Steak-lovers — look at the volatility in the graph of methane levels. That is not the cows…
Methane emissions are a bit of a sleeper. They are ignored (even by me) yet and cows, sheep, pigs and lamas produce a whopping 11% of the Australian national greenhouse emissions (mostly as methane and nitrous oxide). Livestock emissions are 70% of our entire agricultural sector emissions. They are so important, at one stage Australia was considering a camel genocide — hoping to stop storms and reduce droughts by knocking off some camels. So if we like ham, steak and hamburgers, we need to pay attention. The carbon-politisi are coming.
The UN thinks we need to worry about methane which has 34 times the impact of CO2 (which is 34 times something immeasurably insignificant, so who cares?). Somehow global methane levels are often blamed on fossil fuels and farting cows, but this latest analysis suggests humans are pretty much irrelevant.
Tom Quirk tracks the annual changes in methane and finds that it bumps up by both big and small amounts, and the volatile pattern doesn’t match human agriculture or mining but rises and falls in time with El Ninos. This is not entirely surprising as El Nino’s affect rainfall (and thus affect droughts and fires). And wetlands are the largest natural source of methane on Earth. Dryness leads to methane…
Humans were once responsible for the global rise in methane, as Tom Quirk explained in 2013. Russian pipes were so leaky in the 1970s and 80s that the large annual increases in methane may have been due to “communist maintenance”. When the Soviet Union started selling natural gas to the Europeans, the leaks were stopped and the rises in methane became much smaller.
It’s another wonderful bit of original research from Tom Quirk. Looks like thousands of cows and camels may be saved.
— Jo
_______________________________________
Guest post by Tom Quirk
Latest Methane Measurements from Cape Grim
Annual changes in atmospheric methane show no smooth progression but rather great variability.
The annual changes in direct atmospheric methane measurements from 1986 to 2018 are shown in Figure 1 along with 12 year smoothed ice core data from 1900 to 1991. These measurements are from the CSIRO at Cape Grim and ice cores at the Law Dome in Antarctica.
Figure 1: Annual changes in atmospheric methane in ppb per year from ice cores at the Law Dome in Antarctica with 12 year smoothing and direct annual measurements at Cape Grim in Tasmania
Law Dome measurements.
The Law Dome ice core measurements show rising annual emissions in the last half of the twentieth century. This is understood to be due to leaky gas pipelines and in particular the Trans-Siberian pipeline[1] where the leakage was much reduced in the 1980s. There is also a gentle rise to a peak in the mid 1920s and then a gentle decline. The decline is at the start of the Great Depression with a recovery at the start of the Second World War. Figure 2 shows a similar rise and fall from an estimate of total fossil fuel emission for the United States[2] so the Law Dome data may reflect the economic events of the early twentieth century. Similarly the change in trend in the early 1970s may reflect the economic recession that followed the oil embargo of the Arab-Israeli war.
Figure 2: Annual and10 year running average of total fossil fuel emissions for the United States from CDIAC estimates. Note the peak in the mid 1920s.
Cape Grim direct measurements
The direct annual measurements at Cape Grim in Tasmania are also shown in Figure 3-upper along with the year of the Mount Pinatubo eruption, 1991, and the years in which El Ninos occurred. Figure 3-lower shows the monthly El Nino 3.4 Index.
The Pinatubo eruption coincides with an atmospheric methane peak. This has been explained[3] by the sulphur dioxide from the eruption reducing the removal of methane from the atmosphere.
The remaining methane peaks coincide with the years in which El Nino’s occur. There is one exception in 2016 where the methane peaks in 2014, preceding the El Nino peak by 2 years.
The methane peaks are associated with droughts and forest fires from changing conditions in wetlands[4]. Also there were massive forest fires in 2014 and 2015[5].
Fig 3a
Fig 3b.
Figure 3a: (upper) : Annual changes in atmospheric methane in ppb per year from ice cores at the Law Dome in Antarctica with 12 year smoothing and direct annual measurements at Cape Grim in Tasmania. The vertical red line is for 1991, the year of the Mount Pinatubo eruption and the vertical black lines are the years for El Ninos .Fig 3b (lower) Monthly El Nino 3.4 Index.
Conclusion
The main source of atmospheric methane since 1995 is from natural sources with great variability.
It is not from domestic livestock as noted by Albrecht Glatzle[6]. However it is possible fracking and increased transport of natural gas may make a contribution to the methane in the atmosphere.
Update
…
REFERENCES
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329881192_Domestic_Livestock_and_Its_Alleged_Role_in_Climate_Change
So to save the world!
Vegans will have to also eat Kale and drink Ocean water!
The world has gone mad!
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Well it can only Kelp………
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Awful…
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I often wondered how the Aztecs got away with cutting out peoples hearts and sacrificing to thier earth gods, but then you see how a whole generatiom of 20 somethings has embraced a form of earth based green paganism.
The aztec kings no doubt used the human sacrifice thing as a way of keeping the population in line through fear….but is there much difference now ?
Fear, uncertainty, doubt….
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The only difference between the Ancient Aztec rulers and modern politicians is that in the Aztec ritual the knife could be seen coming from the front.
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I had to share this here, last night my builder son told me that he was looking for new work boots and discovered that there are now Vegan Boots.
https://vegfaqs.com/best-vegan-work-boots/
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I didnt realize it was ok to make boots out of vegans….
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It’s the only way to make ’em truly useful!
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Even a busted clock is right twice a day…..whereas….
20
Saw a bumper sticker which read “Vegans, if you care about animals so much stop eating their food”.
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An “oldie” but, ” the only wilderness is between a greenies ears”
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The residence time of methane in the atmosphere is quoted by the IPCC as 12 years, elsewhere as 8 years.
Australian research has shown that soils can remove methane faster than the livestock grazing on it produce methane.
So if ruminant numbers remain constant in an area, the methane they produce will reach a plateau and then stay level, with methane production equal to the breakdown.
How much methane was produced by the 60 million buffalo on the American prairies before they were shot out?
Likewise by the ruminants in Africa.
How much methane is produced by the 305 million cattle in India, and the 232 million in Brazil?
The USA and Australia are small fry by comparison with 94 million and 25 million respectively.
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But, but, but…….
ONLY Australia can save the world……
That’s what the greenies reckon….
It is true, isn’t it?
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JT, by pure coincidence, our GreenNuts said exactly the same thing today, except they changed the name of the country:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/393928/government-s-clean-car-discount-fees-for-high-emission-vehicles-would-offset-efficiency-subsidy
“Heavy-polluting gas guzzlers [huh? that’s so 1970s] could soon be slapped with an import fee, with the revenue going towards subsidising clean, green vehicles [what are they?]” blathered Assistant Transport Minister for the Greens, Ms Julie-Anne Genter (dual citizen American import with a BA in philosophy and Masters of Planning Practice specialising in parking policy… say what?!) who nobody voted for – she rode in on our country’s twisted MMP Party List laws.
By pure coincidence, my vehicle – 3L diesel 4WD Toyota Hiace – is classified as one of the worst ™heavy-polluting gas guzzlers™. This woman is mad and dangerous, yet her press release today was a well-orchestrated, multi-headed, govt/media/industry hit-piece on the NZ populace: was it not Mussolini who described the F word as the collusion between govt/media/industry? Then again, he did make the trains run on time… burp!
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For a while sometimes !
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I CARE.
This is a lie which gets bandied about time after time. And once again here on the JoNova blog.
What is the basis is this outrageous claim?
Here is the contribution of CH4 to the Greenhouse Theory.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&id=F152AF38B73A73FC07F5327151FE148B27800F80&thid=OIP.YimoRa_PHOdLnS11nxqRbgHaHd&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fchriscolose.files.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2Fatmospheric_transmission.png&exph=857&expw=850&q=greenhouse+gas+effects+on+atmosphere&selectedindex=137&ajaxhist=0&vt=0&eim=0,1,2,6
The contribution of Methane (CH4) to the absorption and (supposed back radiation) is tiny compared to H2O and even CO2. How can it be 34 times more powerful that CO2?
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I’m intrigued Peter F. What is the basis for your fly-by comment? Peter C’s graph makes sense, and from it you can easily see that methane emissions fall within the water vapour emissions, so as per CO2, I wouldn’t expect much to happen from methane. Please explain why Peter C is wrong.
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They are not ANY part of your knowledge, PF.
You keep proving you are ADJECTLY IGNORANT in all forms of science and physics.
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Opportunities like this don’t come around all that often . . . . .
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Shouldn’t that be “adjectively”?
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Peter, agreed the methane band which is a very small part of the spectrum. Good point, and I could have added a reminder. Anyone who can explain the UNFCCC “reasoning” is welcome to do so. Some think “34” should be “86”.
——————-
*** Replies to Peter’s comment went far off topic. Please stick to methane and remember that photons don’t think before they fly. “Why greenhouse gas warming doesn’t break the second law of thermodynamics” This post in not the place to discuss that.
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Take a deep breath, Peter and calm down.
Illisa Ocko, a climate scientist, explains;
CH4 has a short residence time in the atmosphere. That fits ok with the measurements from Cape Grim,
CH4 is very powerful at absorbing radiation. No it is not. Surely even a climate scientist can see that!
Short residence time and weak IR absorber = very weak greenhouse gas.
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I agree, and I’m intrigued by the effect of the el nino’s. The question is why doesnt the trend for methane follow the general warming trend as could be expected? Ie warmer oceans (even if a little bit) would release more methane and therefore show a trend. Of course the answer could be that on average, ocean temps are very stable.
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“why doesnt the trend for methane follow the general warming trend as could be expected?”
No reason to expect that it would. Neither drives the other.
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If it is related to el nino’s and they are driven by warmer than average sea temps, then if the ocean was warming you would see a trend. That is what is in the article. An alternative, and related to your excellent comments re methane production in anaerobic conditions, the methane increase could be related to the deep water upwellings on the west american coasts. As I said it is intriguing
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Methane comes from the land (wetlands) not from the ocean. Hence ocean temps mostly matter because of their effect on swamps etc.
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Rainfall cycles are somewhat linked to El Nino events,
also the effects of tides on coastal mangroves would also be linked a bit to El Ninos.
Way too many contributing factors to even consider linking the fluctuations to one specific thing.
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Oh – I was wrong, again. Thanks for the explanation
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Maybe the decaying of kelp is a contributing.Surely it would emit CH4 during decomposition.
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“Surely it would emit CH4 during decomposition”
Depends on the dissolved oxygen content of the water.
