This sounds kind of funny, but it is actually pretty serious. Another good reason to eat less meat. I just came across this posted on Gizmodo and thought it was worthwhile sharing with the Steemit community. I wonder how this bodes for states where there are a lot of cows like Iowa, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
This is not my content. It is from this link.
https://gizmodo.com/we-ve-grossly-underestimated-how-much-cow-farts-are-con-1818993089
We’ve Grossly Underestimated How Much Cow Farts Are Contributing to Global Warming
George Dvorsky
A new NASA-sponsored study shows that global methane emissions produced by livestock are 11 percent higher than estimates made last decade. Because methane is a particularly nasty greenhouse gas, the new finding means it’s going to be even tougher to combat climate change than we realized.
We’ve known for quite some time that greenhouse gases produced by cattle, sheep, and pigs are a significant contributor to global warming, but the new research, published in Carbon Balance and Management, shows it’s worse than we thought. Revised figures of methane produced by livestock in 2011 were 11 percent higher than estimates made in 2006 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—a now out-of-date estimate.
It’s hard to believe that belches, farts, and poop from livestock could have any kind of global atmospheric effect, but it’s an issue of scale, and the nature of methane itself.
There are approximately 1.5 billion cows on the planet, each and every one of them expelling upwards of 30 to 50 gallons of methane each day. We typically think of farts as being the culprit, but belches are actually the primary source of cattle-produced methane, accounting for 95 percent of the problematic greenhouse gas.
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Do Cow Farts Actually Contribute to Global Warming?
There are currently approximately 1.3 to 1.5 billion cows grazing, sleeping, and chewing their cud…
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And problematic it is. Methane is about 30 times more efficient at trapping the Sun’s radiative heat than carbon dioxide over a timescale of about a century. There may be more CO2 in the atmosphere than methane, but by unit, it’s the more destructive greenhouse gas. Both NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System research initiative and the Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI) contributed to the study.
Wolf’s team re-evaluated the data used to produce the IPCC 2006 methane emissions estimates. The prior estimates were based on relatively modest rates of methane increases from 2000 to 2006, but things changed dramatically afterwards, increasing 10-fold over the course of the next 10 years. The new figures factor an 8.4 percent increase in methane emissions from digestion (otherwise known as “enteric fermentation”) in dairy cows and other cattle, and a 36.7 percent increase in methane from manure, compared to previous IPCC-based estimates. The new report shows that methane accounted for approximately 16 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2016. Other human activities, such as the production and transport of gas, oil and coal, along with the decay of our organic waste, also contribute to global methane emissions.
Importantly, the new estimates are 15 percent higher than global estimates produced by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and four percent higher than EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research).
“In many regions of the world, livestock numbers are changing, and breeding has resulted in larger animals with higher intakes of food,” noted Wolf in a release. “This, along with changes in livestock management, can lead to higher methane emissions.” To which she added: “Direct measurements of methane emissions are not available for all sources of methane. Thus, emissions are reported as estimates based on different methods and assumptions. In this study, we created new per-animal emissions factors—that is measures of the average amount of CH4 discharged by animals into the atmosphere—and new estimates of global livestock methane emissions.”
The new research shows that methane emissions slowed in the US, Canada, and Europe, but they’re rising elsewhere. Very likely, the rest of the world is catching up to first-world standards in terms of meat and dairy consumption.
“Among global regions, there was notable variability in trends in estimated emissions over recent decades,” said Ghassem Asrar, Director of JGCRI and a co-author of the new study. “For example, we found that total livestock methane emissions have increased the most in rapidly developing regions of Asia, Latin America, and Africa...We found the largest increases in annual emissions to be over the northern tropics, followed by the southern tropics.”
It’s not immediately clear how, or even if, these revised figures will impact livestock production or public policy, but at the individual level, it suggests we should cut back on our consumption of meat and dairy. The privilege we have over these animals, it would appear, now comes at a hefty price.
Update: An earlier version of this article included a statement suggesting that methane will exert a global warming potential 28 times greater than that of CO2 over then next 100 years. While methane has a unit for unit GWP that’s about 30 times that of CO2 on 100 year timescales, CO2 is still the dominant greenhosue gas in our atmosphere because there is so much more of it. The sentence in question has been removed.
This is actually pretty old news. This has been going on for years. It is the whole beef industry, which experienced a spike since Trump rose beef exports to China this year.
I knew it was an issue but not to this extent. Seems somebody must have blown a whistle somewhere.
It has been going on for years. I remember reading a freakonomics article about it in middle school. It just ravishes a part of America that is dominated by farming and herding.
Unfortunately many of the working class Americans barely receive much money from it as they are usually on lease and it's complicated. John Oliver did a good segment I can try find if you are interested.
Thx - I will search for the JO clip, I'm a big fan but had not seen that episode.
He focuses on Chicken, but same concept. Big companies stop doing work, make others do it for them, lease expensive equipment out, workers can't afford it so they are indentured servants.
Thx!
when the cow dung becomes a danger to nature, so that need to be blame is human, because there is a way to anticipate it by processing into fertilizer, and the gas in the birth by cow dung can be processed into gas bio, we can use for cooking and electricity needs which exists. God created something, must have its own benefits for us humans.
oh my friend @boyasyie, this only will join a LONG list of things to blame on the humans! Fortunately there are good ones out there.
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This is why we need to eat them faster. Just get rid of them.
No, no, no eejit. We needd to eat less so that there are fewer. The amount of space it takes to raise a cow versus growing crops is massively skewed. We are running out of land to herd the amount of cows we need to switch more over to crops which also coincidentally helps rebuild the Ozone layer and circulates oxygen....
Lol, guess there is more than one way to solve the issue :). I've also read that in states where marijuana is legalized that hamburger consumption has gone up, so more green and less cows probably in those states ...
.... it's almost as if solving the biggest gas emiter will also reverse the problems we have. Just saying, think about the dietary benefits.
It's only a matter of time in my view, in 50 years everyone will be a vegan.
500, recount that XP I stil don't want to give up my steak.
they knew this back in the 1990's but chose to ignore it. why? american meat and dairy council pandering. money in politics.
Wow, imagine that, an industry corrupted by lobbyists, politics and money :(/ !
ikr...
I am glad they have not gotten around to studying my farts and burps yet :D
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No offense taken. Greatly appreciated though if you can point to some good articles on the methane released by trees - I would love to learn more and will do some web searching as well, but if you have any good research articles already that would be awesome. Thank you for reading and commenting.
according to this article, the amount emitted by plants is still a bit controversial, this team was researching it in 2009
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/01/methane-emissions-dont-blame-plants
and according to this update in 2014 they still have not quite been able to prove the link except in fungi. But they have not shown yet how it works or how much is released by trees.
https://www.mpg.de/8279621/methane_plants_methionine
Maybe in a few more years they will have an update like the one they just published about cows. Or do you think this is a concerted plot against the dairy industry?
Thank you, watching Iavr Giaver's speech now. The global debate on this issue reminds me of the "Introspection Illusion" introduced by Rolf Dobelli. http://meaningring.com/2016/05/08/introspection-illusion-by-rolf-dobelli/) - everyone considers their own conviction to be more valid. I think the the truth is out there, objectively, somewhere.
No you did not come across as dogmatic, was hoping I did not either. It is just interesting trying to take a neutral view of what has become a very dogmatic issue.