Debunking a Climate-Change Skeptic 807
DJRumpy writes "The Danish political scientist Bjørn Lomborg won fame and fans by arguing that many of the alarms sounded by environmental activists and scientists — that species are going extinct at a dangerous rate, that forests are disappearing, that climate change could be catastrophic — are bogus. A big reason Lomborg was taken seriously is that both of his books, The Skeptical Environmentalist (in 2001) and Cool It (in 2007), have extensive references, giving a seemingly authoritative source for every one of his controversial assertions. So in a display of altruistic masochism that we should all be grateful for (just as we're grateful that some people are willing to be dairy farmers), author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in Cool It. The result is The Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg's work is 'a mirage,' writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. '[I]t is a house of cards. Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature' of Lomborg's work."
Lomborg has a response (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure everybody here will be interested in reading Lomborg's response [lomborg.com] before forming an opinion.
Re:Cue the teabaggers. (Score:5, Informative)
However, it has not been shown that humans are the primary cause of this warming.
Incorrect, it has: Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming [skepticalscience.com]
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:5, Informative)
You'd have done much better to link to Lomborg's response [lomborg.com], than going off on your speculative aura.
Re:tldr (Score:3, Informative)
If he'd be interested in critique, he'd have published a paper rather than a book. This is par for the course for Lomborg. He's been pretty much laughed out of the room by any scientist. I haven't even seen the skeptics refer to his work in a long time.
Re:tldr (Score:5, Informative)
That's not what he says:
Re:tldr (Score:2, Informative)
There is nothing to see here, move along (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lomborg has a response (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:1, Informative)
It is on wikileaks last I checked. Plenty of proof of professional misconduct there, including source code.
No need for wikileaks. The source code that is used on the published models is all in the public domain. Given sufficient computing power you can download and run it yourself. No professional misconduct there.
Some unpublished code replete with bugs was revealed by the theft of emails from CRU. Two things: 1) It was never used for any science in publication; 2) Software bugs are not the moral equivalent of dishonesty.
If you could now tell us why you are so strongly motivated to deny science that you grasp at straws and believe obvious falsehoods such as the one you've just sprouted, maybe we can help you?
Re:Cue the teabaggers. (Score:4, Informative)
***because of our placement in a Milankovitch Cycle so it would be very odd if temperature was not increasing like we are seeing.***
Sigh ... Milankovitch cycles are real. They clearly affect climate at any given location. Plenty of evidence to support that. They do NOT affect total energy received from the sun over the course of the year which remains constant. Further, there is no agreement whatsoever amongst those who believe that the cycles nonetheless affect planetary temperature on exactly what the affect of Milankovitch changes are or where we are headed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles#Present_and_future_conditions [wikipedia.org]
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:3, Informative)
*cititaion [sic] needed otherwise it's just hyperbole
For what, thousands of specialist scientists? Too easy! See Annex II [ucar.edu] and start counting ...
We will see (Score:0, Informative)
BL strikes me as being far more reasonable and less hysterical then his critics. His theseis is that there are far better things to spend our money on from a human point-of-view than a massive and potentially economy-wrecking war on on CO2. Is that such a terrible thing to assert? ... well, they never really figured it out. There is now slightly more forest than there was then and it looks pretty similar to me too.
I would guess that people, species and planet wil turn out to be far more adaptable than the Gore-alarmists would have us believe. And seeing how fast things are actually changing (not that fast) we will undoubtably find out who is right.
And all this reminds me a lot of the "Waldsterben" panic in the 80's when the Germans were convinced all their forests were dying and would all be gone by 2000 if we didn't
Re:Its All About Power and Money (Score:5, Informative)
Medieval warm period wasnt necessarily a period of global warmth. It may have been a period of north-atlantic warmth. Other areas were cooler. This is one of the many areas where the situation is just flat out more complicated than any popular treatment would lead one to believe. Very often one area will be cooler and another hotter and it's bugger-all difficult to properly sort it out and demonstrate a *global* trend without going to a very long time-scale.
