By Jo Nova
Quick! Set up a trillion dollar market and figure out the science later
We got it wrong for so long
Methane is supposedly 80 times more powerful as CO2 over the short term, and we are already feeding our cows seaweed and dubious additives like Bovaer® to reduce it, and we’re trying to make steaks in labs, and create burgers out of crickets. But it turns out, the experts were wrong, yet again, and trees are absorbing more methane than they emit. So just like that, there is a major new sink to remove methane from the air, and it’s been there all the time.
The funny thing is that for years everyone was measuring the air at the bottom of the tree trunk and finding methane emissions, but when Vincent Gauci et al measured 1 – 2 metres further up the tree, not only did the methane emissions shrink to nothing, the gas started to disappear from the air around the trunk. Apparently bacteria under the bark were dining on the methane.
The team looked at trees in Brazil, Panama, United Kingdom and Sweden and estimate that all the worlds trees might already be absorbing as much as 50 million tons of methane, about as much as” is coming out of all the worlds landfill sites”, or roughly equivalent to half the worlds cows.
Scientists got this wrong, every way they could
Researchers used to think trees did nothing much with methane, but around 2006 some scientists were surprised to discover that trees emitted methane, especially in swampy areas. In 2017 a paper showed wetland trees gave out a lot of methane, “like a chimney”:
““In the seasonally flooded part of the Amazon, the trees become a massive chimney for pumping out methane,” says one researcher.“
The bad news back then, was that most of the world’s estimated 3 trillion trees emitted methane at least some of the time. If it had have been Porches instead, we’d have heard all about it.
Since methane is supposedly responsible for a quarter of global warming, you’d think the science industrial complex would have been all over this so they could save the world. Apparently forest scientists even used to entertain students by setting fire to the gases hissing from the trunks in the Amazon, so it’s not like “nobody knew”. Everyone knew, but apparently no one really wanted to announce bad news about their forest friends and give the deniers ammunition to cut down a tree, so people didn’t want to look.
Among the first was Vincent Gauci, then at the UK’s Open University and now at Birmingham University. “When I was first working on this, it was poo-pooed,” he says. When Pangala, then also at The Open University, made her first measurements of trees emitting methane in the swamps of Borneo, she had the same experience. Despite finding that the trees increased standard estimates of emissions from the swamps sevenfold, “it took 18 months to get it published,” she says. “We were rejected by several journals. They just weren’t interested.” — e360Yale
So prejudice and politicized funding stopped humans from figuring what trees were really doing for ages.
The same Vincent Gauci went back and did the study higher up the trees only to find the exact opposite of what they expected and had read in peer reviewed papers:
Trees may be even bigger climate heroes than we thought
By Laura Allen, ScienceNewsExplores
Trees, too, were known to release methane, especially those growing in wet soils. These trees take up the gas from soil and emit it through their trunks.
Vincent Gauci studies methane emission from trees. He’s an environmental scientist at the University of Birmingham in England. Gauci knew trees in wet places, such as the tropics, give off methane from their trunks. Next, he wanted to study its release from trees in drier soils. He expected these upland trees would give off methane, though less than those at wetter sites. But that’s not what he found.
“We were surprised to see the exact opposite,” says Gauci. The trees were actually taking in methane. Think of how many trees there are on the planet, he notes. That could add up to a lot of methane being removed from the air.
Very little is known about these microbes, says Gauci. In fact, little is known about gas exchange in tree bark and branch surfaces. And those surfaces add up to a huge area. “If we were to unwrap all the trees and roll them flat, they would basically cover the entire Earth’s land surface,” he says.
This discovery may have doubled the amount of methane that the land absorbs (that we know about).
This research is important and eye-opening, says Kazuhiko Terazawa, a forest ecologist. He studies trees and methane at the Hokkaido Research Organization in Japan. The study’s estimates for how much methane trees might take up surprised him. If correct, he says, this means the land absorbs nearly twice as much methane as people had thought it did.