Decaying matter in water will use up the oxygen first,
… then you get that stagnant swamp thing where oxygen is low enough that it becomes anaerobic.
Not too likely in moving sea water where kelp using grows, more likely CO2.
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How much interacts with oxygen on beaches where huge amounts are washed up each year.
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The 2014 severe drought in Thailand caused a methane spike a year before El Nino reared its ugly head.
https://reliefweb.int/report/thailand/buriram-and-sakon-nakorn-hit-worst-drought-decades
So we can safely say droughty conditions will produce a methane spike, even without El Nino.
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The Independent says its the flooded rice fields producing the methane, nothing to do with drought.
‘Past estimates have suggested that 2.5 per cent of human-induced climate warming can be attributed to rice farming.
‘The main culprit is methane, a potent greenhouse gas emitted from flooded rice fields as bacteria in the waterlogged soil produce it in large quantities.’
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Jo, You know that I have always respected you and David your husband. I have put, I think, many times at your site the notion that methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 is a lie, first thought of by green activists and accepted by politicians at the IPCC. See this post from 2011 https://cementafriend.wordpress.com/2011/10/ note I reference Tom Quirk. In 2011 the value was 21 (which was a lie), later it became 25 and now it is further exaggerated to 34. I mention in the post I contacted many people (some were Dr Bob Carter, Dr Roy Spencer, and Prof Richard Lindzen) No one could come up with answer to where the 21 times arose so I worked out. No one since has challenged my calculations (at the time Willis E made a comment but as I put he had not properly read the article he mentioned and did not understand the chemistry). Methane is not a potent greenhouse gas. For further proof one can look up Page 5-35 and table 5-9 of the Chemical Engineering Handbook (7th Edition). The emissivity (and hence absorptivity) of methane is little different from non-greenhouse gases NH3, CO, NO or SO2. On the moon of Saturn, Titan, methane acts in a similar manner to H2O on Earth. The temperatures on Titan are very much lower and CH4 exists in gaseous, liquid and solid forms.Liquid methane evaporates from lakes and condenses in the atmosphere and falls as rain. On Earth methane is not a significant greenhouse gas (if at all) but does take a part in the life cycle of plants and microbes.
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‘ …. methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 is a lie ….’
All of us here agree with you.
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cementafriend:
I can remember that the first claim was that it was 14 times as potent as CO2, then it has climbed to 21,25 then 34. The last figures I saw were 45 and 75, admittedly not from sites infected with science.
I think the effect is merely calculated as a way of “explaining” the failure of temperatures to match predictions. Bringing in methane as a fudge factor made things look better, or rather worse – “the curse is come upon us” approach. I have never thought that methane was a problem, partly because I looked at its IR spectrum (and concentration) and its known brief life in nature once oxygen is available.
Claims about it suddenly boosting global temperatures once a “tipping point” is reached merely show that the author lacks any logical thought. If a 1/1.5/2℃ rise in temperature means that permafrost will melt and ‘flood the atmosphere’ fail to explain why the higher temperatures in the Holocene optimum (for thousands of years) didn’t do so, nor why the previous interglacial (the Eemian) didn’t have any runaway temperatures either.
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fair enough – please delete
21
Methane doesnt play any role in any GHG the same as CO2 doesnt.
The methane produced in the planets atmosphere is minute as stated. But there is significant part of the minute that comes from natural geological and biological sources such as decay. Far more than burping cows.
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Methane is about 1800 parts per billion of the air, i.e. 0.00018% or 1.8 parts per million.
So in a million molecules of air there are fewer than two molecules of methane.
How can fewer than two molecules of hot methane possibly heat up a million molecules of air?
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Well here it is straight from Wiki..
Major constituents of dry air, by volume
Nitrogen N2 780,840 78.084
Oxygen O2 209,460 20.946
Argon Ar 9,340 0.9340
Carbon dioxide CO2 413.32 0.041332
Neon Ne 18.18 0.001818
Helium He 5.24 0.000524
Methane CH4 1.87 0.000187
Krypton Kr 1.14 0.000114
Beter get rid of the Ne and HE before GH4!
You never know what they are doing..
Also googling atmospheric gas composition I found Mr
Googlecensor came up with ‘greenhouse gas concentrations’ many times. Mr Google I didnt put anything about greenhouses in my search query you fool!70
‘Knocking off some camels’? I have read that there are 1 million feral camels in Australia, remnants of the Afghanistan camels. Thus the Ghan railway.
As for other feral animals
400,000 feral horses
5 million of feral donkeys
and of course our old friends the Kangaroos
44 million kangaroos.
I suppose they all have to go, but what about the 6 billion chickens grown each year in Australia?
Life! Mass slaughter to save the planet. Does that even begin to make sense?
Possibly the biggest methane emitters in Australia though are the termites which are reducing dead wood to methane, undoing the good work of
carbon sequestration, essential to our survival.
Knock off the lot. For the United Nations, of course.
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Then the extra 1 Billion Indians and 1 billion Chinese since man made Global Warming started. Their breathing out CO2 is twice our total CO2 output. They obviously have to go as well. There is nothing like being a caring sensitive Green. We will save the planet, even if we have to wipe out whole species.
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One thing at a time TdeF.
First they came for the camels, but I said nothing….
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One hump or two?
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Very Droledary.
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‘Some’ camels will be allotted their proper place in the New Land Acquisition, and Control of Toxic Emmissions and Human Activity Act. (UN Agenda 21.)
There’s a land acquisition program taking place in developed nations as per Chapter 15 .3 of Agenda 21 proposing ‘urgent and decisive action’ to be taken ‘to conserve and maintain genes, species and ecosystems with a view to the sustainable management and use of biological resources.’ The UN-designed Wildlands Project, a master plan of Agenda 21, is part of the design to transform land from public ownership to large tracts of no-go wilderness managed by technocrats, each eco-area protected by buffer zones and with designated corridors linking human habitation areas. In the United States, in 1993, the Clinton Administration adopted the Agenda 21 Wildlands Project Plan and here it is, easily available on the internet.
http://allnewspipeline.com/images/UN_SimulationMap21.jpg
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Have a look at the Qld Regional Ecosystem map and imagine if each RE was less than 10,000 ha.
10
And 75 million sheep
and 45 million cattle.
Not ‘thousands’ but tens of millions. Besides all vegetation dies and rotting vegetation ends up quickly as methane anyway. Herbivores simply accelerate it from say a year but you do not stop the production of methane or CO2 by killing herbivores. It’s all in balance, something modern ecologists and mathematics free greens deny. Everything is man made and a sin. It’s like an old time religion, ending in hell fire and brimstone and methane. And requires animal sacrifice apparently.
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2.6 million feral goats.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2016-05-31/gascoyne-goats-make-top-export-prices/7463542
Interestingly the rabbit population in Australia had an estimated peak of 20,000,000,000 by 1920 before controls were introduced. You do not need to travel very far into the bush in Australia to find rabbits now – most parkland in outer suburbs will have rabbits. And you can go a long way into the outback and still see rabbits. They get scrawnier and tougher as they get closer to desert conditions.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/today-in-history/bunnies-by-the-billions-thanks-to-one-gunloving-englishman/news-story/5faae61840b34527e255bce656c4bd60
Do cane toads produce methane? The best estimate for cane toad population in Australia is 200 million. They are not tiny either with average weight around 1kg.
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Two and sixpence a pair at the local freezer works or 25 cents. Great pocket money for us country kids.I considered myself quite well off.
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Re eliminating pest species
Around the mid-1980’s there was a first Australia wide meeting on the Australian rangelands feral goat problem in Dubbo.
One of the speakers was from New Zealand Environment Department, which had done some total eradication programs on animal pests on some off-shore islands.
His message was that getting rid of the last 1% would take as long and cost as much as getting rid of the first 99%.
Which is why the talk of “eradication” usually hopes to maybe get “control”. And why the funding has to keep going.
He also introduced us to governmental green tape.
10
o/t but much hysteria being contrived over 2 mining-related deaths this year, six over the past year. may they rest in peace.
crisis talks; multiple inquiries, ABC very concerned!
***in key points, ABC can’t even name the Committee, which is The Mine Health and Safety Advisory Committee.
8 Jul: ABC: Queensland Government wraps up crisis talks with mining industry after sixth death
By Allyson Horn
Key points:
• Mines Minister Anthony Lynham confirmed the ***committee had not met this year because of challenges meeting gender quotas.
The Queensland Government has called for mining company CEOs and union representatives to attend an urgent safety forum this Wednesday after the death of another mining worker…
On Sunday a 27-year-old man suffered fatal head injuries at the Baralaba North coal mine, west of Gladstone.
He was found “entangled in an excavator access ladder” about 2:00am, the Department of Mines and Energy said.
Six hours later, another man in his 50s was seriously injured in fall at a mine in Collinsville in the Bowen Basin.
The death takes the fatality total to six over the last year — making it the worst year for mining deaths since 1997.
***A review into incidents on coal mines will be expanded to include mineral mines and quarry sites as well as all deaths on mines over the past two decades…
Mine safety committee dissolved last year
Shortly before the State Government headed into crisis talks this afternoon, it was revealed a mining safety committee has been idle for six months ***because it could not reach a gender quota — during which time four miners have died…
(Mines Minister Anthony) Lynham said the two independent reviews would seek to identify changes needed to improve health and safety in the mines…
“This review will look at why mine workers have died over the past 20 years, how industry can improve and how the mines inspectorate can work better…
The industry needs a reset: union
Earlier in the day, Steve Smyth from the mining union CFMMEU had called for a 24-hour stoppage of production at all Queensland mines and for mine CEOs to meet with workers.
***”These coal companies have got to stop production. There’s got to be a reset, there’s got to be a stopping of production, a sitting down with the workers and working through what is actually going on at each and every one of their mine sites,” he said.
“We need to be stopping the industry, the industry needs a reset and get back on with business but be empowering their workers to stand up and speak out.”…
Mr Lynham said there was “no blame” but would make further announcements about the outcome of the meeting later this week.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-08/queensland-mine-death-response/11287178
Safe Work Australia: Fatality statistics
Statistics and Research
3,414 workers have died from 2003 to 2016
39% of worker fatalities were due to a vehicle collision (2003 to 2016)
44 workers who died in 2016 worked in the agriculture, forestry and fishing industry.
(Scroll down) Year-to-date 2019: Preliminary worker deaths by industry of workplace
As at 6 June, there have been 64 Australian workers killed at work in 2019.
In 2018, the preliminary data show there were 157 Australian workers killed at work, compared with 190 workers in 2017. These 2018 figures are preliminary figures and will be updated when more information becomes available.
