Would you, could you, shoot a goat in the Name of Climate Change?

Of course not – anyone who does the math, even on the back of an envelope, quickly realises that these schemes are a complete waste of time and often totally and utterly counterproductive (i.e. generate more CO2 than they save). Of course, in this instance, the methane question seems to have been somewhat ignored by the ‘assessors’?
Not just methane. Goats, like all other animals, breathe in O_2 and breathe out CO_2. The methane they produce has a relatively short lifetime in the atmosphere — it is mostly reduced by the hydroxy radical OH to CO_2 and water, but there are a number of alternative pathways including ones that involve ozone. This reduction occurs throughout the troposphere and into the stratosphere. The lifetime of methane in the atmosphere is cited as anywhere from 8 to 12 years — sometimes using two numbers in a single article (which suggests to me that nobody has any bloody idea how long it lasts, any more than they knew how long it lasted in the ocean until the Gulf Oil spill which released a few billion cubic meters over a matter of weeks and in the process did not produce so much as a measurable blip in the atmospheric methane concentration — they discovered that (to their surprise) methane is very tasty and was EATEN long before it got to the surface, in the process being converted to carbon dioxide).
I have to say that I doubt a lot of the proposed chemistry for methane. For example, the wikipedia article on atmospheric methane fails to include the fact that we can now more or less cross clathrates off of the list of methane threats because methane tends to get eaten in the ocean faster than it can reach the surface even when it is released in truly astounding quantities. This same article completely fails to note that 70% of the Earth’s surface is water, and that the ocean is no doubt a one way sink for methane — methane in the ocean gets eaten and reduced by a biological, not a chemical, pathway, so that atmospheric methane that is dissolved in the biologically active surface layer rarely makes it back out as methane. Finally, I SERIOUSLY doubt the story that it is a “powerful greenhouse gas” in any concentration we are likely to achieve in its limited lifetime. In fact, I in all honesty don’t see how the arithmetic works out.
Consider:
a) The small absorptivity windows for methane occur square in the part of the atmosphere that is already totally opaque due to water. Opaque is opaque.
b) One of the two methane bands that scatters LWIR occurs well outside of the LWIR blackbody curve for surface emission anyway. COMPLETELY irrelevant.
c) Because of the band overlap with water overlap, the presence of methane is like adding a bit more water to the atmosphere. Because this addition occurs outside of the transparency window in the LWIR band, it is difficult to see how it can significantly impact global temperatures by altering the window itself. Yet it is estimated even at its current concentration as having 1/3 the forcing of CO_2! How’s that again? If you removed 100% of it today, you wouldn’t make the water band any more or less opaque on anything like a LINEAR basis in its band (it wouldn’t chop out a transparency hole, for example), and you wouldn’t significantly alter the mean free path of LWIR photons in any frequency anywhere in the troposphere. If you consider its contribution as a linearized fraction of the overall contribution of water, you might be able to assign a number like this, but once again, it isn’t LINEAR, it is logarithmic, and this really is way, way out there in the region of diminishing returns where the atmosphere is already completely opaque.
d) I have a small quibble with the “well-mixed” hypothesis as well. Methane is a molecule that is significantly smaller than O_2 and N_2, and should experience a small but persistent buoyancy force. Just as CO_2 in still air can actually collect in basins, methane in still air will tend to rise. In addition, mixed methane is carried up into the stratosphere by the same processes that carry water vapor up. When it reaches the ozone layer in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere, it is one of the molecules that ozone easily reacts with (especially in the presence of sunlight) to form CO, OH, water, CO_2 and formaldehyde. Finally, methane in free clouds is exposed to water with a truly enormous surface to volume ratio — clouds are basically all water surface. One expects that just as clouds take up relatively small concentrations of e.g. NO or N2O or SO_2 and turns it into acid rain, that clouds adsorb free methane and carry it back down to the surface, where any methane carried into the warm ocean is quickly eaten and where a lot of it carried into the soil is similarly either sequestered or converted by both biological and chemical pathways to something else.
Given this, I find estimates of a DECADE for the lifetime of free methane to be difficult to understand. I would expect weeks to months. I’ve tried to find articles justifying the number (or rather, the wide range of NUMBERS, numbers that don’t agree within a factor of 1/2 for all that some of them are cited (as always) with a decimal and supposedly significant second digit and without error bars or uncertainty.
I do think that the Gulf Oil spill places a strict upper bound on the lifetime far shorter than this. Even with bacteria, the water above the spill was boiling with methane released below. The event had to represent a bolus that was a measurable fraction of the annual methane production from all other sources, yet I cannot discern the slightest effect of it in the ongoing measurement of methane concentration in the atmosphere (which I agree, is going up, but quite possibly for the usual reason — the gradual shifting of heat around in the oceans that changes solubility, or possibly as a side effect of an unusually active CO_2-fed biosphere).
Methane, in any event, is a valuable fuel. Wasting it by letting it go into the atmosphere is wasting money. Rather than shooting goats, build methane digesters that process goat excrement, just as many chicken farms or hog farms have done to process excrement there. That way, bacteria get a good meal, humans can burn the methane for fuel, and the end product is pure sterile fertilizer. As a valuable side effect, it keeps the smell from open hog lagoons contained and ultimately burns it up into CO_2 and water in a CLOSED biological cycle that will turn back into plants, be eaten once again by the goats, and turned back into fuel and fertilizer. And in the meantime, while goats are NOT the best table fare, unless you enjoy the flavor of tallow, they can be turned into curry or ropa vieja, their fat makes excellent candles, and down south we do know that they make the very best of land clearing instruments.
I have friends who cleared acres of forest underscrub — a nasty tangle of thorn bushes, grass, small trees, filled with ticks and snakes — by simply penning a few goats in there and waiting. They eat everything — and I do mean everything — under six feet tall and maybe two inches in diameter. They ended up with a park-like high forest canopy over beautifully cleared ground. It would have been a nasty, dangerous, expensive job for humans, and then — goat curry!
What else can convert poison ivy into food?
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I’ll bet that more CO2 is emitted by the aircraft employed by the “management” companies than is saved by shooting all those animals…

