In a recent study published in PLOS ONE, titled “Measurements of methane and nitrous oxide in human breath and the development of UK scale emissions,” researchers have embarked on a quest that epitomizes the absurdity of current climate change discourse. This study, focusing on the emissions of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) from human breath, is not only a glaring example of scientific overreach but also a worrying indicator of the lengths to which climate alarmism is willing to go.
The study’s objective to investigate emissions from human breath in the UK population is fundamentally flawed. It operates under the assumption that these emissions are significant enough to warrant detailed analysis and inclusion in national greenhouse gas inventories. This premise is laughable at best, considering the minuscule percentage these emissions contribute to the overall greenhouse gas emissions.
The methodology employed in the study is questionable. Collecting 328 breath samples from 104 volunteers hardly constitutes a representative sample of the UK population. Furthermore, the study’s reliance on such a small sample size to draw conclusions about national-scale emissions is a classic case of over-extrapolation.
The study’s findings that 31% of participants were methane producers and that all participants emitted nitrous oxide are presented without adequate context. These results are portrayed as significant, yet they fail to consider the broader environmental impact. The fact that these emissions are stated contribute a mere 0.05% and 0.1% to the UK’s total emissions of CH4 and N2O, respectively, well below any margin of error in “national inventories” renders these findings insignificant.
The idiocy of this study and the entire genre of human behavior studies, whether it be meat eating, or owning pets, diverts attention from more pressing environmental issues and misallocates resources that could be better used elsewhere. This approach is indicative of a climate change narrative that is increasingly detached from reality. This study dangerously overstates the impact of human biological processes on climate change. By attributing environmental consequences to the act of breathing, it sets a precedent for viewing every aspect of human existence through the lens of environmental impact. This perspective is not only scientifically unsound but also potentially leads to dehumanizing policies.
The study, and the subsequent media coverage, lack a rational discourse on climate change. There is a conspicuous absence of critical analysis or questioning of the study’s relevance and implications. This omission is a testament to the current state of climate change discussions, where sensationalism often trumps scientific rigor.
The obsession with carbon, its compounds, and greenhouse gases as seen in this study’s focus on CH4 and N2O, is a misplaced concern. It reflects a narrow view of the complex and dynamic nature of Earth’s climate system. This fixation on carbon emissions is a distraction from more holistic environmental strategies.
The implications of this study for policy making are extremely concerning. It represents a step towards justifying intrusive and overreaching policies based on negligible environmental impacts. Such an approach is not only impractical but also poses a threat to personal freedoms which continue to be under attack daily and the dignity of human life.
In conclusion, this study is emblematic of the absurd lengths to which climate alarmism has gone. It represents a worrying trend in the climate debate, where even the most basic human functions are scrutinized for their environmental impact.
There is a dire need for a return to scientific sanity and rational discourse in addressing environmental issues. The path to a prosperous future does not lie in fear-mongering or exaggeration but in reasoned and rational scientific inquiry. I know we can’t expect that from the current crop of ideologically captured academics, but we must not stop working toward weeding out the rot in these institutions, even though it will likely take decades.
H/T petit-barde
It’s 2% of the amount of CO2 generated by the annual COP party.
At least nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas in the real world.
Methane isn’t (only is in the lab standard dry atmosphere) because it’s IR absorption bands are almost completely overlaid by much more abundant water vapor absorption bands in the real world atmosphere averaging about 2% specific humidity. So the whole no beef, no dairy, melting permafrost thing is completely scientifically unsound.
Since the IPCC doesn’t recognize water vapor as a greenhouse gas, they think methane is important. They assign large GWP values to it for 20 years and 100 years. It probably is oxidized to CO2 and water vapor in far less time.
It is closer to say that because the IPCC knows that burning natural gas instead of coal and petroleum would demonstrably actually allow countries to meet or exceed even unreasonable Paris Accord “targets” for emissions, at low cost, and that this would have absolutely no effect on global average temperatures, weather or climate, that they must suppress it in order to obtain their real socio-economic objectives.
They are painfully aware that even 100% compliance with their limits on natural gas emissions from large animals or for human energy consumption would have vanishingly small effect on the agnitudes gerater natural emissions from small animals and bacteria, biological processes in lakes, marshes, littoral shallows, from composting biomass, and from geologic formations.
Also, methane and CO2 have half-lives of about 3 to 5 years in the atmosphere. Methane is also parts per billion not parts per million like CO2.Green house gases do not exist, but if they did, methane is only 5% the effect of CO2 due to its scarcity. This is a nonstarter. Same is true for N2O.
