It turns out that replicating a cow in a laboratory is not as simple as expected. A new study points at some very major and potentially very hard to solve problems with laboratory meat. We can scale up vats of bacteria in factories easily, but animal cells are very different. Muscle cells not only need a sterile complicated broth but they are basically a sitting-duck feast for any bacteria.
Quote of the day:
“USD 2 billion has already been invested in this technology, but we don’t really know if it will be better for the environment,” Risner said.
Think of a cow as being an entire industrial production campus for meat — to deal with chemical toxins it comes with a customized chemical factory (a liver) and two industrial filter systems (kidneys), and a full immune defense force on a 24 hour watch to deal with the constant flood of microbial contaminants. Cows also have nutrient intake systems to break down grass into separate chemical components which are stored, transported and chemically tweaked to suit. All departments are self repairing, and are equipped with their own laboratory testing, messaging and alert service. The sterile growth conditions of muscle are maintained most of the time in close proximity to dirt and poo. The biological machinery has been road-tested and refined for a half a billion years. Yet somehow we thought we could replicate all that and do it more efficiently in a couple of decades.
Instead of thirty factories, 200 labs, 2000 trucks and sterilized vats of heated pharmaceutical grade goo, we could just use a cow.
In 2013, the first cultured burger patty cost €250,000.
It takes a lot of energy to replicate a cow
It’s not enough to kill bacteria in the growth broth, we have to remove the dead body parts of the bacteria too. The outside shell of many bacteria breaks up into is what we call an endotoxin. You may not know it but these are just bad, bad, bad — they are lipopolysaccarides that sometimes leak from our intestinal walls and trigger fever, nausea, inflammation, shivering and shock. So the dead parts of bacteria have to be cleaned out of the broth — which means chromatography, or ultrafiltration, or ion exchanges, and fine membranes. All of which uses lots of energy.
Factory made meat practically eats fossil fuels:
The three red bars on the right are different scenarios for creating growth mediums. The PF stands for Purification Factor (meaning highly purified).
GWP means Global Warming Potential. ACBM means artificial meat or “Animal Cell-Based Meat”.BH means Beef Herd, and DH means Dairy. Risner et al
Would you like global warming with your burger?
Note the scale on the vertical axis.
Lab-grown meat a potential climate killer, U.S. researchers warn
TVP World
The broth itself must contain salts, sugars, amino acids, and vitamins, and the production of each of these elements involves an expenditure of energy.
This “pharmaceutical” level of purification is essential as animal cells will not grow in a broth that is “contaminated” with bacteria. Experts involved in improving the process are testing to what extent it is possible to move away from purification.
The paper’s first author, Derrick Risner of the University of California (U.S.), in a commentary for “New Scientist”, expressed doubt that moving away from “pharmaceutical” levels of broth purification would be possible since even trace levels of contamination can destroy animal cell cultures.
From the paper — we used to use serum from baby cow blood to grow cells in culture but that is an 18 step process and energy intensive…
Animal cell culture is inherently different than culturing bacteria or yeast cells due to their enhanced sensitivity to environmental factors, chemical and microbial contamination. This can be illustrated by the industrial shift to single use bioreactors for monoclonal antibody production to reduce costs associated with contamination (Jacquemart et al., 2016). Animal cell growth mediums have historically utilized fetal bovine serum (FBS) which contains a variety of hormones and growth factors (Jochems et al., 2002). Serum is blood with the cells, platelets and clotting factors removed. Processing of FBS to be utilized for animal cell culture is an 18-step process that is resource intensive due to the level of refinement required for animal cell culture. Thus, the authors believe that commercial production of an ACBM product utilizing FBS or any other animal product to be highly unlikely given this high level of refinement.
The authors say they might be underestimating the costs.
The requirement of endotoxin removal would also contribute to the environmental impact of ACBM products which makes our LCIA results for the minimum scenarios to be underestimated minimums. Utilization of commodity grade growth medium components such as glucose for animal cell growth is unlikely unless the components undergo an endotoxin separation process. The effect of endotoxin can vary greatly depending on cell type and source; however 25 ng/ml of endotoxin was shown to cause cell apoptosis when coupled with non-lethal heat shock (Corning, 2020).
Endotoxins kill cells at just 25 nanograms per ml. The purity required in a complicated mixture on a commerical scale needs Olympic level chemistry. It’s like feeding pharmaceutical grade drugs to your cows instead of grass. This isn’t going to scale up well.
REFERENCE
Risner et al (2023) Environmental impacts of cultured meat: A cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment, bioRXIV, bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.04.21.537778;
h/t Another Ian, John Connor II and Climate Depot
Cow photo by Penny from Pixabay
Laboratory Meat Photo: The World Economic Forum
We have “fake” meat already in our supermarkets.
I think it is plant based eg soy.
I haven’t tried it but other people must be buying it.
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I recently noticed packs of “Beyond Meat burgers” in the “On Sale” freezer section of our grocery, so people around here must not be buying too many of them.
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Greenies will eat anything . .
40
Pharmaceutical Goop Burgers?
I will not comply.
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The whole public concern about the carbon emissions of farm animals has got to be re-thought right back to basics. I’m talking about the carbon atoms in CO2 and methane (CH4).
All of these atoms – yes, ALL – come from the atmosphere in the first place via solar powered photosynthesis in plants, subsequent plant growth, animal digestion, and breathing out in the form of CO2 and CH4.
The exhaled CO2 is exactly the same molecule it was in the atmosphere before photosynthesis and the CH4 (methane) molecule is unstable in the presence of oxegen (ie, abundant in the atmosphere) and converts back to CO2 and water.
It is a totally balanced, solar powered, natural and organic atmospheric carbon cycle with NO extra carbon being created or added by the life of a cow, sheep or other animal.
