Methane

[Aspiring Peasants]

The fact the GWP100 metric has been shown by the IPCC to be unfit for purpose makes studies like this unscientific and spurious. This needs publicising

 

[Jonp]

https://www.savemoneycutcarbon.com/...ume-enough-electricity-to-power-800000-homes/

It is estimated that the supermarket fridges consume around 1% of the country’s electricity – enough to power 800,000 homes.



https://harksys.com/blog/the-true-running-cost-of-a-supermarket/#:~:text=According to research, supermarkets nationwide,per year.

According to research, supermarkets nationwide consume approximately 3 percent of the UK’s electricity production. Compared to other types of commercial buildings, supermarkets usually have one of the highest specific energy consumptions. For larger stores energy intensity can reach 700 kWh/sqm. per year.



edit: For comparison:

https://ukerc.rl.ac.uk/pdf/AC0401_Final.pdf

Our analysis further indicates that agriculture emits around 1.19 million tonnes of carbon as a result of direct energy use, which is equivalent to 0.8% of total UK emissions. This is relatively small when put in the context of emissions for the whole food chain.

DTI, in its Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES), publishes “Final Energy Consumption” data for a range of industries based on returns made by energy suppliers1 . From this it appears that direct energy use in agriculture accounts for just 0.6% of the UK’s annual energy use.

Note that that is energy use in all its forms - electricity, gas, diesel - not just electricity.
So, yes, Tesco's freezers burn more electricity than does all of UK ag.
Anyone who thinks that their farm is in any way contributing to UK GHG emissions needs to get out more.
When you are out, go and stand on the nearest motorway bridge, make a note of every food lorry that passes underneath you for an hour, then go home and do some maths on the environmental impact of hauling identical food items in opposite directions.

The southern boundary of my farm is the M4 motorway. I sit on my hill looking down on the sheep quietly munching away and down a little further to see the cows munching away. The motorway is a constant stream of lorries and cars sometimes moving slower than I can walk. Overhead are the contrails of countless jets and the buzz of helicopters.
No chemicals put on my land (except fly spray and as little wormer as I can get away with). Occasionally fire up the the old Zetor and burn £20 of fuel.
Yeh my animals and my farm are the problem.

 

[Henarar]

The southern boundary of my farm is the M4 motorway. I sit on my hill looking down on the sheep quietly munching away and down a little further to see the cows munching away. The motorway is a constant stream of lorries and cars sometimes moving slower than I can walk. Overhead are the contrails of countless jets and the buzz of helicopters.
No chemicals put on my land (except fly spray and as little wormer as I can get away with). Occasionally fire up the the old Zetor and burn £20 of fuel.
Yeh my animals and my farm are the problem.

Its what they want to believe so they can carry on doing as they like

 

[tepapa]

Its what they want to believe so they can carry on doing as they like

Can you imagine explaining to a population/ civilization that it's actually their lifestyles that's causing climate change and unless your traveling on foot or horse then your traveling is unsustainable, unless you have 3 layers on to keep warm instead of central heating it's unsustainable. If your buying pointless plastic crap from chy-na or more clothes because fashion has changed then your lifestyle is unsustainable.

 

[Henarar]

Can you imagine explaining to a population/ civilization that it's actually their lifestyles that's causing climate change and unless your traveling on foot or horse then your traveling is unsustainable, unless you have 3 layers on to keep warm instead of central heating it's unsustainable. If your buying pointless plastic crap from chy-na or more clothes because fashion has changed then your lifestyle is unsustainable.

well you just explained it to me and I am part of the population, so yes I can imagine someone doing it but not me, not to good at public speaking,

 

[delilah]

Yeh my animals and my farm are the problem

The greatest frustration, for me, being that too many within the industry are happy to go around saying precisely that.

 

[Raider112]

Friday's Farmers Guardian front page
IPCC report has officially recognised it is wrong to assess methane in the same way as CO2. That the carbon counting metric is unfit for assessing the impact of short lived greenhouse gases such as methane. That net zero warming from methane can be achieved through a 0.3% emissions reduction year on year in existing herds.

