By Barry Brill
The IPCC’s AR5 estimated the global warming caused by a tonne of livestock methane would be 28 times that of a tonne of carbon dioxide. New research destroys that estimate.
The war on meat has been gathering pace amongst our Western elites. The Economist makes a detailed case for “plant-based food” in the interests of quelling climate change –
The FAO calculates that cattle generate up to two-thirds of the greenhouse gases from livestock, and are the world’s fifth largest source of methane. If cows were a country, the United Herds of Earth would be the planet’s third largest greenhouse-gas emitter.
These calculations are based on figures supplied by the IPCC’s AR5, which contends that the global warming potential (GWP) of methane over 100 years is no less than 28 times the global warming it expects to be caused by an equivalent weight of carbon dioxide. This estimate is up from the GWP of 21 put forward in the IPCC’s previous report.
All this is now challenged by a new and authoritative research paper, Allen et al (2017): “A solution to the misrepresentations of CO2-equivalent emissions of short-lived climate pollutants, under ambitious mitigation”. This paper finds that conventional GWPs misrepresent the impact of short-lived gases (such as methane) on global temperature – and recommends the adoption of a new metric, denoted as GWP*.
This is a big advance. The abstract observes that, “measured by GWP*, implementing the Paris Agreement would reduce the expected rate of warming in 2030 by 28% relative to No Policy”. And who would know this better than lead author Myles Allen, who was also a co-author of the IPCC’s SR1.5 in 2018.
Currently visiting New Zealand, Professor Allen has recommended that enteric methane be entirely omitted from that country’s cap-and-trade scheme (ETS) because a steady-state herd of cattle can add very little to global warming. Methane has a half-life in the atmosphere of only about six years – so that every new molecule added is offset by the expiry of a molecule emitted by that herd a few years earlier.
“Traditional greenhouse gas accounting ignores the impact of changing methane emission rates while grossly exaggerating the impact of steady methane emissions”. And –
“Climate policy the world over has traditionally treated every tonne of methane as supposedly “equivalent” to 28 tonnes of carbon dioxide… It isn’t.
To find the carbon dioxide emissions that would actually have a similar impact on global temperature as methane emissions, you need to multiply those methane emissions by seven (not 28), and add the rate of change of methane emissions (measured in tonnes of methane per year per year), multiplied by 2100.”
If there is no “rate of change” (ie the quantity of emissions by weight is constant over time) then there is a one-off impact of only seven times the equivalent weight of CO2. Note that this should only be counted once – there is no accumulation as is the case for CO2 and other long-lived gases.
And, if the herd’s digestive efficiency is improved ever so slightly –
“Even more strikingly, if an individual herd’s methane emissions are falling by one third of one percent per year (that’s 7/2100, so the two terms cancel out) …then that herd is no longer adding to global warming. Yet if methane were included in a European-style Emission Trading System (ETS), the owner of the herd would have to pay just as if it was.”
Professor Allen is not beset by doubts regarding the error of the old ways:
“That this formula is vastly more accurate than the traditional accounting rule is indisputable.”
Not only are steady-state cattle herds climatically harmless, but they have the opportunity to help out the motorists and jet-setters. Professor Allen says in a further speech that if New Zealand reduced methane emissions by 30% over the next 30 years, that would actually contribute to global cooling:
“If a farmer is providing a service to the rest of the country by compensating for other people’s global warming, then that farmer might want to make a case that they should be compensated for that.”
As a co-author of SR1.5, the professor has a tip for the meat warriors that they should not rely on RCP scenarios:
“Those scenarios are based on economic models of the relative cost of different ways of reducing emissions. Some of the inputs to these models, like the estimated “cost” of a large fraction of the population turning vegetarian, are deeply subjective. The scenarios provide background information, but I would not rely on them as a basis for national policy.”
The findings of the Allen et al paper have been implicitly accepted by New Zealand’s Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Simon Upton – formerly the head of the OECD Environment Directorate. He has this week published a lengthy and detailed report, Farms, Forests and Fossil Fuels, which recommends that the Government develop two separate targets for the second half of the 21st century – a zero target for fossil emissions, and a reduction target for biological emissions.
Let’s all enjoy a hearty guilt-free steak, served with lashings of cheese and butter!
“If a farmer is providing a service to the rest of the country by compensating for other people’s global warming, then that farmer might want to make a case that they should be compensated for that.”
