OK I went there. It is pretty flawed. Point by point:
New rebuttal to the myth 'Holistic Management can reverse Climate Change'
"They are at risk of completely drying out because of increasing temperatures and more at risk to the detrimental effect of mismanaged grazing (Lal, 2004).This makes it unreasonable to apply Holistic Management to such dry areas, where the intense grazing would no doubt leave soils further damaged."
This is a false demonstrably illogical statement. Land that has mismanaged grazing neither proves nor disproves properly managed grazing. It's ridiculous to claim there is no doubt that even using Holistic management would result in the same outcome as mismanaged grazing. It's so ridiculous a statement I shouldn't even need to refute it. But I can easily.
Effect of grazing on soil-water content in semiarid rangelands of southeast Idaho
As can be seen clearly, Holistic planned grazing significantly increases water content of soils over mismanaged grazing and critically even shows improvement over the control with no grazing at all!
Most of the rest of that section has nothing to do with Holistic planned grazing and only describes yet again demonstrably mismanaged grazing. We can agree that overgrazing and undergrazing both result in desertification and the release of carbon rather than the sequestration of carbon. Ironically the main reason for the term "holistic" comes from a series of management techniques designed to prevent these sorts of mistakes from happening by closely monitoring and proactive adaptation. Holistic management provides a management framework that dramatically helps prevent these negative results from happening. Simply proving that the land can easily be mismanaged really is not a rebuttal of Savory at all. It's more a critique of the status quo Savory is trying to change.
Methane is my pet peeve here. I have already discussed this in some detail here. Most of the issue is Natural gas leaks and clathrates,(fossil methane) not cows at all. But I would agree that removing the livestock from grazing and instead using feedlots to fatten them also has cause some of the problem.
See upland oxic soils is the only biome on the planet that is a net sink for methane primarily due to the action of methanotrophs. Part of maintaining a healthy population of methanotrophs is indeed proper animal impact.
Biotic oxidation is accomplished by methanotrophs which are bacteria that eat methane as their only source of carbon and energy, which is then incorporated into organic compounds via the serine pathway or the ribulose monophosphate pathway.[
1] Of all the natural methane sources and sinks, the biotic oxidation is the most responsive to variation in human activities.[
2] It can be improved by proper management of upland oxic soils by proper grassland/savanna/open woodland management in agriculture. Essentially the healthy grassland soils are an overall net sink for methane, while closed canopy forests, wetlands, and degraded soils are generally not.[
3]
So once again it is mismanagement of the land that does have some negative impact, and once again Savory's methods are designed to reduce and/or eliminate these sorts of management mistakes. This is once again not a criticism of Holistic planned grazing, but rather a critique of mismanaged livestock. I would agree that this is part of the problem, but the conclusion of this article is one huge logic fallacy. Just because mismanaged land and livestock is indeed a problem, does not say anything at all about what Savory proposes, nor does it refute the 10's of millions of acres already showing quantifiable improvement due to following his work. That does indeed include published results too by the way.
Grazing management impacts on vegetation, soil biota and soil chemical, physical and hydrological properties in tall grass prairie
Once again, this time regarding soil carbon, we see marked improvement over mismanaged grazing of several sorts, and critically an improvement over the control of no animals at all.
"Because of the complex nature of carbon storage in soils, increasing global temperature, risk of desertification and methane emissions from livestock, it is unlikely that Holistic Management, or any management technique, can reverse climate change."
I would agree with that. It's possible but very unlikely. Instead we need to do both fossil fuel reductions and changing agricultural systems both. There is no single silver bullet. And just because fossil fuel reductions is not enough alone, and soil sequestration also probably wouldn't be enough alone, doesn't mean we freeze up and do nothing. It means we must do both! Again with the logic flaws. Astonishing really.
"Studies of several grazing techniques and carbon storage have produced no ground-breaking results to suggest that Savory’s idea is doable."
This is a demonstrably false statement actually. In fact Savory won the Buckminster Fuller award for proving the breakthrough in rather dramatic fashion. Not to mention repeatability on every continent and the aforementioned 10's of millions of acres already showing dramatic improvement. So this part of the conclusion actually borders on an outright lie.
"With increasing temperature, the ability of soil to store carbon will decrease
"
Exactly true. And in fact part of the monitoring of Holistic management involves making sure soil temps stay low so they stop losing carbon and water both. So this part of the conclusion yet again can not be assigned to holistic management, but rather mismanagement. The logic flaws continue.
"and grazing will likely speed up the process of desertification. "
Again the logic flaw. Is this mismanaged grazing? Then the statement is true. Is this properly managed grazing? Then demostrably false. See above.
"Finally, methane emissions from cattle are currently too high, and their effect on global warming cannot be ignored."
Actually methane emissions mean nothing. this is as false as the merchant of doubt argument regarding CO2 emissions from animals. see argument # 34 for more information. When calculating these, of which methane is but a small part, the entire biological cycle must be considered, not just emissions. Thus it is the net that matters, not gross emissions like when we deal with fossil fuels including fossil methane.
"Adding more livestock to the planet will not help this."
Alone no. Of course not. The thing that mitigates AGW is increasing our depleted biological systems, and livestock can indeed be a tool for doing that, as Savory so amazingly proved on many millions of acres across the globe. Mismanaged livestock are part of the problem now. Not nearly as big a part as the plow and agrochemicals, but a part yes. Especially when the plow and agrochemicals are used to raise grains for cows and sheep, which is ridiculous mismanagement even worse than mismanaged grazing. So we can easily start there and stop this wasteful use of land to grow excess grains. That will free up so much land we indeed might need to increase either livestock or wild herbivores just to keep it all pruned properly. To avoid it going to desert like so much is already doing now. However, that is determined later by how much arable land we can take out of production and rest. Got the horse before the cart on that one.
“The number one public enemy is the cow. But the number one tool that can save mankind is the cow. We need every cow we can get back out on the range. It is almost criminal to have them in feedlots which are inhumane, antisocial, and environmentally and economically unsound.” Allan Savory
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We all know biology isn't a real science
, and agriculture isn't science at all!