Biologists Alexei A. Sharov and Richard Gordon have written an interesting speculative paper about the origin of life on Earth and in the universe (see full 19-page paper here). The paper is at times tough going with molecular biology jargon. They used a computer simulation to get back to the simplest form of life.

They start: “An extrapolation of the genetic complexity of organisms to earlier times suggests that life began before the Earth was formed. Life may have started from systems with single heritable elements that are functionally equivalent to a nucleotide.”

Some of their speculations and conclusions:

“Linear regression of genetic complexity extrapolated back to just one base pair suggests the time of the origin of life = 9.7 ± 2.5 billion years ago.” That is older than Earth.

This cosmic time scale for the evolution of life has important consequences:

(1) life took a long time (ca. 5 billion years) to reach the complexity of bacteria;

(2) the environments in which life originated and evolved to the prokaryote stage may have been quite different from those envisaged on Earth;

(3) there was no intelligent life in our universe prior to the origin of Earth, thus Earth could not have been deliberately seeded with life by intelligent aliens;

(4) Earth was seeded by panspermia

(Panspermia: Theory that life on earth originated from organisms coming from outer space); I wonder if this begs the question. However did life originate elsewhere?

(5) experimental replication of the origin of life from scratch may have to emulate many cumulative rare events;

(6) the Drake equation for guesstimating the number of civilizations in the universe is likely wrong, as intelligent life has just begun appearing in our universe.

Physicist Luboš Motl, a fan pf panspermia, has some comments here.

Some of their other speculations:

“In summary, the functional complexity of human civilization grows exponentially with a doubling time ca. 20 years, but we do not see any signs of an approaching “technological singularity” when humans would be replaced by intelligent machines. Instead, we expect a stronger integration of human mind with technology that would result in augmented intelligence.”

 - Big Bang’s Sheldon Cooper can hardly wait.

Earlier today, NASA announced that the Sun has had an Earth directed coronal mass ejection (CME) that is expected to arrive on Earth within one to three days.

According to NASA, a CME is “a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space and can reach Earth one to three days later and affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and ESA/NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 900 miles per second, which is a fairly fast speed for CMEs. Historically, CMEs at this speed have caused mild to moderate effects at Earth.”

A CME is not a solar flare. A solar flare is an intense burst of radiation coming from the release of magnetic energy associated with sunspots.

A CME contains matter with much less radiation. According to NASA: “The outer solar atmosphere, the corona, is structured by strong magnetic fields. Where these fields are closed, often above sunspot groups, the confined solar atmosphere can suddenly and violently release bubbles of gas and magnetic fields called coronal mass ejections. A large CME can contain a billion tons of matter that can be accelerated to several million miles per hour in a spectacular explosion. Solar material streams out through the interplanetary medium, impacting any planet or spacecraft in its path. CMEs are sometimes associated with flares but can occur independently.”

A CME can cause a geomagnetic storm:

“The Earth’s magnetosphere is created by our magnetic field and protects us from most of the particles the sun emits. When a CME or high-speed stream arrives at Earth it buffets the magnetosphere. If the arriving solar magnetic field is directed southward it interacts strongly with the oppositely oriented magnetic field of the Earth. The Earth’s magnetic field is then peeled open like an onion allowing energetic solar wind particles to stream down the field lines to hit the atmosphere over the poles. At the Earth’s surface a magnetic storm is seen as a rapid drop in the Earth’s magnetic field strength. This decrease lasts about 6 to 12 hours, after which the magnetic field gradually recovers over a period of several days.”

We may experience some interference with electronic communications.

In a series of lectures, Dr. Allan Savory, a biologist and former Zimbabwean farmer claims that mis-managed cattle grazing, such as has occurred in Africa, has turned grassland into desert, but properly managed cattle grazing can reverse the process, reclaim the desert, and turn it once again into productive grassland.

Savory was a member of the Rhodesian Parliament and had to go into exile after opposing the policies of Ian Smith. In 1992, Savory founded the Savory Institute in Boulder, CO, and the Africa Centre for Holistic Management in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. You can watch videos of his 2009 lectures here and a February, 2013, lecture here (22 minutes).

Savory’s basic thesis on grazing is this:

“In the past, large wild herds of herbivores such as caribou and buffalo migrated over the land to find food and avoid predators. These herds grazed, defecated, stomped and salivated as they moved across the grasslands, building soil and deepening plant roots. Once these herds had migrated onward they would not return to an area until it had recovered.”

“Unfortunately, over time, the wild herds disappeared and were replaced by small numbers of domestic, sedentary livestock. Without the timely stomping and excrement of large numbers of animals, the cycle of biological decay in these grasslands was interrupted and the once-rich soils turned into dry, exposed desert land.”

Savory’s solution is to concentrate grazing in small areas and move the cattle frequently. I have seen this method practiced in the Cape Province of South Africa when I was doing geologic exploration there many years ago. There, the land is very flat as shown in my photo. There are miles and miles of miles, as one South African colleague put it.

The Savory setup in terrain like this is to establish a central water source, then encircle it with six to eight, relatively small, wedge-shaped pastures enclosed with barbed wire. Cattle are grazed in one or two of the wedges and moved frequently. This short-term, intense grazing does help restore the grasslands in this area.

Would this method be beneficially applicable to cattle grazing in Arizona? To find out, I consulted a friend who is a cattle rancher in Southern Arizona, an expert on desert grasses, and familiar with the Savory system. The answer is “no” at least in Southern Arizona, because:

The Savory Method is highly intensive, requires enormous expense in mini-pasture fencing and constant moving of livestock. Desertification is certainly a concern in Africa. But here it is of less concern because of our intensively monitored and managed systems (developed largely on the Santa Rita Research Ranch in the Green Valley area by U of A agricultural experts). We manage according to agreement with the Forest Service and State Land Department based on this locally-derived science. Desertification is simply not happening in this area.

The pattern here is larger pastures with rest-rotation systems geared to our bimodal rainfall regime with the primary growth in the summer. Entire summer rest is provided (in fact, about 20 months) every other year on most of our summer pastures. Our herds are generally in one large pasture for a season and then are moved to pastures with forage that has had a significant regrowth period. This process seems to produce the best plant community including wildlife habitat and promotes sustainable or steadily above-sustainable production of herbage with the widest variety.

Our rugged, distant, forest pastures don’t lend themselves to mini-pastures: we’d have to drill many more wells or put in more miles of expensive pipelines. We would also have the problem of maintaining many fences cut by folks moving illegally north. The Savory system may well get good results in flatter, privately owned, access-controlled land, but that is quite different from Southern Arizona ranchland.

We see, therefore, that there is not a universal solution, but great benefit when methods of better practice are designed for local conditions. And in each case examined here, cattle grazing can benefit the environment.

While this result may be surprising to some and contrary to the precepts of radical environmental groups, it is just common sense that cattle growers have an economic interest in keeping the range healthy and productive.

See also:

Buenos Aires National Game Refuge This post gives a history of ranching in the Altar Valley.

Ranching and agriculture in Arizona, The Arizona Experience