There’s an idea. Let’s pay cattle farmers for compensating for other people’s global warming. Heck, if the price was good enough, I would start up a cattle ranch. How much would I get paid per cow?
I guess the Democrats probably wouldn’t go for putting that in their Green New Deal. Never mind.
“How much would I get paid per cow?”
About this much:
Current commodity spot price for live cattle: $1.26/lb
https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/live-cattle-price
Were you expecting us to pay more fore your farting cows? 🙂
Australia already does this via the government’s Direct Action plan paying landholders to increase the carbon stored on their properties. About $2 billion committed so far with a further $2 billion set aside for future purchases (Aussie dollars). I would love to see an audit of the carbon claimed to have been fixed – especially for the below ground component. Huge landscape areas have been targeted, mainly in semi arid regions.
Early dinner today. It’s grilling time here in central Indiana, rain or no rain!
Salad of romaine and baby spinach, both rinsed, hand torn, and destemmed. Chopped green onion tops and red onion. Sliced black olives. baby tomatoes.
USA choice bone out ribeyes about 1″ thick and skewered scallops on the grill. Ribeyes marinated in Whistle Stop with Lynchburg steak seasoning added plus just a touch of garlic.
White mushroom caps stuffed with crabmeat. Not stems, just crabmeat and breadcrumbs for the stuffing.
Coconut Crème pie.
It’ll be a cold day in hell before they take my beef away from me.
This is a very important paper people.
It is very hard to argue with the logic here and the climate science community will have to agree with the conclusions. In essence, there is no additional methane coming from cattle (or other animals really). That peaked 30 years ago.
The cows are safe again.
It also means, the methane increases are coming from other source(s). (Probably the oil and gas industry actually).
“It also means, the methane increases are coming from other source(s). (Probably the oil and gas industry actually).” Worth while checking out Russia’s Yamal Peninsula on Google Earth …. using the zoom facility is recommended
“It also means, the methane increases are coming from other source(s). (Probably the oil and gas industry actually).”
Vegans. We need a graph showing the prevalence of veganism alongside methane levels.
Cattle ranchers in Calfornia ought to sue the state government for singling them out as being a problem and adding to CAGW, when in reality, cows are an asset and California should be paying the ranchers rather than fining them.
Excellent point. I wouldn’t wait on the cows to come home for the vegan CAGW believers to loose that argument, especially with all the judges appointed by Obama and their legislature. It’s too bad they worship at the catastrophic climate change altar or they could make California great again.
Seems like this should have been obvious from the get go.
Although this article thoroughly smashes the IPCC’s exaggerations regarding methane, I have a question.
If we can genetically modify plants to be more drought tolerant, less pest resistant, and capable of increased yields per acre, why can’t we genetically modify cows to be more digestively efficient (less burping or farting)? It’s more of a rhetorical question, but I would still be expecting the agricultural scientists to come up with a solution for that for many reasons other than methane.
My diet is labeled GF for guilt-free, and will enjoy that grilled-to-perfection T-bone with a baked potato augmented with generous portions of butter, bacon, cheese, and sour cream.
The abolition of cows because the produce methane seems to lack merit and border on the absurd. Man needs protein. PERIOD. Man like cows rely upon bacteria to digest food. When man digests meat protein little methane is produced. Cows do not eat meat for their protein. they get their protein from vegetables, grains, etc – plants. When they digest these vegetables the bacteria produces methane. The density of protein in vegetables is low, very low. So in essence, the cows eat the vegetables, and concentrate the proteins in their meat and release the methane in the fields. Man then eats the meat, obtains the needed protein and releases very little gas. However, for man to get their protein from vegetables, grains, etc. they would have to eat large quantities of material that when digested by the bacteria will produce large quantities of GAS. It would seem to me that since bacteria is performing the same action to produce the same amount of needed protein that very close to the same amount of methane will now be generated by MAN. Thus the next step is to abolish man.
Vegans supposedly f@rt like monsters. So if everyone’s a vegan nothing’s been accomplished. Might as well let cows do the dirty work.
The chart is worth seeing, as it is about how many large animals there WERE as compared to how many we have now.
https://agwskeptics.info/showthread.php?tid=16&pid=112#pid112
Meat eaters are vegetarians by proxy.
Excellent article, Barry Brille!