Not only should we stop researching silly solutions to non-existant ‘problems’ we should stop conceding the false assertion that carbon emissions from farm animals somehow add to the load of carbon in the atmospheee.
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Whether or not we have to worry about emissions from livestock isn’t for me to say. However, methane is a more powerful GHG than CO2 and if the global atmospheric store increases, then so does its radiative forcing contribution. While livestock emissions don’t add to the global store if all things remain equal, in fact things are not. Global herd size is increasing and so too is the scale of CAFO systems and thus manure. So you can’t say that livestock do not contribute to anthropogenic methane emissions; they very clearly do.
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Termites, peat etc produce far more methane than cows.
Methane breaks down to CO2. The Carbon Cycle continues to provide for all life on Earth.
Both CH4 and CO2 are a totally natural part of the Earth’s atmosphere.
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Seems strange that only food animals are considered. No accounting for the ‘emissions’ of the vast numbers of wild animals. I suspect a more sinister reason for the targeting….
500
Would someone please remind me of the estimated size of the American bison herds !
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Bison: By the Numbers
Peak herd size prior to 1800, some 60 million. 2 m tall, 900 kg each adult.
Lowest US herd size, 325 in 1884 (hunted to near extinction to deny Indian tribes their main food source)
Currently: 362,406 in US, 119,214 in Canada.
https://bisoncentral.com/bison-by-the-numbers/
https://www.flatcreekinn.com/bison-americas-mammal/
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Does not matter to the Greens. They know that nature produces hardly any CO2 or Methane because wicked man is solely responsible for carbon “pollution”. The people who drive this scam and their junior acolytes are ignoramuses with the objective of destroying the West by destroying our power and energy supplies. If they were fair dinkum they would advocate for nuclear power and the fact that they don’t tells you that they are out to destroy us. Bowen’s mad scheme will not work but it will cost us billions and ruin our economy.
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“…to deny Indian tribes their main food source” – Lance
Proof of concept – deprive the “undesirables” of a source of high quality protein, and it makes them easier to subdue.
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There are really other, more important things to worry about, f.e. people telling us CO2 or CH4 are dangerous and overheat the planet and ask for billions of $ or € to prohibit oil and gas burning, drive cars, heat houses or appartements, grow animals we later will eat and command us to become insectivore or even herbivore.
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Swamps, wetlands, lakes and deltas are also copious producers of methane.
Anywhere where anaerobic digestion of organic matter occur.
Obviously we need to get rid of all the swamps, wetland. lakes and deltas to “protect the environment” from ppb levels of CH4. 😉
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The ‘walking pigs’, pakeha, who arrived on their ‘ghost clouds’, sailing ships, promptly set about draining and reclaiming swamps & marshes to create farms, crop lands, towns & cities, hence saving the planet from methane.
Now, almost 200 years later, scientists say we have to revert these back to swamps & marshes, hence saving the planet from methane.
No wonder Generation Alphabet+ don’t know if they’re Arthur or Martha. Thank goodness for Jo’s site – keeps me sane in an insane world.
I LOVE ANIMALS – THEY TASTE GREAT
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Yes and what about the melting permafrost scare !
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Graeme:
John Tyndall MEASURED the methane absorption of IR in 1861 at 4.5 times that of CO2.
That was the whole infrared. He was a very careful experimenter e.g. he noticed early on that his galvanometer showed an error of 0.25% AFTER his experiment. He worked out that there was a stray magnetic effect, and had the insulation on the coils taken off (because it had a minor colour from an iron salt) and replaced. His results are considered still accurate EXCEPT in IPCC circles.
And I would pointed out that IF methane was an bad as they claim (85 times I have seen) then the recent increase in methane then that means any recent warming could be caused by about 30% and carbon dioxide is less dangerous as claimed.
Actually there are lots of papers now starting to point out that global warning hasn’t been measured for around 10 years.
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It is the lack of warming that has the elite in a panic hence the manic need to “do something”. As soon as the great unwashed find out they have been lied to for decades and how much it has cost them the wheels will fall off the climate bus. I suspect that one of the major MSM players will start to spill the beans and claim they were misled by the scientists and are now reporting the truth. Meanwhile the MSM who continue to lie will lose credibility among their subscribers and fail as they should. Dutton’s announcement about nuclear on Thursday will cause panic in the ALP too especially when power prices jump in July. Bowen thinks the CSIRO is correct about the price of nuclear but the CSIRO left out firming and transmission costs so really only calculated the zero cast of the wind that sometimes blows.
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I simply re-state the basic facts of the carbon atom in the atmospheric carbon cycle. Carbon in CO2 in the air above a field is converted to hydro carbon moleclues in a plant by the solar powered process. All of the carbon in a plant comes from the atmosphere – it does NOT come from the ground via the roots as one might intuitively assume.
The animal grazes the grass and uses the CH molecules to produce energy (Much the same as what happens in a power station)
In the process it produces CO2 and CH4.
The CH4 (methane) is produced in an oxygen depleted chamber called the rumen. ie, oxygen is excluded, and must be for the rumen to work. When the CH4 is belched from the animal to the oxygen-rich atmosphere, it is unstable and reacts with the oxygen to revert to CO2 and H2O.
Methane production in this way – and on a vast scale across the whole biological stage – is a totally natural process.
You have to be able to look at how the whole cycle works, not just a little segment of it.
Regards, David.
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There were measurements of CO2 concentration done over a crop field (corn iirc) on a “very still” day
In the morning, the level was up a bit (can’t remember the numbers) around 500ppm iirc
Within a couple of hours, that level had been reduced to 200pmm, where it remained.
Plants don’t grow much at 200ppm… so in essence, the crop only had 2 hours of usable CO2 to put into growth and food content.
