Reduction in Greenhouse Gases

gozunda

sameoldname wrote: »

Anything more solid than industry sponsored tweets?

Here
http://www.vancouverhumanesociety.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/Livestock-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions.-The-importance-of-getting-the-numbers-right.pdf

https://newint.org/blog/2016/02/10/cowspiracy-stampeding-in-the-wrong-direction

Afaik various research has also shown that emissions have the potential to be reduced with new breeds of cattle that produce less methane, and recently developed food additives that reduce dairy cow emissions by 30% without affecting milk yields.

sameoldname

gozunda wrote: »

Here
http://www.vancouverhumanesociety.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/Livestock-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions.-The-importance-of-getting-the-numbers-right.pdf

https://newint.org/blog/2016/02/10/cowspiracy-stampeding-in-the-wrong-direction

Afaik various research has also shown that emissions have the potential to be reduced with new breeds of cattle that produce less methane, and recently developed food additives that reduce dairy cow emissions by 30% without affecting milk yields.

The first link is talking about a 2009 report that I didn't mention. The 2009 report was saying the 2006 UN paper was too conservative in it's estimates and wasn't arguing against the results found in 2006.

The second one is basically saying that changing your diet to reduce meat and dairy isn't enough to tackle climate change alone and unless international governments as a whole agree to tackle emissions in all areas there won't be much change.
I skimmed the report he claimed as a more reasonable source of information and in the section titled "Methane" on page 77 the number claimed was "20% of global emissions" based on a 2001 IPCC report. Note that it did not say 20% of man-made emissions but 20% of total global output of methane. It's an older report though so take from that what you will.

I agree that by all accounts there is a lot of research and success with reducing methane output of livestock but at the rate of increase in consumption it won't be enough to offset future growth or at best it'll keep us where we are.

patsy_mccabe

You gotta love how everyone is now talking about methane emissions from agriculture and completely ignoring the huge elephant in the room, i.e the burning of fossil fuels.

sameoldname

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

You gotta love how everyone is now talking about methane emissions from agriculture and completely ignoring the huge elephant in the room, i.e the burning of fossil fuels.

It's in the news every day no?

patsy_mccabe

sameoldname wrote: »

It's in the news every day no?

No.

sameoldname

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

No.

Well, no one is treating it like the elephant in the room. Not for the past 2 decades anyway.

jhenno78

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

You gotta love how everyone is now talking about methane emissions from agriculture and completely ignoring the huge elephant in the room, i.e the burning of fossil fuels.

Other types of emissions are talked about all the time, and actions taken. Even in the last 10-20 years we produce a lot more sustainable energy, use less coal/peat.
Our recycling rates are much-much higher and there's starting to be genuine pressure on companies to reduce waste produced.
People are moving to electric cars. A metro is finally getting built in dublin. New homes have way more insulation and old ones are getting upgraded etc.
It's everywhere.

Why has it been all about methane here?
well, it's a farming forum and that's what the question was about.

Upstream

Never mind industry sponsored tweets from either big Ag or big Pharma.

If you want to know about how agriculture can help solve the problem, the basics are simple enough. The problem is that everyone who looks at agriculture from an artificial fertilizer mindset gets everything backwards and puts the blame in all the wrong places. Cows are a problem, farmers are a problem, grass doesn’t grow without chemical N, P and K, the environment is going down the tubes and we need massive industrial corporations to feed the world sterile packaged junk.

Check out the how the Soil Food Web works instead. Elaine Ingham on Youtube gives a good explanation of how it works. Every farmer should know this. If you don't, look it up.
Short version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wO5WwOaPKE
Long version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H60ritjag

In a healthy pasture, annual plants like grasses release as much as 60% of the carbon they produce as root exudates. The microbes use this carbon to feed the plant and give it all the minerals it needs to help it grow and to make things like glomalin, the soil glue that gives good soil it's structure and texture. It's a very stable way to sequester carbon too.

Farming using regenerative agricultural techniques, has the potential to heal the environment, improve water quality, rebuild damaged soils and sequester carbon at a tremendous rate. The back of the envelope calculation is that if every farmer practiced regenerative agriculture, it would take about 8 years to mop up ALL the excess carbon that has been released since the beginning of the industrial period and store it in our soils. That's the rough calculations but still - 8 years to halt climate change, 8 years

gozunda

sameoldname wrote: »

The first link is talking about a 2009 report that I didn't mention. The 2009 report was saying the 2006 UN paper was too conservative in it's estimates and wasn't arguing against the results found in 2006The second one is basically saying that changing your diet to reduce meat and dairy isn't enough to tackle climate change alone and unless international governments as a whole agree to tackle emissions in all areas there won't be much change.I skimmed the report he claimed as a more reasonable source of information and in the section titled "Methane" on page 77 the number claimed was "20% of global emissions" based on a 2001 IPCC report. Note that it did not say 20% of man-made emissions but 20% of total global output of methane. It's an older report though so take from that what you will.
I agree that by all accounts there is a lot of research and success with reducing methane output of livestock but at the rate of increase in consumption it won't be enough to offset future growth or at best it'll keep us where we are.