A friend of mine once had a ’65 mustang convertible. He got some goats. Next thing he knows, the goats are on top of the convertible top. He got rid of the goats.
Goats will seek the high spot, wherever it is. That could be a problem at an airport.

Being land next to airport runways thus not seeing virtually any foot traffic, which is frowned upon these days, I would wonder if people have tried planting certain plants in these generally inaccessible areas that are not getting regular maintenance. Considering how often pot plants are found in state parks, it would not be surprising to have those goats inadvertently munching on some whacky weed.
Which would reveal another great possible way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions! Currently the officials are disposing giant bales of the stuff by incineration, or perhaps open pit burning. Well, if the goats would eat it, and like it, then we could just feed all that stuff to the goats and avoid the unnecessary releases of combustion products!
What’s the worse that could happen? The goats might get the munchies, and be even more productive!

Milwaukee Bob says:
May 10, 2013 at 7:27 am
“Tom in Florida says:
May 10, 2013 at 5:08 am
Shooting goats won’t work in Chicago. Chicago has the strictest gun laws in the Country so it is almost impossible to shoot anything or anyone there.”
Tom, you forgot the “” control code. Not about the “strictest gun laws”, but (if you didn’t forget the sarc off code) you can buy guns just about anywhere — even gas stations in Chicago.
I really didn’t think I needed the sarc off code, most people know that Chicago is one of the top murder cities in the U.S. Thanks for providing the stats for those that didn’t.
“From 2003 to 2011, of the 4,251 people murdered, 3,371 died from being shot, (79%) with 98 percent of the murder weapons being a handgun. Thirty-seven people were killed with a rifle and 40 were killed with a shotgun. 506 died from being shot in 2012 and 87 so far this year.”

Will the nutters in Australia’s Green and ALP party’s pass a shoot, kill reward program for feral humans, Show a cut off nose and get a $10 bounty, after all we humans are an inconvenience in the grand scheme of the Al Gores and Hanson’s of the world!
Pathetic politicians and evil bureaucrats!
The same crowd would be the leading lights in the the inquisition, the murder and torture of innocents and accused unbelievers.
Evil good times times for evil people in the guise of religion and so called pious people. Much like today’s extreme warmist believers!
Jail the skeptics – David Suzuki!

Some herein need to keep in mind that goats require care including herding, generally that takes good local contractor – someone who has a herd, knows how to take care of them, and likes working with the critters (they can be independent and pushy, especially male goats).
Sheep would be more useful on flatter terrain (to avoid mowing grass) as they are not as smart as goats at avoiding hazards, and not as tolerant of rough food. (Cows are like sheep, horses can tolerate rougher food, but both may be too tall for airports, goats can tolerate much rougher food.)
As for terrain, that varies with the airport – some have ravines off the edge of runways (a 747 slid into a depression at Anchorage years ago, Toronto has a ravine off the end of one runway). Would be good to fill them in, off the north end of SeaTac’s main runway you’d have to build a wide bridge across that canyon (the south end has some steep sides that goats may be suited for, I do not know about the runways to the west of the main one).

Does this mean some engineer somewhere has adapted NASA’s chicken gun to test fire goats at aircraft?