rick etter wrote:
>>yes, and Rick Etter is promoting this effect by promoting his grass fed
>>beef
>>agenda
>>======================
>
> Nope, especially since my diet, descenteds', and yours are not tied to the
> sahara.
>
> I suggest you and beachbum learn a few real facts about the desertification
> that has been ongoing for 1000s of years...
> Again, for the reading impaired, crop production is habitat destruction and
> environemntal desturction. Using natuarl grass lands as they are and have
> been is not.

You can take that a step further, Rick. Where's the evidence for mass
desertification caused by human activity (much less grazing) anyway? Consider
the following.

...The wholesale deforestation of the Eastern United States...
seems only to have caused the extinction of one species of
bird. While in Puerto Rico, the island's loss of 99 percent of its
forest cover caused the loss of 7 out of 60 species, but after the
deforestation, the number of bird species on the island actually
increased to 97. The species-area relationship (plotted as a linear
function in 1859) seems to be a poor model on which to base extinction
rates.

So the model is suspect and the extrapolation invalid. What about the
link to global warming? The researchers assume that global warming will
reduce habitat. Yet this isn't the case. The earth is not shrinking.
The reduction of one area of habitat does not mean that it is replaced
by void. Other habitats expand. And so far, all the evidence we have
points not to desertification or other changes to less hospitable
climates because of global warming. Instead, the increase of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere seems to have led to a 6 percent increase in
the amount of vegetation on the earth. The Amazon rain forests
accounted for 42 percent of the growth...
http://www.cei.org/gencon/019,03797.cfm

The link provided by Beachboob states that the Sahara "started drying up 6,000
to 8,000 years ago." Rome was founded in 753 BC. That means the Sahara started
drying up at least 3000 years before Romulus settled in the Seven Hills, not to
mention before man made the transition from hunter-gatherer to local farmer.