The number of worker deaths listed in this table is based on initial media reports and is a preliminary estimate of the number of people killed while working…
Transport, postal & warehousing Preliminary worker deaths year-to-date, 6 June 2018: 22
Preliminary worker deaths year-to-date, 6 June 2019: 23
(for construction & mining the respective figures are)
Construction: 11; 11
Mining: 4; 2
https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/statistics-and-research/statistics/fatalities/fatality-statistics#year-to-date-2019-preliminary-worker
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So if no one did any work, lives would be saved? That’s socialism for you. No cars, no trucks, no mines, no agriculture, no mining (especially coal), no animals, no termites and all on the dole. There are about 2,200 overdose deaths in Australia each year, likely none at work. That’s 7 a day. Talk about the wrong priorities. Then that’s the ABC for you. The lucky ones in the lucky country. All complaining, no responsibility.
As for Climate Change, rapidly rising seas, Global Warming. Where exactly?
And could someone please explain why Carbon Dioxide, the essential ingredient in all life on earth from which all life is made, is a pollutant?
220
And on google “Known as criteria air pollutants, the six most common pollutants include ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, lead, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter.
Greenhouse gases are another form of hazardous air pollution.”
So they are too afraid to say Carbon dioxide is a hazardous air pollutant, because it is so silly that it is past idiotic.
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TdeF:
“So if no one did any work, lives would be saved?” Well No. Many years ago I attended a Safety Meeting when the Presenter listed the most dangerous occupations in Australia.
The off-shore petroleum platform…NO.
Aerial spraying of crops…NO
Explosives handling operators in the mining industry…NO.
Judging by the injuries reported the most dangerous occupation in Australia was that of a junior (desk bound) public servant in Canberra.
We must ban all desk jobs in Canberra.
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Yes, stress, the greatest workplace killer and there is no greater stress than having nothing to do.
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And is there any job in Canberra which is not a desk job?
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Might be a gardener or two?
60
Maybe desk repair?
50
I’d doubt that – more likely to run in a new one
30
Sorry. Red was meant to be green. Pobile Moan.
40
Idea of the week.
40
Firstly, the bovine methane emissions are from belching, not farting. Secondly, termites emit about as much methane as cattle, so any suggestions about what we do about all our termites?
130
I wonder how many billion white ants there ?
What ever !
They all need nixing
UN orders to save the planet !
🙂
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Termites, or more specifically the North American version or Coptotermes lacteus, produce an estimated 150 million tons of methane annually.
The estimated number of termites per acre varies, depending on the vegetation. In a temperate area, there are about 2.43 million per acre, while in tropical moist forest, there can around 18 million per acre. The estimate for 5000 acres of cultivated land is 57 billion. That’s a lot of termites…
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Another interesting fact: Methane emissions from a field of grass due to cellulose breakdown is probably the same, whether eaten by cattle or not.
160
And there’s more. Apparently the methane that supposedly comes from cows in reality mostly comes from the rotting dung heaps. Cows by themselves can’t produce methane, which can only be produced by aerobic bacteria.
Methane in the atmosphere is only 1.8 ppm.
For more details, see WUWT article 12 June “Cattle methane is a moooot point in global climate”.
100
And human origin CO2 is about 16 ppm?
And natural origin CO2 is about 394 ppm.
And then water is it really 10,000 ppm?
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Sounds about right KK. Have tried to find the origin of the 3-4% bit, but no luck. In any case, believe IPCC also support this figure.
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True
30
I have the answer..
But the “Black Hole” of moderation prevents it being posted. ?….?
30
Search for a paper by Tom Segalstad on the “Distribution of CO2 in the atmosphere”
20
30
Thanks Chad. Would like to a more detailed discussion of this in another thread sometime.
30
Some useful background..
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V12/N31/EDIT.php
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Thanks Chad. Stored the link for reading later. Still haven’t read Zharkova’s latest paper yet…
20
I can assure you Graeme that cows both burp and fart methane. They may burp up more than they fart, but it comes out both ends. Testing the rear flatus of sick cows for flammability is useful in the diagnosis of certain conditions. A Dutch vet came to grief when he ignited a cow’s flatus and set fire to the entire cowshed, incinerating a couple of hundred cows in the process. OOPS.
We should not forget the contribution of vegans in all this too. Those who stick to a vegetable diet have a much higher methane output than those of us who are omnivores.
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Cow gut digestion is anaerobic, hence methane rather than CO2
70
Applies to the human gut too. If it didn’t, the party game/sport of inflicting fart lighting when levels of alcohol consumed have risen past a Can’t-Happen-to-Me threshold, wouldn’t exist. Inflicting this on the rest is always the domain of the more juvenile men (it’s always males … sigh).
Mind you, it’s always amusing when an occasional bit of blow-back occurs. That individual never does it again.
Perhaps it hurt … ?
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Wrong:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEsGchyLuGE
Could be a singeing experience!
30
Bovines have a second stomach that is highly anaerobic, full of bacteria especially for digesting cellulous.. hence the term “ruminant”.
Humans don’t have this second stomach.
30
The rumen is like a fermentation vat and is the first port of call for partly-chewed material, plus material regurgitated as cud later, then fully chewed. Once chewed a second time and re-fermented, the green matter makes its way to the reticulum.
Rumen liquor is more foul than you can imagine. Green frothy slop. Legumes like clovers and lucerne contain saponins (soap-like chemicals found in many plants) that cause a stable foam to form in the rumen, preventing a cow from belching out the gas, causing the rumen to bloat.
When a cow bloats badly you have to stab through to the rumen to relieve the pressure on her heart and diaphragm or she will die within a few minutes. In extreme cases I have seen an incision cut big enough for a hand and then the rumen contents scooped out by hand up to the elbow. You’ll be lucky to scour the stink off your arm in a week if you get it on you.
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Yes! From experience of many an in vitro digestion analysis.
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“Green frothy slop”
Reminds one of a certain far-left political party. 😉
110
Happy to be corrected on this, as I was going by what I had read a few months ago. Thanks for the information.
40
Tried to find the source of my (apparently wrong) information – was supposed to be a WUWT article on 20 March 2019, but cannot locate it. Strange.
However, I did come across more articles on Methane that are worth reading, especially the comments:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/11/methane-the-irrelevant-greenhouse-gas/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/26/methane-production-and-emissions-in-trees-and-forests/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/10/stop-the-devastation-of-peoples-lives-by-speculating-with-no-data-remembering-cattle-and-methane-emissions/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/30/methane-warming-exaggerated-by-400/
40
Perhaps Catherine O’Leary’s cow was ill, and she was trying to do the same thing in 1871.
40
There are 7 billion humans on the planet
That’s7 billion who burp methane;
Or is it 7 billion who fart methane
I can never remember
Too busy spraying hydro carbon propelled
Air freshener laced with tea tree oil
To keep it all straight in my head !
🙂
60
Fart. We are not ruminants which can digest cellulose.
Cows and sheep have four stomachs. A horse only has one. Digestion of fibre is in the gut in older horses. Fermentation is used as well.
The IPCC rate gases based on the ratio to CO2, which they say has a half life of 80 years in the atmosphere. In fact it is only 14 years, but what would the IPCC know? They are politicians.
160
So the ruminants belch methane
And everything else farts methane.
And that includes the birds
The reptiles
The insects
The amphibians
The micro organisms
etc etc etc
And all us 7 billion humans….
Ummmmm ?
Seems to me that life is totally wrecking the planet
With methane exhausts…
Just like Dr Strangelove, we’ll have to nuke the lot to save the planet
(SARC off now)
80
To save the planet, we must destroy all life. A big reponsibility now that we control everything. The gas in the air, the temperature, the climate. It’s a heavy responsiblity but all life has to go. Carbon lifeforms. Nothing but trouble.
110
“I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure”. Ellen Ripley; Aliens.
50
As the WUWT article points out Bill, no animal can produce methane, and I doubt that humans could produce it as well. If internal, process would have to be anaerobic, but methane can only be made by aerobic bacteria.
41
Graeme:
Shouldn’t that be anaerobic bacteria?
(There the ones who parade around in Collingwood gear).
30
Yep. Have revised my stored info to say this. Lots of good info in this thread that I also need to include…
30
All methane-producing bacteria are strictly anaerobic. They are capable of producing energy through the reduction of CO2 to methane (CO2 + 4H2 → CH4 + 2H2O).
“Swamp gas” is also produced in the anaerobic conditions of a swamp.
60
beowulf
Back when The New Scientist was that they had an article on swamp gas and the lights. Suggestion was that the swamp also produced phosphane and di-phosphane which self ignited and set off the gas. It was also noted that human diets could be adapted to do the same.
Which might have helped Marks and Spencer, as they lost a law suit brought by a woman for problems resulting from their (supposedly) “electric knickers”
60
It’s the ‘NEW SCIENCY’ now.
Main target readership ?
Young female employees in desk jobs
The ‘New Idea” of old
With a dash of scientific fantasy stuff !
Not even worth reading online for free !
40
So it has gone beyond “The Nude Socialist” stage?
40
If methane output was important would you not see a signature in data when guns arrive in north america and wipe out Buffulo almost to extinction… Just wondering?
60
Perhaps not, because as the WUWT article says, the grass would rot and produce methane whether it passes through cattle or not. It’s an aerobic process.
60
We have never seen a signature from anything. Not even volcanic eruptions. Certainly not from 350,000 giant windmills. It’s as if we had no effect on the planet at all except that scientists say we control CO2 levels and they control all climates. Scientists like Al Gore and Tim Flannery and R. Pachauri.
80
Just ran across this fantasy presented as ethical science in Wikipedia on the UNFCC
“Precautionary principle
In decision making, the precautionary principle is considered when possibly dangerous, irreversible, or catastrophic events are identified, but scientific evaluation of the potential damage is not sufficiently certain. The precautionary principle implies an emphasis on the need to prevent such adverse effects.
Uncertainty is associated with each link of the causal chain of climate change. For example, future GHG emissions are uncertain, as are climate change damages. However, following the precautionary principle, uncertainty is not a reason for inaction, and this is acknowledged in Article 3.3 of the UNFCCC”
So there you have it. The famous Precautionary Principle invented by Nobel Prize winning geneticist and head of the Royal Society Sir Paul Nurse in a televised debate with James Delingpole. You may not be certain someone has cancer but according to Sir Paul, you give them near lethal medication anyway in case they do have it. Of course if he was a medical doctor, Sir James would be struck off.