There is a lot more which vindicates what those with common sense have been thinking for years

The NFU should be shouting this from the rooftops. Funnily I haven't heard the report which is the first major review of climate science since 2013 discussed on the BBC either

So this is properly official then? Have they came out and announced it as fact or have they just backed down and let us work it out for ourselves?
This is a game changer if we can quote the IPCC as the other side have used it as gospel truth for years. Imagine being able to say to them that they are using the old data that the IPCC have now corrected.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

So this is properly official then? Have they came out and announced it as fact or have they just backed down and let us work it out for ourselves?
This is a game changer if we can quote the IPCC as the other side have used it as gospel truth for years. Imagine being able to say to them that they are using the old data that the IPCC have now corrected.

This is what the report actually says around assessing methane and my personal layman's version of it:


Chapter 7 pages 123 to 127.

there is high confidence that multi-gas emission pathways with the same time dependence of aggregated CO2 equivalent emissions estimated from standard approaches, such as weighting emissions by their GWP-100 values, rarely lead to the same estimated temperature outcomes..

Contributions to CO2 formation are included for methane depending on whether or not the source originates from fossil carbon, thus methane from fossil fuel sources has slightly higher emission metric values than that from non-fossil sources.

Following AR5, this report does not recommend an emission metric because the appropriateness of the choice depends on the purposes for which gases or forcing agents are being compared. Emission metrics can facilitate the comparison of effects of emissions in support of policy goals. They do not define policy goals or targets but can support the evaluation and implementation of choices within multi-component policies (e.g., they can help prioritise which emissions to abate). The choice of metric will depend on which aspects of climate change are most important to a particular application or stakeholder and over which time-horizons. Different international and national climate policy goals may lead to different conclusions about what is the most suitable emission metric (Myhre et al., 2013b).

This is potentially an issue as Nationally Determined Contributions frequently make commitments in terms of GWP-100 based CO2- equivalent emissions at 2030 without specifying individual gases (Denison et al., 2019).

Note that although the Paris Agreement Rulebook asks countries to report emissions of individual greenhouse gases separately for the global stocktake (Decision 18/CMA.1, annex, paragraph 38) which can allow the current effects of their emissions on global surface temperature to be accurately estimated, estimates of future warming are potentially ambiguous where emissions are aggregated using GWP-100 or other pulse metrics.

Several papers have reviewed the issue of metric choice for life cycle analyses, noting that analysts should be aware of the challenges and value judgements inherent in attempting to aggregate the effects of forcing agents with different timescales onto a common scale (e.g. Mallapragada and Mignone, 2017) and recommend aligning metric choice with policy goals as well as testing sensitivities of results to metric choice (Cherubini et al., 2016). Furthermore, life cycle analyses approaches which are sensitive to choice of emission metric benefit from careful communication of the reasons for the sensitivity (Levasseur et al., 2016).

So, in summary,

• GWP100 is not suitable to assess short lived gas impacts on most timescales.
• Careful choicce of metric is necessary for each gas.
• Individual countries contributions need to take account of this
• This is still consistant with The Paris Protocol
• Lifecycle analysis must take account of this nuance as it can distort the result

 

[Raider112]

This is what the report actually says around assessing methane and my personal layman's version of it:


Chapter 7 pages 123 to 127.

there is high confidence that multi-gas emission pathways with the same time dependence of aggregated CO2 equivalent emissions estimated from standard approaches, such as weighting emissions by their GWP-100 values, rarely lead to the same estimated temperature outcomes..

Contributions to CO2 formation are included for methane depending on whether or not the source originates from fossil carbon, thus methane from fossil fuel sources has slightly higher emission metric values than that from non-fossil sources.

Following AR5, this report does not recommend an emission metric because the appropriateness of the choice depends on the purposes for which gases or forcing agents are being compared. Emission metrics can facilitate the comparison of effects of emissions in support of policy goals. They do not define policy goals or targets but can support the evaluation and implementation of choices within multi-component policies (e.g., they can help prioritise which emissions to abate). The choice of metric will depend on which aspects of climate change are most important to a particular application or stakeholder and over which time-horizons. Different international and national climate policy goals may lead to different conclusions about what is the most suitable emission metric (Myhre et al., 2013b).

This is potentially an issue as Nationally Determined Contributions frequently make commitments in terms of GWP-100 based CO2- equivalent emissions at 2030 without specifying individual gases (Denison et al., 2019).