Not correct. I gave those two references to show the absolute mayhem and conflict which exists between the various factions (including the UN) within the greenhouse gas emissions debate.

In the first paper we have an analysis of reports on greenhouse gas emissions by various authors directly in conflict with each other. The paper concludes that this is a significant part of the problem. The paper is titled Livestock and greenhouse gas emissions: The importance of getting the numbers right and concludes

The magnitude of the discrepancy between the Goodland and Anhang paper (2006) and widely recognized estimates of GHG from livestock illustrates the need to provide the climate change community and policy makers with accurate emissions estimates and information about the link between agriculture and climate

Please note that the quote you give was cut short in your comment and should read
"Goodland and Anhang (2009) claim that emissions from land use and land use change induced by the livestock sector have been grossly underestimated. While estimates from FAO (2006) may be conservative in many aspects, the argument and analysis presented by the authors raises some questions.. The report then goes into the problems with these 'questions' in detail.

The second article dealt with the absolute and evidential use of made up figures to bolster the false argument that agriculture allegedly was the prime agent of ghg emissions. The figure had been presented by Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang in their 2009 paper which falsely claimed that livestock were responsible for 51% of ghg emissions was not only shown to be complete baloney by researchers including some vegans who were frankly embarrassed by this use of overt and false data in support of a plant based agenda. The author states that "There’s only one problem with this eye-grabbing stat: it’s a load of manure. Emissions from livestock agriculture – including the methane from animals’ digestive systems, deforestation, land use change and energy use – make up around 15 per cent of global emissions, not 51 per cent". 

K.G.

a couple of years ago i saw a ted talk by a fella that was involved in trying to stop the desertification in africa in 60 s and 70s.the policey was to cull animal numbers but the situation got even worse despite numerous culls.over time they realised that tbe animals were the secret to the problem but to.adopt grazing .anagement practices which involved using the skills of the native tribes.the situation improved once they started this strategy and they are increasing numbers.worth bearing this type of thinking in mind when dealing with greenhouse gases.on a micro level we saw what happened the mountains when it was decided to take the sheep off the hills.

K.G.

sameoldname wrote: »

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

You gotta love how everyone is now talking about methane emissions from agriculture and completely ignoring the huge elephant in the room, i.e the burning of fossil fuels.

It's in the news every day no?

must have.missed that when leo said he was cutting on his travelling🀔

Buford T. Justice XIX

gozunda wrote: »

Not correct. I gave those two references to show the absolute mayhem and conflict which exists between the various factions (including the UN) within the greenhouse gas emissions debate.

In the first paper we have an analysis of reports on greenhouse gas emissions by various authors directly in conflict with each other. The paper concludes that this is a significant part of the problem. The paper is titled Livestock and greenhouse gas emissions: The importance of getting the numbers right and concludes

The magnitude of the discrepancy between the Goodland and Anhang paper (2006) and widely recognized estimates of GHG from livestock illustrates the need to provide the climate change community and policy makers with accurate emissions estimates and information about the link between agriculture and climate

Please note that the quote you give was cut short in your comment and should read
"Goodland and Anhang (2009) claim that emissions from land use and land use change induced by the livestock sector have been grossly underestimated. While estimates from FAO (2006) may be conservative in many aspects, the argument and analysis presented by the authors raises some questions.. The report then goes into the problems with these 'questions' in detail.

The second article dealt with the absolute and evidential use of made up figures to bolster the false argument that agriculture allegedly was the prime agent of ghg emissions. The figure had been presented by Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang in their 2009 paper which falsely claimed that livestock were responsible for 51% of ghg emissions was not only shown to be complete baloney by researchers including some vegans who were frankly embarrassed by this use of overt and false data in support of a plant based agenda. The author states that "There’s only one problem with this eye-grabbing stat: it’s a load of manure. Emissions from livestock agriculture – including the methane from animals’ digestive systems, deforestation, land use change and energy use – make up around 15 per cent of global emissions, not 51 per cent".

In fairness, though, they did get the numbers right in the end.