Current levels are way too low to give crops their fullest growth ability.
700ppm or even much higher, would give plant growth, hence food supplies, a very significant boost !
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From this post in 2013: Plants suck half the CO2 out of the air around them before lunchtime each day.
Chapman et al 1954.
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Much thanks, Jo. 🙂
I couldn’t find the reference on my computer, and I could only vaguely remember the paper.
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In England corn means wheat, oats and barley. It doesn’t refer to Maize
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And in addition, David, as I have been banging on about to deaf ears for more than five years, a large proportion of CO2 from the air that is injected by ruminants through the vegetation that they eat is sequestered in their flesh and bones. There it stays until the animal is slaughtered and we eat parts of it or bones and blood are converted into fertilisers. No matter what the route is all the carbon based compounds that a ruminant animal may be blamed for come from, as you have detailed above, from the air and they are not “carbon producing factories”.
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The SI of the recent Ivanovitch et al “Nature” paper has the following figures for kg of greenhouse gases per kg of food
CO2 CH4 N20
beef 4.49 1.2 0.024
mutton/goat 4.96 0.55 0.019
pig 3.46 0.083 0.0059
poultry 3.28 0.014 0.0082
Eating mutton/lamb instead of beef allows twice the consumption for the same methane emissions. New Zealand saves the world!
Of course, switching to chook or pork, ham and bacon saves the world even more. Bacon really is a super food.
Unfortunately, the letter from the Nobel committee seems to have been caught in the mail.
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That looks good old cocky, until you realise that domestic pigs are fed food grown as crops, & poultry are fed crop produced food after a processing input.
You will have to add the emissions from the cropping & processing to equal the cow self harvesting naturally grown grass.
Of course some cows & sheep are eating fertilised planted improved pasture, not native grass, the answer to food emissions gets very foggy the deeper you go.
Then perhaps we should have to consider which foods produce the most emissions from the eater. Boy this could become complicated if we really care or believe we should.
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Shhh! You weren’t supposed to notice that.
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Or we could forget the whole pile of dog doo and go on with our lives as once we lived them. The problem is we sent too many idiots to university where they were taught by earlier idiots.
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There was a huge benefit to governments of the day.
10
Grass is still going to grow regardless of the number of cows around to eat it thus recycling the CO2.
Eliminate the cows & the grass is still going to be eaten by other animals, termites or microbes producing the same CO2 & methane as when eaten by cows.
So now we will have the same CO2 & methane produced from the grass, plus factories making “plastic” meat pumping out more of the same, & consuming huge amounts of power while doing so. I couldn’t think of a greater loss/loss situation if I tried for years.
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And wild fires in dry over mature grass burn “like a house on fire”
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In the part of the electromagnetic spectrum where methane acts as a greenhouse gas, water vapour already acts as a greenhouse gas to the extent of saturation. So even if methane is totally removed from the atmosphere it would make no difference to the greenhouse effect.
20
Attempting a few facts …. please correct if anything wrong :
Methane at around 2 ppm and fairly steady vs CO2 at 480 ppm and rising. Plants would die if CO2 dropped below 150 ppm and has been up to 2,500 ppm without catastrophic high temperatures, possibly because greenhouse impact of CO2 increases at an ever declining rate as concentration increases.
Cattle population ( wild and domestic) is fairly stable at around 1 billion head so the methane in atmosphere from ruminants is fairly steady because CH4 breaks down by around 10- 12 years so there is a 12 year ( or so) load consistently in atmosphere
Common to only look at one side of the methane story involving burping and farting without considering the same amount of CO2 sequestered in growing the grasses to feed the cattle.
00
I have said many times that a cow, or any other creature CANNOT put out more carbon than they take in.
It is a chemical and physical impossibility.
Cows, Pigs, Sheep etc are CARBON NEUTRAL
460
Its that endless spouted bull about how it takes a 100ltrs of water to make 1 kilo of beef. A kilo of beef weighs 1 kilo so its 85% water so what. As soon as anyone eats it, or the animal dies from natural causes that 850 ml of water is back in the water cycle in the blink of an eye. The water is neither created or destroyed it simply goes round and round.
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B.Nice – farm animals, particularly ruminants are carbon sinks – much of the carbon that they ingest from feed (which has all come from atmospheric CO2) is sequestered as flesh, blood and bones within their bodies and stays there until they are slaughtered. After that we eat them and blood and bone used for producing fertilisers. But they themselves expel less carbon than they ingest. The whole demonising of farm animals is based on false science, but I don’t see the agricultural industry standing up to say so.
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The issue is not, and never has been about ‘farm animals’ is about ‘farmers’. They’ve always have been too independent and difficult to control.
But if you can crush the farmers the rest of society is a piece of cake.
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That is why the ALP do all they can to punish farmers and make their lives harder.
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I strongly suspect they are also failing to accurately account industrial scale insect farming and indoor vertical plant growing.
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Water is heavy stuff, it requires a LOT of energy to lift it.Thats why efficent farming systems use gravity to move if. Like wise any thing that grows requires protien/energy input including instects. It’s not hard to end up with higher inputs then outputs, in any highly controlled system. Pixy dust and happy thoughts, might get votes. But they don’t last long in real world farming systems. The effinency of the western worlds farming systems, are beyond the comprension of the vast majoring of people who benefit from it.
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Notice to vegans:
Please stop eating my food’s food.
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Factory made meat seems to be a fine companion to unreliables and big batteries…very expensive, inefficient and not fit for purpose.
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The reduction of CO2 emissions is the least of the priorities in the reduction of CO2 emissions.
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So will these new so called meat products cause more problems than farm animals and send even more heat trapping molecules into the atmosphere?