Not surprisingly, the methane was taken up a lot faster in the tropics than in colder places like England and Sweden. What took just a few minutes in Panama took 20 minutes in Europe. Naturally, bacteria work faster in the warmth. It follows then, though no one said as much, that in a warmer world, methane will be removed from the atmosphere even faster.
Using data from the four sites, the team estimated how much methane all the world’s forests may be absorbing. It might be as much as 50 million tons, they calculated. “It’s a sizable chunk,” says Gauci. That’s about as much methane as wafts from all the world’s landfills.
In preindustrial times some 50 million bison may have roamed North America emitting methane for thousands of years without reaching a “tippint point”, turning Earth into Venus or causing the sixth mass extinction.
From the press release: Trees act like a chimney…
…l
POST NOTE: There is bound to be a benefit to the trees.
For all we know, the microbes that feed on methane probably help the trees in some way. Perhaps they defend the bark from fungus, or produce some nutrient trees need, or perhaps they help in moisture control. Who knows? In which case, the trees acting like chimney-pumps for methane are just feeding the good guys in the bark higher up the tree.
If I had to bet, I’d put money on the healthy tree biome stopping fungal rot of some sort, or perhaps producing some phytochemical trees need, like a pesticide that makes chewing bark less fun for beetles.
UPDATE: And lets not forget it was only this year that we realized 90% of the latest surge in methane comes from microbes around the world, not from us.
REFERENCES
Bark-dwelling methanotrophic bacteria decrease methane emissions from trees, Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22333-7
Gauci, V., Pangala, S.R., Shenkin, A. et al. Global atmospheric methane uptake by upland tree woody surfaces. Nature (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07592-w
I’m astonished (well actually, not really ) that the CSIRO, based in a country with both sub tropical and dry land environments weren’t all over this.
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Or they were – like a pillow
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CSIRO’s mission is no longer to do objective scientific research for the benefit of Australia but to support Government propaganda with the Official Narrative. Their continued funding relies upon it.
If they were actually doing their job they would expose catastrophic anthropogenic global warming for the scam that it is.
Like Their ABC, they too cost one billion dollars of taxpayer money per year to support Government propaganda.
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” … to support Government propaganda with the Official Narrative.”
But only when we have a leftist government. Like the ABC, they steadfastly refuse to support any policy or narrative that is in any way ‘conservative’ or right wing. This is because the CSIRO is part of the leftist-controlled public service. They have their own agenda.
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ABC = 1.4 billion with effect from March 2025
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Political “science”?
Trofim Lysenko and Josef Mengele smile.
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Politics is not a science, nor even an art, anymore. It’s now a criminal activity.
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If anyone is half interested in what our esteemed science research organization (CSIRO) is doing regarding CO2 sequestration etc, do an internet search “CSIRO CarbonLock “. What you will find is a collection of voodoo science projects that read like a script for a Monty Python skit. My favorite “Developing a new algal-bacterial biofilm platform for carbon capture and storage“.
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Perfect example of junk science.
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“Seems we don’t know trees at all,
or clouds or the life enabling
value of carbon or
much at all really.”
– Science Industrial Complex.
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The main thing we don’t want to know, despite the hydrogen spin moment experiments done over 150 years and the allowance for same by major hydrogen producers, is that water has two relevant states (there are many others) that allow evaporation at ambient temperatures.
Evaporation is the major climate driver.
Para water (opposite valence electron pair spin moment) is held together with hydrogen bonds, ortho water (same valence electron spin moment) acts as a collection of molecules. Aqua with more ortho water is less polar. Pure ortho water is no longer a solute. Ortho water, just like ortho hydrogen molecules, is at a higher energy state than para water. The process is endothermic. An ortho water molecule weighs less than the atmosphere at sea level at ambient.
The strength of our planet’s magnetic field has a direct effect on the volume of ortho water on the ocean’s surface. More sun spots, the stronger the Earth’s magnetic field, the more evaporation, the more cumulus cloud in our atmosphere.
None of the climate “models” allow for evaporation or changes in the Earth’s magnetic field. We live on a water planet.
$elf-interest before science.
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If I read that right, then a magnetic field affects the amount of ortho water in a sample.
