their actually working on ways to make cows/pigs that... produce less "gasses"... fanscinating I know <.<Originally Posted by SnuggleySoft
but yeah livestock do produce alot of it.
their actually working on ways to make cows/pigs that... produce less "gasses"... fanscinating I know <.<
but yeah livestock do produce alot of it.
Our greatest glory is not in never falling,
but in rising every time we fall.
Hah! Didn't know that.
the major problem are sheep and cows actually. due to their digestive system, they produce tons of methane, which is way stronger ghg (as mentioneŽd by some1 else earlier) than co2. so now bio-researchers look for bacteria that can work in a sheep to dijest all the food without producing methane. a different research is finding a low-methane diet.
just another interesting fact- rice fields are one of the major methane producing areas in the world. there is some evidence that these have been warming up the earth ever since the first people in asia strted settling down and cultivating rice.
just saying that we shouldn't blame just westerna world/us/third wolrd... no singling out. we're all contributing to the ghg, sometimes in mesterious and indirect ways. so we should all work together on reducing the emissions
Sobriety is for those who can't handle drugs
I heard a report on pigs being worse because of mass pig farms and how they deal with the waste.
the biggest human contributor is automobiles.
of course animals will breath and produce CO2, but thats a part of nature's CO2 cycle. if we kill all cows and stop humans from breathing out CO2 yes we would cut the CO2 level by a large portion, but that doesnt justify people polluting it
as for methane, again im only 90% sure of this and do correct me if im wrong, but i think the bigger problem with that is it gets oxidized in the atmosphere and contribute to ozone layer destruction, which is a seperate but more serious issue imo.
No, that's CFC's. Methane does get oxidized, but what happens is that it turns into CO2 and water.
My bad, I looked it up, and Cows are worse. But I think that Pigs may be second... >_>
Thermophillic bacteria cause CH4 and CO2 (and one other gas I forgot, and lost the site...) to form in the mass pig waste dumps. Its made worse because pigs release ungodly amounts of pig ****.
Can you find a site to support the sheep thing? I'm not denying it could be true but when I looked up livestock greenhouse emissions usually only pigs and cows were mentioned and I couldn't get any info on sheep.
ok cows and pigs do not "cause" global warming. what they produce contribute to the ~300ppm of CO2 that was SUPPOSE to exist in the atmosphere. its those CO2 + other similar gases that keeps our planet surface warm and enable it to substain life
however fossil fuel burning and other human influences are whats causing the 150~200 ADDITIONAL ppm of CO2 on top of whats already there, and THATS "global warming"
im sure if ppl had data on how much CO2 ppl breath out, it will be one of the main "CO2 contributor" as well. but beating on nature to make room for us to pollute is not the solution.
Last edited by waheed; 25-11-2008 at 04:03.
@ ralgha: come out of the dark ages please. we do have a couple of scientists on this forum who actually work with the data without being biased
@ snugley: sorry sheep do stand somewhat low on the 'danger animals' list. the article i read was about australia and new zealand where sheep quite outnumber the other stock. it is more of a local problem i guess
@ waheadi really hope that's true. what itches me is that pigs and sheep and cows nowadays are really a lot more than nature originally predicted, just because we've shaped their population for the past thousands of yearswhat they produce contribute to the ~300ppm of CO2 that was SUPPOSE to exist in the atmosphere
i do believe that these animals are more 'dangerous' for the other gasses (other than co2) their 'life stile' releases when u add the effect of each gas to the amount released.
i agree we shouldn't beat on nature to have more space for polution
there's one cool thing though about all this manure- u can make energy out of it. usually the manure is stored in special facilities where the gas is released in controlled environment. it is then usually burnt to produce electricity/heat energy for the needs of the farms. what u are left is slightly less greenhouse gasses and u don't burden the rest of the electrical network. similar approach is used at huge landfills where methane is trapped, bottled and sold, but this is a bit off the topic
guys, please check out the definition of global warming in some proper scientific journal because extra co2 is not global warming. there are many factors and processes that warm us globally, but for that u can check out some of the earlier posts here
Last edited by Uncle; 25-11-2008 at 09:34.
Sobriety is for those who can't handle drugs
hmm can manuvers actually produce large quantities of electricity tho? im under the impression that its only enough to power farms/greenhouses, in which case i personally believe geothermal is the better solution
regardless, between driving electric cars and not eating beef, i would rather drive electric cars :p i also dont like the idea of genetically messing with cows, as it can potentially introduce diseases. or if drugs are used for that purpose, and those drugs get into the water system... (again, correct me if im wrong, but im pretty sure cows produce methane because of the specific bacterias in their intestines. i wouldnt be surprised if the "treatment" is some kind of drug to kill/manipulate them. and if drugs are used, its likely some kind of water-soluable aromatics, which will last for a long long long long time in nature before dissociating.) its a lot easier to reduce CO2 emission from factories and cars than to make cows that dont fart, especially when we DO have the technology to do the formal and $$ is whats preventing us
Last edited by waheed; 26-11-2008 at 03:59.