Note that although the Paris Agreement Rulebook asks countries to report emissions of individual greenhouse gases separately for the global stocktake (Decision 18/CMA.1, annex, paragraph 38) which can allow the current effects of their emissions on global surface temperature to be accurately estimated, estimates of future warming are potentially ambiguous where emissions are aggregated using GWP-100 or other pulse metrics.

Several papers have reviewed the issue of metric choice for life cycle analyses, noting that analysts should be aware of the challenges and value judgements inherent in attempting to aggregate the effects of forcing agents with different timescales onto a common scale (e.g. Mallapragada and Mignone, 2017) and recommend aligning metric choice with policy goals as well as testing sensitivities of results to metric choice (Cherubini et al., 2016). Furthermore, life cycle analyses approaches which are sensitive to choice of emission metric benefit from careful communication of the reasons for the sensitivity (Levasseur et al., 2016).

So, in summary,

• GWP100 is not suitable to assess short lived gas impacts on most timescales.
• Careful choicce of metric is necessary for each gas.
• Individual countries contributions need to take account of this
• This is still consistant with The Paris Protocol
• Lifecycle analysis must take account of this nuance as it can distort the result

I wish they just said what you said in your summary, it would be a lot easier to quote in a debate with a militant vegan.

 

[DaveGrohl]

If the IPCC did indeed say that GWP100 is no longer a valid metric then that's fantastic news of itself, but let's not get carried away. Expecting the mainstream media to backpeddle on the bollox they've be complicit in forcing into accepted "knowledge" is quite optimistic frankly. How exactly do they go about saying everything we've told you about cows up to now is completely wrong? The last IPCC report wasn't even that forceful in saying cows are destroying the planet, it was the media/vegan/big money unholy alliance that decided that was the message that needed to be heard by the proles.

 

[DaveGrohl]

has slightly higher emission metric values

That's the bit I'm unnerved by. Slightly? One's cyclical and the other isn't, even though it eventually becomes part of the cycle. But in so doing it's pushing out carbon that WAS originally IN the cycle. So in essence it isn't really part of the cycle at all, it's additional warming plain and simple.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

That's the bit I'm unnerved by. Slightly? One's cyclical and the other isn't, even though it eventually becomes part of the cycle. But in so doing it's pushing out carbon that WAS originally IN the cycle. So in essence it isn't really part of the cycle at all, it's additional warming plain and simple.

Getting rather technical but methane from either source eventually degrades into a very small quantity of CO² as I understand it.

You and I would rationally argue that the resulting CO² from enteric methane is not actually additional as it was drawn from atmospheric CO² only a few years earlier. Counting this as additional warming impact is thus double counting.

The CO² resulting from the degradation of methane from a fossil source, however, IS additional and SHOULD be counted.

I'm not sure whether this is fully factored in for the difference they now state.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Just saw this one and yet cows are the problem apparaently:

 

[devonbeef]

California massive producer of worlds food, 2 nd biggest water reservoir looking rather empty.The aquifers being pumped to much , one of major crops Almonds, i guess almond milk so we can all go vegan. A Massive producer of Nuts in generally. When they have got rid of the cows how the heck do they think people will be fed. A lot of the world can not grow nuts where they can there is little water. I think the rich will have food sucked in from everywhere the poor would starve. NUTS NUTS NUTS. pics on bbc news feed this am of reservoir.

 

[DaveGrohl]

California massive producer of worlds food, 2 nd biggest water reservoir looking rather empty.The aquifers being pumped to much , one of major crops Almonds, i guess almond milk so we can all go vegan. A Massive producer of Nuts in generally. When they have got rid of the cows how the heck do they think people will be fed. A lot of the world can not grow nuts where they can there is little water. I think the rich will have food sucked in from everywhere the poor would starve. NUTS NUTS NUTS. pics on bbc news feed this am of reservoir.

I'm not sure a place with little water is really a great place to live whatever food you reckon you can eat. Bit silly to have the population they have. But they do have a huge amount of money there so they can spend fortunes and create "solutions" to problems that shouldn't exist in the first place.

 

[DaveGrohl]

Getting rather technical but methane from either source eventually degrades into a very small quantity of CO² as I understand it.

You and I would rationally argue that the resulting CO² from enteric methane is not actually additional as it was drawn from atmospheric CO² only a few years earlier. Counting this as additional warming impact is thus double counting.

