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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

#231

Post by titzer »

Guid_NewGuid wrote: post #155
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...

> they're raised on grassland that cannot sustain arable farming

Funny, neither can "regular" farmland sustain "arable farming" (or whatever that means). Mainstream food production has a massive input of chemical fertilizers produced from fossil fuels.

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

#232

Post by titzer »

slackfan wrote: post #120
brookst wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize you're just trolling, but science is quite settled that anthropogenic climate change is a real ting. Minutae about whether methane is 28x as bad as co2 or merely 20x as bad remains to be settled. Please don't exploit people's good faith interest in getting the exact truth to advance bad faith claims.

I am being pedantic, but there is no such thing as settled science. No matter how solid a theory is, no matter how well-proven, it will remain unsettled in perpetuity.

What utter tripe. Water is made of hydrogen and oxygen and we know their chemical properties exceedingly well. Endlessly splitting hairs that it's not "settled" when someone puts another digit of accuracy at the end of the accepted mass of a proton isn't being pedantic, it's just being pompous.

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

#233

Post by fooker »

jarenmf wrote: post #122
slibhb wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 I think climate change is a problem (not a crisis) but it's important to note that if a scientist questions climate science, he becomes a pariah. In such an environment, it's hard to know how…

> if a scientist questions climate science, he becomes a pariah As a climate scientist myself, I can tell you this is untrue and a harmful legend. As climate science is mostly atmospheric physics, biology and chemistry, it's pretty much very easy to disagree with anyone if you have a good argument supported by data. If you have strong scientific arguments, it does not matter even if the whole world is against you. On…

> If you have strong scientific arguments, it does not matter even if the whole world is against you.

That’s a nice idealistic thing to say.

Academia has shown this to be false again and again.

Most groundbreaking ideas or arguments which go against the current wisdom get buried in the best case, and the proponents scorned and driven out of research in the worst case.

It has been like this since the beginning of organized scientific communities, which is understandable. Scientists are humans with the usual shortcomings like ego and pride.

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

#234

Post by dataflow »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #50
hinkley wrote: post #13

We just had a conversation the other day about climate change and methane, and some people were saying 20x as strong as CO2, and others were saying and sometimes correcting them to 28. According to this article the correct answer is 20. That’s still over an order of magnitude difference. It still doesn’t change the priorities much, it means you can leak 40% more methane from a system before it’s worse that coal, but…

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…

> Methane naturally turns into CO2 in the atmosphere

After how long? A half-life of a decade, as I understand it? Not exactly the order of magnitude of luxury time we have to spare.

> Even if it did increase warming more than CO2

"Even if it did" is strange wording for an established fact. Do you write "even if the sky was blue"?

> once methane emissions reach a steady level, reducing methane emissions won't change a thing

It's kind of really, really important how high that "steady level" is and how fast we'd reach it though, no? We're not just worried about life 1,000 years from now. We're worried about life 20 years from now.

> The narrative is extremely misleading.

I find this statement strange after reading your comment.

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

#235

Post by EGreg »

I am a leftie environmentalist, yet I found this interview quite balanced and informative: https://www.prageru.com/video/why-are-energy-prices-so-frick...

Frankly, we as a global society have FAR more pressing issues than the greenhouse effect, such as:

Collapse of insect and bird populations

Overfishing and plummeting biodiversity as we turn the world into farms and monocultures

Destruction of coral reefs and kelp forests and rainforests

One third of arable land WORLDWIDE is now undergoing desertification

Day zero for many cities as aquifers run dry

Plastic by mass will outnumber fish in the oceans by 2050

Factory farms overuse of antibiotics and superbacteria…

And so on… somehow this “climate change” thing has hijacked the conversation and sucked all the political capital for things like sustainability, switching to non biodegradeable plastics, ending factory farms, etc.

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

#236

Post by ramblenode »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #50
hinkley wrote: post #13

We just had a conversation the other day about climate change and methane, and some people were saying 20x as strong as CO2, and others were saying and sometimes correcting them to 28. According to this article the correct answer is 20. That’s still over an order of magnitude difference. It still doesn’t change the priorities much, it means you can leak 40% more methane from a system before it’s worse that coal, but…

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…

You make a good point about animal-based carbon emissions being a closed loop, but I don't think your conclusion that this loop doesn't accelerate the greenhouse effect is correct.

Methane degrades to C02 in 1-1 proportion. So at any time, if more atmospheric carbon is concentrated as methane than as C02 then the greenhouse effect will be stronger at that time (because methane is a stronger GHG). If agriculture removes 1 unit of C02 from the atmosphere (from feedstock) and emits 1 unit of methane (from cow) then total atmospheric carbon is unchanged but the proportion of methane, and therefore the total GHG effect, is increased at that time. Summing over time, and you get an increase in overall heat that has been trapped.

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

#237

Post by fwip »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #142
least wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but the problem is that meat consumes approximately 25 plant calories to produce 1 meat calorie. Why is this a problem? Animals also produce higher quality protein with higher bioavailability, have a better amino acid profile that better suits what humans require, and provide nutrients that people cannot get from plants. That's on top of the fact that a lot of those plant calories aren't even consumable by hum…

> "Why is this a problem?" It's a problem because of the aforementioned disproportionate energy consumption. > "Animals also produce higher quality protein with higher bioavailability" Hey look, you don't have to pitch me on meat -- I'm basically a carnivore. Personal preferences don't change the underlying engineering dynamics. > "and provide nutrients that people cannot get from plants." I love meat and I'll defend…

I think you're wildly overestimating the amount of calories consumed by "fat people" if you think it's more impactful than the 20x factor you mentioned for meats vs plants.

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

#238

Post by cfn »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #142
least wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but the problem is that meat consumes approximately 25 plant calories to produce 1 meat calorie. Why is this a problem? Animals also produce higher quality protein with higher bioavailability, have a better amino acid profile that better suits what humans require, and provide nutrients that people cannot get from plants. That's on top of the fact that a lot of those plant calories aren't even consumable by hum…

> "Why is this a problem?" It's a problem because of the aforementioned disproportionate energy consumption. > "Animals also produce higher quality protein with higher bioavailability" Hey look, you don't have to pitch me on meat -- I'm basically a carnivore. Personal preferences don't change the underlying engineering dynamics. > "and provide nutrients that people cannot get from plants." I love meat and I'll defend…

Does the majority of the calories consumed by the typical American come from meat? Looking at what is prevalent in supermarkets I would say most come from carbohydrates and sugars. Or is there data proving otherwise?

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

#239

Post by gameman144 »

flavius29663 wrote: post #219
dmurray wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the wild population is larger than our own herds. It is not. Domesticated cows make up approximately 35% of the world's mammal biomass. That's the same as humans. All wild land animals combined - all the ones you mentioned and many more - make up around 2%. One source: https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass

before modern man, there were 30-60 mil buffaloes in the US, now there are 30 mil cows. It's kinda a net zero

There are around 1.5 billion cows alive today.

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

#240

Post by cfn »

smooc wrote: post #227
galangalalgol wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you suggesting we should eat dirt instead of meat to get B12? Ist it even bio-available to us in that format?
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