Farts have more methane, but it is also true that 90% of the gases be produced by our guts are breathed out through our lungs, Many people with bad breath are simply breathing their farts on you. Think about it.
I did think about it . . . for all of the 2 seconds it took me to recall that methane at room temperature is an odorless gas. So, consider that fact.
It seems that N2O itself can’t play a significant role since its main wavelength band is included in the H2O absoprtion band, and the one which is not, is almost out of the emission spectrum of the surface (as is one absorption band of the CO2 which bother nobody among the climate cultists) :
WHY oh why? Is the green blob so obsessed with shutting down humanity, scolding us, vilifying us, limiting us, demonizing us? (but never themselves)
self-inflicted chemically-induced dementia
In one word: Sugar
Uncle Roger recommends MSG
I think a little of what you fancy does you good
not enough sex? like my high school English teacher, a monster! She made us study Shakespeare!
Shakespeare Lieing English wordsmith.
I take exception to that, he was a wordsmith in a standing or sitting position.
Love Shakespeare!
We had to study Molière, evern learn by heart, what I never did and with a lot of chance I was never asked to present what I (didn’t) learn to Mme Guillet. 😀
Shakespeare or Molière, no idea what was better to understand or to learn. Both better not 😀
While largely ignorant of Moliere’s work, I know that a great deal of enjoyment is available through understanding Shakespeare’s. Of course is one is Scrooge like in regard to pleasure, all literature is worthless.
G’Day AndyHce,
“…a great deal of enjoyment is available through understanding Shakespeare’s” (works)
Four years of Shakespeare, more than enough. For ‘enjoyment through understanding’ I’ll go with Charles Schultz. [“Peanuts”]
I found Peanuts to be boring and repetitive. At least until the author died. Then he stopped producing the boring and repetitive stuff.
I wish the climate ‘scientists’ would stop.
I find Chaucer to be highly enjoyable but takes a little more effort on the readers part.
preferred Moliere to Baudelaire”…That I am the keeper for corpses of love…”
Maybe too much sex – with themselves and various genders and species.
Syphilis rots the brain.
Empty lives, vapid and superficial human connections, and no genuine passions. So they distract themselves from these things by focusing on us to an inane degree.
They are a death cult, worshiping the forces of death and darkness, opposed to abundant life.
I saw this on Jo Nova’s site earlier this week –>
Former German Minister warns government is using CO2 “like the virus” to create a tyranny
https://joannenova.com.au/2023/12/former-german-minister-warns-government-is-using-co2-like-the-virus-to-create-a-tyranny/
Seems to explain the climate change push.
Or rather, the ‘climate change putsch.’
Germany had lots of insane weirdos running its government 1933-45. Not a new thing for Germany. Germany spend most of the 20th century with varying types of insane gvoernments, particularly the dictatorships of Ludendorff and Hitler.
“”a dire need for a return to scientific sanity””
One need only look at the state of tertiary and secondary education across the West to see there is little likelihood of that anytime soon.
Sadly true.
After every Climate Outrage Party, all the hot air exhaled there seems to increase the annual ppm CO2 emissions, which have been gradually rising for the past 28 years of COP meetings.
Al Gore’s irregular bursts of verbal flatulence seem to correlate with rising CO2 and so do John Kerry’s bursts of baked beans flatulence.
Glossary:
Environmentalists — Global Whiners
Climate Models – – Confuser Games
Conference Of the Parties – Climate Outrage Party
(1) Al Gore
— Albert “the climate blimp” Gore
(2) John Kerry
— John “why the long face?” Kerry
(3) Greta Thunberg
— Greta “thundering” Thunberg
(1)+(2)+(3) = Three Stooges of Climate Change
Kamala Harris
— Kamala “word salad queen” Harris
Joe Biden
— Jumpin’ Joe Bidet
Never forget:
— Insult a leftist a day
to keep the doctor away
Honest Climate Science and Energy Blog
One correction,
Greta “I can see CO2” Thunberg
I invite all the Global Warm-mongers to hold their breath until…
They should put their money where their mouths are, rather than demand that others make the sacrifice.
Read about this “study” on RT earlier this week. I suggested that the authors should be first in line at the assisted suicide clinic.
That raises an interesting point –
what types and how much gases are generated and released by a human-sized carcass decomposing in the wild?
Above ground, who knows. Below ground (buried) almost none. Everything gets consumed by soil bacteria, and the resulting end state CO2 gets used by the plants growing in the soil.
