We’ve discovered the world’s trees absorb methane. so, can we shut the methane pressure put on livestock farming down?

[Dave645]

https://theconversation.com/weve-di...t-in-the-climate-fight-than-we-thought-235233

plant a few trees on your farm, and we may be able to say job done?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

The only reason there's scrutiny of enteric methane at all is because livestock are a source of human nutrition and reproduce themselves without much input from us.

If methane was as serious an issue as per the various overlapping narratives then fracking and drilling would be phased out or gone

Instead we have a war against food production with fighting on several fronts, if you have stock living 365 days a year on permanent pasture and no debt then it's nearly impossible to find a stick strong enough to beat you with, the methane construction is a baseball bat made to look like a piece of stick.
Otherwise the great global landgrab will not work.

Please don't fall for the "need to reduce enteric methane output" trap however it's baited.
The resources are never the problem, management of the resources almost always is

 

[Dave645]

The only reason there's scrutiny of enteric methane at all is because livestock are a source of human nutrition and reproduce themselves without much input from us.

If methane was as serious an issue as per the various overlapping narratives then fracking and drilling would be phased out or gone

Instead we have a war against food production with fighting on several fronts, if you have stock living 365 days a year on permanent pasture and no debt then it's nearly impossible to find a stick strong enough to beat you with, the methane construction is a baseball bat made to look like a piece of stick.
Otherwise the great global landgrab will not work.

Please don't fall for the "need to reduce enteric methane output" trap however it's baited.
The resources are never the problem, management of the resources almost always is

I am of the same mind.
Even so that, will not stop the attacks. When has being wrong stopped them, they have agendas for what they are saying. And it’s not what most think.
https://www.climatecentral.org/news/livestock-methane-emissions-satellite-co2-17749
A note, not all cows are fully grass fed, pigs and the lowest methane producing farm animal chickens, are never going to be grass fed, and arable farmers rely on them to supply crops to feed them, if they get disrupted by attacks on animal methane production, then it affects the wider farming industry.

I know methane is a con job against farming animals, but it’s used and believed by some. I also see who is pushing it and why, which is why it will be a problem, they know we can not wean off fossil fuels fully. So they are looking at other emission to give fossil fuels a get out of jail card to some degree.
This is the true driver of these changes they are pushing for.

So, we know where the road we are on is going, methane agendas, carbon auditing etc.
And if they keep hitting this animal methane, button, then why not be ready?
With an on farm methane absorbing patch of trees. . .
Play the game but in a way that blocks them from attacking the livestock industry .

The other way is grouping up as an industry so, a pooling of methane and carbon credits/offsets inside all of the uk farming industry, if and when they ever try to apply those to farming.
Plant a few trees now and get ahead of the game, field corners, awkward areas, hedgerows etc. and pool any offset’s or credits as an industry. . .

 

[Surgery]

Brilliant news , now red tractor can tell all to stop imports from deforested areas in South America and replant the rainforest , everyone is happy

 

[DaveGrohl]

I am of the same mind.
Even so that, will not stop the attacks. When has being wrong stopped them, they have agendas for what they are saying. And it’s not what most think.
https://www.climatecentral.org/news/livestock-methane-emissions-satellite-co2-17749
A note, not all cows are fully grass fed, pigs and the lowest methane producing farm animal chickens, are never going to be grass fed, and arable farmers rely on them to supply crops to feed them, if they get disrupted by attacks on animal methane production, then it affects the wider farming industry.

I know methane is a con job against farming animals, but it’s used and believed by some. I also see who is pushing it and why, which is why it will be a problem, they know we can not wean off fossil fuels fully. So they are looking at other emission to give fossil fuels a get out of jail card to some degree.
This is the true driver of these changes they are pushing for.

So, we know where the road we are on is going, methane agendas, carbon auditing etc.
And if they keep hitting this animal methane, button, then why not be ready?
With an on farm methane absorbing patch of trees. . .
Play the game but in a way that blocks them from attacking the livestock industry .

The other way is grouping up as an industry so, a pooling of methane and carbon credits/offsets inside all of the uk farming industry, if and when they ever try to apply those to farming.
Plant a few trees now and get ahead of the game, field corners, awkward areas, hedgerows etc. and pool any offset’s or credits as an industry. . .

What’s the relevance of the link you’ve provided? It’s from 2014. I think I may be missing something, or is it simply the Harvard angle?

 

[Dave645]

What’s the relevance of the link you’ve provided? It’s from 2014. I think I may be missing something, or is it simply the Harvard angle?