I don’t know but I’m not in a hurry to change my eating habits for these clueless laboratory products and I wouldn’t eat insects either.
But I’m sure Bill Gates will pursue this fantasy and throw many more billions $ to his lab workers.
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The way this will work out is as follows:
We tried to make for you non-Elites synthetic meat to “save the planet” but, sorry, it didn’t work out.
So we’ve made you a selection of crickets, cockroaches and mealworms to put in the supermarket “meat” section. Eat and be happy we’ve allowed you to have any food at all.
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I think our friend Bill is currently more worried about his alleged connection to Jeffrey Epstein. I suppose they thought that when Jeffrey conveniently died a lot of things might just go away. Truth is like a bad smell; it lingers for a long time.
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Graham M
The amount of CH4 in the atmosphere is so small any associated warming would not be measurable. The scam continues.
150
Ahhhh, but does it fart?
50
The people we are up against don’t really care about the ramifications of arteficial meat. (Because they are of course vegans and hate meat anyway so no loss to them)
The human cost to the rest of society doesn’t matter, to them it is all about ideology, and they just want to stop animal farming full stop. And we, the masses have to conform.
All they have to do is control government, and government control is their tool.
Just look at countries like New Zealand and Netherlands, who wants to go down that path?
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I don’t entirely agree Geoffrey.
No doubt many of the useful idiots of the Left are vegan.
But do you really think those Elites who tell the useful idiots what to do and think are vegan? Or will they be dining on the finest steaks during their private jet flights to IPCC and WEF conferences? And they won’t be serving insects or vegan food at the banquets at those conferences either.
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You maybe right . .
10
Even the BBC tells us the truth sometimes.
Here’s a quickie reality check of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Nitrogen makes up approx 78%, Oxygen about 21% and Argon about 0.9% and that’s about 99.9% of our atmosphere.
But co2, methane and all the other trace gases add up to just 0.1%.
But water vapour is obviously higher at the equator and at very low levels at the poles.
Amusing that the BBC initially says that the atmosphere is roughly 80% nitrogen and 20% oxygen in the box section at the top of the link.
And their short video has a transcript as well.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/z3fv4wx/articles/zkbbbqt
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And human emissions make up perhaps 4% of the tiny total of CO2 contained in that 0.1% of the atmosphere. Hardly seems worth bothering about does it? I sleep quite well.
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If you talk to the school strike kiddies or their handlers CO2 makes up between 10 and 25% of the atmosphere. Asked what else is up there elicits a dead fish stare.
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Watch out now they’re coming after Nitrogen as we’ve seen in the Netherlands, Sri lanka and Canada etc.
Dr Lindzen and Dr Happer have recently tried to warn us about this extra BS and FRAUD that would bring back wide spread famine, deaths and misery.
But is that just part of their plan? At least some Dutch voters have tried their best at the recent elections.
Also the Sri lanka economy has been wrecked because of their organic farming lunacy and their so called leader had to flee the country.
So who really BELIEVES we have a Nitrogen CRISIS?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/05/11/entire-global-food-supply-at-risk-from-disastrous-response-to-so-called-nitrogen-crisis/
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The attack on meat is an attack on Western society. It has nothing to do with CO2 or CH4 or anything else.
Basically in the carbon cycle of life meat is just one of the many products of carbon dioxide. Most CO2 tonnage is in vegetation. And it all changes back to CO2 and CH4 anyway.
You would think that the attack on cows, pigs, chickens, goats was actually about farming but we did not invent these animals. We just manage them. We have substituted cows for wilderbeest, buffalo, elephants,giraffes,goats,aurocs,zebras, horses. And chickens for a myriad of bird life. We do not invent their food, just supply what grows given a certain amount of sunshine, CO2 and H2O. If any of these increases we can grow more. The American Indians wiped out the massive herds of horses long before the Spaniards arrived and had no memory of them. Its what humans do. Eat.
And all the animals die anyway. If they live longer then other animals starve. There is a direct relationship between total grasses and the number of herbivores. Humans did not create life on earth but we do prefer certain species. And if you do not harvest, predators and weather and age would do it anyway. It’s the cycle of life. If you don’t like it, leave the planet.
Sure there are massive piggeries but who wants 250,000 pigs wandering around major cities eating everything in sight? In general we do not grow more than can be grown, eat more than can be eaten although gluttony is a social problem and as humans dominate the planet, we have made agriculture more productive by having less waste, more focus, higher efficiencies. And atmospheric CO2 has gone up which has greatly helped increasing agricultural output significantly but it is notable that many more trees, a much greener world and more agriculture has not reduced CO2. Which begs the question of why people believe it would, as in carbon credits.
So I reject the idea that farming animals increases CO2 or CH4 or does any more than regulate and manage what would happen naturally, albeit with different species because kangaroos are very difficult to fence. CO2 existed long before humans. We didn’t invent it. This attack on meat one of those popular fantasies of people who think they should tell carnivores to eat grass, starve the cows and eliminate the middle man, saving CO2. Too bad we cannot digest cellulose. Cows and termites and bacteria do a fine job. You can choose which to eat.
But there is always someone who says we should eat bugs or plankton or krill. And another group who want to stop the domestication and racing of horses and dogs so that they vanish entirely from the world. To save them from exploitation and slavery. Like most of these activists, they have not thought it through. And another who think all other humans should be kept in fenced 15 minute towns and fattened up by food deliveries and view the outside world through the internet. We call these prison guards Morlocks.
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“The attack on meat is an attack on Western society. “
As is nearly every aspect of life. The shire that I live in is having a “flag raising ceremony” some time soon to recognise the diverse people who have to be publicly acknowledged and made aware that my “shire” is an inclusive place. Dont know what this flag looks like but I can guess. Now given that flag protocols are totally ignored, with aboriginal flags Torres Strait flags and the plethora of “other” flags all flying at the the same height the thing that just fades into the fluttering crowd is our NATIONAL FLAG.
