In this video presentation, Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop, World Preservation Foundation Senior Scientist, puts forward the case for how, with the devastating effects of climate change being felt ever-more quickly and with increasing intensity, the importance of embracing fast-acting solutions to mitigate climate change has increased dramatically.

In recent years, greater understanding of climate science has advanced considerably, and scientists and even policy makers now recognise that climate change in the short term is being driven by extremely potent, shorter-lived climate forcers. By reducing these climate forcers — namely black carbon, methane and tropospheric ozone — cooling begins rapidly.

Globally, the production of meat and dairy are significant contributors of these fast warming agents with far reaching consequences on planetary warming and environmental devastation. These include the major effects of black carbon due to biomass burning, on West Antarctica as well as the tropical monsoons; deforestation; soil carbon loss; and, food and water security. It’s estimated that 47% to 60% of the black carbon reaching West Antarctica and causing rapid melting is due to biomass burning resulting from livestock pasture management.

CO₂ from pasture maintenance fires, reforestation of pastures and soil carbon uptake on relief of grazing pressure may also play a part in a fast-acting solution to the climate crisis.

This video is a synopsis of the paper Gerard wrote that examines the contributions of agriculture, namely livestock farming, to planetary warming through the shorter-lived climate forcers, and the effect of animal agriculture abatement on alleviating global warming and environmental collapse. We also propose four policy measures to immediately reduce the shorter-lived warming agents.

(By: Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop: Senior Scientist, World Preservation Foundation )

Looking forward to seeing the presentations and meeting reports from the ‘International Meeting on Open Burning and the Arctic: Causes, Impacts, and Mitigation Approaches‘ conference held in St. Petersburg last week.

The Clean Air Task Force blog post on the conference is included below for reference:

One long day down, and one to go at a global meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, where climate scientists, fire experts, farmers, regulators and NGOs have been discussing the role of springtime fires on climate change in the Arctic and what must be done to reduce the occurrence of set fires in northern latitudes.

The Arctic is warming at an alarming rate, threatening not just regional ecosystems but coastal areas around the world that are vulnerable to sea level rise.

Carbon dioxide is the main pollutant responsible for this warming, but recent research shows that black carbon, or soot, from incomplete combustion may also be responsible for much of the Arctic’s warming.

Samples from snow indicate that most of the black carbon in Arctic snow comes from burning biomass, and much of that is from burning crops and grasslands in northern Eurasia.

These crop and grass fires have local impacts too, of course.  These fires often get out of control and spread into forests and peatlands. In fact, many of the deadly fires that plagued Russia this past summer began with fires set on grasslands or croplands.

In response to the growing threat, Clean Air Task Force and Bellona Russia have organized this event to:

1. 1 Examine the range of health, safety, and climate impacts associated with open burning.

 

2. 2 Elevate the issue of black carbon emissions from open burning, and its Arctic impacts, among researchers, governmental bodies, and NGOs in Russia and elsewhere.

 

3. 3 Increase coordination between different organizations (governmental, research, and NGOs) in the USA, Europe, and Russia, and within those countries, working on short-lived climate forcers.

 

4. 4 Survey indigenous practices and motivations for burning.

 

5. 5 Explore alternatives to burning and strategies to reduce emissions from burns, including the practical, economic, cultural, and environmental implications of these alternatives.

We’re not exactly sure where we’ll end up tomorrow, but conversations have been flying and we expect some useful closure by the end of the conference. More information about the meeting is available at http://www.fires-and-the-arctic.org.

After the meeting we’ll post presentations, meeting reports, and any other outcomes on that site.

Massive releases of methane from arctic seafloors could create oxygen-poor dead zones, acidify the seas and disrupt ecosystems in broad parts of the northern oceans, new preliminary analyses suggest.

Such a cascade of geochemical and ecological ills could result if global warming triggers a widespread release of methane from deep below the Arctic seas, scientists propose in the June 28 Geophysical Research Letters.