120
So where anyone even suspects camels of heating the planet adversely with methane, they should all be slaughtered. Just in case. How much more ethical can you be?
100
Camels NO. Inner city Latte drinkers maybe. Look how the inner city temperatures are higher than those in the open air. What further proof do you need?
(Of course I shoud point out that I had an inner city dweller telling me today that Adelaide had exceeded 50℃ this last summer, proof that
Global warming, Climate Change, Climate Disruptionwas happening).60
I assume you failed in your attempt to tell him the truth Graeme ?
30
Bill:
He couldn’t find the date on his mobile phone while I had the actual date in seconds for the supposed record of 46.6℃. Even that is doubtful as I have pointed out before as it required a rapid rise and drop in 20 minutes not shown in any nearby temperature station.
He left saying he would search further.
100
I was in a well known shop buying stinky house stuff ( hand creams etc ) as a present for my wife, this shop run by a well known british woman who sells cosmetics.
When 20-something shop girl asked if i wanted a bag, I said no ( as i had a bag from another shop already ), she said ” right answer!” in an authorative dont-mess-with-me voice.
Ah….the foolish misplaced ” superiority” if ignorance.
I was taken aback, so next time Im in the shop, time to test her science knowledge ….watch this space…. 🙂
50
Perhaps there’s a case to be made for AstroTurf after all.
10
‘Just wondering?’
Wet rice paddies are the problem when there is a drought, a strong El Nino spike creates those conditions. Dry rice farming doesn’t emit methane.
40
Wet rice growing generates methane
Anaerobic bacteria in the rice plant roots are the cause.
To save the planet we must ban all wet rice growing !
In China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, The Philippines, Sri Lanka, Pakistan,
Arkansas and the Murray Darling !
The IPPC however has decided that such a policy would make it very ‘unpopular’
And so it has not bothered.
( SARC/ )
60
Thailand is a big exporter of rice, but that was severely curbed during the strong El Nino of 2015-16. A classic case of extreme drought producing a methane spike. The anaerobic bacteria was decaying, is that how you see it?
30
From the WMO link …
‘Vegetation fires release large amounts of particulate matter and toxic gases including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and non-methane organic compounds …. ‘
So do forest fires produce methane or not?
40
carbon combines with oxygen in preference to hydrogen.
Methane only really gets made in the absence of oxygen.
110
Ash Barty just lost. Darn.
50
It was the methane that did it.
50
overkill:
Carbon Brief: The Financial Times has published a special report on “rethinking energy”. In ***16 separate articles, the FT tackles topics such as China’s “no waste” energy drive, energy producers’ quest for “cleaner barrels”, the mismatch between green intentions and consumer reality, how smart grids can work in extreme weather, and how the “internet of things sparks race to replace the battery”. FT energy commentator Nick Butler has a piece on how a “coalition of the willing” is needed on carbon as part of the report, while his weekly column looks at the weak position of the Opec+ coalition between the 10 members of the oil cartel and the 14 non-Opec oil-producing nations.
40
It’s environmentalism as the one tool of the EU/UN to get past the sovereignty of all gullible countries, to let the foreign bureaucrats write the laws. The other is the IMF, used to subjugate countries like Greece and Spain and Italy. It’s the globalist bureaucrts undermining everyone, fully funded by the Germans and the French elites, as always. Plus the merchant banks like Turbull’s Goldmann Sachs. Like Victoria’s tollways, built at private expense but fully paid off and the public are still paying to drive on their own roads while the government takes a cut of the proceeds. Public taxation by private companies quietly funding public servants. Like Canberra’s free windmills are generating tens of millions a year in RET payments to the public servants of Canberra. Private taxation, a new concept in funding public employees and merchant banks.
130
TdeF:
The wind mills are in S.A. You surely don’t think those greenies in Canberra would stand for them being in their neighbourhood.
80
Strange. I would have thought there was more hot air in Canberra.
60
But only in the pollie seasons TdeF
60
Very intermittent.
70
As Flanders and Swan put it
“The greater the external pressure the greater the volume of hot air”
20
presumably 2 of the 16 FT CAGW articles:
Oil and gas groups under pressure to plug leaks
Financial Times – 9 hours ago
Boom times for US oil and gas have shone a new spotlight on an old problem: leaks of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas…
Pension funds join impact investing campaign for a better world
Financial Times – 9 hours ago
Pension funds join impact investing campaign for a better world…The UK is committed to being among the global leaders in the fast-growing field of impact investing. The newly announced Impact Investing Institute is one sign of this… public equity investors pushing companies to set ambitious climate targets… As a result, interest in impact investing is taking off…
30
8 Jul: RadioNewZealand: One billion tree plan flawed, says climate scientist
The Forestry Minister Shane Jones’ one billion trees won’t reduce carbon emissions, as too few natives are being planted, climate scientist Jim Salinger says.
Forestry New Zealand figures show in the first year, of the 91m trees planted, only 12 percent were native…
Pine forests also absorb hydroxyl radicals, or methane busters, which have the side effect of prolonging the lifetime of methane in the atmosphere, Dr Salinger said…READ ON
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/393832/one-billion-tree-plan-flawed-says-climate-scientist
surely they’d have to ensure they don’t bring in any that emit methane!
7 Jul: UK Independent: Bring foreign species to Britain to stop them dying out, expert says
Iberian lynx and Spanish imperial eagle could thrive in Britain, says ecologist Chris Thomas
by Phoebe Weston
Spanish eagles, Iberian lynx and Portuguese rodents could be brought to the British countryside to stop the species dying out.
That is according to ecologist Chris Thomas who wants to urgently introduce an “assisted colonisation programme” to translocate thousands of endangered species to other countries…
Tens of thousands of species – including 25 per cent of all mammals and 13 per cent of birds – are currently threatened with extinction…
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sixth-mass-species-extinction-human-stop-prevent-colonisation-a8988831.html
40
Sounds like he doesn’t know about rabbits
70
And the so-called climate scientist Dr Salinger, he of Climategate adjusted/bent/cooked/denied infamy, doesn’t know about climate nor science. Maybe he knows about rabbits but I still wouldn’t trust a word he said.
21
More progressive hypocrisy.
We fart more on a vegetable diet than a mixed one.
Yet they want us all to forego meat.
As Mark Twain Famously said ” Tho’ ye subjct be but a fart, yet will this tedious sink of learning pondrously phillosophize.”
sic, 1601 —
80
These fit about here IMO
“Eat Your Meat! Heart Disease In Paleo Farmers And Egyptian Mummies”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/07/06/eat-your-meat-heart-disease-in-paleo-farmers-and-egyptian-mummies/
And
“Distressingly Accurate Analysis Of Fats & Weight Gain”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/07/08/distressingly-accurate-analysis-of-fats-weight-gain/#comment-114320
50
Plus
“It’s the cars, not the cows ”
http://m.startribune.com/it-s-not-about-the-hamburgers/512276872/
Via http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/07/08/the-sound-of-settled-science-49/
21
1601 – the narrated version by Richard Dyer-Bennet is worth a listen of you can find it.
40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4tRWYl16wc
Only about 14 minutes — One of Mark Twain’s finest works. One of his first banned from schools.
Those with a British empire heritage may appreciate it even more than I did.
20
Fine, but the UN will still want to feed us maggot burgers, one way or another.
50
The Appalling Environmental Cost Of Wind Energy- this is available read or download as a pdf
The GWPF <benny.peiser
Press Release: The Appalling Environmental Cost Of Wind Energy
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2019/07/wind-impact.pdf?utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=65a710a4b7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_07_08_12_04_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-65a710a4b7-36429261
40
Oh my God! Did you look at those graphs of methane and el ninos? PLEASE don’t let Al Gore see them, or he will be blaming el ninos on cows!
50
Here it is again…recent ice core data. When does a chunk of snow compacted ice become gas fast? A year? Ten years?..try something like 170! Isnt it amazing the modern core data dovetails so nicely with the Cape Grimm data.
50
In the wetlands that plants populate,
Where oxygen can’t permeate,
A fermenting mass,
Causes swathes of the gas,
Methane to accumulate.
100
Prof debunks flatulence as major cause of global warming
2012: On Monday, he spoke to the Montana Farm Bureau Federation in Billings about how methane gas from livestock was misidentified as the bigger greenhouse gas source than airplanes, trains and automobiles combined.
In 2006, the United Nations concluded that the livestock industry was a big contributor to climate change.
In its report “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” the U.N. concluded that livestock were contributing 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases — allegedly more than the entire world’s transpiration.
The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used the report to forecast that Himalayan glaciers might vanish within 25 years.
Outside groups reacted to the U.N.’s claims by launching efforts to slow global warming by getting the public to go meatless one day a week, as way of lowering demand for livestock products.
Mitloehner convinced the U.N. to recant its claim in 2010.
The U.N. report estimated the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from every aspect of raising meat.
The U.N. did not do the same when estimating the greenhouse gases from cars.
The report ignored greenhouse gases actually created during the car’s production and instead zeroed in on tailpipe emissions.
However, scientists insist livestock methane is still a source that should be mitigated even if belching, farting animals have fallen in the U.N. rankings of polluters.
Mitloehner contends that the best way to curb methane emissions from livestock is to modernize farms, making them more efficient.
https://helenair.com/news/state-and-regional/prof-debunks-flatulence-as-major-cause-of-global-warming/article_1c6c9c5e-2dbb-11e2-9e51-0019bb2963f4.html
And, we all now know how “The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used the report to forecast that Himalayan glaciers might vanish within 25 years” ended …
Climate scientists hit out at ‘sloppy’ melting glaciers error
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/08/climate-scientists-melting-glaciers
IPCC officials admit mistake over melting Himalayan glaciers
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jan/20/ipcc-himalayan-glaciers-mistake
Climate body chief defends use of ‘grey literature’
The head of the UN’s climate change panel has defended the use of unproven science to justify climate change by saying the “grey literature” cannot be ignored.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/7725266/Climate-body-chief-defends-use-of-grey-literature.html
2012: Himalayan glaciers growing despite global warming
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/9206785/Himalayan-glaciers-growing-despite-global-warming.html
60
Travis I gave up reading this comment.
I just had to go take a pee
and s big fart
or my gut’s sake.
Burrrrrp !
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh !
10
We all know how it started, too. Not an ounce of science. All PR (propagande).
30
Like the “fresh water Lake Alex” that has come to Andrew Bolt’s attention (The Murray Darling scandal on his blog)
30
Link Ian ?