Ortho water is at a higher energy state than para water. So, if you can make more ortho water, you are either adding energy to the water OR it cools down.
So here’s a quick test of that. If I wave a magnet over some water in a sealed vessel and it doesn’t change temperature then either the theory is wrong or the process is not endothermic.
Since no one has invented a magnetic water cooler, (surely you can reverse the process by the magnetic force being added, or shielded), then I think this para/ortho water is either trivial or waffle in the real world.
Anyone else see this problem?
OR…… is this just a very expensive study on the functioning of a microwave oven? If so, how much did we pay for that?
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The volume of water changed by waving a magnet across the water would be very small. However, cycling the water through a fixed field multiple times, builds up the volume of ortho-water. The measured temperature of the aqua does not change unless there is a means of separating the water eg water vapour escape. A closed container will not change in temperature.
A water evaporation based air cooler would have an easily measured additional drop in water temperature if combined with a electromagnet as part of the flow input pipe.
As there is an energy difference between ortho and para water the simplest thing to do is measure the voltage difference between them. It is over 0.2V/square cm unaided by any charged initiator.
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And no one has commercialised this….. It makes it sound like it isn’t quite right.
When I read up on the two water types it was very apparent that the two types of water do not change from one type to another, (in regard to the fradction of each present). So how are you going to make the water more of one type that the other and where does the ‘other’ go?
I’m still of the opinion that this line of thought is next door to Schrodinger’s cat, interesting but commercially worthless.
If it had value for cooling water, then I’d love to see the energy balance equation for the magnet moving. Does the magnet feel a force from the water? If so…. doesn’t that make the water magnetic and if so, why are we only finding out about this now?
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It’s funny how all this information is coming out after TRUMP was elected who is going to blow the whole catastrophic anthropogenic global warning scam apart.
Maybe all these incompetent “scientists” who supported the scam will now want to now switch sides to keep their jobs. But they shouldn’t be allowed to. They have already proven their lack of ethics and competence.
As I said before, they should be sacked (fired) or their salaries massively reduced and they can be sent to third world countries to pick up rubbish and teach behaviour change among the locals to teach them to dispose of their rubbish correctly. It would be an effective and inexpensive foreign aid package and much better than money being given to corrupt dictators.
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Yep these are very smart people. They’re quick to work out who’s paying, and what they want for their money.
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I wouldn’t assume the swamp (which includes the climate change industry) will reverse course under Trump. All they’re doing, or some of them at least, is buying time until a real pushback against Trump and other conservatives gathers momentum. The anti-humanity movement will coalesce once again, as will the AGW gravy train. The ONLY way things might change permanently is if the powerful figures heading and directing this stuff – all around the world – are rooted out and rendered powerless. Some even deserve to go to jail, but I honestly don’t see that happening unless whatever Trump builds in this term is consolidated and expanded by subsequent conservative presidents and leaders.
It’s VERY early days, and we shouldn’t underestimate our opponents’ relentless and determined approach.
Kings of old knew this. When they defeated an opposing army, they often executed its leader AND their family and followers, because they knew that leaving them be would lead to another war down the line. It isn’t enough to win a battle, or even a war. Long term peace demands that the enemy to thoroughly annihilated and rendered powerless. This is also why viking rulers often destroyed or confiscated a beaten enemy’s fleet of longships.
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I think this exactly what Trump is hoping that Musk and Ramaswamy will achieve by beheading the Swamp Monsters.
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IIRC –
The Romans used the Tarpeian Rock as a source of reminders
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarpeian_Rock
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Dr George Van Dyne was a notable around the range science scene around 1960 – 70.
In one discussion he warned of the need to vet new research applications for “creative adaptations of researcher’s pet interests”
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I once worked at the University of S****y back in the day and two examples of that come to mind.
One was a VERY famous physics professor who went to the jungles of the Northern Territory every single year to track crocodiles. Another researcher I knew of went to camp on islands of the Great Barrier Reef every year, all in the name of “research” of course. I don’t think anyone actually believed that these projects were for “research purposes only”.