And it wasnt named that because it was actually green - it wasnt. It was named that because Ericsson had previously found it very difficult to attract settlers for his previous development, Iceland, because even though it was in fact quite green at the time, it just sounded cold and barren. So he chose a more attractive name for his second development in the interest of marketing.
Certainly true.
Whether or not this is true is far from a settled question. Mans actions influence the environment and vice versa and always have. How much is "significant?" There is some very interesting research that indicates even the tens of thousands of years of farming prior to the industrial revolution may have altered global climate significantly enough to be detected. However in the broader picture, of course, the natural forces that have driven climate change since long before humans evolved are still at work and dwarf anything we can do or likely will be able to do anytime soon.
I think there is a grain of truth in that, but you drastically oversimplify.
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:5, Informative)
There you go again. Conflating "climate change" with whether man is the most likely cause. Its really rather rich. The prime highlight of the IPCCs AR3 was to "forget" the existence of climate change prior to the 19th century. Natural variation over the past thousand years was reduced to quiet gradual downtrend with an abrupt surge upward in the 1800s. In so doing they discarded thousands of studies and work of thousands who previously carefully documented periods of great warming and cooling throughout the history of man.
This can be seen clearly by comparing the IPCC-1990 report, which concisely shows the consensus of an old guard (now largely dead). A very warm, much warmer period during the middle ages (shown in read). The IPCC AR3 and AR4 replaced this with the blue curve. Shown a flat-changeless temperature history with a slight downtrend, suddenly accelerating upward. [wikipedia.org]
But their claim was bespectacled from the start by way of special pleading they had explained away each interruption in warming that occurred during the 20th century, but then after the report was published, yet another unexpected cooling period emerged.
Suddenly the meme switched from being about "Global Warming" to being "Climate Change". The focus shifted from temperatures to sea-levels and hurricanes. Yet this turned out to be an even more tenuous footing. Its already no longer considered reputable among intellectual circles to discuss such extravagances. Eventually the talking point was settled upon: weather is not climate. The recent cooling is just weather.
Indeed, weather is not climate. Climate is the expectation of weather--and so yes, it surely does matter when year after year goes by somewhat cooler than had been predicted by the IPCCs latest report.
Meanwhile, the very people who had steadfastly refused to deny climate-change are now labeled the climate change deniers. This stemmed from an Orwellian campaign to redefine terminology. Suddenly believing in climate-change meant believing in anthropogenic climate change. The language literally twisted to be an embodiment of the "one true belief"--no need for that pesky modifier anthropogenic, and all the better to co-opt what everyone knows: climate changes.
Several very cogent critiques of the AR3 temperature series have been published which eviscerated that graph as a product of flawed statistical methods and bad data. Yet a loud cadre continues to deny any problem exists, and banks on the lack of specialized knowledge among the public and other scientists to trade on their word alone.
And, no, we're saying that there is no contribution from Man. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but its effect on temperature depends on poorly understood feedback effects. These effects are in part also responsible for the long history of natural temperature variation that the IPCC otherwise ignores. Ultimately, what it comes down to is this: The IPCC claims a temperature rise of 2C/century. To arrive at this number they assume almost all strong feedbacks are amplifying rather moderating the C02 driven warming. Why does this matter? Much of the impetus for "ACTION NOW!" stems from the notion of a climate tipping point, but if the feedback effects are more moderating than the IPCC claims, this is highly unlikely.
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Its All About Power and Money (Score:3, Informative)
Classical denialist argumentation from ignorance. If very small amounts of something aren't danegrous, you wouldn't mind drinking a glass containing the same concentration of nerve toxin as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, would you?
There's so much evidence of our ability to affect the climate that it's just silly to ignore it. To get you started, read up on the haze of brown smog hanging over Asia [wikipedia.org]. People are actually changing the climate by simply burning wood. Now imagine what a billion cars can do.
Re:Cue the teabaggers. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cue the teabaggers. (Score:4, Informative)
RF = 5.35*ln(C2/C1) = 3.71 W/M^2 for a doubling of CO2
T = (3/3.71)*5.35*ln(387.5/280) = 1.41 deg C. For the observed change in CO2 concentrations.
Re:Lomborg has a response (Score:5, Informative)
Miss.