Even if they were backwards:pac:

Brown Podzol

K.G. wrote: »

a couple of years ago i saw a ted talk by a fella that was involved in trying to stop the desertification in africa in 60 s and 70s.the policey was to cull animal numbers but the situation got even worse despite numerous culls.over time they realised that tbe animals were the secret to the problem but to.adopt grazing .anagement practices which involved using the skills of the native tribes.the situation improved once they started this strategy and they are increasing numbers.worth bearing this type of thinking in mind when dealing with greenhouse gases.on a micro level we saw what happened the mountains when it was decided to take the sheep off the hills.

Allan Savory

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI

Birdnuts

Our energy policies are a mess in this country - thats where the focus should be. We have semi states like Coillte and BNM owning/controlling some of the richest Carbon storing soils potential in the country ie. our peatlands. Instead of restoring them to their full potential, the fat cats there are hiving off huge areas for windfarms that have to be backed up 24/7 by conventional power plants like coal burning Moneypoint, all of which are subsidized by the publics every growing energy bills. These windfarms will then be flogged to foreign vulture funds according to a piece in todays Irish Times via stealth privitization of state land

Indeed I looked at my recent energy bills last month and I'm now paying more in standing charges and other levies then the actual number of units I use:mad::(

Say my name

From Tullamore.

A different take on things.

https://youtu.be/ZLzFC_ZCmgE

All the clips are available from that YouTube upload host.

Buford T. Justice XIX

And for something completely different...
https://twitter.com/TheSpinoffTV/status/1095149608181719040?s=19

Say my name

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

And for something completely different...
https://twitter.com/TheSpinoffTV/status/1095149608181719040?s=19

But theoretical and please give me not one billion but just twenty five million.

God this species loves their shiny lights. :rolleyes:

gozunda

In all this discussion, imo there is something missing in all the wailing and hair pulling - and that is the proportionate production of green house gases worldwide.

Interesting article here which puts some of this into perspective.

China's intensive greening efforts, however, have been vastly overshadowed by civilization's still-rising carbon emissions -- which at the current pace likely won't even peak for another decade. And China is largely to blame. The booming industrial giant's carbon-spewing coal factories are far outpacing its expansive solar farms and greening efforts. It's the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases on Earth.

https://mashable.com/article/greening-china-india-nasa.amp/?europe=true

Tbh there's little or no level playing field in looking at these issues. We can tie ourselves up in knots about this or we can look at the whole picture.

Farmer

A more balanced article from a non farmer in today's Indo on the role of beef

https://m.independent.ie/business/farming/comment/tassos-haniotis-if-we-want-to-be-politically-correct-about-climate-change-we-had-better-start-by-being-factually-correct-37816712.html

Upstream

Farmer wrote: »

A more balanced article from a non farmer in today's Indo on the role of beef

https://m.independent.ie/business/farming/comment/tassos-haniotis-if-we-want-to-be-politically-correct-about-climate-change-we-had-better-start-by-being-factually-correct-37816712.html

Great article, thanks

Timmaay

I listened to a very interesting Npr Ted radio hour on Newstalk tonight, irrigation accounts for the single biggest use of freshwater in the world, in the Southwest of the USA they are irrigating thousands of acres of Alfalfa, which then gets shipped over to both the middle East and Asia to be fed to dairycows. Ireland is by far one of the best locations to produce milk, especially if we can reduce our nitrogen dependance with the use of clovers etc, and we should be aiming to maximise the milk output from existing Irish grassland instead of other crazy methods of producing milk like with the Alfalfa.

Water John

A lot of dairy farmers have moved away, and been encouraged to do so, because of clover having a late spring.

Gawddawggonnit

Timmaay wrote: »

I listened to a very interesting Npr Ted radio hour on Newstalk tonight, irrigation accounts for the single biggest use of freshwater in the world, in the Southwest of the USA they are irrigating thousands of acres of Alfalfa, which then gets shipped over to both the middle East and Asia to be fed to dairycows. Ireland is by far one of the best locations to produce milk, especially if we can reduce our nitrogen dependance with the use of clovers etc, and we should be aiming to maximise the milk output from existing Irish grassland instead of other crazy methods of producing milk like with the Alfalfa.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews//farming/we-depend-two-times-more-on-imported-animal-feed-than-our-neighbours-832683.html

Panch18

Timmaay wrote: »

I listened to a very interesting Npr Ted radio hour on Newstalk tonight, irrigation accounts for the single biggest use of freshwater in the world, in the Southwest of the USA they are irrigating thousands of acres of Alfalfa, which then gets shipped over to both the middle East and Asia to be fed to dairycows. Ireland is by far one of the best locations to produce milk, especially if we can reduce our nitrogen dependance with the use of clovers etc, and we should be aiming to maximise the milk output from existing Irish grassland instead of other crazy methods of producing milk like with the Alfalfa.

