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Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

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Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#151

Post by josephcsible »

myshpa wrote: post #141
freedomben wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ok, so let's stop using fossil oils and animal agriculture (let's ignore human farts for a moment). > How could that be detrimental for human flourishing, I ask? Are the burgers essential for humans to flourish? I don't think so. Disclaimer: I decided to interpret the comment as disagreeing with me because it seemed like the most plausible interpretation giving the ambiguous potential use of sarcasm, but it's very…

> How exactly do you propose to heat the average person's home when all fossil fuels are no longer available Atom & renewable sources. 256x256 km of solar panels is enough for whole world. > And any derivative products of fossil fuels such as plastics You mean trash (99% of plastics produced)? Stop producing it. > fertilizers Use regenerative agriculture. Agriculture can perfectly well function without fossil fuel in…

> Atom & renewable sources. 256x256 km of solar panels is enough for whole world.

> Electric tractors. Should have been here decades ago.

Those sound like great ideas. How about we roll them out first, and only stop using fossil fuels once they're able to totally replace them with no downside, instead of giving up heat and tractors indefinitely in the meantime?

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#152

Post by 411111111111111 »

culopatin wrote: post #110
machina_ex_deus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methane naturally turns into CO2 in the atmosphere. Even if it did increase warming more than CO2, once methane emissions reach a steady level, reducing methane emissions won't change a thing, compared to CO2 emissions. This is also similar to meat production emissions. Most of carbon emissions in meat productions are of carbon which was captured from the air as a part of the production cycle, by the plants which fee…

I don’t understand this logic or the wording. Methane = increase in Co2 Reducing methane = no effect But reducing Co2 yes? Why wouldn’t reducing methane change anything? Following your logic reducing Methane is reducing Co2, no?

The argument is that there is a set quantity of co2/methane in circulation. The meat industry supposedly isn't increasing the amount on a yearly basis.

By that logic the only climate change relevant source of greenhouse gases are ones that introduce new ones into the circle, which is pretty much only burning fossil fuel.

It's a pretty old argument that holds some truth, (the fossil fuels are the biggest issue) but is also been debunked by people much smarter then me

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#153

Post by revelio »

dmbche wrote: post #99
shrubble wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The temperature has changed repeatedly without any evidence of human involvement over those longer time periods we can observe. And the levels of CO2 etc. have changed as well, during time periods when it could not possibly have been blamed on humans. I grew up in Canada, in an area with lots of farms... and I remember the high school trips to different geographical features such as moraines which are the residue of…

I don't think you understand what you are arguing. Yes, the average temperature of earth has chaged vastly over its history, giving different levels of habitability. At this time, we're in a really good spot for habitability, and we are seeing that we are slipping out of it. There is evidence that some of the temperature change could very well be human made, and thus easy to stop (compared to, say, the emissions of v…

Climate has changed in big ways without mass extinctions. The medieval warm period, the little ice age, mid-20th-century cooling. Just three examples. The idea the climate has been stable since the dinosaurs isn't supported by the evidence.

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#154

Post by revelio »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #91
shrubble wrote: post #40

This is exactly what the "deniers" have been saying - that the mathematical model is not fleshed out enough, and the data is not present in sufficiently accurate quantity, for the climate models to be accurate. This research shows that the mechanism of action was misunderstood all this time. What else hasn't been researched enough and has simplistic assumptions baked into the climate models? That shockingly simplisti…

The deniers are mostly denying that the impact of human activities on climate is real. They are just attacking the models as a convenient scapegoat which is weird because everyone know the models can be criticised but there is undeniable evidence for human emitted CO2 having an impact so it’s mostly a waste of time. If you really want to criticise the models, demographic hypotheses are far more questionable than anyt…

World population has grown at exactly the same rate for the last 70 years:

https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth

If modellers were caught by surprise by this then they are clueless. But they weren't because population doesn't factor into models. They go straight from projections of CO2 levels, which have also grown at a constant rate:

https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

So it's not clear why you bring up population growth. It's not relevant.

>> there is undeniable evidence for human emitted CO2 having an impact

What is it and how is this impact measured in an undeniable way. It can't be temperatures because they don't track CO2 levels.

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#155

Post by Guid_NewGuid »

ta8903 wrote: post #9

How will this affect internet arguments about going vegan?

