Via Eurekalert:
Measuring methane
Researchers develop technique to measure methane gas from cattle
MADISON, WI, MARCH 1, 2011 – Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas. Wetlands, gas hydrates, permafrost, termites, oceans, freshwater bodies, non-wetland soils, are all natural sources of atmospheric methane; however, the majority of methane presence ca n be accredited to human-related activities. These activities include: such as fossil fuel production, biomass burning, waste management and animal husbandry. The release of methane into the atmosphere by cattle and other large grazing mammals is estimated to account for 12 to 17% of the total global methane release.
Recently, scientists developed a methane release measuring technique as way of tracking the discharge of the gas without disrupting the regular management of the herd. This is part of a collaborative research study conducted by researchers from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Lethbridge Research Centre, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, and the University of Melbourne in Australia.
Cattle were fitted with global positioning devices to track their movements and wind speed and direction were constantly measured. Unlike previous studies in which a few cattle were handled daily and methane measurements were taken directly, this technique centered on using open-path lasers to obtain a short-term measurement of methane release from an entire grazing herd. For instance in one study, the technique was used to take repeated measurements of methane concentration every 10 minutes directly above the height of the 18 cattle in the paddock. According to the results, the technique developed so well it can account for 77% of methane release at a single point in a paddock.
Sean McGinn, the author of the study describes the technique as a “significant advancement in assessing greenhouse gas emissions from the cattle industry.”
Collaborative research is continuing to further measure methane release from other agricultural sources. The full study is published in the January/February 2011 issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality.
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I have to check the calendar… Hmmm,.. It’s March 1st, but this article made me think it’s April 1st.
{/sarc}
Haven’t the reference handy but a study in the Alpine region of Australia found that methane loving bacteria actually absorbed more methane than the cattle released. The cattle were actually feeding and maintaining the methane bacteria. The result is that there is an organic carbon gain from caqttle grazing in that region.
Despite methane’s potency, “As a proportion of all greenhouse gases emitted in the United States, livestock belches only contribute about 2.2 percent,” notes Hristov. “The emissions from the energy and transportation sectors are much larger. In fact, looking at methane emissions alone, there are other human activities with larger methane footprints than livestock, such as emissions from landfills, for example.”
so says Penn state
http://www.rps.psu.edu/probing/cow_burps.html
I’m sure with a tad more funding to produce a tad more research they could account for 100% of methane release at a single point in a paddock.
/sarc off
Next….Humans!
Here’s a video for this post 😉
http://tinyurl.com/4pgfdjo
(http://theland.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/ets-lifeline-soils-capable-of-absorbing-cattle-methane/1612492.aspx)
The are plenty of other methane loving bacteria as was shown during the gulf oil spill.
Methane might be a bad gas for heating but it is also very highly processed and converted to organic carbon. By the way, those long organic carbon molecules can remain as plantstones or be broken down by fungus/fungi to be converted into fertile topsoil.
Typically, the alarmist concentrate on the narrowest part they can to get the most publicity.
Oh goody. An excuse to buy lazerz, gizmos, saddles, thingys, and all manner of scientific gadgets at a ridiculous price, all to justify some meat ball scientist’s Porsche Payment.
Why would I make such an outrageous claim of wasteful grant funding and scientific master….uh…self-stimulation? Simple. It’s not necessary.
You put a representitive sampling of cows in a room, even put some of them on an equine rated treadmill, control the air in, and measure the air out of the room. Voila. You’ve got the metrics you need to see what’s coming out the bovine exhaust pipe.
It’s been done before on a smaller scale, I know, I’ve helped build contraptions to do it. With this method, the accuracy goes up substantially from the almost laughable 77%.
The accuracy in fact is up into the realm where instrumental accuracy is the greatest variable.
Option 1: herbivores eat vegetation and bacteria in their gut digest it, with methane as a by-product.
Option 2: vegetation dies and rots periodically without being eaten, bacteria release methane as a by-product of decomposition.
Oh Nooooo – The Sky is FALLING!!!
I wonder how they inventoried all the possible sources to come up with their “estimate”. I wonder what they would estimate if they did their measurements over a couple of hog farm lagoons. Since methane is so short lived, what difference does it make? Oh I forgot, they intend to pay farmers to change their feed to get carbon credits.
Yep, yall er ganna hafta ta get rid a all themthere cows! I hope yall like that there toofu!
Isn’t it reassuring to know that we spend our tax dollars studying cow flatulence?
Firstly, methane has been steady for about 12 years with peaks occasionally from a volcano farting. There has been a growth in methane for 200 years, covering huge changes in herd animal populations (bison, antelope, etc.). NOAA is not sure why growth has stopped and speculates that decreased activity in the former Soviet countries may be the cause.
Methane is also only at ~1700 ppb, or at 0.44% the concentration of CO2 (390 ppm). So what if methane is 20 times better at heat-trapping, it represents only 8.7% of equivalent heat-trapping to CO2. Then, taking that the real thermodynamic constant for CO2 and that doubling CO2 would cause 0.12 deg C of warming (if even this much), methane would be having an effect of 0.010 deg C of warming. WOW, PANIC! A hundredths of a degree – that’s undetectable and not worth a cow fart. We can only hope that the wind was blowing towards the researchers all of the time.
Basically, we have gotten much better at controlling our own emissions from the gas industry. Wetland are wetlands. Tundra when it melts becomes a thriving living ecology and becomes, alas, a carbon sink—the assumption that tundra would just rot and release methane show the ignorance of these claims.