00
Bill
Behind a wall to me – go to his blog, scroll down and work from there
00
Bill
Time to ringfence your Apple
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/07/02/w-o-o-d-1-july-2019/#comment-114378
00
Any flatulence affecting the global climate theory, hypothesis, is really in the realm of the mentally ill scientist. So totally absurd it is laughable, but the fools and alarmists take it seriously.
20
My efforts on the education front are getting some attention:
https://townhall.com/columnists/pauldriessen/2019/07/06/educating-kids-to-debate-alarming-climate-claims-n2549587
I like cows, personably and edibly. I grew up on a beef raising farm.
60
Surely the cows only replaced the buffalo?
50
Is it time now to thank all those heroic buffalo hunters who stopped 30-60 million buffalo from farting?
Why America Wouldn’t Be America Without This Mountain Of Skulls
https://allthatsinteresting.com/buffalo-slaughter
h/t: tom nelson – @tan123
70
How can anyone suggest that methane has any role in regulating the planet’s temperature and expect to be taken seriously?
Look at the concentrations of methane in the graphs heading this post – they’re in a few parts per billion, in other words a few molecules per billion of all the other atmospheric gases. Homeopathy for the planet, it might be said!
What exactly happens to methane in the atmosphere – do for example electrical discharges in storms degrade it to other molecular species? I imagine it’s all a lot more complicated than the doom-mongers would have us believe. Still, we can’t let anything get in way of a good scary story, can we?
100
I checked atmospheric methane levels before the last El Nino —late 2014.
They were around 150 ppb (parts per billion.)
I checked them again at the start of this year and they were 1 part per million.
Correlation = Causation is a popular pseudoscientific practice so I’m going to add to it:
It was the El Nino wot dun it.
70
While we are on the subject of correlation and causation, there was a large methane spike on Mars in 2014 and they think its was somewhere near Gale Crater.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-04-02/mars-express-confirms-methane-spike-detected-by-curiosity-rover/10563160
Back here on earth, do you believe wet paddies produce methane?
30
Trees emit methane as well..trees bad..
https://e360.yale.edu/features/scientists-probe-the-surprising-role-of-trees-in-methane-emissions
50
‘Caught between a rock and a hard place.
Nobody is arguing that trees are therefore bad for climate and should be cut down. Indeed, in most cases, their carbon storage capability easily outweighs their methane emissions.’
40
All those rare and threatened mangroves
Which are the nurseries of fish species,
Will have be to pulled out and destroyed
To save us all from the Methane monster !
40
Even Andy Revkin wrote about this little “issue” of trees emitting methane
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/03/trees-release-methane-what-it-means-climate-change/?cjevent=d2309f3872b511e981a8000d0a1c0e0b&utm_source=6172777&utm_medium=affiliates&utm_campaign=CJ
Also Miles Allan et al have shown the IPCC overestimated the effect of methane by 400%
Reference to it in this WUWT article : https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/30/methane-warming-exaggerated-by-400/
30
Save the world and raze some forests http://joannenova.com.au/2019/01/save-the-world-and-raze-some-forests/
90
And I note that the planet is greening up FAST…
Link to WUWT.
Global greening is happening faster than climate change, and it’s a good thing
20
It is more evidence that CO2 warming is being abandoned as an unsustainable argument. Coal first and then farming is the plan. And always use the phrase scientists say.
70
For how long have humans farmed cattle?
Professor Israel Hershkovitz, from Tel-Aviv University’s Department of Anatomy, noticed the characteristic bone lesions that are signs of TB in skeletons from the settlement, one of the earliest with evidence of domesticated cattle.
The discovery of the earliest known cases of human tuberculosis in bones found submerged off the coast of Israel shows that the disease is 3000 years older than previously thought.
Direct examination of this ancient DNA confirms the latest theory that bovine TB evolved later than human TB.
Earliest Known Human TB Found In 9,000 Year-old Skeleton.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081014204442.htm
50
I have posted a small collection of Curry videos:
http://ccdedu.blogspot.com/2019/07/
What a hoot.
30
Good stuff David.
Thank you.
00
O/T Peter Ridd was on the Bolt Report last night and the GBR is in quick recovery mode, except for some patches in the north which may take a few more years.
With El Nino out of sight for the foreseeable future the whole coral community should be in pristine condition around 2022.
60
We can hope. Happer says:
“World is in the middle of a carbon drought.”
So don’t worry about owning/driving that SUV …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-9UlF8hkhs
50
I think its been in a CO2 drought for a few hundred million or so.
31
New post from Jennifer about sea levels rising and falling and rising again..
Interesting & worth while reading and thinking about !
https://jennifermarohasy.com/2019/07/recent-sea-level-fall-since-when/
40
Cool pics of rocks at Tea Tree and Granites at Noosa: having climbed over them – occasionally getting washed into them – but usually riding past them, half the fun of surfing the point(s) was checking out the geology, the lay of the land, and of course the exotic vibrant bird life onshore…
10
a pathetic tale:
TWEET: Zali Steggall MP
This is something everyone can do. Let’s start planting! (trees):
LINK Guardian: New research estimates that a global tree planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-blowing”…
4 Jul 2019
from replies:
I Vote Yes…. for Tax Equality Jul 5
@HonTonyAbbott’s Direct Action Plan
Gazza – Ju 5
ABBOTT SAID THAT 6 YEARS AGO
GEE SHE HATED EVERYTHING HE STOOD FOR
SCOFFED AT EVERYTHING
THEN PINCH HIS POLICIES…
https://twitter.com/zalisteggall/status/1146936561415516161
Senior Liberals in talks to recruit Zali Steggall in attempt to win back Warringah
Daily Telegraph – 6 Jul 2019
9 Jul 2013: Guardian: Tony Abbott’s climate policy is just a figleaf developed by deniers
Abbott’s direct inaction policy would condemn Australia to even worse heatwaves, extreme floods and bushfires
A review by Monash University research officer Tim Lubcke (LINK) into the sequestration side of the Coalition’s policy – the Green Army planting trees – estimated that:
by Alexander White
“to achieve pledged return of an annual 85 million tonnes of CO2 captured would require equivalent to a plantation within a minimum size more than twice the size of Melbourne and to increase wood production by more than an additional 300%. As this analysis relied upon the most optimistic assumptions, real world limits to tree plantation ignored and optimal yield was used. With this in mind, the scale of DAP would be much larger physically, in management and in cost with real world conditions.”
23 Jul 2011: ABC: A close look at Abbott’s Direct Action plan
By Ben Eltham
(Ben Eltham is a writer, journalist and fellow at the Centre for Policy Development)
In 2002, Canada announced that it planned to rely on tree planting and improved forestry practices to achieve one-third of its Kyoto emissions reduction targets. This didn’t happen. Instead, huge swathes of forest died, due to catastrophic infestations of the Mountain Pine Beetle. As a result, Canadian forest scientists estimate that Canada’s forests went from a source of carbon reduction to a source of carbon emissions.
What caused the Mountain Pine Beetle infestation? Scientists believe it was in part climate change itself…
If you stop to think about it for a minute, it’s obvious that Direct Action won’t work. It doesn’t introduce a proper market mechanism for carbon abatement…
No wonder Tony Abbott can’t find any economists or climate scientists prepared to support it…
The Coalition’s plan is based on incomplete science, dubious economics and breath-taking political expediency. It will be hugely expensive. It won’t cut carbon emissions…
8 Feb 2010: SMH: AAP: Turnbull blasts Abbott’s ‘recklessness’
Former opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has savaged the Coalition’s direct action plan to combat climate change as a “recipe for fiscal recklessness”.
Giving his first parliamentary speech since losing the Liberal leadership in December, Mr Turnbull indicated he would cross the floor to vote with Labor when a vote was taken on the carbon pollution reduction scheme…
Last year, Mr Turnbull committed the Liberals to supporting the legislation before he was dumped in favour of Tony Abbott, who has since released an alternative climate change policy…
30
minus Abbott, ABC finds planting trees is good:
11 Feb 2019: ABC: Top 10 things you can do to help conserve Australia’s biodiversity
by Karina Holden
1. Plant some trees
Planting trees provides habitat and food for animals, while creating oxygen and absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Join in bush regeneration programs near where you live and help native species thrive. Support National Tree Day, held in the last weekend in July, or support the trillion-tree campaign…
Wikipedia: Trillion Tree Campaign
In 2006, the Billion Tree Campaign was launched, by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as a response to the challenges of global warming…
The Billion Tree Campaign was handed over to the Plant-for-the-Planet Foundation in December 2011, an organisation that has been participating in the Billion Tree Campaign since 2007. The momentum has continued with 40,000 young ambassadors spreading the message in over 100 countries. In December 2017, following the discovery that there are more than three trillion trees on Earth, the planting target was revised to a trillion trees and the Billion Tree Campaign became the Trillion Tree Campaign. It was found that this amount of trees would cancel out the last 10 years of CO2 emissions and sequester 160 billion tons of carbon…
VIDEO: 4min08sec: 5 Jul, Updated 8 Jul: CBS: Planting a trillion trees could be the “most effective solution” to climate change, study says
The researchers say a program at this scale could remove about two-thirds of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions caused by human activities since the start of the industrial revolution, or nearly 25% of the CO2 in the atmosphere.
The scientists used Google Earth mapping to determine there is enough space globally to plant more than a trillion trees ***without interfering with existing farmland or cities.
According to the study, an area of trees about the size of the United States could scrub 205 billion metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere — out of the roughly 300 billion metric tons of man-made carbon pollution produced over the past 25 years…
“This is by far — by thousands of times — the cheapest climate change solution,” study co-author Thomas Crowther, a climate change ecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, told The Associated Press…
But it’s not a be-all and end-all solution — Crowther said we still need to stop burning oil, coal and gas to tackle the climate crisis. “None of this works without emissions cuts,” he said…
And Professor Martin Lukac from the University of Reading said (LINK), “Planting trees to soak up two-thirds of the entire anthropogenic carbon burden to date sounds too good to be true. Probably because it is.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/planting-a-trillion-trees-could-be-the-most-effective-solution-to-climate-change/
***VIDEO: 1min17sec: 1 Jul: Sky News UK: Fifth of farmland could be used to plant trees to hit carbon target
by Dan Whitehead
A fifth of land currently used for farming could be transformed into new woodland and forests as part of the government’s legal obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.
The recommendation is one of many from the climate change committee, which says nearly three billion trees need to be planted in the UK in the next three decades…
The committee says 30,000 hectares of trees need to be planted every single year in the UK, increasing tree cover from 13% to 17%…
The UK has a long way to go if it is to plant 30,000 hectares of trees annually – last year only around 9,000 hectares were planted.
