Guest essay by By Walter Starck
Science is, above all, a search for understanding based on a primacy of reason and evidence, with all findings subject to revision in accord with further evidence or more comprehensive explanation. The highest achievement in science is to discover a new or better understanding that can extend or replace an existing one.
The other major systems of organized understanding are ideology and religion. In these systems, understanding derives from what is deemed to be revealed truth, which is unethical even to question. Reason and evidence are subordinated to a supporting role that’s restricted to selected examples that accord with belief. The highest achievement here is not to discover truth, as that is accepted to be known with absolute certainty, but rather to defend such belief from any questioning and to maintain it without change or doubt, regardless of any and all reason and evidence that does not support it.
In this regard, climatology—and to an increasing extent, much of the field of biology—has ceased to be science. It has instead become a hybrid of ideology and religion, employing selected science to lend authority to existing beliefs, more like Scientology than any actual science.
This selective use of blatantly misleading and even provably false scientific claims to promote a quasi-religious ideology is nowhere more exemplified than in the claims involving the role of methane from livestock as a potent source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions contributing to dangerous climate change. Although the evidence clearly refuting this nonsense is compelling, readily available, and not controversial, it is simply being ignored.
Now consider some relevant facts about methane:
· Methane (chemical symbol CH4) is claimed to be a potent greenhouse gas, an idea based on its estimated effect compared to CO2. However, this is highly uncertain and can vary from 21 to 84 or more times greater than CO2, depending on the methods used for estimation. These high multiples derive mainly from a strong level of infrared absorption in the IR bandwidth of methane and a hypothetically lengthy persistence of many years in the atmosphere, due to a low rate of sequestration in natural sinks compared to CO2.
· What is conveniently ignored is that the IR absorption spectrum of methane is limited to two quite narrow bands. Although CO2 is a weaker absorber of IR, it has a much wider bandwidth of absorption and is about 200 times more concentrated in the atmosphere than methane. Also, due to constant turbulent mixing in the atmosphere, it makes little difference to temperature if absorption of particular amounts and wavelengths of backradiated IR occurs in a few centimetres or over a few meters. In either instance, a similar amount of heat energy is being mixed into the lower atmosphere.
· In the case of methane, and unlike CO2, it also breaks down chemically in the atmosphere, with a half-life of only about five years.
· Even more importantly, the IR absorption spectrum of methane is overlapped by that of water vapor, which has a hugely broader IR absorption spectrum. It is also on average about 10,000 to 20,000 times more abundant in the atmosphere than is methane. No matter how little or how much methane is in the atmosphere, all the IR in its absorption spectrum is still going to be absorbed, if not by methane, then by water vapor. More methane adds nothing to the effect on temperature.
· Cellulose is the most abundant structural component of plants. Its decomposition by various microbes and digestion by a wide range of animal life generates methane. This is pervasive across all vegetated land. Such natural generation of methane is similar to what is being attributed to livestock. Plant material not eaten by livestock is only consumed by something else or decomposed by microbial activity with similar amounts of methane being produced.
· Trees are also major emitters of methane, both through their own metabolism and by acting as conduits bringing methane generated by microbial activity in the soil up into the atmosphere. A recent study has found that the Amazon rainforest is a major global source of methane.
· The bottom line is that reducing livestock has little or no effect on the amount of methane being generated from an area of land.
· Most of the land used for the grazing of livestock is either unneeded or unsuitable for agriculture. Grazing lands, however, are also shared by a wide range of wildlife that benefit from the year-round water supplies, improved pasturage, weed and pest control, as well as controls on hunting, which grazing also provides. Graziers tend to have high regard for the flora, fauna, and natural features of their land and take pride in being good custodians of it.
The whole idea of becoming vegans to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of methane from livestock displays an extraordinary level of scientific, environmental, and economic ignorance. This goes well beyond just not knowing or being mistaken. It entails a profound ignorance compounded by understanding so little it is not even possible to recognize one’s own ignorance. This way of thinking is then made malignant by believing it should be imposed on everyone else for their own good.
The more one considers the multiple unrealities of what is coming to be called the Green New Deal (GND), the more it appears that the most effective solution may simply be to just try it. Doing so would immediately squelch the endless arguments and polarization. As the unfolding EU experience already indicates, recession with rising costs of living and unemployment plus chronic government deficits would begin to accelerate.
With a fully implemented GND, the capacity of government to pander to those who vote for a living would soon cease to exist. Then, with an overwhelming majority of the electorate having to do something others actually want or need in order to earn a living, a much-improved level of common interest would be restored. Being primates, we will probably always find things to incessantly squabble about, but we’ll be without the impossible levels of polarization that currently plague us.
