I download the data and do my own calculations.
You can go this web site and download the data and do your own calculations if you wish.
If you close down all the ranches in the prairies, other grazing animals will just move in and take over methane emissions.
But I have one question about methane: doesn’t it freeze in the atmosphere and fall as part of snow? I know a lot of frozen methane is locked up in permafrost and in the polar regions, as well as the ocean bottom.
Excellent plan. Education, especially scientific education, is pointless, and years of specialization in a field means nothing when it comes to understanding the specifics of the field. That’s why you probably also wrote the OS you’re using and invented any medication you take as well. Vive le Renaissance Man!
You sarcasm is wasted. I believe is being a skeptical consumer of information. On matters I can’t verify myself, I will get a 2nd opinion. I’ve actually correctly diagnosed a medical problem myself and sent a friend to a different doctor who was able to fix the problem and get her back to work when the other doctors had left her in misery for over a year. I also use to write operating systems for a living, so anyone who isn’t skeptical about the software they use is a fool.
In terms of an answer to the op I will refer to this past thread in which I linked to this journal article:
FWIW and presented as an omnivore myself.
Beef doesn’t make you fart. So don’t worry about gas emissions.
No. Methane only has a limited lifespan in the atmosphere (~10years) where it reacts and becomes CO[sub]2[/sub].
Methane in northern lakes and permafrost is the results of organicly produced methane begin trapped under layers of ice (lakes) or permafrost. Methan Clathrate is an water crystal with methane trapped inside it typically formed in low temperatures water is present like the bottom of the ocean.
I still think that is missing the point made previously; methane emissions from cows just aren’t that significant when you consider all GHG emissions, only a few percent, and even less when you factor in the source of the carbon and pre-settlement emissions from wild animals; methane from cows isn’t just building up in the atmosphere, unlike fossil fuel emissions (in fact, until recently, global methane levels were leveling off, the recent increase is not due to more cows either, as I have previously posted).
The most likely aid to reducing greenhouse gaseswould likely be technology. Your PC, your TV, your refrigerator, heck - even your light bulbs usea lot less power than years ago, while performing better. Hybrid cars use substantially less gas in typical use - stop and go traffic in the city. Higher prices for energy mean that better insulation and other building upgrades are becoming a lot more common. We can reduce our energy consumption and greenhouse emissions, we simply aren’t motivated enough to.
Yes, when all of China cateches up with Shanghai and Beijing and the west, the amount of energy used will go through the roof. India is not too far behind. The Soviet bloc jumped on that bandwagon 20 years ago. Does the world have enough energy (and other resources?) to give most of its population a western lifestyle?
The question is whether tech will solve the problem faster than populationa nd demand can create it.
With all we’ve done to date, the concentration of CO2 has only gone from the original about 280ppm to 380ppm. The problem is our total carbon use keeps going up, not even levelling off.
You’re not skeptical. You’ve reached a conclusion and are trying to force the data to fit it. 1998 was an exceptionally hot year. You use that outlier to try to claim that global temperatures haven’t increased for fourteen years, then link to a chart that shows the warming trend quite clearly. Saying the world hasn’t warmed significantly since 1998 without mentioning that it *has *warmed significantly since 1997 and 1999 is simple intellectual dishonesty. There may be reasonable arguments to be made against man-made climate change, or especially the methods proposed to ameliorate it, but denying the warming trend isn’t one of them.
If you read the graph I posted, it shows a warming 1.5 degrees per century on all the temperature indexes. by my calculations we are going run out of fossil fuels before we have dangerous warming. No matter what the question is, the answer is nuclear power.
Show me you math or admit that all you are doing is regurgitating someone else’s opinion.
For some information discussed in this post please refer to this EPA source.
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No, not just “a few percent.” Together enteric fermentation and manure management make up 29% of U.S. methane emissions. Domestic livestock produces much more than do wild animals in sustainable ecosystems.
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Methane is an extremely potent GHG. While it is relatively short-lived its effect in the moderate term is much greater: “Pound for pound, the comparative impact of CH4 on climate change is over 20 times greater than CO2 over a 100-year period.”
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The op was specifically asking about methane output directly from cows so the answer given was specific to the question, but the overall impact of global nutrition becoming increasingly meat-centric is much greater than the methane directly produced by agriculture. As a case in point just look at the impacts associated with China’s increasing consumption of pork.
Across the world the demand for meat has led to “desertification” as marginal lands are overgrazed and monoculture to feed the livestock further depletes resources. Scientific American expressed it like this:
4)U.S. per capita meat consumption is huge, only exceeded by Luxembourg. About 3X the global average. 50% more than France, Germany, or the U.K.
The op’s questions are GQ answerable:
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Humans eating a plant-centric diet would produce an insignificant amount of methane compared to the methane produced by the process to bring a meat-centric diet to them.
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Breeding many fewer cows to be raised for slaughter does not equal “a bovine Holocaust.”
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Wild bison herds at their peaks were indeed a significant methane source but significantly less than curent farmed ruminants. Looking exclusively at methane production (not including the other issues like feed source, transport of product, desertification, etc.) all wild ruminants in historic, pre-European settlement United States
Again, then add in the consequences of having eliminated prairie grasslands (which quite efficiently capture CO2 in root systems) with an industrial scaled petroleum product supported monoculture feed supply.