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Did oe of them happen to have “some problems with geese?”
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Yes. Magpie geese. They are apparently quite tasty.
From Goolag AI:
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Magpie geese ruined several arrempts at serious rice-growing in the NT.
And, YES, they are “tasty; cook ( bake) low and slow, best if cut into portions to even out the cooking process.
That “croc caperb” back in the 1970s was a classic research project with a pre-ordained set of findings. The “scientists” drove up and down several NT rivers and barely sighted a croc.. My informant described the general “atmosphere” as “quite convivial”. The name “Harry Messel” rings a bell
Outside of croc farms, the snapping handbags are generally not seen in abundance in daylight. They tend not to frolic about like Disney cartoon characters. After dark? Fire up the 9-inch Powabeam and then check again.
Crocodile: The “other” white meat.
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Bruce, that name “messel” rings a bell from my long ago school days……that was our Science book written by him from memory……wouldn’t think there would be too many HM’s running around in the late 60’s early 70’s ????
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Harry Messel
“That bastard thing called General Science”
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He apparently liked Barramundi fishing as well.
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Do not agree with the Magpie geese being rare. We get several pairs, along with black swans, whistling ducks, purple swamp hens, coots, hard head ducks etc on the series of small lakes behind our place in South East Qld. The Magpie Geese were there over the winter & spring period and were there in the last few years. Not there today but then we have had lots of rain which has sent many of the birds away. Still one black swan hanging around.
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I can say from experience that magpie goose is truly good eating. I’ve had it twice whilst living in Darwin. The second time it was straight out of the fridge and it still tasted amazing
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I’ll bet the one who went to the islands always took an ‘undergraduate assistant’ along as well.
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There is a lot we don’t know about tree microbiomes. My understanding is that a healthy forest will absorb methane where one under stress will be a net emitter.
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Hydrocarbons are made in trees. Trees oil has been used for thousands of years.
Capillary forces change para water to ortho water. Ortho water rises. It requires far less energy to split by photosynthesis to hydrogen atoms and interact with CO2 to form hydrocarbons and sugar/fat.
Every plant on our planet “lives” in this manner.
Climate models are a direct measure of $elf interest not science.
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What weight of new discoveries challenging and contradicting the existing AGW/MMCC pardigm is needed for the alarmists to start questioning their belief system?
Sadly they seem unable to change their thinking and manage to twist everything using a more and more tortured logic, somewhat like Man and the Babel fish in Douglas Adams’ THe hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “Oh, that was easy,” says Man(n), and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing”
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So these so-called scientists are so bright that they thought measurements taken at a meter high on the trunk, would represent the whole tree, incredible.
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They are so bright, they took the measurements from were it gave the results the payer wanted.
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As with all woke “science” you first formulate the Official Narrative and then you collect or adjust the collected data to suit the required narrative.
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Yes, the big question is, if they missed this what else have they missed, or covered up.
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Can’t trust them trees – they do multiple things. Some produce volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that react with ozone and other chemicals in the atmosphere to form secondary organic aerosols (SOAs). Some, such as the oaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Eastern USA, give off isoprene. A few chemical and physics steps later the “blue” color gives the mountains their name.
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So trees absorb Methane and C02 and convert it to the oxygen that all mammalian life need to exist and thrive. Whatever will they discover next?
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Nothing, as science is settled 😀
Is it ?
Never ever 😀
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FWIW
“Will AI devalue university degrees?”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2024/12/will-ai-devalue-university-degrees.html
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What else?
Did you know a tree gets 90% or so of its bulk from the air not the soil?
Carbon and Oxygen are the building blocks of giants like the Redwood, growing to 100m, living over 3,000 years, weighing 1,300 tons, and transpiring about 2,000 litres of water a day.
While convectional suction pumos are limited to 10m due to atmospheric pressure limitations, trees can move water 10x that easily in their Xylem.
Nature is impressive!
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That trees produced methane has been known since at least 1907. Why wasn’t the whole methane absorption and emission cycle studied?