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:2, Informative)
The man of straw returns.
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think anyone *denies* that climate is changing.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22climate+change+is+a+lie%22 [lmgtfy.com]
is is NOT caused primarily by man.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=is+climate+change+caused+by+man [lmgtfy.com]
in the past the earth was also hotter and contained more carbon dioxide. Who caused that
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=did+earth+have+higher+co2+levels+and+what+cause [lmgtfy.com]
And so on...
Turns out you have to actually search for it as it evidence doesn't just appear in your hand. But I assure you its not really that hard. This took me a minute.
Re:Yet Again (Score:4, Informative)
Here is what climate scientist Edward Cook wrote regarding the accuracy of dendroclimatology:
Without trying to prejudice this work, but also because of what I
almost think I know to be the case, the results of this study will
show that we can probably say a fair bit about 100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know
with certainty that we know fuck-all).
From the climategate emails [eastangliaemails.com]
Here is what Phil Jones said in his BBC interview [bbc.co.uk] regarding the Medieval Warm Period:
There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?
There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.
Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.
We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere.
So Phil Jones is unsure if the MWP was global in extent and Edward Cook thinks we have very little idea at all. Perhaps the certainty in wikipedia is overstated.
Discussing a specific case: Hot and cold (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.lomborg.com/dyn/files/basic_items/118-file/BL%20reply%20to%20Howard%20Friel.pdf [lomborg.com]
"Without reading both books, I can't take sides on the merits. But I will say some of the stuff in TFA sets off my alarms--like spending a footnote on a WHO report just to cite the population of Europe."
When doing math, statistical sources matter. But here we have something substantial to discuss. Is Lomborg dishonest in this case? Read along for the answer!
Friel: "But Lomborg's only source for these figures—a chart in the statistical annex of a 2004 World Health Organization report—contains
no data on human mortality due to excess heat or cold. In fact, the words "excess heat" and "excess cold" make no appearance in the WHO document; neither does the word "heat," and the word "cold" appears only once in a reference unrelated to death due to excess cold.
Lomborg's reference to the WHO document, which allegedly supports his claim that two hundred thousand people die each year in Europe from excess heat, reads in its entirety: "207,000, based on a simple average of the available cold and heat deaths per million, cautiously excluding London and using WHO’s estimate for Europe’s population of 878 million (WHO, 2004a:121).”
However, page 121 of the 2004 WHO report—The World Health Report 2004: Changing History— which is what this source references, lists no data on cold- and heatrelated deaths per million, or for cold- and heat-related deaths in any context.
Likewise, Lomborg's very next reference-to support his claim that 1.5 million Europeans die annually from excess cold - reads in its entirety: "1.48 million, estimated in the same way as total heat deaths."
Thus, Lomborg's references indicate that page 121 of the 2004 WHO report is the source of his estimates of annual heat- and cold-related deaths in Europe; however, this page in the WHO report lists no statistics for either cold- or heat-related deaths. Consequently, there is no apparent basis here or elsewhere in Cool It for Lomborg's claim that 1.5 million Europeans die annually from excess cold. [LD, p. 86, emphasis added]
Lomborg: "In fact, the text and first endnote in this section make it very clear where the figures are sourced from: “Based on the summary of the biggest European heat and cold study (Keatinge, et al., 2000, p. 672).” (p. 170).
In the UK edition of the book, there is even a figure with the numbers, with the further explanation: “estimated in the text, using Keatinge et al., 2000:672.” (p. 233, CIUK) Friel’s claim that I relied on a WHO document that does not support my case is astonishing and profoundly disingenuous.
I clearly used the WHO report solely to provide an estimate of Europe’s population (because WHO uses the standard geographical definition of Europe to the Ural Mountains).This is evident in the text that Friel himself quoted: “and using WHO’s estimate for Europe’s population of 878 million (WHO, 2004a:121).”
Finding this study on Google Scholar took me all of two seconds using the reference provided by Lomborg (in his book).