In the year to March 2019, 13,400 hectares of trees were planted…
Environmental contracts between the government and farmers to make it financially viable to switch from agriculture to farming are still being formulated – made more complicated by uncertainty over farm subsidies post-Brexit…
https://news.sky.com/story/fifth-of-farmland-could-be-used-to-plant-trees-to-hit-carbon-target-11752149
30
The problem with these theories about planting billions or trillions of trees to stop climate change is that the carbon dioxide processing is hardly noticeable until the trees reach a reasonable size, often many years depending on the species. So tree planting is not necessarily a quick fix. As well, the species to be planted in any area would need to be suitable for the area.
30
But! But! But!
“Save the poor bustard – from tree thickening”
30
There is a certain un-named MP ( guess who ) the likes of whom I have encountered before….. its the self righteous , leftist self grandiosing sneer that really gets me…but its also the unshakable feeling that you can never turn your back on them and remind me of the type of one-eyed mean old cattle dog, that sneaks around behind you to bite you on the back of your leg when youre not watching….
It is what it is …..
10
Stop Press from 3AW: “An explosion at Mortlake Power Station has halved the station’s power generation capacity”. “There are fears the generating unit, which provides an estimated three per cent of Victoria’s energy, could be offline for up to a year”.
Mortlake 2 went offline at 6.20am yesterday, nameplate capacity 283 MW burning natural gas.
Per Anero.id, during July Mortlake 1 & 2 have generally provided daily peaks of 560 MW, so that will be halved.
More problems ahead for cold days in winter and hot days in summer?
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That means that the wind mills in South Australia will need to work harder….
Or SA will be like it was in September 2016….
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They should have dispatchable supply available that can always meet demand.
If that means having a surplus of coal-fired power at times, (like there was several years ago before all this renewables nonsense), then so be it.
Everything else will just have to get out of the way so that coal can operate at peak efficiency !
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begins with children, ends with XR. open access article, as this is for the non-subscribing CAGW activists:
8 Jul: Financial Times: Hopes clash with reality on curbing energy use
There is a tension between rhetoric and consumer behaviour
by Nathalie Thomas
From schoolchildren across the world walking out of classrooms to demand action on global warming to US Democrats unveiling plans for a “Green New Deal”, campaigns to tackle climate change have gained impetus this year…
Behind the rise in political campaigning, however, data on energy use paints a different picture. Spencer Dale, group chief economist at oil group BP, says there is a “mismatch between hopes and reality” when it comes to controlling energy demand…
Global energy consumption grew last year at its fastest rate since 2010, as countries including the US suffered a ***colder than average winter while the use of air conditioning in developed and developing countries continued to rise to cope with hot weather.
Much of this increased demand was met by fossil fuels, particularly gas, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency. That pushed global carbon dioxide emissions to a record high of 33bn tonnes…
We have seen this rhetoric around climate change making its way into the political agenda . . . the words are there, the policies are not there,” says (Rachel Kennerley, a campaigner at environmental group Friends of the Earth)…
The mismatch could narrow as more countries speed up the implementation of policies to confront big challenges. These include reducing reliance on fossil fuels for heating buildings and transportation, says Richard Black (EX-BBC), director of the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, a London-based research group…
“We have to tackle lifestyles,” says (Benjamin Sovacool, professor of energy policy at the University of Sussex), although he admits this is tricky territory for any politician as consumers take it as “an insult” if they are told to stop using so much electricity or curb their air travel…
“Politicians know the problem, [but] they don’t feel they yet have popular backing to go ahead and do something at a level that is required,” says Per Arno, who took part in an Edinburgh protest by activists Extinction Rebellion last month. “For me, one of the things is to try and raise awareness.”
https://www.ft.com/content/86fa4eee-8846-11e9-b861-54ee436f9768
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I was listening to a preacher who does Christian evangelust tent revival meetings, who has spent a lot of time in California.
The one thing he said that resonated, was that California has so much homelessness and drug use, that its basically a 3rd world failed state…..
10
….evangelist…..
Fat fingers….sorry…
10
I reckon you had it right the first time…
10
READ ALL FOR THE POSSIBLE/COULD SCARY PREDICTIONS MADE IN THE STUDY, AND MORE:
8 Jul: Scientific American: Trump Administration Officials Scrubbed Climate Change from Press Releases
The dire predictions of a recent USGS study on sea level rise were removed from the agency’s release
By Scott Waldman, E&E News
A March news release from the U.S. Geological Survey touted a new study that could be useful for infrastructure planning along the California coastline…
The news release hardly stood out. It focused on the methodology of the study rather than its major findings, which showed that climate change could have a withering effect on California’s economy by inundating real estate over the next few decades…
An earlier draft of the news release, written by researchers, was sanitized by Trump administration officials, who removed references to the dire effects of climate change after delaying its release for several months, according to three federal officials who saw it…
“It’s been made clear to us that we’re not supposed to use climate change in press releases anymore. They will not be authorized,” one federal researcher said, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal.
In the Obama administration, press releases related to climate change were typically approved within days, researchers said. Now, they can take more than six months and go through the offices of political appointees, where they are often altered, several researchers told E&E News…
In the case of the California coastline study, the press release went through the office of James Reilly, the director of USGS, a former astronaut who is attempting to minimize the consideration of climate change in agency decisions…
“There is no policy nor directive in place that directs us to avoid mentioning climate change in our communication materials,” said Karen Armstrong, the (USGS) spokeswoman…
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-administration-officials-scrubbed-climate-change-from-press-releases/
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Just when you thought CO2 might be let out on parole for good behaviour, the Guardian says that indoor levels of this benighted molecule could pose a hazard!
Good grief. They just will not give poor carbon dioxide a break… :).
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Next thing is the UN insists the world go vegan, while they dine on tournedos rossini at fancy New York steakhouses.
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plenty of negative reporting, especially by the Beeb’s virulently anti-Trump N America reporter, Zurcher:
8 Jul: BBC: Trump praises his administration’s environmental efforts
President Donald Trump delivered an address on Monday touting his administration’s environmental efforts while criticising Democratic measures.
He praised his policies for improving air and water quality and creating new energy jobs, and again defended leaving the “unfair” 2015 Paris climate accord.
“Punishing Americans is never the right way to produce a better environment or a better economy,” Mr Trump said…
Mr Trump’s Environmental Leadership remarks focused primarily on his economic policies. He did not mention climate change…
He was joined by his supporters, including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who are former oil and coal industry lobbyists.
“A strong economy is vital to maintaining a healthy environment,” Mr Trump said, adding that millions of new energy jobs have been created under his presidency…
In defending his withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement – a decision that saw some pushback even from within the White House – Mr Trump said that every other nation “lags behind America” with emissions.
He called the Paris deal “unfair, ineffective and very, very expensive”.
“The US does not have to sacrifice our own jobs to lead the world,” Mr Trump added…
Mr Trump has also repeatedly questioned environmental science and claimed earlier this year that climate change “goes both ways”…
A pre-emptive strike on climate change – Analysis by Anthony Zurcher, Nth America reporter…
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48916388
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speech starts at 13min21sec to the end:
Youtube: 59min: Trump Delivers Remarks on America’s Environmental Leadership
posted by Breitbart News – 7h ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae63oN-DMec
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8 Jul: Daily Caller: Trump Administration Touts Record On The Environment
by Amber Athey
(EPA administrator Andrew) Wheeler also defended Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement, noting that other countries such as China and India had much looser standards under the agreement than the U.S. and adding that the U.S. has continued to decrease CO2 and methane emissions.
“So, regardless of whether we’re in the Paris Climate Accord or not, we continue to make progress on that front. But the Paris Climate Accord is unfair to the U.S. consumer, U.S. manufacturer, and the U.S. economy,” Wheeler said…
The administration’s celebration of its work on the environment comes as Democratic members of Congress and presidential candidates continue to advocate for sweeping environmental reforms that would likely have devastating effects on the economy…
https://dailycaller.com/2019/07/08/trump-administration-environmental-policy-event/
8 Jul: Breitbart: Poll: Trump Hits 50 Percent Approval Rating After Independence Day
by Kyle Morris
President Donald Trump’s approval rating has increased since the Salute to America celebration on Independence Day, according to the Rasmussen Reports’ Daily Presidential Tracking Poll.
The Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday revealed that 50 percent of likely American voters approve of President Trump’s job performance, while 49 percent disapprove.
At this point in President Obama’s first term in 2011, he received a 47 percent approval rating among likely U.S. voters…
Last week, it was announced that America had created 224,000 jobs in June under President Trump’s leadership, and unemployment reached 3.7 percent.
As reported by Breitbart News’s John Carney, “Manufacturing jobs showed renewed strength, adding 17,000 jobs after four months of coming in flat. Construction jobs rose by 21,000. Transportation and warehousing added 24,000 jobs. Employment in health care increased by 35,000. Professional and business services added 51,000 jobs.”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/07/08/poll-trump-hits-50-percent-approval-rating-after-independence-day/
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8 Jul: CBS: Trump avoids climate change in speech on environmentalism
By Arden Farhi, Kathryn Watson
But a White House fact sheet obtained by CBS News ahead of the speech did not mention climate change, nor did the president…
The president did tout the importance of forest management to prevent fires in California, and blasted the “Green New Deal.”…
“While we’re focused on practical solutions, more than 100 Democrats in Congress support the so-called Green New Deal,” the president said. “Their plan is estimated to cost our economy nearly $100 trillion. A number unthinkable. A number not affordable even in the best of times. If you go 150 years from now, and we’ve had great success, that’s not a number that’s even thought to be affordable. Kill millions of jobs, it’ll crush the dreams of the poorest Americans and disproportionately harm minority communities. I will not stand for it. We will defend the environment but we will also defend American sovereignty, American prosperity, and we will defend American jobs.”…
Mr. Trump, over the course of his presidency, has undone much of President Obama’s environmental achievements, withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement and rolling back regulations like the Clean Power Plan…
The president, who campaigned alongside coal miners and oil and gas barons, believes the economic toll of converting energy production from fossil fuels to renewable sources is too great. And he has consistently argued that doing so would put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage…
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-to-tout-environmental-stewardship-in-speech/
Trump praises jobs numbers, says economy would be ‘like a rocket ship’ if Fed were to cut rates
NBC – 5 Jul 2019
The economy gained a whopping 224,000 jobs in the month of June, beating expectations of 150,000 and continuing a generally robust hiring pace that has brought Americans off the sidelines and into the workforce at the highest rate since 1969.