The CO² resulting from the degradation of methane from a fossil source, however, IS additional and SHOULD be counted.

I'm not sure whether this is fully factored in for the difference they now state.

Yup, and that's why I highlighted their own words. If you substitute totally for slightly I would be much happier. Still, at least they seem to be doing some genuine thinking at last so small progress at least......

Maybe in another 10 years' time they'll have worked out that CO2 isn't actually the problem they believe it to be. They've already decided that their forecasts are too alarmist. No axe to grind here btw, I remain neutral on climate change. I'm all about improving our damage to the planet, cos let's face it, the planet would be quite happy if we weren't here.

 

[Ffermer Bach]

Problem 4: Stopping using land capable of economically producing human edible foods for growing livestock feed is a good thing I believe (Goodbye barley fed beef etc). Stopping deforrestation to graze or grow feeds for livestock is a no-brainer. However, ALL of these analyses fail to adequately recognise the issue that very little of the land currently grazing livestock in the UK can ECONOMICALLY produce human edible crops though. Unless it is profitable framers will not do it. Even worse, for the alternative use argument, some studies have recently indicated that simply converting pasture to woodland can actually EMIT carbon.

None of this is easy.

Easy to understand.
Easy to change.
Easy to live with.

I think you have hit the nail on the head with the not easy to understand, and as I have got older, I am thinking we are living in an age of emotion (aided by social media), where rational analysis is relegated behind emotional judgments, this is not helped by the fact that our education system seems to be aiding this, we only have to look at "trigger warnings" on anything being discussed/taught that may make students feel uncomfortable! Growth and education is all about moving from comfort zone, into the stretch (or uncomfortable) zone.

 

[Ffermer Bach]

Using the impact share figures from Monday's IPPC AR6 report global methane emissions in the last decade break down like this:

View attachment 979289

Fossil fuels released as much methane as ruminants did and have been under reporting this for years.

Landfills are a pretty big deal on it as well. At least we get food in return for the ruminant emissions, we get nothing for the landfill ones.

The easiest methane emissions to tackle are actually the coal, oil and gas ones (stop mains leaks, stop or capture leaks at wells) and the landfill ones (collect it and use for heating).

The report also states that the major issue is from rising methane emissions and these are in Asia, The Americas and Eastern Europe.

Finally, and critically, it states that cutting methane emissions will only buy time (around 11 years) to get on with DEEP AND PERMANENT cuts in carbon dioxide emissions in all countries and that doing one without the other will be pointless.

Ruminant methane is a very small part of the problem, blown out of all proportion because it suits everyone else's narrative.

Have you got any links to published evidence on the methane emissions variability within species? It would be very useful to have.

and looking at the landfill gas emissions, that tells us we need to all be keeping a pig and fattening it on food waste - oops, can't feed a pig food waste - regulations! Another example of unintended consquences.

 

[Ffermer Bach]

Yup, you've got it in a nutshell. The sad thing is the "buys time" bit is irrelevant because it doesn't actually buy any significant time at all because the reduction in relevant carbon emissions from wiping edible ruminants from the planet in an instant is of the order of a couple of percentage points. These calculations have been done. When I left school that meant there was another 98 odd % left to worry about. Then we're quickly back up to 100 %. It's a while since I left school though.

I would question if it would "buy us time", organic farming would be screwed, a lot of permanent pasture would be ploughed up to grow grain (so releasing lots of soil held carbon), lots of fertliser would be used (which in itself is made with fossil fuels), so how I wonder would the above alter the calculations?

 

[DaveGrohl]

I would question if it would "buy us time", organic farming would be screwed, a lot of permanent pasture would be ploughed up to grow grain (so releasing lots of soil held carbon), lots of fertliser would be used (which in itself is made with fossil fuels), so how I wonder would the above alter the calculations?

I've mentioned this before, I think there would be a small gain (less than 2%) because of the consequences of doing away with farmed ruminants that aren't obvious to the numpties who advocate it. And that is against a background of these idiots thinking agriculture is responsible for somewhere betwee 25-50% of emissions. A US study took all of this into account, sadly I didn't take note of the study when I was listening to it being used as a reference on a podcast. And of course that tiny reduction was very temporary and would then lead to a whole host of unintended problems. Mankind is in a weird stupour right now.