Hi, the link,
Just because like me they think livestock's methane is irrelevant long term dispite the amounts they measured doesn't guarantee that those in power or reading it think so. like all science or conclusions, it often comes down to more complex debates. what wins out often comes down to what else is affected, like they want to keep using fossil fuels so, to do that, they need other cuts to other emmissions, if that includes methane from Uk livestock they will do so.

The debate is, will rules on methane and C02 make it into legislation or support payments we farm under, if they do or not is key. the science of it or the reasons for the changes are not relevant, because regardless of science or reasons to regulate if they are implemented on us, we have to live with them.

I believe the headline emission numbers from animals will always work against us, especially when they also work against our use of fossil fuels. if the powers in charge have to pick between Uk animal farming or fossil fuels that keep the lights on, what will they do? I think we do not win out in that debate. even with some science on our side.

Let's face it we have seen RT starting the trickle when it comes to C02 regulation it backfired for now, but for how long?

if trees could protect our industry from these possible changes for both co2 and methane is the point i am trying to make. Now trees are seen to absorb methane and co2, that's the new science that is important.

 

[essex man]

Global methane emissions rising at fastest rate in decades, scientists warn

Researchers call for immediate action to reduce methane emissions and avert dangerous escalation in climate crisis

www.theguardian.com

 

[Dave645]

Global methane emissions rising at fastest rate in decades, scientists warn

Researchers call for immediate action to reduce methane emissions and avert dangerous escalation in climate crisis

www.theguardian.com

the smoking gun is
To Quote that link.
So far in the 2020s, global methane emissions have typically been about 30m tons higher each year than during last decade, with annual records in methane emissions broken in 2021 and again in 2022. While there is no single clear reason for this, scientists point to a number of factors.

All farmers understand that makes it impossible for the increases to be from animals. As there numbers have been relatively stable for decades.

The finger should be pointing at, fracking , fossil fuels, and melting permafrost land.
They only include farming as a scape goat. It’s not our fault but we get pushed under the bus to try to fix it, because we cannot give up fossil fuels any time soon.

We started the transition away from fossil fuels, about 20 years too late.
If we had started 20 years earlier we would be seeing our dependence on them winding up in the next 20 years and the cost and pain would have been far smaller to do so.
I am under no illusions we are currently many decades away from being remotely ready to give up on fossil fuels, so that leaves farmers being thrown under the bus for past mistakes others have created.

Like I said, if it comes down to cuts, they do not want to make, or cannot, ie fossil fuels. As we will need them for quite some time yet.

so, legislating changes onto farms, becomes the path of least resistance.
fairness will not matter, or the science.

If planting some trees defends our industry, it seems a simple thing to do, to avoid what they seem to be pushing towards.

 

[delilah]

if you have stock living 365 days a year on permanent pasture and no debt then it's nearly impossible to find a stick strong enough to beat you with,

When your last abattoir within an economically viable distance shuts, your '365 days a year grazing' wont help you.

When your last buyer says you need to show them the invoice for your medicated feed, your '365 days a year grazing' wont help you.

When the last member of the cartel says you need to hand over your carbon or you can keep your stock, your '365 days a year grazing' wont help you.

Every farmer who tries to make out that their chosen system will somehow see them safe, is both utterly deluded and part of the problem.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Correct. So the rub is that farmers overinvest in things to produce animals with and underinvest in things to process the products "they" then have to process. What happened to "we"?

Given the billions that are pumped around you'd think at least some of the investments would futureproof their farming

But it's all too hard/ too niche, every man for himself, and very little trust exists - almost like it was engineered to be

 

[essex man]

the smoking gun is
To Quote that link.
So far in the 2020s, global methane emissions have typically been about 30m tons higher each year than during last decade, with annual records in methane emissions broken in 2021 and again in 2022. While there is no single clear reason for this, scientists point to a number of factors.

All farmers understand that makes it impossible for the increases to be from animals. As there numbers have been relatively stable for decades.

The finger should be pointing at, fracking , fossil fuels, and melting permafrost land.
They only include farming as a scape goat. It’s not our fault but we get pushed under the bus to try to fix it, because we cannot give up fossil fuels any time soon.

We started the transition away from fossil fuels, about 20 years too late.
If we had started 20 years earlier we would be seeing our dependence on them winding up in the next 20 years and the cost and pain would have been far smaller to do so.
I am under no illusions we are currently many decades away from being remotely ready to give up on fossil fuels, so that leaves farmers being thrown under the bus for past mistakes others have created.

