How Bad Is Global Warming?

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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby DrEvil » Thu Apr 28, 2016 10:40 am

Elihu » Thu Apr 28, 2016 3:19 am wrote:the onus is on you my friend to explain first why you think these taxes would be handled differently than all that have gone before, and second, why anyone should believe this time is different..... unless they just want to believe....


If they're handled like regular taxes in most civilized countries then they will be spent on infrastructure, healthcare, social security nets, schools and (gasp!) green initiatives. Most countries spend only a small fraction of their budget on the military/prison system/war on drugs (not counting the US which is so far beyond anyone else in that regard it's ridiculous).

Joke of the day: The US is the only empire that skipped the civilized phase and went straight to decadence.
"I only read American. I want my fantasy pure." - Dave
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby PufPuf93 » Thu Apr 28, 2016 11:39 am

There is rare scientific doubt that atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases are on the rise and that the current increase in such gases is rapid, anthropomorphic, and results in global climate change.

The tube is off the toothpaste regards greenhouse gases and climate change and humanity cannot fix the impact on life and environment and choices are how to mitigate and adapt to the change. A bigger catastrophe is that humanity has initiated a global mass extinction event that is at end geologic in nature. The loss of life forms and genetic variety and resilience is profound and of time scale much longer than any human endeavor.

Humanity is going to monetize mitigation and adaption. Short term monetization can be and often is counter to longer term benefit to humanity because of the nature of business opportunity. Politics is with agenda that too often is but marginally related to the environment. War is environmental and human destruction on steroids. A majority of humanity does not have the information, economic luxury, nor will for response. Scientific knowledge and models lack complexity, precision, and accuracy. The hopelessness and certainty is not a reason to ignore nor fail to respond.

I can classify increased greenhouse gas emissions. There is more than one type of greenhouse gas and they vary as to source and impact; example, CO2 versus methane.The increased emissions can be point source or non-point source; example out of a smoke stack or a pipe or from open air burning of biomass. The increased emissions can be secondary and secondary direct or indirectly caused by humans. Buffers can be lost; example loss of CO2 using organisms or carbon sinks; examples are loss of algae in the oceans or forests on the land. Finally, greenhouse gas emissions cascade out of control; example extreme methane releases related to melting of polar ice or the sum total effects of industrial and technological age humanity.

Population will be reduced and migrate as oceans rise and some traditional areas are made uninhabitable or less habitable with a less than offset of lands becoming more habitable or otherwise useful. Unless there is major change, I expect an ever greater divide between the poor and the wealthy.

I have no answers. The flesh I prefer to eat is beef and fish; the most damaging and most impacted. My lifestyle and place of residence requires a car. I do not have the wealth for major personal impact.

Regarding carbon taxation and other schemes. I would recommend carbon taxation of point source emissions from corporate endeavors and the monies dedicated to mitigation, adaptation, and related education. I believe that carbon offset credits, the securitization and marketing of carbon emissions, is a scam and even with best intentions something that is gamed.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Iamwhomiam » Thu Apr 28, 2016 11:54 am

Thank you for sharing a well written and thoughtful comment, PufPuf. I do not disagree with anything you've written.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Burnt Hill » Thu Apr 28, 2016 12:22 pm

Meet the “clean cow” technology that could help fight climate change

By Chris Mooney

July 31, 2015 

First, let’s get one thing straight. Despite what you may have heard, it is cow burps, not cow farts, that are the real climate change problem.

Here’s how it works: Cows digest their food in four-part stomachs, including a “rumen,” which is a site that allows for fermentation — a process that gives off a lot of carbon dioxide and methane gas, as microorganisms aid in the process of digestion. That gas has to get out of the cow’s body somehow — hence, burps. “Approximately 132 to 264 gallons of ruminal gas produced by fermentation are belched each day,” notes the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences.

And because we have so many cows — where would human civilization be without them? — this really adds up. Indeed, according to the EPA, so-called “enteric fermentation” in cows and other ruminant animals, like sheep and goats, contributed 26 percent of the country’s total emissions of methane, a hard-hitting greenhouse gas with much greater short term warming consequences than carbon dioxide does (though the latter packs a far greater long-term punch).

