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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Australis – “termites . . . we can’t . . . eat them.”
You’re doing it wrong.
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.
What’s wrong with this picture? If humans and their farm animals didn’t exist what would be in their place? Answer: large grazing animals. So why do humans get the blame for methane?
Here is an interesting statistic. There are an estimated 10,000 trillion ants in the world. The combined mass of ants exceeds the mass of humans. All are eating food and emitting CO2 but ants are only about 1% of the number of insects which include termites. Termites are a HUGE emitter of methane. So the amount of food eaten (and CO2 and methane emitted) by humans is a tiny fraction of life on Earth.
sophocles says:
March 1, 2011 at 8:37 pm
It’s much worse than we previously skepticized:
A trace hypothesis of a trace hypothesis.
Phil’s Dad and RobJM above point out that increments of CH4 can have no effect in a watery atmosphere like Earth’s since H2O already saturates the 7-8um band. Hit these bozoz with a simple assertion, over and over: “Methane has a GHG effect only in dry atmospheres. Ours is wet.”
There’s also the wee matter of lifespan: CH4 continuously breaks down quite rapidly into the “much weaker” CO2 and H2O.
This stuff just reinforces the perverse desire to see the NLIA (New Little Ice Age) kick off and force AGW bozoz everywhere to beg for more atmospheric heating!
I wonder how much the Amazon basin releases?
Wasted fuel! I’m not suggesting a hose to every cow, but… we do it to maple trees… 🙂
Best,
Frank
Water in the atmosphere doesn’t necessarily trump methane absorption since at high altitudes where it is dry methane could still have an impact.
They say that they constantly measured wind speed. I am wondering how the velocity of the methane as it exits the beast figures in their calculations 😉
So when the UK Met office /Opal claim that…
“Cows burp up about three quarters of the world’s methane emissions.”
http://www.opalexplorenature.org/sites/all/themes/custom/opal/assets/videos/opal-fact-fictionfeb14.swf (Question 2)
…the correct response is “Bullshit”?
One of the most useful comments here was:
“Dr. Dave says:
Y’all don’t know yer ruminants. Most bovine methane comes out the front end, not the back end of cattle. Useless trivia, I know. It pretty much doesn’t matter where atmospheric CH4 comes from. There’s not a damn thing we can do about it and, like CO2…it just doesn’t matter. What DOES matter is that taxpayers are funding this nonsense research.”
Scientific American confirms this in an article published on June 23, 2009. However, a part of their very important research also indicated that cow flatulence can be reduced by up to 15% by introducing garlic into their diet. So there is still hope for us all!”!!!
“Climate science” is so discredited and corrupted by the grant culture that one has to rate this as one of the better examples of its purveyors’ “science”.
Italy produced the first methane driven car in 1932, today there are more than 400,000 methane consuming cars on the road in Italy, cost ? about $0.25 a gallon, and if you Google you can build a methane producing plant for the home using household waste. I am one of the 400,000 screwing the govenment out of their taxes.
That’s been an entertaining read! Thank you, one and all.
The overall plot seems to be to make us feel guilty just for existing. Well, I don’t feel guilty. I try to be reasonably careful in use of energy, etc. but Mother Nature has allowed us to come into existence, and given us (well, most of us) a natural desire to eat a good selection of foods, including meat.
I wonder how many termites and ants I equate to?!
Why don’t they just put a methane detector on the side of a volcano in Hawaii and be done with it?
One key point is that methane is produced during anaerobic metabolism, so it is not the usual pathway for decomposition of plant organic matter. That being said, the biggest concern for methane is the thawing in the arctic, which has the potential for releasing large amounts of the gas. Lakes and ponds as well as moist soils in the tundra are releasing increasing amounts of methane. If we are going to understanding cycles of methane in the environment, we need to quantify various sources, including wetlands (including arctic, tropical and inbetween), ruminants, termites, escape from oil and gas drilling etc. We also need to know how quickly methane is oxidized to C02 in the atmosphere, because methane is a more potent green house gas, molecule per molecule, than C02.
It’s always interesting to hear studies claiming various sources of methane and corresponding percentages of contribution…I suspect most of these claims, however scientific, cannot be verified in any significant, reliable manner.
For example, in the state of New York alone, there have been over 70,000 natural gas wells drilled, of which 40,000 wells are now all but uncharted and undocumented, and many of which leak methane continuously – 24/7/365. Add to that number the thousands of naturally occurring sites in NY where natural gas simply oozes out of the ground – and has done so for thousands of years – and one gets the impression that cows passing wind, comparatively, is NOT an issue worth worrying about.
Yet, we have here another example of a study that simply defies common sense.
This effort from the Peoples’ Republic of Madison is excellent justification for Governor Walkers’ efforts to shrink the state budget. What a waste of time, money and energy.
The eco-history of these “man-made” emissions of methane from cattle is that it replaced similar methane emissions from bison. Those latter emissions would have been of course, “natural”.
What are the Greens suggesting? Eliminate all animals that produce methane? I can tell you that I personally would resist!
These scientists sure seem to be anal retentive, anal obsessed, whatever, why not study lemming flatulence in population boom years which directly affects flatulence in arctic fox, snowy owls, wolves, etc….
@ur momisugly Australis
http://www.chefdepot.net/chocolateants.htm
Propane Methane Rogaine
I have often heard it said, as in this article, that methane is a potent greenhouse gas (values of around 26 – 30 times co2 potency are usually mentioned) but nowhere is it said why this is.
I’m then left trying to figure out in what way a molecule of methane has 26 times the radiative forcing of co2. The only possible solution that comes to my limited understanding, is that methane must absorb over wavelengths that are 26 times as wide as that over which co2 absorbs. But then, if that were the case, these wavelengths would overlap water vapour and shouldn’t be included.
In an even more extreme example, I’ve heard that HCFC’s have greenhouse gas potencies not 26, but thousands of times greater than co2. This makes even less sense because such a huge width of absorbtion would extend way beyond what the Earth emits in its outgoing radiation.
So I have to conclude that I don’t really understand how they calculate the relative potencies of greenhouse gases. Any atmospheric physicists here care to comment?
The greatest source of methane is rice paddies. So much for the vegetarians claiming moral superiority.
My experience with cows is they can kick really quick. And I learned early on to keep my distance from a bull when possible. But I never thought of blaming cattle for the weather.
I can’t believe that buffalo and deer release as much of the wrong kind of methane, so the solution is obvious. We need to reduce the amount of “domesticated” animals in the world. Besides, from what I hear these days, they’re really not that good to eat either; I mean from a health perspective, too many additives and genetic whatnots.