[Vision2020] Ed the Viking, Greenland, and Global Warming

[Megan Prusynski]

This is just a guess (since I'm not Nick), but perhaps the statistics  
on livestock contributing more to global warming than all  
transportation combined came from this UN's Food and Agriculture  
Organization report: http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/ 
index.html

Here's a quote from the above article:
"Which causes more greenhouse gas emissions, rearing cattle or  
driving cars?

Surprise!

According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and  
Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more  
greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent - 18 percent -  
than transport. It is also a major source of land and water  
degradation."

Looks like going vegetarian has more positive impact on global  
warming than getting a hybrid. :) PETA has written a letter to Al  
Gore asking if he'd consider going veg (and offering to make him some  
fine vegan cookin') in order to reduce his impact on global warming  
and set an example. We'll see if he responds. Here's the article on  
that from PETA's blog: http://blog.peta.org/archives/2007/03/ 
clearing_a_few.php

If anyone needs vegetarian recipes or tips, I have plenty to share. ;)

peace,
~Megan


-----------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 06:15:49 -0800
From: "Ted Moffett" <starbliss at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Ed the Viking, Greenland, and Global Warming
To: "nickgier at adelphia.net" <nickgier at adelphia.net>
Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com
Message-ID:
	<d03f69e0703120715m64f1f228gbab37b0b7ea418f3 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Nick wrote:


>
> Regarding livestock and global warming, they contribute, by expelling
> methane, 18 percent of all greenhouse gases, more than all world  
> transport
> combined.  In developing countries raising cattle also requires  
> burning
> forests, which overall contributes another 18 percent of greenhouse  
> gases.
>


Can you provide scientific references for the data you offer above?   
I am
finding documentation of this data difficult.

Methane releases from livestock do not add up to 18 percent of  
greenhouse
gases from human activity or 18 percent of the human sourced greenhouse
effect, given the sources I've read.

A source listed below gives methane releases in the USA, many from non
agricultural sources (landfills, coal mines, oil and gas operations)  
as 9
percent of total human sourced greenhouse gases.  The amount from  
livestock
would be a fraction of this amount.

The GWP (global warming potential) would need to be considered, given  
that
methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, though it  
dissipates in
the atmosphere much faster. I wonder if this 9 percent figure is  
corrected
for GWP.  Of course this is only data for the USA, so global  
percentages of
methane release could be very different:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggccebro/chapter1.html

According to this source below, significant methane releases are  
associated
with the huge increase in rice cultivation (anaerobic decomposition in
paddies):

http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap01/co2_change.html

NASA article claiming rice cultivation adds 8 percent of total global
methane releases, or it did till recent changes, much of this coming  
from
China:

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2002/1204paddies.html

This source below (asserting CO2 is 80 percent of the human sourced
greenhouse effect) combined with other data I've read on the  
percentages of
atmospheric concentration of other greenhouse gases, suggests methane  
from
all human impacts contributes about 10 percent of the current human  
sourced
greenhouse effect, allowing for GWP.  Even if this figure is in error, I
doubt that just the methane from livestock will equal 18 percent of the
human sourced greenhouse effect, given the percentage influence of CO2,
nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide, CFCs, etc. and methane from other  
sources:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v344/n6266/abs/344529a0.html

Another source below gives a figure for methane's GWP over the next  
hundred
years as 18 percent of the total human impact, but the amount of methane
from fossil fuel related and waste treatment and disposal sources is  
a large
percentage of this total. Consider that even if methane contributes 18
percent to the GWP, in absolute amount of percentage of release it is at
a much smaller level, because it is a more powerful greenhouse gas  
than the
dominant greenhouse gas from human sources, CO2.  This source is data  
from
2000, and fossil fuel use has increased dramatically in the past 6  
years,
thus the 14 percent figure for the transportation sector is now in  
error:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Greenhouse_Gas_by_Sector.png

As far as burning of forests contributing 18 percent of atmospheric  
CO2 from
human impacts, I cannot verify this figure either.  The source above  
gives a
figure of 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions for land use and  
biomass
burning, which should include forest burning impacts.  This source below
gives a figure from burning of forests and deforestation of 7-10  
percent of
the CO2 emissions from fossil fuels:

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/2004/biomass-812.html

Quote from article above:

Of forest burning, about 80 percent results in permanent deforestation -
meaning the land is now used for some other use, such as grazing,
agriculture or buildings. The remaining 20 percent of trees are regrown.
When forests are permanently replaced by other plant types - shrubs,
grasses, crops, all of which contain less carbon than do trees - the  
carbon
difference accumulates in the atmosphere. "The total carbon dioxide  
emission
from permanent deforestation is on the order of 7 to 10 percent of  
global
fossil-fuel-carbon-dioxide emission," Jacobson says.

Jacobson's calculations used a model honed over 14 years and emission  
data
from a variety of sources. He is an author of two textbooks -  
Fundamentals
of Atmospheric Modeling (Cambridge University Press, 1999) and  
Atmospheric
Pollution: History, Science, and Regulation (Cambridge University Press,
2002).

------

Given these estimates of methane releases from livestock in absolute
amounts, and in terms of the GWP of these methane releases, methane from
livestock does not equal the amount of CO2 from the transport sector,  
which
according to the source below contributes over 18 percent of global  
human
sourced CO2 emissions, nor does it equal this CO2s GWP.

http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/135

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