Globally, meanwhile, methane emissions from livestock are an even bigger problem. Overall, the livestock supply chain emits 44 percent of the globe’s human caused methane, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization — and a large slice of that comes from cattle’s methane burps. So anything you could do to cut down on cow belching would, literally, help save the planet.

The ideas for how to do this have been numerous — and sometimes hilarious. We’ve heard about cow backpacks, for instance, to capture methane and put it to use. And there are also more mundane solutions like simple “husbandry,” says Johan Kuylenstierna, policy director of the Stockholm Environment Institute.

“You could reduce emission intensities – i.e. emissions per kg meat or milk, by about 30% if people in a given region adopted the good practices of the top 10% of farmers that have the lowest methane emissions,” Kuylenstierna says by email, citing the FAO. This includes keeping animals healthier, giving them better diets, and managing their reproduction to lower their overall emissions.

But one fundamental way of fixing the problem involves trying to change the chemistry of what’s happening in cows’ rumens — after all, methane emissions represent lost food energy that could have gone towards cow growth or milk production. For some time now, the Dutch life sciences and materials company DSM has been pursuing such a solution, which it appropriately calls its “Clean Cow” project.




DSM is a Netherlands-based life and materials sciences giant with ten billion euros in annual sales — including 32 percent of its market in animal feed. The company has created a powder that can be added to cow feed that, it says, can produce “a reduction of over 30% in methane emissions with no negative impact on animal welfare, performance, or the amount of feed they consume.” And now, newly published science backs this idea up.

DSM worked with a top dairy sciences researcher who focuses on methane emissions, Alexander Hristov of Penn State University, in order to study the clean cow technology — what they more technically called a “methane inhibitor.” And they got promising results.

Hristov and colleagues, including several researchers from DSM, designed and carried out a trial in which 48 cows, receiving varying amounts of the inhibitor in their feed, were observed over 12 weeks. Their methane emissions were measured when they put their heads into feeding chambers which also had atmospheric measurement sensors, and also through nostril tubes attached to canisters on the backs of the cows.

The result was that the inhibitor “decreased methane emissions from high-producing dairy cows by 30%,” the research found.

“The present experiment is, to our knowledge, the first to document this effect using a methane inhibitor with potential for widespread use in the livestock industries,” notes the study. It was just published in an influential scientific journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The substance “blocks one of the steps of the enzymatic process that produces methane from carbon dioxide and hydrogen,” explains Hristov. And he notes that in that process, energy is actually being lost in the form of methane. So with less methane generated, Hristov says, the cow has more energy that can instead be converted to growth and milk production.

“In our case, that energy didn’t go to milk production, but the cows actually gained more body weight, basically the energy was directed towards body weight gain,” says Hristov. The published study discloses that the research was partially supported by DSM.

To get a further read on the research, I contacted several researchers who were not involved in the study. Ermias Kebreab, a professor in the department of animal science at the University of California, Davis, commented by email that “I think it has a real potential to reduce enteric methane emissions. However, before it can be recommended for wide use, the mode of action should be explained well and the long term impact on the animal should be studied.”

Kebreab said that he wanted to know how long the methane inhibitor lasts “in manure or soil after excretion,” and added that “research on the toxicity of the compound and residue should also be conducted.”

“It would be important to extend the study to beyond the 12 weeks of the study, say over a full season or even through multiple seasons to fully assess impact on animals first of all as well as on products quantity and quality,” added Francesco Tubiello, an expert with the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, by email.

Shown an earlier version of the research, Jeffrey Firkins, an agricultural researcher at the Ohio State University, noted that the design is powerful because it captures a “dose-response” relationship — the more of the inhibitor cows were given, the more their methane emissions appeared to go down. “Anything like this should be repeated of course, but for one experiment, it looks pretty robust,” Firkins said.

The real trick, though, may be getting farmers to adopt the technology — but according to Hugh Welsh, president of DSM North America, they may ultimately have an economic incentive for doing so.

“We’re looking to a day when there really will be a price on carbon, or where a farmer will be able to sell carbon credits for using this in his feed,” says Welsh. He says the company hopes to be able to take the inhibitor commercial by 2018.