It appears that when life gets too easy, we start to find petty concerns to obsess over. Doing something really stupid and suffering the consequences very effectively serves to reconnect us to reality. Climate change and the new version of Green politics provides a rich opportunity for such a correction.
Walter Starck, a policy advisor for The Heartland Institute, is one of the pioneers in the scientific investigation of coral reefs. He received his Ph.D. in marine science from the University of Miami in 1964.
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“Such natural generation of methane is similar to what is being attributed to livestock.”
To the best of my knowledge, CH4 is CH4, regardless of created by cows or microbes.
The CH4 from cows is created by microbes. Cellulose can only be broken down by microbes. Whether they live in the soil, in swamps or inside cows or termites is immaterial.
Incidentally there is a theory that the long and severe glacial/low CO2 interval from the late Devonian into the Permian (with huge coal deposits) was due to the evolution of decomposers lagging the evolution of forests.
I believe that termites may produce the same amount of methane as livestock. Difficult to count their numbers though. If some folks claim that we should reduce livestock numbers, then surely we should also reduce termite numbers.
The GHE of 33K (sic!) has been attributed to GHGs quite arbitrarily. Both, the claimed magnitude of the GHE and the attribution are completely wrong, and the problem is by no means limited to CH4. Of course, to understand to whole issue one will have to read a little.. 😉
https://de.scribd.com/document/414175992/CO21
It’s not just the marxist left that wants to stop meat eating for idealistic and political reasons; the capitalist right wants to create opportunities for great profit by throttling back the consumption of beef. How does that work? One way is for fake meat companies to give stock options to legislators who push legislation to regulate methane via a methane tax. That makes real meat more expensive and fake meat relatively less expensive. Consequently, the fake meat business booms, and large stock holders become rich. That’s one way how legislators become millionaires in Congress.
Cows are Climate Change Neutral.
Enjoy your steak in full confidence that your eating habits are doing no harm to the Earth’s atmosphere or climate.
I think that the problem with science is that, ever since the Germans invented the research university, science has been funded by government.
When you mix honey and ordure, you get ordure.
And when you mix science and politics you get politics.
“a hypothetically lengthy persistence of many years in the atmosphere”
How about some evidence? The persistence used in calculations is in fact 12.4 years (AR5 Table 8.7.1) which is derived from time to oxidation.
“What is conveniently ignored is that the IR absorption spectrum of methane is limited to two quite narrow bands.”
Where is the evidence that it is ignored? The band structure is the basis of any calculation of IR absorption, as AR5 8.7.1.2 explains. The narrowness of the bands results in mathane having only a quarter of the effect of CO2.
“Plant material not eaten by livestock is only consumed by something else or decomposed by microbial activity with similar amounts of methane being produced.”
Wrong. Methane can only be produced by breakdown of cellulose in an anaerobic environment – ie with exclusion of oxygen. Livestock rumens can do that; bacteria can’t, unless the material is buried or in anaerobic swamp etc.
”Wrong. Methane can only be produced by breakdown of cellulose in an anaerobic environment – ie with exclusion of oxygen.”
Wrong.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7364086_Methane_emissions_from_terrestrial_plants_under_aerobic_conditions
From your link:
“Most of the methane from natural sources in Earth’s atmosphere is thought to originate from biological processes in anoxic environments.”
There’s an awful lot of important grey area between the two. It is more helpful to consider “low oxygen” rather than “anoxic”.
It is also helpful to consider the staggering large amounts of methane hydrates in the ocean. These add some perspective to the ridiculous theories espoused about what effect a few ruminants will have munching on a small fraction of the vegetation on a small fraction of the land area.
Like the author, I also consider it to be one of the most outrageous stories foisted on us (yet) by the global warmers in cahoots with the vegans and militant vegetarians.
Nick they are both right……one is just the boundary layer…it moves up and down and that’s what makes it work
Bacteria can’t produce methane. Whew, we’re safe than from the bacteria contained in permafrost. No more permafrost bomb…that was sure close
“Bacteria can’t produce methane.”
as I said
“bacteria can’t, unless the material is buried or in anaerobic swamp etc.”
Nick. Not being familiar with the fine details of the models as you are, you may be able to help me. Do the models attenuate the incoming /outgoing IR with increasing optical depth which would be fairly important where absorption bands overlap for more trace ghgs.
Nick Stokes
October 14, 2019 at 5:49 pm
“Livestock rumens can do that; bacteria can’t, unless the material is buried or in anaerobic swamp etc.”