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/321/7262/670 [bmj.com]
The quote is confirmed by Google Books:
http://books.google.se/books?q=estimated+in+the+text,+using+Keatinge+et+al.,+2000:672&btnG=S%C3%B6k+i+b%C3%B6cker [google.se]
In short, from this example, picked by you - not me, it plainly evident that is Friels honesty or literacy that should be in question, not Lomborgs. This is likely to be representative of the "debunking" in its entirety, going from what I have read of the rebuttal so far.
Give and take? (Score:3, Informative)
Having read Lomberg's response to the criticism, I'm more comfortable with his conclusions than I am with Friel's. However, the last word probably hasn't been written/spoken on the subject. Both sides of the argument fall short of absolute proof, but Lomberg seems to be a better mathematician.
I am basing my opinion on incomplete information (as are all the posters on this topic) since, a. Friel's complete book is is not completely available to us and, b. it's a lot of dang work to analyze the books side-by-side in any case. Despite the lack of sufficient info, people will go out and vote (some of them anyway) and the minority of the voters and the general citizenry will be stuck with the results.
The information at hand doesn't support a conclusion of immediate emergency, so I'm holding out against any hasty drastic actions that mostly serve to make Al Gore richer. The urgency is for more research done a manner that we can all trust, untainted by political considerations, BEFORE it becomes a real emergency. Legitimate scientists will examine all sides of the problem before recommending any long-term solutions.
Friel deliciously biting his own glacial ass (Score:5, Informative)
Friel, denouncing Lomborg on glaciers:
"Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is Page 18 of 27 very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005). [IPCC, 2007c, p. 493]"
How is that "settled science" working out for you Frielyboy?
Re:Cue the teabaggers. (Score:5, Informative)
The best part is that even on that very page, if you match up the time-lines you can see that the temperature and CO2 graphs don't line up, and that the temperature starts to spike before CO2 amount does.
Unfortunately, there's no -1 misinformative mod.
That is to be expected. Normally, temperature starts to rise due to e.g. distance to the sun decreasing slightly, which leads to increased CO2 which enhances the effect of the warming, causing further CO2 to be released until a new balance is achieved (essentially that the energy absorbed from the sun equals the earths black-body radiation). CO2 increase with temperature because CO2 is less soluble in warm (sea)-water, and a number of other effects (Tundra melting is often mentioned as a big one, though I don't personally know.). Now, into this system we (the humans) release enough CO2 to increase the concentration by what, 30%? What do *you* think will happen?
That CO2 must warm the earth can also be concluded directly by looking at the absorbtion bands of CO2. You could even calculate the approximate effect (though not the feedback loops) from this, the atmospheric and distribution of CO2 and from the distribution of the electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere.
But of course, you knew all this. What pisses me off about all this that while the above is well-known science and has been for a long time, the economic aspects are far from clear to me. Is it worth it to curtail the warming? How much will it cost to adapt vs. prevention? Those are the interesting questions, but few discusses this :/
Re:Lomborg has a response (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:3, Informative)
Plenty of proof of professional misconduct there, including source code.
Nope. [guardian.co.uk]
Re:Cue the teabaggers. (Score:5, Informative)
You deserve upmods. It seemingly cannot be stated enough, because the "skeptics" don't get it: of COURSE temperature leads CO2 levels. What would a sudden, pre-temperature rise of CO2 levels come from? There wasn't much coal burned in the ice ages.
When no CO2 is added to the system, it merely works as a feedback for temperature changes, magnifying them. Oceans get warmer, reducing their capacity to dissolve gases, releasing more CO2. Rotting vegetation trapped in ice melts, releases methane and CO2. Fortunately, the additional CO2 released from warming is not enough to cause more warming than what released it, so it doesn't run away, it stabilizes at a new, higher temperature.
But when CO2 is added to the system from outside (fossil fuels trapped in the earth for ages), it's not just a feedback. It's a forcing, something that drives temperature change.
So, that CO2 followed temperature rises during the end of the ice ages is not evidence against global warming. It's what you would expect to happen when there are no humans around to burn gigatons of coal, if current theories of carbon feedback are correct.
Re:Cue the teabaggers. (Score:4, Informative)
Technically correct, they show a feedback from CO2, not a forcing, which is what you would expect. There were no things at the end of the ice ages to release CO2 in large amounts, except higher temperatures themselves (which in turn was caused by Milankovitch cycles). As the earth warmed, CO2 was released from oceans and frozen vegetation, causing further warming.
Without the feedback from CO2, the Milankovitch cycles would only cause a very modest change in temperature - not nearly sufficient to cause the ice age/interglacial cycles we know.
Before humans, temperature was driving the change, and CO2 caused the feedback.
Now, CO2 is driving the change (cause we have coal power plants now), and temperature causes the feedback (because warming up the oceans still reduces their capacity to hold CO2)
Re:Cue the teabaggers. (Score:1, Informative)
Mankind has increased greenhouse gas 40% over pre industrial levels
Sadly, not true. Not even close.
First of all, the greatest greenhouse gas is naturally produced water vapor. It makes up about 95% of the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. Industrialization has not changed this much, certainly not by 40%. More like 0.0001%. From HERE [geocraft.com]
When greenhouse contributions are listed by source, the relative overwhelming component of the natural greenhouse effect, is readily apparent.
From Table 4a, both natural and man-made greenhouse contributions are illustrated in this chart, in gray and green, respectively. For clarity only the man-made (anthropogenic) contributions are labeled on the chart.
Water vapor, responsible for 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect, is 99.999% natural (some argue, 100%). Even if we wanted to we can do nothing to change this.
Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions cause only about 0.117% of Earth's greenhouse effect, (factoring in water vapor). This is insignificant!
Adding up all anthropogenic greenhouse sources, the total human contribution to the greenhouse effect is around 0.28% (factoring in water vapor).
However, if you are just talking about CO2, then you're still not close. I believe the number you are looking for can be found here:
To finish with the math, by calculating the product of the adjusted CO2 contribution to greenhouse gases (3.618%) and % of CO2 concentration from anthropogenic (man-made) sources (3.225%), we see that only (0.03618 X 0.03225) or 0.117% of the greenhouse effect is due to atmospheric CO2 from human activity. The other greenhouse gases are similarly calculated and are summarized below.
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:1, Informative)
citation please.
OK:
[1] Lomborg, Bjorn. The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Enjoy. I look forward to your comments... after you've read this POS.
Ummhave you read the emails (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:4, Informative)
Suddenly the meme switched from being about "Global Warming" to being "Climate Change".
The shift was a result of people not understanding that the term "global warming" referred to the mean global termperature. The media, and Joe Sixpack, did not understand that this meant some regions could still cool, and hence the meme that any cooling disproves global warming [newscientist.com] was born.
The recent cooling is just weather.
By recent cooling, do you mean Climate myths: Global warming stopped in 1998? [newscientist.com] Or is this another "they can't predict the weather so how can they predict the climate" post? Regardless, these arguments have already been debunked: What's the Difference Between Weather and Climate? [nasa.gov] and Climate myths: Chaotic systems are not predictable. [newscientist.com]
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:3, Informative)
If the collection methods are normalized, it can work. What Lomborg did what take two different methods of accounting for forest cover, argue that they were identical, and that the resulting increase in forest cover was real. What in fact was going on was that the UN organization responsible for the data collection explicitly stated that the two data sets should not be directly compared.
Could he have normalized the data, and then compared the data sets? Sure. But he didn't. And considering that the warning was right there in the data sets that he used, I can only assume one of two things: he can't read, or he is being dishonest.
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:5, Informative)
1. Oops! You used the wrong word there -- you said there are *rates* of increase / decrease that overwhelm anything we've seen in modern times. I'm aware that the *total change* was much larger, but not that the *change per unit of time* was much larger. Rate is important, as faster rates reduce the time for species to adapt.
2. What is this rubbish about little old us? There are more than 6 billion of us on the planet. Why wouldn't a very large number of resource-using large mammals be able to affect the planet? We can and do change physical geography on an ongoing basis -- there's virtually no square inch of England that isn't different from its "natural" state due to active management by humans. We can and do deplete resources or poison environments so that they are uninhabitable.
3. What is this rubbish about "trace gas" and "parts per million"? What is inherently implausible about changes in the quantum of trace gases (it's not just CO2, y'know) having real effects on physical systems?
