 12 years or 18 years (or even 40 years) if we do it, we wont stop 12 years later. if we wont do it, it wont be done. so i suggest we focus our attention on actually doing it
Breathe, breathe,😵
He had a lot to say. :)
Metric tons or?
nevermind must be
Thank you Tony Lovell, very interesting. Proven with data and intelligence. Grazing animals should migrate all the time. We people used to migrate alongside these animals. It's not only better for the planet, it's better for the meat.
It will. It isn't a lock, it is a cycle. But if the average carbon in the soil goes from 1% to 10%, you lock it in the soil for a longer period of time, amount of carbon in the soil goes up, in the air, carbon drops. This is tweaking the cycle to retrun it to the proper balance, not a "take carbon out of the air, store it forever."
You need to remove your linear thinking.
this is snake oil, smoke and mirrors.
Sounds like it's high time that individual country's had a mandatory carbon sequestration quota then?
Completely neglecting methane and co2 emissions from cows.
Where exactly do you think the carbon comes from? Don't you know that much from physics and chemistry?
Every living organism eremits CO2, but how exactly do you sequest your CO2 back into the ground!
Cows turn desert into grass and woodlands!
@@jenspetersen5865 methane is 86x as potent as CO2. it goes into the stratosphere and cooks the planet. Methane is responsible for 38% of the global warming to date. (IPPC AR5 Ch8, Supplementary Material)
Growing plants is the primordial sin.
We should all be eating meat and no plant-based food...
I hate the fact I have to watch this for a foods project just makes me mad
Why?? This is good news. It saves farmers from going bankrupt. It creates more nutritional food. It combats desertification.
Cut the forest down and the soil is washed away by the rain!
I guess this was before he realized increased CO2 in the atmosphere means more plant growth on the ground....smh. Good ideas though.
It only means more plant growth if the soil it grows in is healthy. Just increasing CO2 hasn't increased plants. Many trees are dying because of the increased temperatures that mean winters aren't as cold, and bark beetles don't die. Healthy soil not only helps plants to grow, but plants growing in the soil helps the soil be healthy and absorb all kinds of carbon. If CO2 could stimulate plant growth on its own, all our deserts would be full of plants. They could be, but they're not since we've removed the animals that stimulated and fertilized the plants that used to grow in our deserts.
@@wendyscott8425 these comments are littered with ignorance. the blind leading the blind. it's so sad.
If you are working hard, slow down. Because you are working to make some one buy something or you are making people consume some thing or making the economy dynamic by consuming the earth.
If you think about it you do not need to increase biodiversity to get all those good effects, you only need to increase biomass. Technically speaking we could get rid of all the biodiversity in the world and only have select few plants and animals that are the most efficient. Granted we would have to have some variations due to region and as well to protect from disease but other than that technically speaking we only need more biomass not biodiversity. I mean of course biodiversity is still great and we should protect it to some degree BUT it is not necessary for human survival. Please reply with opinions as this is a controversial take on biodiversity and I want to know if I am missing something obvious, no judgement.
Nathan McClinchey that would be dangerous because we don’t even know about all the functions in ecosystems of most species.
But some we know for example are whales. Whale poop is extremely important the help offset carbon from the atmosphere. Whales spread nutrients all over the ocean that stimulates the growth of phytoplankton which pulls carbon from the atmosphere. The more biodiversity the more stable an ecosystem is.
Ramona Le Faye true true but if we know for example turtles spread that exact same poo then theoretically if all the whales died yet the turtle population boomed we would be OK, still I get what you mean and my arguement is just am example because we don't know but if you were to study a certain forest I'm sure you would find that all the ferns and mushrooms and such could easily be replaced with edible human friendly counterparts with little to no backlash, but yeah we haven't done said research yet so it is best to leave nature the way it is because we do not know the consequences YET. As well the ocean is huge and in the case with the whales we probably would not be able to replace them simply because it would be too hard to map out all the effects a whale has on the environment but you never know
The reason that modern farming and animal agriculture has failed is the lack of biodiversity. We are understanding more and more of the complex nature of the relationship between fungi and microorganisms within the soil and within ecosystems. Healthier soils and ecosystems are those with a large diversity of organisms. Monoculture practices, whether in plant life or animal life are unsustainable and are damaging.
The more diverse the more stable. The more "efficient" (monocultures or reduced bio diversity) the more unstable. Highly efficient "stteamlined" systems get to a point where they INVARIABLY collapse. The same happens not only in ecology but also in economic systems, etc.
@@nathanmcclinchey786 check out the videos of Geoff Lawton. You will find them highly interesting. Not his TED talks those are more abstract, but the 5 - 10 minutes vids where he talks about very practical thins (should I plant bamboo, what about swales, how to improve your soil if you have xx as condition. How to plan and design, ....)
He plants food forests etc and is not shy to also plant exotic species. BUT: he aims for diversity and to understand the niches and what the native plants does in and for the system.
Or, putting carbon back where it belongs, in the atmosphere for the support for all life forms!
0:11 xx