I don't believe in Cow Farts. It's a myth.
hot girls dont fart.
its true.
ill wont tie that too co2/methane emissions...
Oil consumption is only a small contributor to the co2 level increase.
1 Its also "fuelled" by deforestation/ turning acres into agricultural land
2 Melting of permafrost tundra which can release it's stored CO2.
3 Drying out of swamps, where also CO2 is stored and now released.
4 Carbon stored on ocean shores is released if water temperatures rise.
Do increasing temperatures cause Co2 levels to rise; yes (2 & 3 4)
So one can say Co2 levels follow an increase in temperature, but they also induce it.
It won't be for the lack of oil that pushes auto makers to a new source of energy, it will be policy, pubic pressure, and new technologies. However, on a side note, each technology that we have adopted has its pros and cons. We started off with wood, moved to coal and then to oil (each emits massive amounts of pollution). We've seen Nuclear come into play yet it has its radioactive wastes to contend with. Wind on large scale changes local air patterns due to vertical mixing, solar panels need oil to be created and require large areas (change in landscape) and the next burgeoning energy - hydrogen will increase the demand for water (more than what is currently is).
There is no amount of CO2 that is supposed to be the atmosphere. The atmosphere is in a constant state of flux. The cretaceous for example shows evidence of CO2 concentrations roughly 3-4 times what is current today. Yet going to the Silurian-Ordivician glaciation we find that CO2 concentrations were roughly 10-15 times higher than we are experiencing now. But then when you look at the Permian and Carboniferous you find that CO2 levels are generally where we sit today.
Last edited by <<< Epi >>>; 17-12-2008 at 17:38.
"solar panels need oil to be created and require large areas (change in landscape)"
At least for solar, individuals can do a lot to reduce the space needed for panels. Everyone has a roof on their house, no? Yes, I know that daily conditions cause the energy produced to fluctuate, but it's a hell of a lot better than relying on pulling 100% of your power from the grid 100% of the time. It would also take that many fewer panel arrays in the desert to use solar on a widespread basis and reduce the need for mass produced coal, oil and nuclear energy.
I don't think anyone is fooling themselves that we will be 100% free of oil anytime soon, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't take steps in individual areas. I mean, even if cars or electricity use something else, there's always plastic, lubricants or anything else you can think of. But whether or not we can agree on the specifics, no one is arguing that our fossil fuel use and related pollution is good, so why not do what we can to cut back? Not having "THE answer" to oil doesn't mean we should mock any suggestions or progress.
(PS- I'm not saying the previous post was mocking alternatives, reading it just brought to mind some of the many times when others have..)
For those interested in reading a scientifically peer-reviewed paper on the topic of Global Warming from someone who is steadfastly against the theory, have at it. The link will send you to the American Physical Society website, to a paper written by Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley. He was an adviser to Margret Thatcher while she was in office and quite an intelligent man. To be honest his work was quite beyond my somewhat limited understanding, but I found his Conclusion to be quite telling.
"Even if temperature had risen above natural variability, the recent solar Grand Maximum may have been chiefly responsible. Even if the sun were not chiefly to blame for the past half-century’s warming, the IPCC has not demonstrated that, since CO2 occupies only one-ten-thousandth part more of the atmosphere that it did in 1750, it has contributed more than a small fraction of the warming. Even if carbon dioxide were chiefly responsible for the warming that ceased in 1998 and may not resume until 2015, the distinctive, projected fingerprint of anthropogenic “greenhouse-gas” warming is entirely absent from the observed record. Even if the fingerprint were present, computer models are long proven to be inherently incapable of providing projections of the future state of the climate that are sound enough for policymaking. Even if per impossibilethe models could ever become reliable, the present paper demonstrates that it is not at all likely that the world will warm as much as the IPCC imagines. Even if the world were to warm that much, the overwhelming majority of the scientific, peer-reviewed literature does not predict that catastrophe would ensue. Even if catastrophe might ensue, even the most drastic proposals to mitigate future climate change by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide would make very little difference to the climate. Even if mitigation were likely to be effective, it would do more harm than good: already millions face starvation as the dash for biofuels takes agricultural land out of essential food production: a warning that taking precautions, “just in case”, can do untold harm unless there is a sound, scientific basis for them. Finally, even if mitigation might do more good than harm, adaptation as (and if) necessary would be far more cost-effective and less likely to be harmful."
"In short, we must get the science right, or we shall get the policy wrong. If the concluding equation in this analysis (Eqn. 30) is correct, the IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity must have been very much exaggerated. There may, therefore, be a good reason why, contrary to the projections of the models on which the IPCC relies, temperatures have not risen for a decade and have been falling since the phase-transition in global temperature trends that occurred in late 2001. Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC’s estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no “climate crisis” at all. At present, then, in policy terms there is no case for doing anything. The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing."
I personally would be what some call a "global warming denier" though I'm open to reading and learning more about the issue. As for temperature readings, I found this little piece from Daily Tech interesting, as well as the UK Telegraph article for different reasons. To my mind, the science is still out on the matter, though reality may well end up being a shade of gray.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote