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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

#221

Post by sjducb »

slibhb wrote: post #167
jarenmf wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is preventing the skeptics from posting their arguments anonymously to arxiv for us to see how the arguments hold?

Well for one thing it's a waste of time to work on research that won't advance your career. Also, I'm not saying "heterodox scientists have secret, bulletproof analyses to disprove climate change," I'm saying that there are significant incentives against publishing climate-crisis-skeptical research. I'm unsure how anyone can disagree with that. Acknowledging it doesn't mean denying climate change is real or accepting…

If you're a climate sceptic scientist then the oil companies will give you a lot of money to do research.

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

#222

Post by cromulent »

shrubble wrote: post #78
Loquebantur wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason your comment is bad isn't you pointing out some "truth". The reason is your comment being misleading. You pretend, the accuracy of climate models was insufficient for any relevant conclusions to be made. That is just nonsense. The interesting part is people clinging onto anything calling that impending climate catastrophe (or its human cause) into question. Individual subjective short-term benefits outweig…

You're talking about changing literally trillions of dollars worth of economic activity, per year, now and supposedly for the next 50 or 100 years, across the whole of Western civilization. The requirement for the math being absolutely "spot-on" in this case is extremely high. Is it?

> literally trillions of dollars worth of economic activity, per year, now and supposedly for the next 50 or 100 years, across the whole of Western civilization

I'm not sure what sort of model you used to arrive at this vague estimate, but:

Even if you assume AGW science is completely wrong and the effect is zero, humans have to move from fossil fuels to renewables/nuclear in that timeframe anyway, because we have 47 years of oil left. Whether it's 20 years or 80 years, still needs to happen.

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

#223

Post by bandyaboot »

stametseater wrote: post #170
culopatin wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that the claim is that meat industry is extracting as much Co2 as they contribute?

Specifically with respect to the methane cow farts, yes. That carbon comes from their plant diet (be it grass in a field or grain in a feeding lot), and the carbon in those plants came from the atmosphere. This isn't counting the fossil fuels the industry also burns, or the carbon released during the production of fertilizers used when growing that feed. But the carbon in the feed itself all comes from the atmosphere…

The argument I’ve heard is that with more demand for meat comes more clearing of forested land that’s turned into pasture. So instead of storing atmospheric carbon long term in trees, you take much of the carbon absorbed by the grass and release it right back.

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

#224

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

stametseater wrote: post #170
culopatin wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that the claim is that meat industry is extracting as much Co2 as they contribute?

Specifically with respect to the methane cow farts, yes. That carbon comes from their plant diet (be it grass in a field or grain in a feeding lot), and the carbon in those plants came from the atmosphere. This isn't counting the fossil fuels the industry also burns, or the carbon released during the production of fertilizers used when growing that feed. But the carbon in the feed itself all comes from the atmosphere…

On the one hand yes, on the other hand the immense amount of land set aside to produce cow feed could be used to produce much more human food, and the extra land could be used to plant forests.

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

#225

Post by kredd »

kcplate wrote: post #106
altacc wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a prelude to a simplistic "the models aren't accurate, so climate change probably isn't really a problem". However the problem with that is that the overwhelming majority of observations and models, many of which are far from simple and use large amounts of data, point to climate change being real, unusually rapid and anthropogenic. Using the argument that these models aren't accurate ignores the fac…

I think the problem with the attitude of “so what if the models aren’t accurate, we should still undertake giant unpopular sacrifices because I, the expert, says so…”.is that it makes people more and more distrustful of future models that may be more accurate. We just watched with front row seats what happens when once trusted scientific authorities rely on poor data, poor communications, and poor models. The general…

Significant portion of population will always act against status quo even if the data is accurate to the T. Something about “don’t let perfect be enemy of the good” heavily applies to climate modeling, in my opinion. Worst case scenario, we convert to better sources of power through a ton of investment, and make general populace’s life “cleaner” anyways.

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

#226

Post by Out_of_Characte »

orev wrote: post #59
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…

Plants that feed the cattle are overwhelmingly fertilized using fertilizer derived from petroleum products, so it’s not an accurate picture that the feed plants are carbon capture methods.

Where have you been that fertilises grass?

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

#227

Post by smooc »

galangalalgol wrote: post #112
verdverm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There are no amino acids only found in meat. B12 is mostly only found in animal products, but some fungi have it. As to metabolic equivalency, that is a very good question, studies so far indicate the accessibility of amino acids in plants to the human metabolic pathways varies within our species somewhat widely.

B12 is found in animal products because it's added to their diet. It doesn't come natural them. B12 you get from eating dirt, which we don't like to do.

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

#228

Post by titzer »

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…

> This is exactly what the "deniers" have been saying

Deniers gonna deny. They'll use whatever argument it as hand, including completely nonsensical and contradictory ones, to tarnish, downplay, distort, misrepresent, and fundamentally reject the underlying thing they want to deny.

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

#229

Post by runarberg »

phpisthebest wrote: post #119
kvgr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All plants we eat are fertilized. We can stop fertilizing and all die.

[flagged]

I’m seeing more and more of this sentiment, particularly this simplistic tone which spreads FUD around the energy transition. I wonder where it is coming from.

But no, as somebody thoroughly on the left wing of the political spectrum, and a believer in most of the things you accuse climate activists of, I can attest that I’m a minority. I know a bunch of climate activists exists that have full faith that capitalism will solve the crises, some actually believe it has basically been solved (I call them climate optimists; and is a form of climate denialism).

However I do want to defend my camp here a little. Have you considered that perhaps we are right? GMO was supposed to end world hunger, or at least provide a global food security, it was pointed out at the time that no such thing would happen (as we already could have food security through more equal distribution). Now GMO is a pretty established technology that is rolled out in most of the world, and lo-and-behold, food security is still an issue.

Today I see nuclear power pitch similarly as a solution to global warming, however looking at the data, seeing different energy policies, where some countries keep building more reactors, others keep what they have, and some—but few—decommission and phase out nuclear power. What the data indicates is that nuclear power policy is pretty much irrelevant next to a policy of renewable proliferation and other energy savings measures. In other words it doesn’t matter. It can even be argued, because of the cost of nuclear power, that keeping them on is drawing away funds which could otherwise be used in more effective climate measures.

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

#230

Post by upsidesinclude »

stametseater wrote: post #170
culopatin wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that the claim is that meat industry is extracting as much Co2 as they contribute?

Specifically with respect to the methane cow farts, yes. That carbon comes from their plant diet (be it grass in a field or grain in a feeding lot), and the carbon in those plants came from the atmosphere. This isn't counting the fossil fuels the industry also burns, or the carbon released during the production of fertilizers used when growing that feed. But the carbon in the feed itself all comes from the atmosphere…

What about when seaweed is added to the feed which reduces methane emmission by 70%?

The numbers that go into these approximations are not reliable and that's the problem with trying to have some exacting figure 20-28 and use that to create policy.

Which is why we can know that it is just about creating policy.

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