farmer on a bike
Member
I’m sure my wording isn’t perfect, by unintended I mean that a farm increasing cow numbers from 100 to 103 cows would roughly double it’s predicted warming impact from enteric methane compared to GWP100 as a business in that year under GWP*, 6 extra cows would treble it and 9 extra quadruple it as i understand it. This seems crazy as we know it is biogenic methane and should just be ignored.Odd use of the words unintended and issues. It’s simply a far better way to measure actual warming impact rather than "emissions" which does no such thing, it’s a proxy which doesn’t actually work as such. You perhaps meant to phrase that better?
I see what you’re saying about fossil methane, although fossil and biogenic methane have different warming values which take into account where the CO2 ends up. The AHDB eventually managed to do some calculations after an almighty prod from some of us, and created a monster doing what you‘re pointing to. They showed that fossil and landfill reductions have massively reduced our national footprint, creating idiotic numbers. Ghey were supposed to show how benign UK ruminants are but completely ballsed it up.
As a total industry that gradually reduces cow numbers for similar milk production the result of GWP* seems fine, but not on an individual business basis and I not sure how you sort that anomaly.
Thanks for pulling up the AHDB piece as it does confirm I have understood the issue correctly.