Occasionally on my dairy farm we would lose a cow to a summer lightning strike. Stinky very fast. Get the tractor with the front bucket or the skid steer, dig a cow sized hole about 4-5’ deep, bucket in dead by then sometimes falling apart cow and cover with all the excavated soil—instant no stink, and extra green pasture there next year. We always kept some fertile pasture mix seed to sow on such unfortunate occasions—every thusly dead cow was at least $1500 lost.
Yes Rud putrefaction is a horrible thing to have to deal with.
I just grossed myself out remembering a time from my army days when our platoon leader made us get our drinking water from a small dam that had a hugely bloated, blowflies-covered dead cow half submerged at the edge of the dam.
We had purifier tablets to put in our canteens, but it was still impossible to not gag / retch with each sip from the canteen.
The fact that they are questioning the actual breathe of mankind being somewhat negative to climate is just an extension of animal emissions and other irrelevances. They just need to continue the charade in whatever way they can to keep they gravy train going.
Aren’t supposed mass extinctions making it okay for humans to breathe more?
No, it’s two breaths a day, no matter how many extinctions accumulate.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but these morons are looking and the wrong end of the process.
“The study’s findings that 31% of participants were methane producers”
Wow that’s a lot of vegetarians.
The termites in their homes probably produce more methane than they do.
Fart-sniffers.
“The study’s objective to investigate emissions from human breath in the UK population is fundamentally flawed. It operates under the assumption that these emissions are significant enough to warrant detailed analysis and inclusion in national greenhouse gas inventories. This premise is laughable at best, considering the minuscule percentage these emissions contribute to the overall greenhouse gas emissions.”
It doesn’t matter how absurd the study is, its premise or conclusions. Its purpose is to help justify a course of action.
“The implications of this study for policy making are extremely concerning. It represents a step towards justifying intrusive and overreaching policies based on negligible environmental impacts. Such an approach is not only impractical but also poses a threat to personal freedoms which continue to be under attack daily and the dignity of human life.”
This is an understatement. ‘They’ want to kill a lot of people.
Did the study also measure their bodily gas emissions? 🙂
They should use a gas-tight syringe and needle to sample that orifice directly.
So if you run or do anything vigorous, you will increase the amount you pollute the air.
Anthony: I tried before to connect with you to study a method of data analysis used in chemistry for reactions that I haven’t seen in any statistics of the climate change claims. It’s rare to see discussions on statistical significance that may differ normal cycles of natural variability versus “CO2 intervention”; as a matter of fact I haven’t seen any, they automatically assume that nature is inert without changing by itself, and that the apparent change is caused by humans: Pseudoscience.
I want to see if you ever had an article/interview/investigation on how much funds the government(s) are allocating for the so-called “climate change” versus for efforts to lower the costs of medicines and increasing their availability. I have the observation that the government is prioritizing mitigating “climate change” over contributing with the issue of the costs and access to medicines. Recently some faculty from the UTEP school I graduated from with a MS/PhD received $5M in funds to computer methods to mitigate climate change. However, my industrial company has been stuck for a few years now in a project to establish a production line of injectables of sugar and water to increase blood glucose in diabetics, a dextrose solution too 5% on the FDA lists of shortages needing generics that the big pharma is not interested in producing due to the large costs of production versus profits. The costs of licenses for any drug is around $200K initially, around $360K for annual renewal, plus the costs of the production plant. Besides the FDA’s programs to help companies to pass through the ANDA process, there are no incentives in funds like those for climate change to start a production plant, at least that I know about. Is it possible for you to help us investigate if it’s true that the government prefers to have easier funds for climate change than for lowering the costs of medicines? Thanks. Dr. JBVigo EP/TX.
Correction: on one sentence I meant to say “TOP 5%”
The FDA’s main goal is to protect the bottom line of their major benefactors, the population at large be dammed.
It is all so frighteningly logical. Net zero condemns billions to death from war famine plague and cold and whatever else a grim reaper holds in store. So why not condemn us all for having the temerity to breathe – apart from those of the elect elite whose breath is as fragrant as a white rose’s perfume
Did St. Greta say she could see Methane?
If so, that might explain why 6 people (authors) thought it wise to study this aspect.
I would have sampled 104 bottles of wine from different vineyards. A much better idea.
Greta can miraculously see CO2—she says. A colorless odorless gas, except to her. She is SO special—or maybe just nuts.
The last 😀
Who wrote this? Did you, Charles? Too often on WUWT I am left wondering who the author is. Authorship needs to be made prominent and clear.
Charles has developed a style. When he posts with an attribution, he is citing someone else. When he doesn’t, he is the author of the post.