The sooner they dramatically reduce, or ban, irrigation of crops in certain parts of the world the better it will be for Irish farmer of all types

We need to actively push for this as Irish farmers. They are growing crops in places that should never be growing crops and this has huge environmental consequences, far worse than anything we are doing here in Ireland

bogman_bass

gozunda wrote: »

Not correct. I gave those two references to show the absolute mayhem and conflict which exists between the various factions (including the UN) within the greenhouse gas emissions debate.

In the first paper we have an analysis of reports on greenhouse gas emissions by various authors directly in conflict with each other. The paper concludes that this is a significant part of the problem. The paper is titled Livestock and greenhouse gas emissions: The importance of getting the numbers right and concludes

The magnitude of the discrepancy between the Goodland and Anhang paper (2006) and widely recognized estimates of GHG from livestock illustrates the need to provide the climate change community and policy makers with accurate emissions estimates and information about the link between agriculture and climate

Please note that the quote you give was cut short in your comment and should read
"Goodland and Anhang (2009) claim that emissions from land use and land use change induced by the livestock sector have been grossly underestimated. While estimates from FAO (2006) may be conservative in many aspects, the argument and analysis presented by the authors raises some questions.. The report then goes into the problems with these 'questions' in detail.

The second article dealt with the absolute and evidential use of made up figures to bolster the false argument that agriculture allegedly was the prime agent of ghg emissions. The figure had been presented by Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang in their 2009 paper which falsely claimed that livestock were responsible for 51% of ghg emissions was not only shown to be complete baloney by researchers including some vegans who were frankly embarrassed by this use of overt and false data in support of a plant based agenda. The author states that "There’s only one problem with this eye-grabbing stat: it’s a load of manure. Emissions from livestock agriculture – including the methane from animals’ digestive systems, deforestation, land use change and energy use – make up around 15 per cent of global emissions, not 51 per cent". 

Goodman’d and Anhang was never a peer reviewed paper even though it it is often quoted like it was. It was a magazine article in World Watch magazine

Farmer

Article in today's Indo looking at the logic around why Ireland should not be carbon taxed on agricultural exports

Saudi Arabia produces oil, which is consumed in Ireland. The carbon emissions are counted as part of the Irish total.
Ireland produces dairy products which it sells to Saudi Arabia. The carbon emissions, you would imagine, count as part of the Saudi total. And you would be wrong. They also count as part of the Irish total, so there is pressure to constrain the livestock industry in Ireland.

Worth reading it all

https://m.independent.ie/business/farming/comment/colm-mccarthy-punishing-ireland-will-only-send-carbon-emissions-higher-still-37823746.html

Water John

Yes we need accurate measurements in agriculture, esp around sequesration. You really can't set targets and methods to get there, otherwise.
The NFU in the UK are aiming for being GHG neutral by 2040, though not all in the industry agree.

https://www.fginsight.com/news/news/nfu-calls-for-net-zero-agriculture-emissions-by-2040-77113

Upstream

Farmer wrote: »

Article in today's Indo looking at the logic around why Ireland should not be carbon taxed on agricultural exports



Worth reading it all

https://m.independent.ie/business/farming/comment/colm-mccarthy-punishing-ireland-will-only-send-carbon-emissions-higher-still-37823746.html

He's defending us, but he has missed the most important point of all.

When he talks about carbon emissions, he's only talking about half the puzzle. He doesn't mention carbon sequestration.

Well managed livestock have the potential to help grasslands build soil and sequester carbon at a rate far greater than the emissions of the livestock that graze it. So much so that global warming can actually be reversed with regenerative agricultural practices.

Beef farmers will continue to be demonised until people realise this. Ireland, with our low input, grass-based, family farm model has a big role to play.

gozunda

bogman_bass wrote: »

Goodman’d and Anhang was never a peer reviewed paper even though it it is often quoted like it was. It was a magazine article in World Watch magazine

Btw the bit in bold was a direct quote from the link I provided and was pointing out just how wrong that pairs 'findings' really were.

yosemitesam1

Water John wrote: »

Yes we need accurate measurements in agriculture, esp around sequesration. You really can't set targets and methods to get there, otherwise.
The NFU in the UK are aiming for being GHG neutral by 2040, though not all in the industry agree.

https://www.fginsight.com/news/news/nfu-calls-for-net-zero-agriculture-emissions-by-2040-77113

We have to acknowledge the carbon currently being lost from grassland soils if we're to move forward and reverse it.