Like I said, if it comes down to cuts, they do not want to make, or cannot, ie fossil fuels. As we will need them for quite some time yet.

so, legislating changes onto farms, becomes the path of least resistance.
fairness will not matter, or the science.

If planting some trees defends our industry, it seems a simple thing to do, to avoid what they seem to be pushing towards.

The "smoking gun" is all emissions are rising despite the great global pretence that this is a both a problem and something that we are doing something about.
We have been pretending for 35 years already, going to carry on for another 35?

 

[roscoe erf]

Just discovered this have they f.f.s

 

[FonterraFarmer]

The only reason there's scrutiny of enteric methane at all is because livestock are a source of human nutrition and reproduce themselves without much input from us.

If methane was as serious an issue as per the various overlapping narratives then fracking and drilling would be phased out or gone

Instead we have a war against food production with fighting on several fronts, if you have stock living 365 days a year on permanent pasture and no debt then it's nearly impossible to find a stick strong enough to beat you with, the methane construction is a baseball bat made to look like a piece of stick.
Otherwise the great global landgrab will not work.

Please don't fall for the "need to reduce enteric methane output" trap however it's baited.
The resources are never the problem, management of the resources almost always is

Those who seek control tend normally to be the ones that are first at the trough but need to be at the front of the "queue".....

 

[DaveGrohl]

Global methane emissions rising at fastest rate in decades, scientists warn

Researchers call for immediate action to reduce methane emissions and avert dangerous escalation in climate crisis

www.theguardian.com

It’s actually not quite as anti-livestock as I was expecting from the Gruniad. It even leads with fossil fuel emissions of methane.

 

[DaveGrohl]

I see the source paper is making lots of assumptions that don’t bear much scrutiny, certainly in the area of nutritional evidence anyway. EAT-Lancet and Global Burden of Disease mentioned in the text, and as refs for instance.

No sign of the Chandra et al paper about isotopes, which disagrees with some of the modelling assumptions used. This slide is from the Chandra et al paper. Note how small the grey bars are on the RHS, ie the excess of methane isn’t that great.

Why have they assumed atmospheric sinks grow with emissions? On what are they basing that, other than a vague guess, fingers crossed?

Remove the fossil emissions though and the methane % starts to go down and continues to go down. So why don’t we do that instead of talking bollox about cattle without understanding the whole point of them being in the biosphere in the first place?

 

[DaveGrohl]

Lol. This is an editorial from the same Frontiers in Science journal, commenting on the said Shindell et al paper;

Frontiers | Reducing methane emissions—the “easy” way to keep 1.5 alive?

According to a 2024 survey by The Guardian (1), a large majority of the lead authors of the sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment...

www.frontiersin.org

Note the introduction;

According to a 2024 survey by The Guardian (1), a large majority of the lead authors of the sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report are becoming increasingly skeptical that the aspirational goals of the Paris Agreement remain achievable, at least without substantial temperature overshoot. Only 6% of the respondents believed that remaining below 1.5°C is still possible while almost 80% anticipated at least 2.5°C of global warming.

At least most of them are tending towards being realistic.
Clues as to why really aren’t tricky at all. We’re not reducing fossil fuels, we’re burning ever more. In spite of every meeting and policy proposed/enacted.
So were not actually doing anything at all really are we?

So cattle. Let’s talk about them instead…

 

[DaveGrohl]

More from the editorial, it’s worrying that these people aren;t able to walk and talk at the same time, eg;

The authors also argue that a strong link between CO2 and methane mitigation actions may exist through the conversion of pastureland to forest, which would eliminate an important source of methane and at the same time increase CO2 uptake.

Er, converting pastureland to forest actually increases emissions over the first 3 decades or more. And removing ruminants from pastureland has climate implications waaay beyond simply two gases. Ya pricks.

Here they start to make sense, but then shrug their shoulders;

Unlike CO2, methane is a fuel and if captured in concentrated form can be used as such, leading in some cases to negative abatement costs due to the profit made by the energy produced.

That’s negative costs. So pure profit for these companies. Do we have to beg or something?

However, the fact that costs may be negative for certain abatement approaches does not necessarily mean that they would be implemented without government intervention. Even though the abatement may be profitable, capital is limited, and commercial entities may find other, even more profitable investments, which is particularly evident in the oil and gas sector

 

[Lazy Sod]

When the anti livestock people get to hear about it, they'll say: still get rid of livestock and plant even more trees.