I wrote this.
That would explain why your name was above the article next to a symbol for ‘author’ – I did wonder about that. Do they omit that section in the braille version of the site for the sight-challenged readership, then?
So I was curious and did some poking about. Of course, the Conversation had a feature on this study. The main work was done by Ben Dawson for his masters thesis for an MSc at University of Edinborough. The other PLOS authors were his thesis supervisors and some hangers on. Does not speak well for the educational quality of that Uni. This would have been rejected as an undergraduate honors thesis at mine. (My undergrad thesis got a summa and was also accepted by the University as my economics PhD thesis.)
The Conversation piece did have a gem of a one sentence paragraph that they apparently did not appreciate the irony of:
”If you want to reduce your impact on the climate, don’t hold your breath.”
Yup.
Most of the impacts and effects “research” I see highlighted here, upon investigation, are worse than a high school science project. No testable hypothesis. No experimental design. No predetermined statistical test. No controls. On and on!
In the natural and applied sciences arena and the humanities, university faculty are being paid government research dollars (my taxes) to churn out worthless MS and PhD degrees.
We need a Trumpian style president who has the guts to turn down the federal research dollar firehose to a trickle. I work in a major higher education institution that would be heavily impacted, but sometimes cancer treatments must almost kill the patients in order to save them.
Experimental and statistical defects aside, I see no reason not to make such a study. Good data always has the possibility of being useful someday, somewhere (a long interplanetary journey?) One can question the rationality of tax payer funding for the study, and most certainly the inclusion of the data for policy considerations, but not, I think, for the gathering of data per se.
I’ve not investigated, but there are likely gigabytes of human breath analysis data, likely tied to diving research, biomedical research, Air Force high altitude research, and space exploration research. Don’t try to tell us that nobody knew the methane and nitrous oxide content of human breath.
There nothing novel or original about the testing. In fact, it would have never been read outside of the thesis committee except for the “climate” connection. Say “climate”, and a university communications office and the media see “Squirrel!!”
Charles definitely gets the implication.
I see this syndrome in university “sustainability” offices, a bunch of know-nothing busybodies trying to take the joy and laughter from life by straining gnats and judging every element of existence, no matter its insignificance. Censoriousness is not attractive. The bigger picture is that ultimately, in their view, humans are a plague on the earth and should be dispatched as soon as possible. It is a death cult, except that they don’t volunteer to be first in line.
Charles Rotter,
Your concise, well-chosen words have expressed this social problem with a clarity that ought be convincing to readers with open minds. Sadly, too many have closed their minds. Geoff S
Well any “science” that’s most important measurement is “global average” temperature is likely to be absurd …
They may as well measure Unicorn temperature …
anyone debating anything in climate science is debating nonsense on stilts… a huge waste of time and energy … an intellectual circle j*rk … including WUWT …
Leftists must stop breathing to save the planet
And stop eating baked beans to reduce their methane emissions pollution.
This absurd piece of supposed research is simply more evidence that there’s far too much tripe being produced, pretending it’s important science and demanding to be treated as important science simply because it’s passed peer review. It’s shameful that this would be considered a research paper. This drivel adds nothing to the sum of human knowledge about the universe around us.
How long before they introduce a fart tax?
Apparently John Kerry would veto this, as it could send him bankrupt.
(combined effects of his own loud emissions and his baked beans fortune inheritance)
Or ban singing team songs at Premier League games.
This is just evidence of the underlying misanthropy that is the source of warmunist ideology .. along with communism and the belief in their own right to tell other humans how to live and die.
Why did the not measure and report on carbon dioxide emissions? Maybe the could have also reported relative amounts pop of methane and nitrogen oxides. Then we would be able to see the direct effect humans have on greenhouse gas emissions. Irrespective of any industrial activity
They did. You should read the study. Here’s the relevant quote:
“Concentration enhancement of CO2 in the breath of the participants ranged from 26.5 to 63.4 parts per thousand (2.65–6.34%) following a Gaussian distribution, with an arithmetic mean of 4.35 (4.29–4.43) % (Fig 1A). All participants exhaled CO2, and while the data distribution skewed slightly towards higher values, overall, the data was relatively symmetrical around the mean.”
The fact that the percentage of CO2 in the breath we exhale, can be over 100 times the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere, is something interesting that we should know. Such facts need to be confirmed or refuted, through scientific experiments, like the one in this study.
Wow! So many negative comments on a study which addresses the relevance of GHG emissions from human breath.
