Compounding Failure

Hubris:

As a young scientist in Africa, Allan Savory helped set aside national parks. His organization removed indigenous “hunting, drum-beating people” to protect animals. Newly burgeoning herds of elephants were then identified as causing desertification by overgrazing. Savory theorized as much in a paper and sent it to his peers for review. Other scientists corroborated the report, and the government killed 40,000 elephants.

Instead of improving, desertification worsened.

Savory opens his recent TED talk with this story, assuming responsibility for an awful mistake. But, he says, the experience taught him a lesson, “One good thing did come out of it. It made me absolutely determined to devote my life to finding solutions.” I had to rewind the video the first time I heard that.

According to his account, this was a man already devoted to finding solutions, and those solutions, implemented on a grand scale, failed just as grandly. That experience might imbue some with a severe and undying sense of humility in the face of nature’s grandeur and complexity. Not so, Allan Savory.

No, now he has a new plan. He's going to solve world hunger, stop the mythical global warming, and green up all the deserts. By golly, he's gonna SAVE THE DAMNED WORLD!

Savory says his favored solution—holistic management and planned grazing—is the right solution and should be implemented on an even grander, global scale. “I can think of almost nothing that offers more hope for our planet, for your children, and their children, and all of humanity.” Queue the standing ovation.

That is why I don't watch TED talks. Instead of calling him out as the arrogant jackass he obviously is, they applauded the twit. Rather than stand up and question his objectivity, they encourage him to continue acting rashly based upon flimsy rationalizations of his pet hypotheses. I have no respect for anyone who would sit in the audience listening to the delusional babbling of an obvious egomaniac and think him an intellectual giant.

What the hell happened to critical thinking skills and scientific detachment? Oh, right; the modern collegiate system. It's all about "consensus" now. But consensus is not science, it's religion.