It does not take precedence over all others, as protocol demands. Its just one of many, purposely reduced in importance to reduce national pride. I would bet that a very large number of school children today could not recognise or point out from the crowd our once magnificent flag.
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Well, Russia has great national pride at the moment,its what going to war does.. So, how do those in power reconcile the deletion of national pride with the war they are pushing against China? Will we be fighting for Australia? No, we will be fighting for ‘the rule of law’ or ‘democracy and freedom’. They are trying to replace our nationalism with servility to an idea that puts Anglos at the top, and Americans above all others.
“stop the domestication and racing of horses and dogs so that they vanish entirely from the world. ” Yes, when the NZ Govt started spending millions on saving the Kiwi and banned people catching them, killing them, and interacting with them, I said it was a waste of money- They should promote them as Kiwi Burgers and eat them. Its obvious that we have chickens and ducks because they are eaten, otherwise they are just in the way.
South Africa has done wonders for their wild game since they introduced commercial hunting, and now a zebra, a wildebeest, a Kudu, all of them have a commercial value depending on their numbers and how easy they are to breed. So long as we have hunters willing to pay, we will have all the African species that can be hunted. Ban owning and racing dogs and see how long they last..
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This ignoring of correct flag protocol infuriates me Sambar. The local town hospital is one such offender.
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Me too, Annie. I cannot bear the fact that the Aboriginal flag is placed in the centre, with the Australian flag to the left and the TS flag to the right every time a Labor politician is on TV. In fact, I am appalled by the fact that those two flags are displayed at all in connection with our government and I am disgusted that the aboriginal flag flies at the same height as the Australian flag on the Harbour Bridge or, in fact, that it is there at all.
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The one that gets me, is “half mast”.
20
Half mast is not half way down the pole.
00
What’s wrong with you, Sambar, and all those agreeing with you? Don’t you know that “diversity is our strength?” //S// 🙄
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/05/15/diversity-is-our-strength-in-minnesota-n550585
00
A brilliant comment TdeF.
40
Whale breathe is atrocious. Imagine a restaurant full of krill eaters. It would certainly have a negative effect on human procreation.
20
I don’t agree with all of it, but here’s an interesting video titled:
“Eating less Meat won’t save the planet. Here’s Why”
https://youtu.be/sGG-A80Tl5g
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As a number of people have said above, we are barking up the wrong tree: thanks David M-J and others.
It’s time to have the truth acknowledged that CO2 or methane are a complete irrelevance and are being used as a pseudo weapon to design and justify our illegal incarceration.
The science, the thermodynamics is indisputable; human origin gases do not influence atmospheric temperature.
Time to confront the perpetuators of this evil and deal with it properly once and for all.
30
It’s up.
10
Agreed, KK.
For there to be an “an ‘existential’ climate crisis” predicated by humanity’s use of hydrocarbons as fuels, it is necessary to be able to prove that carbon dioxide can trap heat. Let’s examine that highly profitable and politically useful claim using five immutable laws of physics.
Water vapour is the major “greenhouse gas”, it absorbs EMF across 37,000 spectral bands, and it leaves just three gaps for CO2 to interact with outgoing longwave infrared radiation. The most energetic of these gaps is at the 14.8 microns wavelength, (Planck’s Law). The temperature of absorption at 14.8 microns is -80 degrees Celsius, (Wien’s Displacement Law and Kirchhoff’s Law of Thermal Radiation). Minus 80 degrees Celsius is 95 degrees lower than average surface temperature and is found in the lower stratosphere, well above the troposphere where we live. Heat doesn’t flow from cold zones to hotter zones, (Second Law of Thermodynamics).
Ipso facto, CO2 cannot trap heat. It merely delays outgoing infrared photons for a billionth of a second so high up in the atmosphere it’s irrelevant. It releases them at a less energetic frequency, and they continue on to outer space. Atmospheric CO2 is contingent upon seawater temperature, (Henry’s Law). The hotter equatorial water is, the more CO2 it releases. Cold Arctic and Antarctic waters reabsorb it.
Repeatedly asserting something to be true does not make it true. If it did, all our low-lying coastal towns would have been flooding at each high tide for over twelve years now.
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Co2 molecules hit other molecules and transfer the energy via kinetic collisions. This means the delay is extended as gas molecules in the vicinity gain energy, travel faster and warm up. Most molecules are not greenhouse gases. O2 and N2 make up 99% of the air. Eventually they will hit a GHG molecule and the energy may then be transferred and released as IR in a random direction.
30
No, the convective lapse rate controls all, and channels far more energy than radiative transfer.
Net vertical radiative transfer is controlled by vertical temperature differences, which is controlled by the convective lapse rate.
There is no delay. There is no “blocked” radiation, just transfer to different frequencies.
This has been proven by measurement.
11
No. The lapse rate is not a force of nature itself, it’s a rate, a consequence of several other forces. Think of molecular thermodynamics. Unless molecules can steer intelligently, the average GHG molecule will smack into an N2 or O2 molecule and kinetically heat the air up.
It’s all “just a delay”. Life is “just a delay”. But it’s the size of the delay that matters.
10
Jo,
you are a “force of nature” in running this amazing blog.
Comments like Cardimona’s are well worth a second read.
Even Will Janoschka seemed to pass over the fact that air has a density of 1.227 kg per cubic metre as he was focused on the passage of radio communications over long distances.
From about 30 metres above ground level it’s all over for any heating of CO2 by ground origin IR and from then on up it’s mostly about water and P.V = n.R.T.