Nick, so are you saying that 100g of grass decomposed by termites will produce less CH4 than if digested by a ruminant?
What do you see as the reason for the Envisat discrepancy between ruminant numbers and global CH4 emissions? There seems to be a very poor correlation and also there’s the huge northern and southern hemisphere difference.
The IPCC says that by mass, methane has a Global Warming Potential of 86 including feedbacks, 85 without. That is to say they are claiming that it is 85 times more powerful than CO2. This figure has increased over the years as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased. You can be sure that the GWP of methane will increase substantially when the IPCC’s AR6 is released. That is really nuts if you think about it.
On average methane increases a few parts per billion ppb annually. By the end of the century that might amount to as much as 0.5 parts per million (ppm). What the GWP says is a similar increase in CO2 of 0.5 ppm will cause 1/85th the temperature rise caused by 0.5 ppm methane So an increase in temperature due to an increases in CO2 from 400 to 400.5 ppm can be calculated and multiplied by 85. Then because methane’s mass is less than CO2 (16/44) the final answer is multiplied by 0.36. It comes out to be about 0.05 deg Celsius or nearly nothing and unmeasurable.
Here’s the article in Nature and link where this nonsense comes from:
Model calculations of the relative effects of CFCs and their replacements on global warming
Donald A. Fisher, Charles H. Hales, Wei-Chyung Wang, Malcolm K. W. Ko & N. Dak Sze
Nature volume 344, pages513–516 (1990)
Abstract:
Halocarbons can contribute to global warming by absorbing long-wave radiation. Concern over the depletion of stratospheric ozone has led to inter-national agreements that restrict future uses of fully halogenated compounds, such as chloro-fluorocarbons CFC-11 and -12. But most compounds proposed as replacements also absorb long-wave radiation, and so their potential contributions as greenhouse gases need to be assessed. Model calculations show that the replacement compounds have an effect about an order of magnitude less than that of their regulated counterparts.
If you’re still not convinced, try to find out how much methane, business as usual, is on course to run up global temperatures by 2100. You won’t find the answer to that anywhere.
“The other major systems of organized understanding are ideology and religion. In these systems, understanding derives from what is deemed to be revealed truth, which is unethical even to question. Reason and evidence are subordinated to a supporting role that’s restricted to selected examples that accord with belief. The highest achievement here is not to discover truth, as that is accepted to be known with absolute certainty, but rather to defend such belief from any questioning and to maintain it without change or doubt, regardless of any and all reason and evidence that does not support it.”
You can define religion that way if you want to, but I would strongly disagree. That’s not my understanding or practice of religion. Religion is as much seeking to discover truth as science is, perhaps more so. The questions religion seeks to answer are different than scientific questions (mostly). Nevertheless, the objective is the same – seeking truth.
To me the elephant in the room remains natural submarine emissions from continental shelves. Huge areas of the shelves are yet to be explored. I am yet to see any quantification of this source, mainly because it would be hellishly difficult.
I suspect that emissions from farmed ruminants are insignificant when compared with natural sources.
M
…didn’t like the bit about religion at the outset but let’s let that go. I’ll keep reading. Religion works best where science cannot go. Different realms. No conflict.
Exactly.
It can be fun watching willfully obtuse materialists twist themselves into knots in order to bitterly cling to their religious belief that there is no God.
Not to mention that on a hot day the methane slowly combusts when exposed to oxygen and ceases to be methane anyway.
“The whole idea of becoming vegans to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of methane from livestock displays an extraordinary level of scientific, environmental, and economic ignorance. This goes well beyond just not knowing or being mistaken. It entails a profound ignorance compounded by understanding so little it is not even possible to recognize one’s own ignorance. This way of thinking is then made malignant by believing it should be imposed on everyone else for their own good.”
Ehh…seems like a bit of a slam against vegans based on one claim some of them may make. Not going to argue that being vegan is going to reduce methane levels, but there are many valid healthful, environmental and economic reasons to be vegan. This country in insanely overweight as a whole. Eating more nutrient dense vegan meals would not be a bad thing. However, no way this should be imposed on a society against their will.
What makes cows/cattle so special with regards to methane? Prior to the dominance of cows/cattle there were millions of bison here in the US, not to mention all the other ruminants. Ruminants are everywhere in the world and they all emit methane to one degree or another. The ignorance and/or duplicity of the alarmism crowd is disgusting.
Beef is not the only product we get from cows. The loonies want to ban milk, cheese, yoghurt and ICE CREAM, too. If the kids knew that ice cream was on the list of climate taboo foods, they might not want to join the How Dare You movement. Somebody should tell Ben and Jerry about this.
“It appears that when life gets too easy, we start to find petty concerns to obsess over.”
Such a small observation … and so pertinent!
“In this regard, climatology—and to an increasing extent, much of the field of biology—has ceased to be science. It has instead become a hybrid of ideology and religion, employing selected science to lend authority to existing beliefs, more like Scientology than any actual science.”
Just because you don’t understand it (and clearly you don’t) doesn’t make it a belief. What is the above but a belief?
It has become a religion, Kristi, insofar as “the science is settled” and no discussion or even presentation of said science, let alone critical viewpoints, is allowed in the majority of mainstream media. From the BBC, for example, we get only unsupported tabloid-level scare stories going well beyond even the most serious claims of the IPCC and no dissenting voice will be heard. It is even their official policy.
Kristi,
When you now have 52 (or, more) genders and biological males can claim they are women and vice versa, yes, biology has ceased to be a science.
Looks mostly overlapped, but what the heck, mild warming is a benefit to the planet.
The real issue is lack of WV increase, with no feedback the warming from CO2 (and CH4, whcih breaks down into CO2) is beneficial. Add in it’s greening effect and it is of staggering benefit.
What is the figure, something like 3.5 trillion $ of agriculture is due to man made CO2?
Buried in this article is a comparison between climate science and Scientology. I have no idea whether that’s fair, but do quite like the term which occurred to me as a result: “Climate Scientology”. Somebody has probably already thought of this.
“The more one considers the multiple unrealities of what is coming to be called the Green New Deal (GND), the more it appears that the most effective solution may simply be to just try it.”
This might be so if we were the only country on the planet. But we are not. The national security implications of the catastrophe that attempting it would result in are enormous.
“No matter how little or how much methane is in the atmosphere, all the IR in its absorption spectrum is still going to be absorbed, if not by methane, then by water vapor. More methane adds nothing to the effect on temperature.”
err wrong.
next
Why?
Because water doesn’t have any significant absorption at the wavelength of the CH4 absorption band.
Patrick — Try tty’s nifty MODTRAN link http://lorelei.uchicago.edu/modtran/ Change the CH4 concentration (upper left) and watch what happens to the Upward_Heat_flux (lower left).
An increase in CH4 will indeed have a (very small) effect on temperature.
In the US Standard atmosphere profile a doubling of CH4 has the same effect as a 5.4 % increase in water vapor.
Without the greenhouse effect of its atmosphere Earth would not be +15C. It would be -18C. How much water vapour would there be at -18C?
It’s the non-condensible gases like CO2 that cause global warming – both that “natural” or the “extra” due to human activity. Water vapour makes a contribution, but it follows the temperature – ie is a feedback.
Methane acts independently of temperature – ie is a forcing. An increase in the level means a higher temperature.
“Without the greenhouse effect of its atmosphere Earth would not be +15C. It would be -18C. ”
That is a common claim, but it is wrong. It presupposes that all water vapor is removed from the atmosphere but that the clouds somehow manage to stay around and keep the albedo up. If you correct the albedo for no clouds the equilibrum temperature is +1C rather than -18C
Where on Earth did you get such nonsense? Provide link please.
“Dennis Horne October 15, 2019 at 3:53 pm
Where on Earth did you get such nonsense? Provide link please.”
Annie get your gun.
Dennis get your links:
https://www.google.com/search?q=correct+the+albedo+for+no+clouds+the+equilibrum+temperature+is+%2B1C+rather+than+-18C&client=ms-android-huawei&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
Who needs science when we are blessed with people who just know?
Another interesting peer-reviewed paper on the subject:
Glatzle, Albrecht. (2014). Severe Methodological Deficiencies Associated with Claims of Domestic Livestock Driving Climate Change.
Journal of Environmental Science and Engineering B 2. 2. 586-601.
All this is assuming that the composition of the atmosphere has any effect upon its temperatures, because of “greenhouse effect”. Just a quick study of other planets show that this is not so – the temperatures of Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune are exactly what they are based solely on the distance from the Sun and the density of the atmosphere. If that is so for those planets, why should it not be for Earth?
The result of your ‘quick study’ is wrong.
“It appears that when life gets too easy, we start to find petty concerns to obsess over.”
This is true, and the source of all the doomsayers.
“Doing something really stupid and suffering the consequences very effectively serves to reconnect us to reality. Climate change and the new version of Green politics provides a rich opportunity for such a correction.”
It would also result in massive human suffering and death. I would prefer a more reasoned (intelligent) solution that doesn’t involve totalitarianism, reeducation camps, and a collapse of the world economy.