So in sum, cows remain a major contributor to climate change, and just as with caps on tailpipe and smokestack emissions, we will need to find a way to curb that contribution. There are many contending solutions — but perhaps a key of the fix will turn on changing what’s happening in a cow’s stomach.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/07/31/scientists-say-this-clean-cow-technology-could-help-fight-climate-change/
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Iamwhomiam » Thu Apr 28, 2016 12:31 pm

Beano for cattle.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Agent Orange Cooper » Thu Apr 28, 2016 1:34 pm

Why don't they just genetically modify the cows so that they belch fairy dust instead of methane? What could go wrong?
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Nordic » Thu Apr 28, 2016 1:45 pm

We're all being caught with our pants down. Hand-wringing, arguing, while the house burns down and collapses all around us.

We'll be remembered as really fucking stupid.

And we will not be forgiven.
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Iamwhomiam » Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:15 pm

^^^^ "We'll be remembered as really fucking stupid."

We won't be remembered at all.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Nordic » Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:17 pm

A few will survive. Somewhere.
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Elihu » Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:26 pm

I apologize for my foul mouth. out of an evil heart the mouth speaketh. iam knows i love him harbor no ill will toward him.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby PufPuf93 » Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:27 pm

Twenty five or so years ago I worked on a weird (and failed) project in California's San Joaquin Valley and learned about cattle feed science. The project was a biomass digester that was able to convert specific biomass feedstock into a form that could be marketed as a component of corporate cattle feed mixes for feedlots and dairy cows.

At the time there was the new PURPA legislation that required large utilities to purchase electricity from independent producers operating alternative energy projects (biomass, wind, solar, small hydro, cogeneration). I worked on biomass (and some wind) projects; for biomass specifically fuel issues for the banks or for folks dealing with the banks or permitting. Below market rate government backed bonds were available for "offset" fuels from operating wastes that would otherwise be open-air burned or landfilled. Developers by guaranteeing to use a proportion of specific "offset" fuels obtained the low cost loans. Diverting wastes from open air burning or landfill was usually a condition of their permit as determined under CEQA in the Environmental Impact Report (CA law not federal). One problem was that the "offset" fuels were more difficult and expensive to obtain from a fuel procurement perspective.

The project was unique in that it was a natural gas fired turbine power plant that used the heat and steam in a cogeneration system to run the digester. Other biomass plants burned the wood waste directly to make steam to turn the turbines. The digester was a cutting edge machine developed in Quebec that could take trimmings from stone fruit orchards (almonds, peaches, nectarines, apricots, cherries) and make a product that was digestible by cows and provided net food value. The trimmings were open air burned. Orchard removals already had a market for fruitwood briquettes and firewood. Stem wood reduced the value of the digested wood for cow food. Other wood could be digested by the machine but the result was not suitable for food. Utilizing orchard waste was a requirement of the bond financing as noted. The green wood chips from the stone fruit trimmings cost on the order of 3 to 4 times of hog (boiler ready wood fuel) fuel because of gathering, chipping, and purity costs. The largest source of hog fuel was the then many sawmills and the competition for that hog fuel was cogeneration systems at the sawmills, new (PURPA related) independent biomass power plants, or landscaping plants.

The project developers had a nifty machine but had boxed themselves in by concentrating on the cattle food market without recognizing the existing and competing components of the cow food mixes. Also they underestimated the procurement costs of the stone fruit trimmings. We (actually me as an employee of a management consulting firm) was hired to look at what could be done to make the start up project work as it was built (about $60 million) and dead before going operational.

I took a quick study of cow food and learned of the things taught in agriculture science. Cattle nutritionists developed food mixes balancing nutrition and cost. Different mixes were made for dairy (more nutritious) versus feedlot. The food mixes were dynamic because of seasonality and market factors. The product was a bulking and energy component (sugars and fiber and some micro-nutrients but lacking in protein, fat, and micro-nutrients in general). If stem wood was chipped to decrease the cost, the food value also declined (think how branch trimmings are heavy to young phloem material). So the product could be 20% to 30% of food lot feed and somewhat less for dairy. The problem was that sugar beet pulp was already abundant and cheap, albeit seasonal, and came on a conveyor out of a processing plant. The stone fruit trimmings were also seasonal, another issue that the developers and the Canadian university scientists who designed the machine and tested outputs, failed to consider in their lust for cheap financing.

