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Unexpected Surge in Global Methane Levels

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Re: Unexpected Surge in Global Methane Levels

#191

Post by intuitionist »

tcbawo wrote: post #7
newnewpdro wrote: post #4

The scale of human activity has become so large that what may seem like fairly trivial variations can be quite impactful thanks to the multiplication factor. Until we substantially reel in the global population size the situation will continue to be rather precarious.

Western capitalism seems to be the one thing that has successfully incentivized people to have less kids, later in life. It's not always glamorous, but it's probably better than most alternatives.

The thing that seems to decrease birth rate isn’t capitalism, it’s education of girls and women. These things often go together along a “modernist” axis but they don’t have to.

Re: Unexpected Surge in Global Methane Levels

#192

Post by TeMPOraL »

zubspace wrote: post #58

One thing I don't understand is why political leaders aren't all over this? Think about a nation going full green and the effect it could have on neighbouring countries? Or a president understanding, that this problem was of highest importance could be a leader of a global change! Think about the fame! But what do we have instead? Ignorance, unwillingness, a dangerous continuation of the status quo on the state level…

> Think about a nation going full green and the effect it could have on neighbouring countries?

Besides the domestic unrest others mention, yeah, they do think about the effect it could have on neighbouring countries. The immediate effect would be tanking one's own economy and significantly reducing the country's position as compared to the neighbours who didn't implement such change. Countries compete with each other too, just like companies do, and they are hesitant to change much for the same reasons companies are.

Re: Unexpected Surge in Global Methane Levels

#193

Post by TeMPOraL »

maelito wrote: post #92
acangiano wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will so many climate based doomsday scenarios, how did earth survive for so long? Earth will be fine. Us, not so much.

Depends how you define the earth being fine.

Not cracked in half or pummeled to space gravel.

But even if you wanted to be less strict, life on Earth will be fine too. It's humanity - and in particular the technological civilization - that's in danger.

Re: Unexpected Surge in Global Methane Levels

#194

Post by convolvatron »

zaroth wrote: post #130
jazzyjackson wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A real push to switch to electric cars already pushes certain types of people to drive bigger trucks and pollute more brazenly, e.g. "Rolling Coal" which I've witnessed first hand in my very liberal college town. Culture is very complicated and you will always get push back. Furthermore, switching out the 200+ million cars in USA to electric vehicles is not going to help emissions because of the carbon footprint of n…

Why discount EVs if you’re listing energy efficient new housing stock? EVs are not a car someone is getting who wasn’t otherwise getting a car. It’s not a question of “let’s build 100 million EVs” but rather, since we are building 100 million vehicles, as many of them as possible should be EVs. Keep in mind that in order to achieve meaningful results it’s going to cost a lot of money. That means asking people to pay…

"Reducing energy use is putting the whole country on a diet, and shrinking GDP would cause more pain and suffering than climate change in the short term."

this really seems to be the root of the matter. unfortunately the wording isn't completely clear.

are you saying that we'd have to accept some economic discomfort in the short term to mitigate some serious long term issues? that seems like a tradeoff worth discussing.

or are you saying that the consequences of economic contraction are so dire that we'd better just learn to deal with the environmental consequences. maybe we can find some market solutions (i.e. shifting to electricity) that reduce emissions somewhat without harming whats really important.

Re: Unexpected Surge in Global Methane Levels

#195

Post by 52-6F-62 »

village-idiot wrote: post #190
oliveshell wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a nice thought, but even if we accept that the global population doing this would stem the tide of climate change (which I am doubtful it would), one quickly realizes that there is no way that the entire global population is going to stop eating animals, and we are back to feeling hopeless. I’m increasingly convinced that carbon sequestration on industrial scales is the only serious way to solve this problem.

Fun fact, properly managed cattle herds can sequester carbon on an industrial scale! Techniques like rotational intensive grazing can help build up the top soil and rich root system that used to cover the plains, sequestering carbon and making the soil far more fertile.

To add to that— adjusting the diet of cattle to one of red algae has proven to reduce their methane emissions dramatically.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-...

Re: Unexpected Surge in Global Methane Levels

#196

Post by 52-6F-62 »

devit wrote: post #104
oliveshell wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a nice thought, but even if we accept that the global population doing this would stem the tide of climate change (which I am doubtful it would), one quickly realizes that there is no way that the entire global population is going to stop eating animals, and we are back to feeling hopeless. I’m increasingly convinced that carbon sequestration on industrial scales is the only serious way to solve this problem.

Just outlaw animal husbandry and meat sales or apply high enough taxes to meat, and meat consumption will become small enough to be irrelevant. People can be vegan just fine, it's only a matter of habits.

Not everyone can be vegan just fine.

Nutritional balance isn’t as well understood as many people think.