But the question no one asked was whether Myles Allen had a steak in this study.
Cow methane 400% over-estimated. About the same as the IPCC over-estimate of temperature rise for a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere. About the same under-estimate of the cost for wind & solar power when backup requirements are included. Nice number. Hoax or fraud? Let the Trump Climate Committee work begin.
So, if I can’t eat the beef, and instead have to eat the beans and asparagus, what happens to me when I start…OMG!
Don’t eat. It will save humanity.
I have written about this before how I met John Maunder who was a New Zealand Meteorologist who had taught meteorology in Universities around the world .
He was a member of WMO and he told me that he attended the very first climate conference in Villach in Austria and the second one in Rio de Janiero in Brazil.
At both those conferences methane emissions from farmed live stock was never mentioned and it was not till the Kyoto conference and the ensuing Kyoto Protocol was introduced that activists became involved and brought up the livestock methane scam .
We have been fighting this nonsense ever since and at last Professor Allen has debunked the myth.
I and many others have argued that the methane is simply a cycle and that no more CO2 or methane is produced and emitted over any time period.
Grass and fodder crops grow and absorb CO2 ,They extract CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it into carbohydrates and cellulose .
Farmed livestock eat this grass and crops and methane is emitted as the livestock’s digestive systems rely on anaerobic microbes to digest the cellulose and the microbes produce methane as a byproduct .
The microbes then are moved on to the next stomach and the animals absorb the microbes as food.
The methane emitted breaks down in the upper atmosphere in into CO2 and H2O and that is what grass and fodder crops need in abundance .
No one really knows what the half life of methane is in the atmosphere but it is between 6 and 10 years but it does not really matter .
What matters is that the whole process is a cycle and should never have been included in any countries emissions calculations .
The trolls will be yelling that the methane levels are rising and all farmed livestock should be eliminated .
Methane is emitted from many sources but most are cyclic and therefore do not pose any threat to rising levels .
The small rises being recorded come from methane released during coal extraction ( see Pike River Mine West coast NZ ) and gas fields and pipe lines and from general fossil fuel use .
STOP BLAMING THE COWS AND SHEEP .
Let the first person that has ever tipped a cow, throw the first stone 🙂
Now that’s a problem, if methane wasn’t responsible for some of the warming, what was? They totally understand CO2 because the science is settled so it can’t be that. There is another theory of Global Warming and that is that it is made up so as to further the cause of a Global Government etc.
Methane is 28 times worse than CO2. If you reverse it then CO2 is only 1/28 of methane. That is wonderfull, you don’t need to care about CO2 anymore.
A fun in vivo experiment might be to compare South Carolina’s USHCN station data of Clemson to nearby stations of Anderson and Walhalla. Clemson is (or was when I surveyed it) sited at the Lemaster Dairy Cattle Center fairly nearby the cattle barn. I was struck by the strong and pervasive odor of the livestock there.
In regard to the mention of the word woman to virgin.
My understanding is that in the 3rd century one of the earlier churchmen remarked that the concept of the Virgin Mary was a error caused by the translation from Jesus language which was Aramac into Greek.
That in the Greek of that time a young woman was considered to be a virgin.
MJE VK5ELL
There were 6 times more Buffalo around 1800 than there are cows now. So cow farts are more potent than Buffalo farts. Is there a study?
Never did make sense, that today’s cattle have increased the amount of methane in the atmosphere. There use to be 100,000,000 bison on the great plains with roughly the same number of cattle as today. I would propose that methane emissions from 4 stomach animals have actually been reduced in the last 150 years.
People eating kale produce way more emissions then cattle eating kale.
No there was a maximum of about 20 million Buffalo, there are now about 100 million cattle in the US.
Also inconsistent with agw theory. Enteric fermentation is not a creation of the industrial economy
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/16/beef-and-climate-change/
Remember the great plaines of the world have been covered by large bodied herbivores producing methane for millions of years. All we have done is exchanged species
Problem solved.
http://tjogel.org/backpack-wearing-cows-a-new-alternative-energy-source/
Apropos of nothing in this thread, except tangentially, is this article saying “we have conclusive proof that CO2 does not lead temperature change, but we will continue to push our agenda anyway” or am I missing something?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ice-core-data-help-solve/
Models and estimates = rubbish!
There are so many more issues worth actually worrying about.