Jim Laurie - Nature Does 90% of the Work From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference: "Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming" Saturday November 22nd, 2014

2. Biodiversity for a Livable Climate
Loss of Biodiversity: Consequences
1. Freshwater: Reduced Availability & Quality
2. Food: Reduced Availability & Quality
3. Disease Processes in Many Species (including Humans)
4. Loss of Climate Stability - Global Warming
Jim Laurie
jimlaurie7@gmail.com

3. 6th Extinction ? - Soil ?
“Big animals are like the
nutrient arteries of the
planet and if they go extinct
it is like severing these
arteries.”
Chris Doughty - University of Oxford
Environment Change Institute
In the late Pleistocene, 97 genera of large
animals (megafauna) went extinct, concentrated
in the Americas and Australia.
Nature Geoscience 6, 761–764 (2013)
“Poop Paucity Predicament” - David Biello, Scientific American

6. Carbon Lost / Acre?

11. Soil Extinction
1. MegaFauna Extinction in Australia and Americas
2. Barbed Wire - Herds Can’t Move to “Sweet Grass”
3. Plow - Fragment and Oxidize Soil “Dust Bowl”
4. Pesticides & Chemical Fertilizers
We are now inhibiting Photosynthesis by
tolerating bare ground. (10 to 15 billion acres)
We are inhibiting Humification
with agricultural chemicals.

13. CO2
levels rise
rapidly
>>>
Loss of
Polar Ice
>>>
Ocean
Anoxia
>>>
H2S
bubbles
out of
oceans.

14. “When you understand the power of self-organization, you
begin to understand why biologists worship biodiversity even
more than economists worship technology.”
“Hierarchical Systems evolve from the bottom up. The purpose
of the upper layers of the hierarchy is to serve the purposes of
the lower layers.”
from Thinking in Systems
by Donella Meadows
Places to Intervene in a System
12. Numbers - “Mostly, the numbers are not worth the sweat put into them”
(I’ll skip a few.)
4. Self-Organizing Systems (John Todd & Eco-Machines)
3. Goals (What do you want? - Allan Savory & HM)
2. Paradigms (Lynn Margulis - Microbial Symbiosis)
1. Transforming Paradigms (questioning your own beliefs and paradigms)

19. Lynn Margulis - Symbiosis is a key to evolution.

21. More Poop
More Possibilities
and
More Fungi
More Future

24. 15,000 / square mile

29. Greg Judy’s Goal:
25 earthworms / sq. ft.
100 tons castings / acre
http://www.greenpasturesfarm.net/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6HGKSvjk5Q

30. Christine Jones - AmazingCarbon.com

31. Long sticky
molecules
outside the cell.
Humus
Glomalin

36. Paul Stamets

39. Jerrie Tipton - 1989

48. Thanks to
Peter
Donovan

53. Methane?
Methanogens produce
methane in
anaerobic conditions.
Methanotrophs eat
methane in
breathing soils.
Wastewater Lagoons Bury 3 feet deep
Concrete Floor Dung Beetles
Where Cow patties?