Aside from the article above, what made me recall this was some of the other matter that was allowed to be included in the cattle feed mixes, Specifically, chicken manure and feathers were the largest source of protein and IIRC were allowed to be 5% of dairy mix and 10% of feedlot mix. I have no idea if this is true today but was the case 25 years ago and standard practice. I had already gathered data on orchard acres by tree species, parcel size, removals/renewals, and by county to estimate waste wood for this and other projects. I added databases of numbers of feedlot and dairy cattle by county over time plus market cattle feed prices and price indexes for milk and beef. When cattle herds declined, the price of cattle feed declined in unit value and during times of smaller herds there was not enough market to accept the beet residue (given to the cattle feed mixers for free removal and disposal at the time).

The project got permission from the permitting agency and bond issuer to change to a mixed wood chip blend and stopped making cattle feed component replaced by a trademarked item called BioMoss. The BioMoss ressembled an ulta clean eratz peat. The owners obtained a contract with a landscaping product company in the wood products industry and the BioMoss was used in landscaping blends or as a pure mixture, wholesale by the truck or in bags as one sees at home and garden stores. I just checked online and could find no mention of BioMoss or indication that the natural gas powerplant still operates. I know that the associated landscaping product plant and the sawmills that provided residues closed in the 1990s. At one time 20 years ago one could find the BioMoss product readily in the Fresno, Sacramento, and San Francisco areas.

Cattle can eat a variety of items and additives so most certainly the agriculture food scientists can come up with blends so cows burp less methane (and I can eat my steak, London broil, burgers, and chili). I grew up with cows and knowing steaks on a first name basis but that was very long ago.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby PufPuf93 » Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:49 pm



I once gave my first wife / university sweetheart Santa wrapped Beano in a Christmas stocking and she did not think very funny but others there did. Maybe this belongs in Prank thread in Lounge as well as the rubber mouse I once put in her stew.?
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby PufPuf93 » Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:50 pm

Agent Orange Cooper » Thu Apr 28, 2016 10:34 am wrote:Why don't they just genetically modify the cows so that they belch fairy dust instead of methane? What could go wrong?


Don't make such great suggestions :whisper:
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby PufPuf93 » Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:55 pm

Nordic » Thu Apr 28, 2016 10:45 am wrote:We're all being caught with our pants down. Hand-wringing, arguing, while the house burns down and collapses all around us.

We'll be remembered as really fucking stupid.

And we will not be forgiven.


Humanity at present is a minor blip and doomed.

The species will hang around for sometime but no where near as long as the dinosaurs.

We will get our own geologic age though, the Anthropocene, only there won't be geologists around to classify and interpret.

My outlook is quite cynical and powerless and gloomy. :hug1:
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby jakell » Thu Apr 28, 2016 3:18 pm

PufPuf93 » Thu Apr 28, 2016 6:55 pm wrote:
Nordic » Thu Apr 28, 2016 10:45 am wrote:We're all being caught with our pants down. Hand-wringing, arguing, while the house burns down and collapses all around us.

We'll be remembered as really fucking stupid.

And we will not be forgiven.


Humanity at present is a minor blip and doomed.

The species will hang around for sometime but no where near as long as the dinosaurs.


We will get our own geologic age though, the Anthropocene, only there won't be geologists around to classify and interpret.

My outlook is quite cynical and powerless and gloomy. :hug1:


Pretty much the worldview described in John Michael Greer's 'The Next Ten Billion years' (link to thread on here).

The difference being that his view isn't really cynical and gloomy, but tries to explore the upsides of such a thing. These are very hard to imagine for most people, but it's really about considering the competing tropes of immortality and near term extinction and finding both wanting.

The author of the above thread has provided me (in this thread) with a label for my own views... 'Climate Fatalism'. So thanks to him for that.
" Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism"
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