Why Trump is in a mind-blowing sweet spot after the June jobs report
Yahoo Finance – 6 Jul 2019
President Donald Trump has every reason to kick back with a Big Mac and some Cristal this July 4th holiday weekend and toast the economic sweet spot he finds himself in right now.
The president’s ongoing trade war with China hasn’t hammered the U.S. labor market…
Can it get any better at the moment for the Commander-in-Chief (and any worse for the Democrats trying to unseat him)? Probably not…
“This is just good news for Trump,” Yahoo Finance’s senior columnist Rick Newman said.
Get ready for a weekend of bullish economic tweets from Trump — he will be right to do a happy dance off this jobs number…
Jobs report delivers jolt for Trump campaign
The Hill – 5 Jul 2019
A new jobs report that said the economy added a better-than-expected 224,000 jobs in June delivered good news on Friday for President Trump, solidifying the sense that economic growth will be a source of strength for his reelection bid next year…
***Democrats Should Attack the Trump Economy
The New Republic – 17 hours ago
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Here is one of my comments from WUWT
““harmful methane emissions — a greenhouse gas that is roughly 30 times more harmful than carbon dioxide emissions”
Typically with propaganda this is a half truth. You need to understand where this 20 or 30 times came from. What Hansen did was compare a 1 ppm increase in CO2 to methane ie for CO2 375 to 376 or a 0.3% increase to a 1ppm increase in methane from 1.6 to 2.6 ppm or a 63% increase. The result was that the increase in the forcing for methane is 20 times that for CO2. And what is the increased forcing; next to zero so 20 times zero is a pretty small number. However methane at the same concentration as CO2 is actually less powerful than CO2 as the emissivity/absorbance is lower for methane at the same concentration. Essentially the effect of methane on forcings is negligible.
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In a discussion around another “Where/how did Hansen get that number” on another blog was the comment “He needed that number so he just worked backwards till he got it”
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3 Jul: ManhattanContrarian: The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time — Part XXIII
by Francis Menton
The scandal that I call “The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time” is the alteration of official world temperature data by a small number of government employees in the US and the UK. Uniformly, the alterations have the effect of lowering temperatures early in the record, and raising recent temperatures, in order to create and enhance a warming trend that does not exist in the data as originally reported. The purpose of the fraudulent data alteration is to support the continuation of the “global warming” climate scare. To read the prior 22 posts in this series, go to this LINK…READ ON
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-7-3-the-greatest-scientific-fraud-of-all-time-part-xxiii
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Pat
Try his “Finally The U.S. (aka Trump) Has Caught On To What The G20 Is About”
Thanks for the link
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lengthy, multiple responses:
9 Jul: GrainCentral: Ag responds to Four Corners ‘Cash Splash’ episode
ABC television’s Four Corners ‘Cash Splash’ program last night called into question the Murray Darling Basin’s multi-million-dollar irrigation efficiency scheme…
Responses to the program include…
https://www.graincentral.com/news/ag-responds-to-four-corners-cash-splash-episode/
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haven’t watched it; doubt if I will; Lake Alexandrina not mentioned in the transcript:
VIDEO: 43min32sec: 8 Jul: ABC Four Corners: Cash Splash
TRANSCRIPT
https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/cash-splash/11289412
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Maybe the ABC can start advocating for the removal of the barrages at the bottom end of the lake.then back to nature;in time of course.
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Four corners was nonsense as was a lot of the self interest from the irrigation lobby.No balance, no understanding of the history or the hydrography/hydrology or the realities of the intermittent nature of the system.Saw Mal Roberts on Bolt tonight.The man is an embarrassing fool.
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O/T but
I hope the ABC is watching
“BBC Faces Legal Challenge As Viewers Raise Thousands To Tackle ‘Bias’ ”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/08/bbc-faces-legal-challenge-as-viewers-raise-thousands-to-tackle-bias/
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This is a conclusion without a supporting argument.
There should have been some sort of “Discussion” or “Analysis” section between the observation section and the conclusion section to justify Dr Quirk’s decision to interpret the data only in one particular way. Why are there not other different physically possible processes which would also be compatible with the presented data?
In particular, is it impossible for the source of the methane to be a very consistent anthropogenic source which is then modified prior to measurement by a natural process with high variability? (i.e. the methane source and the variability source are two different things, not both natural.)
I suspect what is happening is warm SSTs (in El Ninos) reduce the ocean’s rate of absorption of methane from the air, which is why the rate of increase is high in El Ninos and not because the oceans are the source of methane.
An unusual feature glossed over by Dr Quirk and all commentators so far was the net reduction in methane occurring during 2000-2005. Any explanation of where the methane increase came from has to have the main source decreasing or some other absorption process greatly increasing, or both, during only those 6 years. As a rule we burn every bit of methane we can get our hands on, so fossil fuel methane showing up in the atmosphere in large quantities is either an unusual eruption from permafrost or a pipeline leak. All the cows, rice fields, bushfires, and landfills did not disappear for a whole six years. So a huge reduction in wetlands output and a surge in absorption are the only plausible candidates for the drop in methane.
Global ocean surface temperatures during that time were still consistently above the average for the previous decade. So the ocean did not suddenly begin absorbing a lot of methane due to temperature, though there could be other processes in the ocean that could do the same. What else absorbs methane?
And what could make wetlands stop most of their methane output for 6 years? Did Siberian permafrost get extra cold and reduce its methane bubbling for a whole 6 years? That also seems unlikely. Some data I have on hand shows the world total rainfall was below average for nearly that whole period. When wetlands stop being so wet do they stop their methane output, and was this lower rainfall enough to explain it?
These are all the unanswered questions of methane. Dr Quirk’s conclusion is not valid unless some constraints on these myriad other factors are applied.
Is it just a random co-incidence that the fixes to the trans-siberian pipeline were completed in the mid-90s, and the shale gas revolution did not begin until 2007? The 6 years of methane decrease could have been the only 6 years where we weren’t leaking the stuff all over the place. You have to at least consider an anthropogenic source for the uptick since 2007, and I note Dr Quirk admits to that possibility.
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Growth in atmospheric methane tailed off in the late 1990s and was essentially flat for a while before starting to grow again around 2007. I have not seen any completely convincing explanation in the literature for this behaviour, mainly just speculation, but the δ13C data do provide some indications. For example: NOAA’s ‘explanation’ of the resumption of growth since 2007 was as follows: “Possibly the most important clue: air samples collected at different latitudes around the world show that the amount of methane carrying carbon-13—a rare, heavy isotope of carbon—has dropped significantly since 2007. That drop casts doubt on one of the first explanations experts considered for the post-2007 rise: an increase in methane emitted from fossil fuels, including “fugitive” methane gas escaping during oil and natural gas drilling. Instead, the chemical fingerprints point toward agricultural and wetland emissions from the tropics.”
The key point here is that the pre-2007 value of atmospheric δ13C-CH4 was around -47 per mil. As it has clearly been dropping since then, the incremental CH4 must have a δ13C content of less than that, estimated at around -60 per mil, which is more in line with a biogenic source than a thermogenic source (such as fossil fuels).
If you look at multiple sites, it gets more interesting:
https://i.postimg.cc/J0P5zJGc/1512742412-2982099.jpg
(BRW: Barrow, Alaska; MLO: Mauna Loa, Hawaii; SPO: South Pole)
This figure shows that the major changes in rate of growth (late nineties and 2007) occur at essentially the same time at the three locations (certainly no more than a few months apart, see next figure) and yet the sites maintain a constant offset. The offsets could possibly be due to calibration issues, but that seems very unlikely given that other (non-NOAA) sites apparently provide comparable data.
Thus, it seems that atmospheric CH4 is not ‘well-mixed’ globally, but instead shows increasing values from south to north. In contrast, looking at the trends with the offset removed, the synchronous nature of the increase in 2007 is even clearer:
https://i.postimg.cc/rFw9YhPh/CH4-C13-by-latitude-large.jpg
The question is then: how does an increase in CH4 show up at virtually the same time at the South Pole as it does in Alaska, unless the primary source of the increase is essentially global in nature and there is a different (independent) process controlling the latitudinal gradient in values? Any comments and/or references would be much appreciated!
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Thanks for that info, Jim. It would have been nice to get a link to the original too, but DDG found it easily enough: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/after-2000-era-plateau-global-methane-levels-hitting-new-highs
That was one of several points I was making, that we cannot establish the cause from only the data that Dr Quirk presented above. This is why it was interesting and useful for you to bring in another source of data, which is the isotopic ratios and related source fingerprinting. Quite possibly Dr Quirk also knew of such data, but it was never mentioned.
I’m getting some mixed signals. The article’s claim “The decline in the 13-C isotope of methane in the atmosphere indicates that microbial sources must have an increasing share of total methane emissions globally” came from Schwietzke.
Whereas Saunois, Jackson, and co-authors made a little potshot at that finding later in 2016:
But also…
But then the biogenic and thermogenic sources have fractionation that overlaps by a huge amount (mentioned here but I cannot get the original source):
So unless one is quite certain about the fractionation of all the actual sources and their relative contributions, I’m not sure how the fractionaction of “thermogenic” methane can be pinned down to be exactly -40‰ as given in Wikipedia.
If we accept the -40 figure then yes, it’s pretty clear an increase in fossil methane (-40‰) cannot be lowering the atmopsheric methane fractionation when that’s already more negative than -47‰.
So that’s the fossil fuels candidate eliminated too. It was fun while it lasted (7.5 hours).
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The idea that all fossil fuels can be characterised by a single δ13C value is of course completely ludicrous. There are innumerable references showing that different fuels produce methane with different δ13C values and hence can only be characterised as ranges, as you have also quoted. The point though is that fossil fuels are typically above -50 per mil (less negative) and lower values are more likely to be characteristic of biogenic sources. What is actually measured could obviously be a blend, which leads me to another interesting point.
Both Jo and Tom mention forest fires as a potentially significant source of methane. However, such sources generate even higher δ13C values (-9 to -30 per mil, ref: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/1999JD900909) and a recent study concluded that the increase in atmospheric methane may reflect a mixture of fossil fuels and biogenic sources, but that the impact from forest fires must be decreasing! Ref: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2668/nasa-led-study-solves-a-methane-puzzle/.
I cannot say that I am convinced that they have the answer, but it does seem to be clear that increasing atmospheric methane since 2007 is not due to any (alleged) increase in forest fires. I do not have time right now to investigate this further, but it is interesting.
