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

Mon Mar 12 18:03:20 PDT 2007

Megan et. al.

Thanks for your UN FAO source on the figures for livestock impacts on global
warming gases.  My searches on this subject did not discover this source.

First, let me state I would be happy to find the human race switching from
animal food sources to other forms of nutrition.  I agree that the animal
food industry has serious negative impacts on the environment, and is often
a wasteful inefficient means of food production in a world of 6 billion and
counting, with plant based foods a more efficient and often healthier
alternative.  Not to mention being often cruel to the animals, which I find
particularly objectionable.  I have eaten a totally non animal product diet
and been as healthy as a horse, though lately I have been eating some animal
products, trying to avoid this as a staple for my diet.

However, given the misinformation and propaganda that gets tossed around
regarding global warming, which I regard as a very serious threat to
planetary ecosystems and the survival of millions of human beings, I think
it is important to stay within the bounds of referenced scientific data when
discussing this subject.  The global warming skeptics who wish to spread
misinformation on global warming count on the public not doing the research
necessary to discover the junk science they promote.  Climate science is a
very complicated subject, and it is easy to use figures and statistics
juggled this way and that to come up with the conclusions sought.

It appears there is a significant disagreement regarding methane releases
and other greenhouse gases, and their total impact on global warming,
related to livestock, from credible scientific sources.  I quoted numerous
sources referencing scientific studies that cast doubt on some of the claims
in the UN FAO article.  If you read objectively through the sources I
quoted, they should raise doubts.

For example, the World Resources Insitute article I quoted on global
transport claims that transport is over 18 percent of CO2 impacts on global
warming, and the highest estimates of the GWP (global warming potential)
from human sourced methane I could find was 18 percent, of which only a
fraction can come from livestock, if you view the information from the
Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research.  Note the NASA article on
methane releases from rice paddies, asserting 8 percent of human methane
releases are or were from this source alone.  I quoted another source that
listed rice paddies along with livestock as significant sources of human
related methane releases.  There are numerous other human related
significant sources of methane release from fossil fuel related activities,
landfills, waste treatment and disposal (how many people realize that human
waste and its treatment and disposal releases large amounts of methane, with
a human population over 6 billion and counting?), etc. The chart on methane
referenced from the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research,
listing percentages of the methane coming from various human
sources, contradicts the claim from the FAO that livestock accounts for 37
percent of human related methane releases.  The National Energy Information
Center source I offered providing data on the USA's human sourced methane
releases gave a figure of 9 percent of greenhouse gases from methane
domestically.

Also, I referenced a Nature article that analyzed the GWP of methane and
found that, when considering all factors, such as methane's 12 year
atmospheric lifespan before dissipating in the atmosphere, compared to CO2s
100 year plus lifespan, methane has 3.7 times more GWP than CO2 per mole.
This casts serious doubt on the FAO article's assertion that methane is 23
times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2, a figure you often hear
tossed around without full understanding of the facts of climate science.

I could go on, but...who is readying this dry prose, anyway?

Given disagreements of this magnitude on a difficult scientific issue, I'm
going to withhold judgement on the data regarding the impacts of livestock
on global warming, while agreeing that the livestock industry is
environmentally unsound for a number of reasons, and does
contribute significantly to global warming gases, in part from land use
impacts, burning forests for cow pasture, etc.

I long ago quit eating beef almost entirely in part because of the clearing
and burning of forests to make way for cattle...even in the Brazilian rain
forest!

I need to fully study in total the IPCC latest report on climate change.  It
may offer the latest data on livestock impacts on climate change, along with
every other known climate change variable.

Ted Moffett

On 3/12/07, Megan Prusynski <megan at meganpru.com> wrote:
>
>  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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