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KK, thanks, but perhaps read my reply to Cardimona again. Do kinetic collisions not occur? If they don’t occur, what force is keeping CO2 from hitting say O2 molecules?
The delay is much longer than those who only think in radiative terms seem to realize. CO2 molecules are “allowed” to transfer energy to and from non GHG molecules. No law is broken. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine an atmosphere where this did not happen. Basic chemistry.
I am somewhat baffled at having to repeat this? Not sure how else I can explain it?
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Very concise.
Very accurate.
Very clear.
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Thanks Cardimona, nice outline.
As you say, most people don’t seem to grasp the idea that CO2 is just another gas and is in immediate equilibrium with surrounding gases and maintains that equilibrium through conduction.
At an altitude of about 11,000 metres the CO2 eventually rips its shirt off to expose its greenhouseness.
At about 243°K it lets go of this “greenhouse” energy in the form of an electromagnetic radiation pulse which is drawn towards the lower potential of deep space, i.e. NOT towards Earth. This radiation is Not a particle as spoken of by so many and is drawn on a specific path by the environment
It is not spewed out “randomly”.
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An earlier discussion with Mr Nice.
https://joannenova.com.au/2022/05/the-guardian-voodoo-little-ice-age-caused-by-volcanoes-white-men-and-co2/#comment-2546465
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With cell grazing you can intern as much as three kilos of carbon for every kilo of beef produced and wipe out fertiliser costs. Grass fertiliser is often urea which the cow will produce on its own. Of course none of this means anything for climate but it’s vitally important for soil development. The same people who get the CO2 issue wrong also blow it when it comes to carbon internment so the real problem is the state of rationality in the West. People have degenerated into primitives.
You can try to throw these people a solar bone telling them how panels can be quite useful for off-grid portable electric fencing. But they will sniff out your apostate heart so there is no mileage in compromising with lunatics.
People think it’s irrationality finally invading the sciences. I think it started in science.
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They can’t wipe out fertilizer costs. The nutrients must be added somehow, and now we know that the pharmaceutical grade broth is very expensive fertilizer.
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Done right the nutrients are added by the mycelium. By the fungal network mining the rocks. Grasslands are slanted towards bacteria in the soil. For the most part Western agriculture hands out steroids but denies mineral nutrients. You could efficiently send nutrients through molasses for the cows to lick
So grasslands are bacterial, whereas woodlands have a fungal bias. You want to see the setup that Sepp Holzer has in Austria. You will weep tears of joy for the wonderment of it Trees on the banks and ponds and grasses on the terraces. Everything feeding everything else.
When the greatest Australian died people went to check out Bill Mollisons place. It was so over fertilised they could walk on the plant mass of the stream
beds.
It goes without saying that these joyful conditions can’t be forced on our farmers they take decades of untiring. Zero interest loans may help.
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Decades of something. Decades of devotion. Let’s go with that. If you force it on farmers we will all starve. But the reality is that set up right over decades, nature can do most of the work.
The seed is the most low maintenance nano-technology we have and we will ever have. Forget that clown Kurzweil.
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The labs. may produce costly meat,
Which people may choose not to eat,
While cows are supreme,
For yogurt and cream,
As for butter grass-fed, labs. can’t beat.
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From the Tallbloke website. The most important lesson in Climate science you are ever likely to watch: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2021/09/06/ned-nikolov-demystifying-the-atmospheric-greenhouse-effect
78 minutes long. It starts by telling you why the work of Fourier (1827), Arrhenius (1896), Nils Ekholm (1901) and Callendar (1938) is proven to be rubbish. Confirmed by “Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics (2009)” by Gerhard Gerlich. Ned Nikolov then explains how he and Karl Zeller, used data from across the solar system, to find that, distance from the Sun and atmospheric pressure are the only factors needed to determine the atmospheric temperature.
The second piece of evidence comes from “The Theory of Heat Radiation” by Max Planck:
https://ia804508.us.archive.org/26/items/theheatradiation00planrich/theheatradiation00planrich.pdf
I have re-read this paper a few times. To simplify, The random nature of the movement or vibration of gas molecules means half are producing radiative heating and half are producing radiative cooling. This is confirmed by the fact that the atmosphere of Venus comprises 96.5 percent carbon dioxide, yet the altitude Venus has identical pressure to that on the Earth’s surface is 1.176 times the Earth’s average surface temperature, and the radiating temperature of Venus is 1.176 times that of the Earth, proving that input from the Sun and a change to thermal inertia due to pressure as a precise function of altitude are all that is needed to calculate the atmospheric greenhouse effect on Venus.
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Venus is about 900C. So in a gross calculation the total distance from the sun determines the surface energy input and so temperature. It really is an academic debate. There is only radiation, not convection or conduction for planetary temperature.
The very big difference is that Earth is a water planet and so unlike all others. Under 100C generally under 20C and above 0C in most places small temperature changes known as the weather are determined almost entirely by nearby water and direct solar, as in day and night and we are only concerned with these very minor variations. A few degrees in an average.
We humans evolved and live in a very narrow band of temperature. The naked ape with clothing and energy has adjusted to -40 to +40 . Maintaining that narrow band of temperatures is what liquid water does, cooling the tropics and warming the frozen wastes and cooling hot land surfaces, as with the monsoon rains. As almost a constant CO2 in a single lifetime, has nothing to do with the weather.
And very unlike Venus, there is a lot of oxygen and mainly (78%) nitrogen. Oxygen was likely CO2 until plants appeared. And they ate almost all the aerial CO2 to the point of extinction while most is in the water. So aerial CO2 only 0.042% at present and lower than 0.02% all life on earth vanishes. So we are in the end game, praying for the oceans to release a little more CO2 which has really made a difference in liveability.