4. Overall, you've missed the point: there's a ton of physical evidence that climate change is happening (and quite a bit for it having an impact on ecosystems too), plus well-worked through theory with good evidence for how ("the greenhouse effect"). *That's* what will need reconciliation with an assertion that there is no climate change.
In the end, there are two arguments to be discussed:
1) Is it happening?
2) What do we do? -- ranging from nothing to something.
I assure you that I'm quite as attached to home comforts as you -- I just happen to believe that the answers are pretty clear:
1) Yes, it is
2) Doing something is more likely to preserve more of my comforts (and fellow human beings) than doing nothing. You clearly take the opposite view.
Re:Cue the teabaggers. (Score:3, Informative)
You mean there were no "hurricanes, snowstorms, tornadoes, wildfires, desertification, droughts, etc. etc. etc." before industrialization? Who knew all these things were man made?
Actually, there's pretty good evidence that some of those things in the ancient world were in good part due to human activity. Probably not the hurricanes, snowstorms or tornadoes. But humans are known to have been involved in at least some of the others.
The case of wildfires is obvious. In several parts of the world, prairie-like ecosystems covered around twice their natural area, and a major factor in all of them was the fires started by humans. This was generally done intentionally, to limit the growth of trees, because a prairie system puts more energy into growing greenery and supports a much higher animal population than most forests. But it only works in dry areas; you can't convert a rain forest to a prairie with fires. And yes, a controlled burn isn't a "wildfire". But controlled fires did frequently get out of control and burn more than was intended, and lightning did start some of those fires. The archaeological evidence supporting all this has only been understood for a few decades, but it is in the literature.
The situation with desertification is also fairly well documented. Thus, historians say they have evidence that the problem of under-irrigation leading to salinification was well understood in the "Fertile Crescent" at least 3000 years ago. But the people chose short-term profit in the form of maximum crops this year, knowing full well what it would do to the land that their grandchildren would inherit. You can see the results in any news videos of the Iraq countryside.
This is much more widespread than just Mesopotamia+Levant. There was a series of experiments back in the 1970s, in which areas across the southwest-Asian arid zone (Syria to Pakistan) in chunks of 2-5 square km were surrounded by goat-proof fences to keep out grazers, and left fallow. In all of them, a year later they were covered with grasses and other forbs. Conclusion: The "desert" in this area is unnatural, and is a consequence of overgrazing. There aren't very many wild grazing critters in this area now; the grazers are almost all domesticated animals. If they could be removed for a year or two, the area would revert to grassland. The land would then support a much larger grazer population than is there now, as long as the grazing were limited so that the bare ground isn't exposed. But humans won't do this; they'll always maximize their grazing animals, until the grasses are killed, and then move on, complaining about how they're mistreated by their gods (or corporations or governments or whatever).
There's evidence that this applies to deserts in other areas, in the form of similar land control development. If you google for "bocage" plus other desert-related keywords, you can find some information about it. (Warning: As you might guess from the term, it's mostly in French. ;-) This term refers to a plot of land surrounded by a goat-proof fence and usually some dikes to catch storm runoff. They have been built in various parts of the "Sahel". By limiting grazers and catching water, people have converted their chunks of dry land to greenery. Of course these are widely considered "pilot studies", and aren't taking seriously by the political system or the people who believe that climate is too big to be effected by humans. Some of the aerial photos of these plots of land are impressive. And this can't much be done in areas where fighting is going on.
This story was covered in a lot of "discussion" sections of various scientific journals back in the 1970s and 80s. The consensus was that the political system probably couldn't be made aware of the implications, and the documented spreading of the Sahara would continue due to overpopulation and overgrazing. But the information has been around, available to people who are interested and apolitical enough to look for it (
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:3, Informative)
And your tactic is the scientific equivalent of Godwin's law. You say, "This is something creationists do" therefore implying that it must be wrong. In fact deniers use the same stupid tactic against warmers, of trying to compare them to creationists.
In his defense, the poster he was responding to had demanded to see proof of overlap between AGW deniers and creationists. I'd say he provided that quite clearly.