I’m all for reducing the scale of meat, but for someone like me—who’s been urged to eat more red meat as a result of my deficiencies on top of supplementation—ceasing to do so will put my health back at risk.

I don’t need to eat it every day, but it’s a near essential part of my diet.

Problems of nutrient uptake are the reason medical researchers and professionals aren’t just telling us to go ahead, subside on non-nutrient cellulose fibre cakes and just pop a pill containing all essential nutrients and calories every day.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/dietary-suppl...

Re: Unexpected Surge in Global Methane Levels

#197

Post by gmuslera »

assblaster wrote: post #157
halfjoking wrote: post #149

Not sure how this is "unexpected." For 20 years there have been articles/studies saying that the "calthrate gun" containing all the methane stored in Siberia and the arctic is the best reason we need to keep CO2 levels below 400 ppm. Now CO2 is at 415 ppm and we're starting to see the accelerated release of methane and it's "unexpected." Why not interview one of the people who said this is exactly what was going to h…

How does CO2 level above 400 cause release of methane from Siberia? There is no established direct link between CO2 atmospheric levels and release of methane.

Check the GISS Surface Temperature Maps (https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/index_v3.html) how the temperature anomalies were distributed around the world in the months of this year. In the upper latitudes you always have big patches with 4+C over the average of 1951-1980, the anomalies are not so extreme in the rest of the world.

And in those regions in particular have 2 possitive feedback loops, with less snow the land absorb more heat, and then the "unexpected" release of methane.

Re: Unexpected Surge in Global Methane Levels

#198

Post by ar-jan »

rewq4321 wrote: post #176
ar-jan wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's also look at greenhouse gases in general: "According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the largest sources of U.S. GHG emissions in 2016 were electricity production (28 percent of total emissions), transportation (28 percent) and industry (22 percent). All of agriculture accounted for a total of 9 percent. All of animal agriculture contributes less than half of this amount, representing 3.9 percent o…

> Global direct greenhouse gas emissions from transportation versus livestock represent 14 versus 5 percent respectively. The FAO's latest number for livestock emissions is 14.5% when considering the full life-cycle. It doesn't matter that we don't have a full life-cycle analysis for transportation - that doesn't change the number for livestock. The author tries to dismiss the 14.5% because "[transportation might be…

It does matter, because it makes sense to focus on the biggest contributors to emissions, where the most gains could be made.

The current thinking goes we should eat "less or no meat", when the effort could be put towards not using grain for livestock feed, and promoting other changes such as reducing methane specifically by adding seaweed to the livestock's diet. That's not to mention that grazing is essential to both prevent and reverse desertification.

Re: Unexpected Surge in Global Methane Levels

#199

Post by village-idiot »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #195
village-idiot wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact, properly managed cattle herds can sequester carbon on an industrial scale! Techniques like rotational intensive grazing can help build up the top soil and rich root system that used to cover the plains, sequestering carbon and making the soil far more fertile.

To add to that— adjusting the diet of cattle to one of red algae has proven to reduce their methane emissions dramatically. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-...

Methane release from cattle is largely a by-product of nitrogen fixing fertilizers putting natural methane eating bacteria in the soil into an inactive state. If we stopped using synthetic (and oil based!) fertilizers at least on where the cattle poop, a lot of that methane will get sequestered into the top soil too.

Which also explains why the flatulence of 60-100m buffalo before the industrial era didn’t warm the planet.

Re: Unexpected Surge in Global Methane Levels

#200

Post by keymone »

nmca wrote: post #159
keymone wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cattle doesn’t convert plant based protein into animal protein. Also cattle eats crop that humans can’t eat and which grows in significantly more tough conditions than those required for crops used as feed. Eating lots of soy is not healthy. It’s a very weird and unconvincing argument on your part, to suggest humans should just start eating crops fed to cattle and that would somehow work in terms of sufficiently heal…

Baffled to read this, as I thought it was widely established as grossly inaccurate. Suggest you read Steinfeld, Henning; Gerber, Pierre; Wassenaar, Tom; Castel, Vincent; Rosales, Mauricio; de Haan, Cees (2006), Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options Or alternatively anything about food culture and supply in India. I don't believe your current position is substantiated by any evidence; but I'm happy…

I skimmed through it, thanks for the link, my “rebuttal” is mostly that this report takes into account all cattle while I’m specifically talking about grass-fed. There are plenty of statements that clarify that corn-fed cattle production is much worse than grass-fed, like

> The water used by the livestock sector is over 8 percent of global human water use. The major part of this water is in fact used for irrigation of feed crops, rep- resenting 7 percent of the global water use.

And, yeah, that’s kind of my point - let’s limit cattle to grass and push it’s production somewhere out to steppes of mongolia or something, which will help recover Amazon rainforests and free-up land for more nutritious vegetables for humans.

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