But all this is just scientifically interesting. The man made CO2 driven Global Warming conjecture was that a 50% increase in a very small gas almost all of which is in the oceans will increase temperatures by a few degrees. This is a very silly conclusion when the reverse that a small amount of ocean surface heating would release a lot more CO2. Warming produces CO2 rather than CO2 produces warming. And it’s this tiny, tiny alleged effect on average temperature which has people racing for the bomb shelters and to go full druid.
My view is that man made CO2 is provably 0.0013% of the air. And if anyone really thinks this is going to change the temperature of the planet, I would love to see the proof. There is none. Man made CO2 driven rapid tipping point Armageddon was a fantasy in 1988 and continues to be the biggest fraud in human history despite failing every single prediction. But it has attracted faux scientists and businessmen and communists across the world. Climate baggers. And despite failing every test, governments across the planet are determined to shut down Western societies while giving China a free hand in everything.
That is probably a better explanation.
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The normal test of a science model is to make a prediction and get it right.
Can anyone nominate in the last 35 years a single Climate Change prediction which has proven right?
And why isn’t that the end of any claims firstly that CO2 is man made and secondly that it is heating the planet and lastly that this is a bad thing?
As for the idea that cows and pigs and cattle and sheep and goats are the problem, who decided that? And what problem?
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“praying for the oceans to release a little more CO2 which has really made a difference in liveability.”
As we head into a cooler future, we may need to look at using coal and nuclear to release CO2 from limestone, and pump it into huge “growing” sheds or feeding direct to crop fields at ground level so it can be used by plants to grow food before the oceans get hold of it.
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Interesting idea. Could that really accelerate growth?
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Actual greenhouses often use CO2 to allow full growth potential.
As long as you can keep the CO2 level around a crop up above say 400ppm, or even 300ppm, you will get growth… so long as you have the other essential ingredients, sunlight and water.
If you can keep the CO2 around the crop up above 400ppm all day, you get a day’s worth of growth, rather than it being used up in the earlier part of the day.
see https://joannenova.com.au/2023/05/fake-meat-could-make-25-times-more-co2-than-real-beef/#comment-2671489 and link in Jo’s reply.
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The point is that the observations determine the theory, and the theory fits the observations at one bar pressure on Venus and the Earth’s surface. Using the average surface temperature for each planet, the evidence proves that whether the surface is liquid or solid, this fact is irrelevant. Due to almost a hundred bar atmospheric pressure, Venus has a constant average temperature whether it is day or night (112 Earth days long) or at the poles or the equator. At the surface the temperature is a constant 735 Kelvin. But at one bar atmospheric pressure, the Earth has a 60 Kelvin difference between the poles and the equator.
Not just average surface temperature for each planet, but the theory also fits the evidence for the fact that the average temperature at the one bar pressure points on each of the planets, is the same, adjusted for distance from the Sun, despite the different main gases, Nitrogen for the Earth & Titan, Hydrogen for Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn & Uranus and Carbon Dioxide for Venus.
However, the Earth’s Oceans do interact with the Earth’s Atmosphere. The thermal inertia period on the surface of Venus has not as far as I know been worked out yet but on the Earth the deep ocean thermal inertia is about 800 years, so using this we can guess that the thermal inertia at the surface of Venus must be just under 300 years. So the surface temperature on Venus only varies due to atmospheric pressure. The only significant change to the temperature of the atmosphere of Venus is with altitude, the atmospheric temperature drops by an average of 100 Kelvin for every 11 miles, up to an altitude of 60 miles. From Venus the Sun appears 38 percent bigger than it does from the Earth, an atmosphere that is 96.5 percent CO2 and 93 times both the mass and the surface pressure of the Earth’s atmosphere, as well as having a quarter of a million times more CO2 than the Earth.
So on Venus, the coldest temperature on the surface is on the top of Maxwell Montes, at 6.8 miles high and around 50 degrees colder than the average surface temperature. The 300 year thermal lag produces an average surface temperature variation between the poles and the nightime and daytime equator temperature of less than one degree kelvin.
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tumour steaks
i’m sure they are on to a real winner there.
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If you do a Goolag search for “meat tax” without quote marks you will see all the nefarious ways the Left are proposing to stop non-Elites eating meat.
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Frankly it’s the old ‘meat is murder’ crowd. Except now they claim meat is killing the planet. Which is beyond preposterous.
But I did get a laugh years ago when they also claimed ‘milk is prostitution’.
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That moderating AI bot again.
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These clowns believe that they are gods and seek to prove it by making God’s creations in their laboratories and factories. God will not be mocked! Have you noticed the crescendo in events worldwide? The clowns see us as useless eaters and wish us dead. The clowns now control all of Australia’s governments and can cheat and lie and steal with impunity. Will they catch us up to the USA?
Remember: The point is never the point. Look behind the stated purpose or objective. Look under it. Look inside it. Find the magician’s other hand.
Climate change is a lie crafted to be the ultimate instrument of death. Our death. Do not argue with the clowns. Denounce them as the murderers they are.
God wins!
Always!
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Nature has found a more efficient method than humans. Who’d have thunk it?
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More on this –
“Bill Gates funded Lab-grown meat ‘could be 25 times worse for the climate than beef’ – ‘Highly energy intensive’ – ‘Meat’ grown in steel vats from stem cells from animal”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/05/12/bill-gates-funded-lab-grown-meat-could-be-25-times-worse-for-the-climate-than-beef-highly-energy-intensive-meat-grown-in-steel/
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Sometimes I wonder if this stuff is designed to fail. By investing a truckload of other peoples’ money to investigate growth of artificial “meat” and then conclude that it’s not viable, they can claim that both real meat and fake meat are bad for the environment so YOU vill all just have to eat ze leaves und ze bugs.
I know, it’s a stretch, but I wouldn’t put it past that lot.
