Methane Cycle ignored

We do need to eat.
The world produces emissions, we do actually need greenhouse gases to survive (stops us freezing, I know no fear of that at the moment).

Livestock farms also sequester carbon as well as produce it.
The other sources I've mentioned only produce new emissions and do nothing to remove any, so arguably more important to control.
I don't deny agriculture produces emissions, I don't deny we need to do our part to reduce emissions and plenty is being done. Agri emissions in Ireland are actually reducing with a reduction of 4.6% in 2023, I don't see an end of year for 2024 but it was down another 2.4% earlier in the year.

But it is only a reasonable valid analogy if we apply all of the same conditions.

But it is different and arguably every source should be treated differently. Zero emissions are impossible, every time you exhale you are producing emissions, life with or without humans produces emissions. Feeding the population is more important than achieving net zero (even with achieving net zero, one has to accept that some emissions can be off set through sequestering carbon).


Here is an analogy.
If I have 10 acres of lush pasture with 10 cattle on it, it is both a carbon source and a carbon sink.
In Comparison 10 acres of land fill is just a source, producing far more carbon than a few cows and absorbing 0 carbon.

Certainly we count all of the carbon produced but we also need to consider what is captured and offset. And to be honest not every 10 acres will capture the same amount. Reducing the amount of waste going to that landfill will be far more beneficial than removing a few cows off of Irish pasture.

There is not much carbon being captured in the worlds oil fields, its a finite resource and one way or another we will need to end our dependence on oil, but we will still need protein.

I agree that the guy in the video has put too simplistic a view on it, but emissions need to be looked at in Net amounts not Gross.

You better explain it better so!

Ruminants create methane from the digestion of food, food which grew by capturing carbon, carbon which "may" have been created from methane previously. Even if it wasn't, methane will be converted to carbon. It doesn't keep growing with static ruminant numbers. Biogenic cycle is what you need to put into the search/AI engine of choice to learn more about it. Keeping animal numbers the same means the methane from them is the same. We've done that on this fair isle for 50 odd years.

Explain to me how cattle create new methane

Methane is a chemical compound which did not exist before. It is not the same thing as 12kg of Carbon, and 4kg of Hydrogen sitting beside one another.

If I take yeast, and barley, and ferment them together over time, would you disagree that I have created alcohol? Does that alcohol have more detrimental effect on my body than if I was to eat the yeast and wheat separately?

Also, the "steady state" argument he tries to put forth is total bullshit. It's like saying that the amount of that same alcohol in my body doesn't count as long as it's steady state. Drink 5 drinks a day for the next 20 years and compare yourself to someone who drinks water.

Just because we try to convey global warming to the public in terms of warming/cooling - that is not to say that that the steady state is irrelevant - it's just difficult to put that into meaningful terms for people. 10 Billion metric tonnes of a gas per year is just impossible for anyone to wrap their head around - so it's expressed into heating and cooling estimates - because that is the net effect of the total process.

Lastly, the CO2 Equivalent vs Petrol comparison, is again, total bullshit. This is because Methane absorbs a different spectrum of radiation to other Greenhouse Gasses, so every extra bit of Methane is worse than every extra bit of CO2.

Of course Methane existed before?

You should look up water intoxication, too much water can be fatal too.

This is because Methane absorbs a different spectrum of radiation to other Greenhouse Gasses, so every extra bit of Methane is worse than every extra bit of CO2.

Well that statement is total bullshit. Methane lasts about 12 years in the atmosphere and CO2 lasts for 100s of years, over a long period CO2 is worse for global warming and is 200 times more abundant in the atmosphere. As methane from cattle is being released in the atmosphere, the methane from 12 years ago is being destroyed, meaning that if our national herd size is not growing then we are not adding additional methane to the atmosphere.

https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/why-methane-cattle-warms-climate-differently-co2-fossil-fuels

Interestingly methane in the atmosphere started growing rapidly since 2006:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/fracking-boom-tied-to-methane-spike-in-earths-atmosphere

A 2015 study led by John Worden of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory found that methane levels were unchanged for years, but increased sharply after 2006, growing by 25 million tons a year. Using satellites and other measures they concluded that fossil fuels were responsible for between 12 and 19 million tons of this additional methane and the rest was likely biological sources.

The Howarth study adds another piece to the extremely complicated methane puzzle, Worden said in an email, declining to elaborate.

It’s unlikely that the sharp rise in global methane levels at the same time as shale oil and gas operations increased dramatically is just coincidence, said Anthony Ingraffea, a Professor of Engineering at Cornell University and a colleague of Howarth’s. The paper suggests shale gas’s chemical fingerprint offers evidence of a direct link, said Ingraffea, who reviewed an early version of the paper.

The methane in the atmosphere from cattle in Ireland is the same (more or less) now as it was 50 years ago. It is not contributing to additional warming which people seems to think. Reducing it would bring benefits in 12 years and once again, the level will level out based on the number of cattle. If methane levels are rising in Ireland, it's not due to cattle.

I didn't say that at all. I said every "extra" bit of methane.

 every extra bit of Methane is worse than every extra bit of CO2

Methane, is ballpark 100 times more effective at trapping infrared radiation than CO2, and additionally it does so at different wavelengths, so one extra tonne of Methane is far worse than one extra tonne of CO2.