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OT but principia – scientific.org/ climate-control-or-climate-cycles/ has new article explaining origin of most climate cycles including those of Milutin Milankovitch. Also Arrhenius failed models. Worth a read.
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Also worth a read is the other article on same site “Winter Is Coming: Europe’s Deep Freeze Of 1709” Well that was a REAL bad winter..
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I know it’s from June 18th but Karoly on Jones and the menace of CO2, not methane.
“Professor Karoly said: “Not everything he (Jones) says is factually accurate.
“I am a climate scientist and Alan Jones is wrong.
“We know that, yes, the greenhouse gas content in the atmosphere … is 400 parts per million. And this was the one thing he (Jones) was reasonably accurate on, that that corresponds to about .04 per cent of the whole of the atmosphere is made up of carbon dioxide.
“All of his other numbers were wrong,” Professor Karoly said.
He said that facts showed carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had increased by 40 per cent in the last 100 years.
“That 40 per cent increase is due to human activity. We know that for absolute certain.”
Will Steffen was exactly the same. When presented with the simple fact that you can prove it is under 5%, he just ducked. As scientists, they know it is wrong. It was wrong in 1956 and it is wrong in 2019. Are we still paying the wages of these people? Is there any point at which these Climate Scientists can be prosecuted for this?
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So my question is why the move to methane? Why the attack on farmers? Is this part of a larger strategy to cripple us?
Whatever the business with methane, there is no more or less with or without the animals. Anaerobic rotting produces methane anyway.
It’s a bit like the fake scare on melting glaciers in the Himalayas. The glaciers do not make the water, they simply act as a dam, evening out the flow.
A lot of the scare business is based on trickery. CO2 does not stay in the atmosphere, but people are prepared to believe it. Glaciers do not make water. CO2 is not heating the planet. And methane is produced by rotting and billions of animals and insects too, regardless of farming. However the scare is believable as long as the David Karoly and Will Steffen and Tim Flannery and Bill Nye and Al Gore types keep saying it is all true and ‘trust me’ and the papers write ‘scientists say’. None of it is true.
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As Steve McIntyre says “Watch the pea, not the shell”
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video is worth watching:
8 Jul: Daily Caller: The Real College Scandal’ — Tucker Exposes The ‘Quid Pro Quo’ Between Ivy League Schools And Prominent Democrats
by Scott Morefield
The Fox News host included several examples during a segment on Monday night’s edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” including the Cuomo, Gore, Clinton, and Obama families, and juxtaposed the legality of that with Hollywood figures and others currently in legal trouble for trying to bribe their kids’ way into some of the same schools.
VIDEO: 7min04sec
https://dailycaller.com/2019/07/08/tucker-carlson-real-college-scandal/
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Parts per billion….
00
9 Jul: Reuters: China’s war on pollution could boost solar power – study
by David Stanway
China’s efforts to reduce chronic air pollution could increase its ability to generate solar power by up to 13% by allowing more sunlight to reach the earth, according to a new study published on Tuesday.
China’s so-called photovoltaic potential fell by an average of up to 15% between 1960 and 2015 as a result of pollution, climate researchers from Switzerland, the Netherlands and China said in a report published by the Nature Energy journal…
The country’s total installed solar capacity stood at 170 gigawatts at the end of 2018, about 9% of total generating capacity. Solar last year produced 177.5 terawatt-hours of electricity, about 2.5% of the total…
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-solarpower-pollution/chinas-war-on-pollution-could-boost-solar-power-study-idUSKCN1U400P
8 Jul: Nature: Estimation of losses in solar energy production from air pollution in China since 1960 using surface radiation data
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-019-0412-4
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9 Jul: Reuters: ABB pays up to $470 m to ditch solar converter business
by John Revill
ZURICH – ABB will pay up to $470 million to hand over its loss-making solar inverter business to Italy’s FIMER SpA, the first big move by interim CEO Peter Voser and a reflection of the tough conditions in the solar industry.
Sales at the inverter business, which makes units that convert direct power from solar panels into alternating current that can be fed into the electricity grid, have plunged since the Swiss engineering company bought it in 2013…
???Although solar power is the fastest growing source of electricity generation, equipment prices have plummeted in recent years in the face of Chinese competition and increased production…
ABB Chairman Voser, the former head of oil company Royal Dutch Shell, took over as the Swiss company’s chief executive in April on an interim basis.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-abb-solar-divestiture/abb-pays-470-million-to-offload-solar-business-idUSKCN1U40E8
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9 Jul: American Thinker: What It Will Take for the Wind and Solar Industries to Collapse
by Norman Rogers
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/07/what_it_will_take_for_the_wind_and_solar_industries_to_collapse.html
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9 Jul: Warrnambool Standard: Fire safety, setbacks issues highlighted in windfarm commissioner’s report
by Katrina Lovell
With wind turbines significantly higher than they were when the regulations were put in place, (national wind farm commissioner Andrew) Dyer said it was time the state considered increasing the setback distance to 1.5km…
“These permits were done in 2009 and 2010 and probably based around turbines of 1.5MW to 2MW in capacity. It would have been based on tip heights of 120 metres to 150 metres. We’re now looking at turbine tip heights of 200 metres or greater.”…
Mr Dyer said there had also been a lot of work around making firefighting safer around wind farms, which had resulted in updated guidelines…
However, he said safety protocols should ensure that when wind farms were switched off in the event of a fire, blades should kept in the Y-position to make it safer for pilots.
He said it should be a safety requirement for turbine manufacturers that all wind farms can remotely put their blades in the Y-position.
Mr Dyer said transmission lines and met-masts could be difficult for pilots to see in the event of a fire…READ ALL
https://www.standard.net.au/story/6261846/commissioner-calls-for-15km-wind-farm-setback-in-victoria/
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My apologies to all those who found my several dopey comments irrelevant: they have been consigned to the sin bin.
Nevertheless I now fully accept that ” greenhouse” energy does explode out in all directions from greenhouse molecules.
It does this equally and undiminished in all directions.
As an example consider some greenhouse gas at an altitude of say 4,000 metres where temperature may be minus 12°C.
Assuming ground temperature is 10°C giving an overall temperature differential of 22C°,
I believe Will J said that the CO2 greenhouse activity starts at about 14,000 feet.
The question we have to ask in thermodynamics is, for how long will the energy put out by CO2 move out in all directions, and how much of it will reach the ground and “heat the planet”?
I’m not sure of the altitude at which Methane activates the greenhouse process, but am certain that the outline of CO2 guides us.
I can’t wait for the Sun to come up, we’re expecting the temperature to rise 9 or 10 C°.
Where does all that warmth get to when it gets dark?
10
Thanks is due from all of us for yet another great piece of research which enlightens us about what the real Climate and Weather causes are, coming again from Tom Quirk.
00
Thanks to Tom.
Years of effort condensed for us, thanks.
00
As I have been pointing out for ages, the burps of ruminants have NO effect on Australia’s greenhouse emissions as discussed below. The carbon comes from grass and grain and was sequestered from the atmosphere the year or so before. Methane breaks down in from 7.5 to 14 years. At “worst”, taking 14 years, a given number of cattle simply replaces the methane from 68 years earlier – no loss, no gain. As I wrote to David Karoly recently: (He was unable to comment which I found amazing for a meteorologist to be unable to comprehend the simple analysis – just accounting which shows clearly that there is NO gain in methane from cattle but of course great potential for harm to out great industry!
To Karoly:
“My question to you now relates to the contributions which Australia makes towards greenhouse gases per head of population, being significant as it is in most developed countries. However, it is often widely claimed that some 14% of this comes from our large population of ruminant animals, a claim which I find impossible to justify and one which has the potential to do significant damage to a very important Australian industry. Below I have outlined a case against this claim but would appreciate your assessment of it and perhaps an explanation of the contrary argument which I am at present unable to understand.
The output of methane from the burping of livestock in feedlots or paddocks of pasture is not contestable, but the life of that methane and its sources, I believe, remove any conceivable suggestion that they contribute to our load of emissions and that this load could be reduced through the elimination or reduction of such livestock. While it is recognised that Methane is a significantly stronger greenhouse gas than Carbon Dioxide, the total number of animals on the globe has not increased significantly in the last couple of hundred years and over the last thirty years the Australian population of ruminants in equivalent terms has decreased. However, that is not a feature of the discussion as to whether animals present a problem, particularly when it is acknowledged that the sources of methane are mostly of a fairly natural kind and that the concentration waxes and wanes. In the case of cattle, and the behaviour of Methane which has an estimated half- life in the atmosphere of approximately 7.5 years, before breaking down to yield CO2 and water, their “contribution” is subject to a reduction in 100 years to less than 1.0e-06 (10^-6) of its original quantity (but replaced by CO2). Thus cattle from 100 years in the past produced this gas, and as it decayed, it has simply been replaced by a similar source over the years, and somewhat less since the `population of ruminants in Australia has declined significantly in recent years because of improvements in production of beef. Thus, realistically, our cattle herd does not produce any increase in atmospheric methane, be it brahmans in the North, Herefords or Black Angus in the South or sacred cows in India.
Further, every molecule of carbon dioxide eventually released into the air from methane, alongside its complementary water molecules, was previously sequestered from the atmosphere by the grass, grain or weeds which provides the daily diet of cattle – hay, cotton seed and other supplements being in exactly the same category.
Further cattle produce large amounts of carboniferous dung – again the carbon having been previously free in the atmosphere. Most of this dung under free range conditions returns to the soil binding carbon for a long period of time, most of it being buried by insects and in particular dung beetles. From feedlots, none of the manure is allowed to go free but is included with other materials to make fertiliser to be buried deep in the soil and contributing to the desired increased carbon required in efficient farming. Thus I would argue that the processes in which ruminants are involved reduces the contribution of Australia and other such beef and lamb producing countries rather than contributing to an increase. In comparison with other industries, the use `of carboniferous fuels is also minimal in the grazing and feedlot industries.
Thus I find it very difficult to accept the argument that the reduction of our livestock numbers would have any significant on our carbon footprint beyond the obvious “one-off effect” as the methane from those eliminated animals decayed. Obviously from the calculations and estimates, the elimination of all ruminants would reduce the output ONCE by 14% which over the next century amounts to 0.14% per annum.”
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Good to have this perspective on the quantitative aspects of the claim.
This whole new political nightmare is designed to have everybody jumping through hoops, while the Elites wine, dine and relax in New York or the subsidiary in Geneva.
UNAusExit!!!!
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