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No. No “stretch” at all.
I no longer wonder, but am convinced, that failure is not an option. It’s a mandate.
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Yes you can but I can’t see my more considered response. Think of a nutrient? Given enough time you can set it up that the nano-technology, that is biology, is supplying that nutrient.
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In my humble opinion this is either just a ruse to get investors money or the intent is to switch in soy fake meat products and convince consumers that these are real ” nutritionally complete animal proteins” .
Either case is FRAUD
also no fats No dha or dhc
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All very interesting, but until something breaks in the science world or the media where people are looking to improve their increasingly depressing world of increasing hardship, then nothing changes. The big media, big government, big business, big finance, cartel controls the debate as per the censorship article of a couple of days ago.
When things got tough in the EU losing Russian gas, Politicians saw the end of their careers unless they did something quickly. Gas was suddenly declared green, fracking caps were removed, coal burners reopened. That’s what it takes to turn the tide. That was a missed opportunity to take on the debate. When people hurt enough they will listen to saving argument.
As economies worsen in the next couple of years – it’s only in the first world nations that AGW holds lethal sway – particularly in Australia where politicians destroy ff power plants, the opportunity will come to crash through the censors. Power outages and higher prices will become rampant and added inflation becomes really destructive. That’s when commentators’ families hurt with everyone else. Some will be willing to break, to open their minds to ease the pain.
As in Europe, someone like Dutton may become strong enough to force open the debate on the basis of advancing poverty and inability to pay the nation’s bills while the nation destroys its ff industries. Hardship renders anything possible. We need the breaking point!
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“someone like Dutton may become strong enough to force open the debate”
Lol! Don’t hold our breath waiting! No current party in power will go back on all this crap, just like they all got behind Covid. You either break the democratic system and get out the ropes or vote in people who have never been in power and are dedicated to returning to the 1970s. The power of the rich and the whole political system will be against anyone trying to rock this boat!
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This means it’s even more likely the climatecult will push forward with synthetic meat.
I’ve started to apply the inverse-outcome test to every issue the climatecult flirt with; the more a proposed ‘solution’ makes the ‘problem’ they are trying to solve worse, the more attractive that solution becomes to market. They know the average person is totally apathetic at this point.
If you think about it, a textbook racket – under the original definition – requires that the problem be created first so that the seller of the solution can make a profit (or at least get whatever they’re looking for; ideological point scoring and breaking things is as good as building capital for the average climatecultist). Thus, once the ‘solution’ is paying out, why would anyone actually want the ‘problem’ to disappear?
If a BigPharma Co profiting off of prescription pain meds had an R&D dept that found a way to cure pain forever with one single treatment, they’d have no incentive not to bury the latter to ensure the former keeps paying out, regardless of the suffering involved for their customers.
Climatecult members are no different. They know a sweet-sweet honey pot when they see one.
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Hell yes,lets create a Chernobyl on the White Cliffs of Dover.
As the current atmosphere is too thin for our insect masters to return.
As the permafrost “melts” our insect overlords will hatch out..into a New World defenceless from their onslaught..
Sarcasm aside,our food crops are at near starvation levels of plant food.
And the wailings of Carbon Based Lifeforms ,complaining of the abundance of CO2 is beyond parody.
These are people made stupid,to quote Bonhoeffer,there is no arguing with them.
“They KNOW”.
Banishment is our only hope.
As no civilized technological society can survive this level of madness and magical thinking.
You can not cure stupid.
Compound Stupidity becomes evil.
As we are living..The evil of ignorant persons,fully deluded and absolutely convinced they know how we must live..Our Parasitic Overload of elected and permanent “helpers” are demonstrating their common condition..
Bone deep stupidity,incompetence and arrogance in a glorious combination.
Any such persons produce exactly one response in the long term.
And they declared war on me..
I was just minding my own affairs.
The hubris of these idiots is awesome..
They shall replace God’s Creation,the food beasts,currently enhanced by centuries of selective breeding by mankind…with Vat Grown Goo.
What could possibly go wrong?
And especially when these same “geniuses” are working very hard to ensure your refrigerator has no electricity..
Yumm.
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My comment elsewhere to the same subject, copied/pasted here:
” (…) have you ever heard about a thing called “vKJD” (i.e., “variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease”, aka “Human Mad Cow Disease”)? Are you aware of the UNDETECTABLE risks of mass-growing LIVING cells? (by mass-growing I mean an industrial process, not a large-scale laboratory experiment: orders of magnitude bigger). Prions, mycoplasmas, etc., will pass quality control unnoticed.
Please read and think carefully about the comment by XXXXX on May 12, 2023 7:39 pm:
“Who cares how “bad” it is for “climate”
How bad will it be for your health relative to the real thing ?”
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”Animal cell growth mediums have historically utilized fetal bovine serum (FBS) which contains a variety of hormones and growth factors (Jochems et al., 2002). Serum is blood with the cells, platelets and clotting factors removed.”
Yes! And for an adequate supply of FBS to grow beef cells en-mass one would need an astonishing number of pregnant cows, far in excess of those the purveyors of fake burgers claim need to be eliminated.
NOTE – I used to do tissue culture in the lab I worked in. I know that using FBS isn’t as simple as buying and adding it. Each lot must be screened for it’s ability to support the cells you intend to grow. Often more lots are rejected than accepted.
There are other important considerations, just one of which I’ll highlight by directing everyone to Joao Martins‘ comment above about potential diseases. As to bacteria, it’s hard to imagine industrial growth of cells in the absence of antibiotics, especially given that we often used them, and they were occasionally ineffective. If overuse of Abs is a concern now, just wait till they try to grow meat industrially, and then expose consumers to higher doses of junk in their food than ever before.
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