I read the article, and came across the following statements which suggest that the study concludes the issue is not a problem, and that the purpose of this study was to confirm or falsify the conclusions of previous studies which implied that human GHG emissions from breathing are a problem.
To support my point, I’ll cherry-pick a few statements from the study.
“The purpose of this study was exploratory, to determine if certain generic diets had an overall impact on an individual’s emissions of these gases, which does not seem to be the case.”
“The predicted total emissions of these gases from humans is very small when compared to global emissions.”
“Therefore, emissions of these gases are generally ignored in most environmental monitoring or inventory work as they are considered negligible. However, there are reasons to study these emissions further.”
“While there is an extremely high concentration of people in cities compared with more rural areas, the emissions of CH4 associated with fossil-fuel burning, gas leaks and wastewater leakage in cities are several orders of magnitude greater than that from breath.”
“For comparative purposes only, if the Greater London area were a managed grassland, the soil emissions of CH4 would be equivalent to that of human breath in the same area.”
“Samples from participants in this study were separated into three dietary groupings: those who ate meat regularly, those who eat meat up to twice a week, and those who ate no meat at. No trends were observed between the emissions of all 3 greenhouse gases with any of the three dietary groupings in this study “
Any studies that seek to quantify what and how much we breathe is going to be treated with suspicion and negativity after a veritable cascade of misanthropic studies of a supposedly ‘scientific’ nature which are nothing more than thinly disguised rantings about how awful humans are and how the world would be a better place without 3/4 of the human population.
Can you understand how we might react in this way after so much bile?
This is simply step one. Step two is, “wait, it may be worse than we thought”. Step three is, “we had better get funding to look into this further”. Step four is “models say human breath may cause warming”.
As I’ve been saying for a while now, “We are the carbon they want yo reduce”.
One of the primary problems is the publish or perish policy for professors at colleges and universities. The policy can be justified for many reasons but if you did a cost benefit for society we would come out on the short end of the stick. It has helped lead to crappy peer review and crappy studies like this one. For me I would put way more stock in a good teacher giving me instruction than a top notch researcher who was a mediocre teacher. Students are there to learn, they need all the best help they can get.
“Useless breathers”?
“This study aims to identify patterns in emissions from individuals that may alter emission estimates in national scale accounting and provide a realistic national emission for the UK in particular.”
Did they take into account the volcanoes emissions (say Pinatubo 1991 emissions alone, according even to the 1991 USGS article** on the subject) and compared them to human’s exhalations ?
More on the volcanoes CO2 emissions and possible discrepancies :
The USGS published an article** in which the authors state that volcanoes emit only 1% of what humans emit and that the 2015 human’s emissions* equals 700 Pinatubo 1991 eruptions. There seems to be a discrepancy between the James Hansen’s article*** and the USGS’s article of a factor of about 18000 :
*2015 emissions from burning fossil fuels : actual : 35.5 Gt (retained value : the estimation of 32.3 Gt in the USGS article, value they used to find the factor 700) :
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions
**USGS’s article (from Terrence M. Gerlach) :
https://www.usgs.gov/programs/VHP/volcanoes-can-affect-climate
***James Hansen’s article :
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/011006
“𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘺, 𝘧𝘰𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘦 (𝘊𝘏4) 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘰𝘹𝘪𝘥𝘦 (𝘕2𝘖) 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩, 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘢 𝘨𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘦𝘹𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘢 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘵𝘩𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘤𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘮 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘰.”
With the human population now well over 8bn people (and increasing rapidly) and many of them relying on rice (from paddy fields) as their staple diet the increase in CH4 must be quite significant. Has rice growing now overtaken flatulent ruminants?
Yet here we are with some scientists continuing to concentrate on publishing inconsequential irrelevancies to help keep the waters muddy!
“The study’s findings that 31% of participants were methane producers . . .” invites the questioning if the procedures were rigorous enough to insure the human emissions were sampled at the right location. 😜
TPTB tax our income, property, energy, acquisitions, water in/sewage out, vehicles, and many more things. I guess they are aiming to add breathing to the list.
I guess this is a back up for when people realise we produce a tiny amount of the global CO2 emissions in the UK. They do seem to be looking at the wrong end for methane emissions.
Ah, so that’s what the massive global project to inject the World population with toxic “experimental vaccines” is due to!
There is no real evidence that any of these gases affect out global climate no matter how much humans might exhale them The AGW hypothesis has been falsified by sceince so we no longer need to be studying it. We should not be wasting the money..
I’ve said for years that the people who believe climate change is caused by humans could end it now simply by not exhaling for 30 minutes.