On here?

Nothing will change from the chorus of "well I get all my meat from this local quaint little butcher who knows all the cows by name and they're raised on grassland that cannot sustain arable farming so it's fine, actually", completely ignoring what happens when 8 billion people need to go to that butcher...

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#157

Post by xyzzyz »

myshpa wrote: post #146
xyzzyz wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, eating meat is essential to flourishing of overwhelming majority of humans. Most humans, as they become wealthier, increase their meat consumption. This is very consistent across the world. If you forced humans to stop eating meat, this would make billions of people very unhappy. Benefits of burning fossil fuels are extremely obvious, so I shouldn’t even need to list these — for one thing, they make the discussi…

> If you forced humans to stop eating meat, this would make billions of people very unhappy. Wealthy billions. The poor ones don't eat as much meat and dairy. And it's a good thing ... if they did, we would need not one, but 4-5 Earths to feed everyone. Eating meat is a culture. A story we tell ourselves. It cost us all of megafauna, half of our forests, it threatens thousands of animal species with extinction, and i…

> Wealthy billions. The poor ones don't eat as much meat and dairy. And it's a good thing ... if they did, we would need not one, but 4-5 Earths to feed everyone.

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying: less energy consumption pretty much directly translates to less human flourishing. You seem to be arguing that this is a good thing (which I disagree with), but you keep supporting my claim with more evidence, so please, concede this.

> Costs are human construct. Money is just a record in someone's database. Goverments can make as much as they want. It means nothing.

This is not so. If that was the case, poor countries could become rich by their governments printing more money. Zimbabwe tried, they did get more money, but did not get any wealth.

The point here is that money represents something very real and significant, which a claim on value produced in the economy. If you just “change records in someone’s database”, you’ll only have more money chasing the same amount of goods, ie. inflation. If you, however, force people to use different, more expensive sources of energy, the impact is very real: less of stuff in total gets produced, and so the society gets to consume less in aggregate. This means less flourishing.

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#158

Post by revelio »

xyzzyz wrote: post #144
revelio wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antarctic sea ice extent is currently at the same level it was at this time of year in 1980, actually a little higher. Use Charctic to see for yourself: https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-... Arctic sea ice extent is currently tracking the 2010-2020 average. Nothing much is happening in terms of Arctic sea ice extent at the moment and that's been true for a while. There has been a steady decl…

What an outstanding comment. You put much more effort in it than the person you replied to really deserved.

Thanks! :) Glad someone appreciated it.

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#159

Post by eastof »

verdverm wrote: post #105
throwaway09223 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the problem is that meat consumes approximately 25 plant calories to produce 1 meat calorie. It's a reducing function, which means calorie for calorie meat produces 25 times as much greenhouse gas simply from the costs involved in plant production. This isn't universally true - some meat is grown by grazing "free" plant calories. But it is true for grain fed cattle -- for most US industrial meat production.…

There are nutrients and amino acids only found in meat. Where do you get the replacement for this, what does that process look like, are they even metabolically equivalent?

> nutrients [...] only found in meat

Nutritional yeast is tasty and naturally has b12, and most cereals/grains are fortified with it.

> amino acids [...] only found in meat

This just isn't true, you can get all amino acids from plant-based sources like soybeans, lentils, and peanuts.

Source: I have been vegan for 5 years and I still have a healthy 6 minute mile, 25 consecutive pullups, V5-V7 range boulder problem climber, etc.

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#160

Post by gonzo41 »

Retric wrote: post #128
gonzo41 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes 10 years for that to happen. So the effect in the short term is 20 time more greenhouse gas effect. If we stopped producing CH4 now, it'd be 10 years to see the drop back to co2 levels.

Cutting CH4 is useful for fighting climate change, but in a different way than cutting CO2. In terms of climate change it’s not a 10 years thing and then methane instantly swaps, it’s a second by second thing where a percentage of existing methane is constantly converted. In steady state new methane from say cow farts 1:1 replaces methane from past cow farts being transformed into CO2. The only difference is an atom…

I'm more worried about untracked CH4 leaks from coal mines and LNG projects. Which dwarf farm emissions. Cow's are just part of the problem. The real threat is the LNG industry.
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