@GeorgeMonbiot Thank you again for agreeing to debate after ten years of researching and criticizing my TED Talk in which I explained for the first time in history why global desertification was occurring. I am sorry that you would not accept my offer to join us for a drink after the debate but then continued to argue on social media. We might have learned together because science is understanding nature through observation, discussion, deduction, logic and reasoning supported by experimentation and confirmation. That is how the Wright brothers learned to fly using science - not papers by their peers when there were none as in my case. You may like this blog by one of the women in our audience who you met 3lm.network/at-last-a-collis… I note on social media that you now appear unaware of what oxidation is. George if you just look at my TED Talk you will see it is explained in detail as well as explaining why it is leading to loss of biodiversity and climate change. I also explained why it cannot be corrected by any technology and why we HAVE NO OPTION but to do the unthinkable and use livestock on this area of Earth every year that is perhaps about 200 or more times the size of the UK. I am deeply sorry that you did not take the opportunity to answer my question asking you how it could be done by any technology - the very basis of our debate. I did my best by accepting all your arguments as givens so that as I said we could focus on discussion, reason, understanding to answer this question fundamental to the very survival of civilization. For your interest, you are not the first to think technology can reverse desertification playing perhaps a greater role than fossil fuels in climate change. Professors at prestigious American universities in the 1960s claimed they could crush down the dead oxidizing vegetation and break up the soil surfaces using giant machines such as you see below. Such "Proof by Authority" was accepted by the US government and United Nations and Billions of dollars were invested in imprinting vast areas of land. Unfortunately the machines did not have a moist microbe-containing gut like large herbivores do to digest the dead plant material and reduce it to dung and urine, although the machines could mimic the trampling of large herds. So now the machines lie rusting in spreading deserts. I am sorry I cannot refer you to any peer-reviewed papers because they don't exist for some reason. And because those university professors wrote no papers acknowledging the costly failure I used to fly visiting scientists to New Mexico over vast areas of failed machine treatment, reseeding and water harvesting swales to see it for themselves. Others have long believed we could use technology to plant trees including drip irrigating them as you also see below where over $30 Billion has been spent by the government of the UAE again on "proof by academic authority" and as you can see the desert is just advancing through it all - a massive failure. The Chinese are learning that at even greater cost. If you come up with an answer to the question of our debate as you continue to argue on social media do please let me know. Kind regards, Allan.