Worldwide, particularly in deeply buried permafrost and in high-latitude ocean sediments where pressures are high and temperatures are below freezing, icy deposits called hydrates hold immense amounts of methane (SN: 6/25/05, p. 410). Studies indicate that seafloor sediments beneath the Kara, Barents and East Siberian seas in the Arctic Ocean, as well as the Sea of Okhotsk and the Barents Sea in the North Pacific, have large reservoirs of the planet-warming greenhouse gas, says study coauthor Scott M. Elliott, a marine biogeochemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Many oceanographic surveys have already discovered plumes of methane rising from the ocean floor, particularly in the Arctic, Elliott notes. The climate warming expected in coming decades will likely extend even into the deep sea, melting or destabilizing hydrates and releasing their trapped methane, he explains. Some scientists estimate that increased temperatures across some swaths of ocean floor between 300 and 600 meters deep — where methane hydrates are now stable but may not be in the future — could eventually release as much as 16,000 metric tons of methane each year.

That methane would be an unexpected bounty for methane-munching marine microbes that consume dissolved oxygen and produce carbon dioxide. As a result, the researchers’ model suggests, the waters down-current of a large methane plume, especially in an ocean basin with poor circulation, could lose as much as 95 percent of their oxygen.

The ocean acidification that resulted from the increased carbon dioxide would rival that seen in surface waters under today’s atmosphere, which is already stifling the growth of phytoplankton, rendering the shells of marine snails thinner (SN: 10/20/07, p. 245) and affecting marine ecosystems worldwide (SN: 7/17/04, p. 35).

“This will be a truly big environmental pollution problem in the next few decades,” Elliott contends. “This problem is not going to go away.”

Besides generating large volumes of acidified water and low-oxygen dead zones, the microbial activity will rob the waters of key nutrients — including nitrate, copper and iron — that otherwise would be used by microorganisms that don’t feed on methane. Many of these nutrients are already sparse, and the resulting shift in populations among the fiercely competitive microorganisms at the base of the ocean’s food chain in many regions could be devastating, the researchers suggest.

“This is an interesting possibility,”

says David Valentine, a microbial geochemist at University of California, Santa Barbara.

The team “has taken what we know about methane-consuming organisms and placed it in the context of a warming Arctic,” he notes.

Nevertheless, he continues, the largest rates of methane release considered by the researchers “are considerably larger than scientists have seen in the Arctic recently.

“They picked a very large [methane] flux, in my estimation”, he says.

“But there’s very little doubt that if methane emissions are as large as this, there will be severe biological and geochemical impacts.”

Future work will refine the new study’s preliminary results, says Elliott. In areas where river deltas inject organic material and dissolved trace elements into the sea, for instance, it’s not clear how all of the intricately related processes will affect water chemistry.

On the whole, though, the cascade of ecological effects envisioned by Elliott and his colleagues are a reasonable scenario, Valentine says.

“The same sort of processes are seen in the dead zones in many lakes and oceans today,” he notes.

Source: Methane releases in arctic seas could wreak devastation - Sciencenews

Date: 05 July 2010

With the added environmental stresses of climate change, prices of staple crops could double

Every nation — developed and otherwise — is dependent upon a stable agricultural sector, and climate change threatens that stability, a panel of experts said yesterday.

World population is expected to swell by 50 percent by 2050. This alone is a challenge for the world’s supply of vital grains, said Gerald Nelson, an agricultural economist and fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. But then you have to tack on the impacts of climate change.

Global agriculture, he said, could adapt to climate change for about $7 billion annually, with most of the resources being devoted to research, new irrigation techniques and training small farmers for rises in sea level.

Agricultural management directly affects how the three major greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — are cycled through the environment. According to United Nations Environment Programme, “Agriculture, deforestation and other forms of land use account for nearly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions.”

Source: Experts Warn Climate Change Is Beginning to Disrupt Agriculture - Scientific American

Date: 17 June, 2010

The UK’s biofuel industry will have to deliver “substantial improvements” if it is to comply with new EU-wide sustainability standards that are due to come into effect by the end of the year.

Late last week the European Commission released two communication documents clarifying how member states should implement the biofuel components of the Renewable Energy Directive when they come into effect at the end of this year.

The communications call on governments to set up independently verified certification schemes designed to ensure biofuels are produced in an environmentally sustainable manner.