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Some years ago, I cut a cottonwood down that was about 30 or so inches diameter. The very center gushed a liquid fountain 8 inches tall. That lasted for 20 seconds. Now you have me wondering what else was there. Next April I will have to experiment. Maybe I can borrow a meter from a professional, ’cause I don’t own a detector. 🤔
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I only wish the dopey OECD countries had spent nothing on CC over the last 30 years and if only we Aussies had been very careful and built only reliable BASE-LOAD power stns for our future use.
We would be a lot wealthier today and have a long time before we had to worry about their CC lunacy or other contrived left wing nightmares.
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Hopefully, Trumps second term will put the skids under all the Bovine Excrement we have been forcefed for decades.
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Canadian carbon removal company scores US$40M grant from Bill Gates-backed fund
A Canadian company that has received a US$40-million grant from Bill Gates’ climate solutions venture firm says its Alberta test site will be removing carbon directly from the atmosphere as early as this spring.
“This should be a proud moment for Canada. This facility in April of 2025 will be one of the first full-stack facilities in North America to actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere using renewable power, and store it underground in a deep saline aquifer,” Steel said.
https://globalnews.ca/news/10924056/deep-sky-carbon-removal-bill-gates/
Who needs trees anyway when we can have solar and wind farms.
The Canadians must be so proud.😆
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From the linked article the nature of the scam becomes clear:
Sale of “carbon credits”, another scam.
This must use an enormous amount of energy. It can’t possibly be worthwhile but for selling fake carbon credits or harvesting tax credits.
Harvesting tax credits, there it is.
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The mind boggles. Nobody in his right mind could believe this would work or be useful.
Bill Gates is no fool, he would not put money into this unless there were 20-fold benefits from subsidies. Or are they pure evil?
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Some of us oldies may remember Clint Eastwood singing “I Talk To The Trees” in the movie Paint Your Wagon. But all along the trees were talking to us and we weren’t listening. The trees were trying to tell know-all climate scientists about the tree methane cycle but “prejudice and politicized funding stopped humans from figuring what trees were really doing for ages”. (What else don’t we know?) Hopefully we’ve realized that trees solve a lot of problems for us. For example, air conditioning and climate control. They do this naturally, for free and without a political agenda.
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While China works tirelessly to restore the CO2 balance in the atmosphere beyond survival level for the global biomass, Australia is culling trees to make way for wind farms, solar farms and powerlines.
Blackout could go down in history as Australia’s most infamous environmental vandal.
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Meanwhile the Albo loony tells us that a big battery at Collie WA will supply electricity for 860,000 homes.
But Dr Ian Plimer tells Rita Panahi that the battery would only last about 2 minutes. So how do you then charge the useless battery for another 2 minutes worth? Just more of their clueless Labor / Greens BS and fra-d. And the toxic battery would be thrown into landfill after about 10 years if they’re very lucky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dVIncKu1Mk
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They must not be aware that they still have to provide power to the grid while charging said battery.
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There is no time limit on fraud….
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$650 million worth of solar, wind and a 50MW battery were made redundant in late October when base load power was cut off to Broken Hill by high winds. It resulted in a 10 day blackout with the hospital and homes running off diesel generators. It seems rolling blackouts have been occurring in the area for weeks afterwards.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-03/broken-hill-loses-power-again-after-rolling-blackouts-nsw-sa/104679408
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I also liked Ian Plimer’s comment in that video: Labor expects all our power to come from “sea breezes and sun beams”
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“Slopped, slipped and slapped”
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FWIW –
Has to do with climate change and things. So parked here for the record on how it was done –
“WATCH: Sen. Kennedy Delivers Masterclass in Destroying Climate Change Hypocrites”
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/12/19/sen-kennedy-delivers-epic-masterclass-in-destroying-climate-change-hypocrites-n4935264
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Once again we could use C14 to radiation carbon date methane which is made from the same sources as CO2. But who really cares about the truth?
Only 2.0% of CO2 is from fossil fuels.