There is little question that decreasing average per capita meat consumption (including bringing American per capita meat consumption closer to the world’s mean) would have significant global greenhouse and food availability impacts. That does not, to me, imply that I have an ethical obligation to become a vegan, but that is discussion better suited for GD than GQ.
At this point arguing with Climate Change deniers is on the same level as arguing with Creationists, Young Earthers, Flat Earthers, and Birthers. It is not worth the effort.
OK, now I don’t even know what you’re claiming. There is a warming trend, but it’s been consistent for a century or multiple centuries? There is a warming trend, but it’s not dangerous? You originally said there was no warming over the last fourteen years … a claim that relies on cherry picking 1998 as a baseline and still isn’t right. It sounds like you agree with that now, so that’s progress at least.
The chart that I saw at the end of your link showed a chart with global temperature averages from 1978 to present, and showed a clear upward trend. Even that link is broken for me now though.
Nuclear power may be the answer. Reducing beef consumption may or may not help significantly. We should be able to discuss the pros and cons of various ideas without getting derailed by claims that climate change isn’t really happening.
Michael63129,
Specific to some of your other points.
If not for increased methane emissions from livestock we would have had reductions in methane due to improvements in landfill methane capture and up until recently improved efficiency in the production and distribution systems for natural gas. (See EPA link.)
It is not possible to support the current global meat intake, or anywhere close to it, with cattle feeding only on their natural diet sustainably “in areas otherwise unsuited for agriculture.” Very little of the meat eaten is produced in that manner including so-called “grass-fed” beef. This current level of meat intake is unavoidably associated with degradation of marginal lands into completely non-arable land, with large amounts of feedstock being produced on highly arable land with massive petroleum product inputs, and with rain forests being cut down to create land that can feed the cattle. Meat production as you propose necessitates much less than current consumption.
Of course other things can be done that would have greater impacts. Energy efficiency, renewable sources, less waste all around (including of food), the list goes on, all are good ideas. Still the huge global appetite for meat (led by the U.S.) is also of significant impact.
But, the point about the “bovine holocaust” is that I have never once heard a proponent of the switch-from-beef-to-grains argument explain WHAT exactly would happen to the 90 million head of cattle in the USA. Do we slaughter the entire 90 million in one fell swoop and stop breeding more?
The second question: what happens to the lands we just freed up? Seems wild ruminants move back in on a major portion (leading to only about a 14% reduction in methane from animal sources on those lands, per your source). And the arable sections continue to be used for “an industrial scaled petroleum product supported monoculture feed supply”—albeit the monoculture feed (wheat, corn, or soy, take your pick) will be for “human feed” rather than cattle feed. Same fossil fuel inputs to grow and harvest, though.
The same thing happens to the current 90 million head that would otherwise have happened to them. They will get killed and eaten.
Be realistic for a second. No one in the world I think expects the entire world human population to become vegan. The position generally put forth is that the current level of meat, and especially beef, production is associated with significant adverse outcomes, that currently global per capita is increasing, and that decreasing per capita consumption instead would be a good thing. Of note, decreased per capita consumption does not even mean an absolute decrease in beef production given that the number of heads is on track to continue to increase for a while. Somehow even marginally decreasing absolute production would be an amazing accomplishment. It would take imagining a much much more substantial decrease in global consumption to get us to a point that beef could be produced as Michael63129 states with accuracy would be GHG neutral, and even then there would be many cows raised and slaughtered across the globe.
If there is marginally less demand then some marginal lands are no longer as overgrazed and are less subject to desertification, some arable land that is now devoted to raising crops to feed livestock is instead used to raise crops that feed people with greater efficiency from every angle of analysis. More people able to be fed, fewer starving, less GHG per unit protein and calorie … maybe some small amount of marginal land goes wild and becomes a carbon sink while supporting species diversification, or is used to produce biomass for energy …
Your analysis quite frankly is absurd. We will not suddenly have herds of bison across this country instead of livestock being industrially raised; we will likely never have those wild ruminants again (although excessive deer are a real problem and I heartily endorse hunting them for food, not that I am hunter myself). We have a limited amount of land and an increasing number of people to feed, many of them who already can’t afford to buy enough food to not starve. The question to my mind is how best to utilize that land. Using more and more of it to feed cows which we then eat? Or using the some of the same land to produce much greater amounts quality nutrition per acre, per input, and per harmful output, in plant products? Same fossil fuel inputs? Arguably yes. Same outputs per input (both beneficial and harmful)? No.
It is really quite easy to understand. I’m a lukewarmer. I believe that increases in CO2 will increase temperature, but CO2 is not a strong greenhouse gas and there isn’t strong feedback on the water vapor. The actual measured temperature increase rate since we started measuring the temperature with satellites is about 1.5 degrees per century. With such a modest temperature increase there will be long long periods of time when other climate trends overwhelm the CO2 signal, which is why we haven’t have any net warming since 1998.
The people who believe in strong warming have a problem. The Co2 signal should blow right though other climate trends. With modest warming we will run out of fossil fuels before we have dangerous warming.
Here is the temperature graph again.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bzn-XlBIM9nGaXpYT0dqdnp3WkU