Panic all they want, but methane is not a problem. The thousands of tons of methane that dissolved in the Gulf with the BP oil spill disappeared within 120 days as it was eaten by microscopic denizens of the ocean ecosystem; there was a huge drawdown in oxygen in these waters as the microbes ate the methane.
Now they want to panic over a supposed mammoth methane bubble under the area where BP had drilled. Perhaps we should see if we can tap this and capture all of this wonderful resource. Instead, they are probably going to claim that we should cease all drilling and wait for it to blow anyhow. What a great political football!
This is of significance to New Zealand, because the ETS will ultimately include methane from cattle.
Unfortunately, there is very little we can do about it, unless we all become vegetarians.
As an employer, in part, of some of these experts, I say they need to be told, get a job.
According to the US Census, there were 98,048,000 cattle in the US in 2000.
The pre-contact buffalo herds in North America have been estimated to be as large as 70,000,000. Add to that number the vast elk, moose, and other ungulate populations back then and I suspect the total number of ungulates/ruminants/bovines was not unlike their numbers today. However, it won’t be long before the California Air Resources Board (CARB) will blame the present commercial herds for at least a portion of GHG emissions.
I wonder if they should also monitor all the methane generated by the consumption of bean and cheese burritos at Taco Bell or the neighborhood lunch wagon. Would controlling the border diminish the amount of burrito-sourced methane emitted in California?
I wonder how the population of cattle compares with the population of bison a few centuries ago.
Uganda…
Dateline 2005
http://www.newvision.co.ug/PA/120/453/458677
Burp…! (Old News)
As far as I can tell Methane would absorb at around 3.2-3.8 um (except that very little in nature is hot enough to produce energy at that frequency) and does absorb at 7-8um where a combination of existing Methane, Nitrous Oxide and (mostly) good old H2O pretty much soak up all there is. So the point of this exercise escapes me.
“Cattle were fitted with global positioning devices to track their movements and wind speed and direction were constantly measured. Unlike previous studies in which a few cattle were handled daily and methane measurements were taken directly, this technique centered on using open-path lasers to obtain a short-term measurement of methane release from an entire grazing herd. ”
???????????????? Can’t these guys go and do some USEFUL SCIENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What about the massive herd of Bison in USA that used to exist, the cows just replaced them!
Cows eat grass. They produce methane. Methane combines with oxygen in the air to form CO2. Grass absorbs the CO2 to re-grow. Cows eat the grass…
It’s a cycle with no net effect.
Any scientist who wastes time analysing the flows around the cycle is just chasing grant money.
Hmm, the little ice age ended around the time massive herds of bison were being wiped out, and the end of the “big” ice age came around the time that massive herds of mastodons went extinct.
Now someone’s got their eye on our cattle? Don’t they know that massive herds of tasty herbivores keep the earth cool? 🙂
“Cattle were fitted with global positioning devices to track their movements and wind speed and direction ……”
Ahem…. Their ‘wind speed’ is kinda personal, at least for the cow, dontcha think??!
Firstly, why do we need to know which direction they’re pointing, when they break wind??? Secondly, is their ‘wind speed’ a really relevant parameter??? Third and finally, is their ‘wind speed’ really so great that we must fit them with a GPS tracker to determine which way they have rocketed of to???
Great Scott, Man! What are they feeding these mutant bovines? This is way beyond bovine growth hormones and ‘Franken-foods’!!!! I know from experience how hazardous the whitetailed deer can be to motorists in Wisconsin…. and now this!!!!!!!
“It’s a bird. It’s a plane…. NO! That’s a rocket propelled bovine! Look OUT!!!!”
};>)
Bah, I’ve been studying ruminant methane production for years & first published on this in 1981 (Proceedings of the International Gas Research Conference, Los Angeles, CA, 9/28/1981). Much ado about nothing.
According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the real culprit is methane from flooded rice-paddy agriculture. Here’s one reference:
http://unfccc.int/essential_background/background_publications_htmlpdf/climate_change_information_kit/items/293.php
“Wetland” or “paddy” rice farming produces roughly one-fifth to one-quarter of global methane emissions from human activities. Accounting for over 90 percent of all rice production, wetland rice is grown in fields that are flooded or irrigated for much of the growing season. Bacteria and other micro-organisms in the soil of the flooded rice paddy decompose organic matter and produce methane.
This UNFCCC website once had a news item about this a few years ago & my jaw dropped! Of course, that heresy was soon scrubbed clean, I’ve never been able to relocate that link.
Here’s an idea: How about a “significant advancement in assessing
greenhousegas emissions from thecattleAGW industry.” ? Leave Bossy alone.These authors should know a lot about manure, I’ll give them that.
There is no way on earth the “experts” will be able to figure out methanogenesis in the earth until they understand that the bulk of it is abiogenic, produced in the earth’s crust (seriously, not even then). The Ukrainians showed the chemistry of this years ago.
How for the luvva Mike, did seas of methane and ethane appear on Titan, in amounts that dwarfs earth’s supply? I feel sorry for these authors, they just can’t process information from diverse disciplines. By the way, termites produce methane estimated at 10 times all of the ruminants on earth—and that is just one species of insect! The earth’s crust harbors Teratons of methanogenic bacteria, by some estimates.
And anaerobic seabeds—fugget aboud it!
What has happened to our institutes of higher learning? I am really depressed by this “paper”.