And Agriculture is considered a big source, but haven’t cows just replaced other herbivores because we prefer cows. The reality is that we humans can only eat seeds and meat. And the meat comes from animals which can eat what we cannot eat, cellulose. But they fart methane so grass eaters are a problem. Every living thing apart from those which photosynthesise has to eat to get solar energy. Sugars, seeds, cellulose, methane.
Except cows each output tons of CO2 per year. Humans output 3 tons a year. So we need to cull the humans too.
Death to all living things seems to be the kneejerk fake science response.
Who is directing this insanity where perfectly natural animals and humans are now the problem, bringing doom to the planet?
Kill all living things. Eliminate CO2 and CH4 changes from our was perfect world. And the planet will be saved? For whom? Even communists need CO2 and CH4.
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Greenpeace once banned Chlorine. An element of the periodic table. That was insane.
Now they are banning all ‘carbon’ compounds. Which includes CO, CO2, CH4 and soon all carbon life forms including plants, insects, animals, bacteria, fungi, birds, fish, all life forms. All of Organic Chemistry and thus Biochemistry. And they call it ‘The Science’. Idiots.
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And no one asks the very simple question, if CH4 is such a common product both from all cellulose eating herbivores across a planet and industrial processes, why is it an incredibly low 0.00017% of the atmosphere?
Where is the methane going? And it looks like trees are ruining the story, but we should have known that because there is essentially NO methane in the air.
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Me, no doubt it’s the WEF. They’re the real crazy influencers. DEI, ESG and Net Zero- all the products of the WEF. They were the original group to use the phrase “climate crisis”. The UN are the lightweights and as noted via a commentator on this blog the other day , the WEF are now advisors to the UN. Old mate Klaus thinks he’s the leader of the world these days.
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Bovine excreta Bowen is making us the laughing stock of Washington, Peeking, Mosco and Israel/Middle East generally.
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The bedwetters want us to eat less meat, so presumably, more vegetables. To reduce carbon dioxide levels. If we succeed, we will then be able to grow fewer vegetables. Makes sense to me.
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If we eat more vegetables, then we will emit more methane. Oh no!
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I hope someone tells the Coles supermarket guys before their meat sales fall to zero after saying they are buying from farmers who use Bovaer.
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Could be sporting and let them find out – the hard way?
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Has gas firming snuk into Labour’s plan to make Australia a renewable energy superpower? I recently saw treasurer Chalmers casually mention this whilst rubbishing the Coalition’s nuclear option.
Anyway, it’s obvious that Labour’s plan is to continue to use gas and coal fired baseload to keep their renewable energy superpower fantasies on life-support. Meanwhile they continue to rollout their hideous eyesores of wind-farm forests, solar farms and ancillary giant battery installations.
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Just added a thought to the post.
POST NOTE: There is bound to be a benefit to the trees.
For all we know, the microbes that feed on methane probably help the trees in some way. Perhaps they defend the bark from fungus, or produce some nutrient trees need, or perhaps they help in moisture control. Who knows? In which case, the trees acting like chimney-pumps for methane are just feeding the good guys in the bark higher up the tree.
If I had to bet, I’d put money on the healthy tree biome stopping fungal rot of some sort, or perhaps producing some phytochemical trees need, like a pesticide that makes chewing bark less fun for beetles.
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Nature is full of symbiotic relationships. It’s a cornerstone of healthy ecology and demonstrates successful evolution. We all experience it directly with the bacteria in our gut. If we eat well then we get good gut flora and enjoy good health
https://a-z-animals.com/animals/lists/animals-with-a-symbiotic-relationship/
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If you are looking for some tree-based entertainment, try googling “Trees fight back”. I love the story about how umbrella thorn acacias in Africa sense when giraffes nibble on their crowns, and fight back by releasing ethylene, making the leaves bitter so the giraffes move on. But on top of this, the attacked trees send a warning to nearby trees, who also pump ethylene into their leaves. So the giraffes have learnt to ignore nearby trees and try somewhere else.
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Vote for a TREE for prime minister. The tree would exude a lot more common sense!
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We hear this over and over,
I don’t understand the claim and I have yet to read an explanation that makes any sense!
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