The new certification schemes are being billed as voluntary, but the European Commission signalled that only biofuels that carry sustainability labels will be allowed to count towards national targets requiring 10 per cent of EU road fuels to come from renewable sources by 2020. The condition means that the sustainability certification will, to all intents and purposes, become mandatory for biofuels produced in the EU or imported into the bloc.

The proposed “Recognised by the European Union” label will only be awarded to biofuels that can demonstrate that they deliver greenhouse gas savings of at least 35 per cent compared with petrol and diesel. The target, which covers methane and di-nitrous oxide as well as carbon dioxide, will rise to 50 per cent in 2017.

Biofuel firms carrying the label will have to submit to regular independent audits of their entire supply chain, from farmer through to fuel supplier. They will also have to demonstrate that the fuel has not been produced in environmentally sensitive areas, including protected areas, natural forests, wetlands and peatlands. Significantly, biofuels made from palm oil grown in converted forest plantations will not be able to qualify for the label.

Source: EU sets out sustainable biofuel criteria – businessGreen

Date: 14 June, 2010

Together with other large plant-eating mammals that are now extinct, they released around 9.6 million tonnes of the gas each year, experts estimated.

When the ”megafauna” disappeared there was a dramatic fall in atmospheric methane which may have altered the climate.

Analysis of gases trapped in ice cores suggests that the loss of animal emissions accounted for a large amount of the decline.

”The changes in methane concentration at this time seem to be unique,” said the researchers, writing in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. The scientists, led by Dr Felisa Smith from the University of New Mexico in the US, pointed out that a ”cold event” hit the Earth at about the same time that methane levels plunged.

”Our calculation suggest that decreased methane emissions caused by the extinction of New World megafauna could have played a role..” they wrote.

Source: Mammoths contributed to global warming with methane emissions – Telegraph.co.uk

Date: 24 May 2010

More than 13,000 years ago, millions of large mammals such as mammoths, mastodon, shrub-ox, bison, ground sloths and camels roamed the Americas and may have had profound influences on the environment according to research in a paper titled, “Methane Emissions from Extinct Megafauna” released in the publication Nature Geosciences Sunday.

The extinction of these large herbivores, which also include horses, llamas and stag moose in addition to the giant wooly mammoth, probably led to an abrupt decrease in methane emissions and atmospheric concentrations of the gas with potential implications for climate change says Dr. Felisa Smith, Associate Professor of Biology at the University of New Mexico.

The research also involved Dr. Scott Elliott from the Climate, Ocean, Sea Ice Modeling Team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Dr. Kathleen Lyons in the Department of Paleobiology at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution.

“This is arguably the first detectable influence of humans on the environment going back 13,400 years to when humans first got to the continent,” said Smith. “I think that it’s intriguing because there are a lot of ramifications. Potentially, if the decrease in methane, which is synchronous with this ice spell, was actually the cause, then humans contributed to the Younger Dryas cold episode.”

“We were able to come up with an estimate, which turns out to be about 10 teragrams. This is really pretty enormous,” said Smith.

“When you bracket it, at the very minimum, the demise of all these animals explains 12 percent of the decrease in methane seen at this time. At the maximum, it explains the entire decrease. This suggests that the extinction of megafauna by humans caused a detectable impact on the environment long before the development of agriculture and the industrial age.”

Ice core records from Greenland suggest the methane concentration change associated with a 1 degree Celsius temperature shift ranges from 10 to 30 parts per billion by volume with a long term mean of about 20 ppbv. A drop of 185 to 245 ppbv methane drop observed at the Younger Dryas stadial is associated with a temperature shift of 9 to 12 degrees Celsius. The calculations suggest that decreased methane emissions caused by the extinction of New World megafauna could have played a role in the Younger Dryas cooling event.

Source: Research Suggests Large Mammals Influenced Global Climate – UNM Today

Date: 24 May 2010

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency:

“[g]lobally, ruminant livestock produce about 80 million metric tons of methane annually, accounting for about 28% of global methane emissions from human-related activities.

In the U.S., cattle emit about 5.5 million metric tons of methane per year into the atmosphere, accounting for 20% of U.S. methane emissions.”

An adult cow may be a very small source by itself, emitting only 80-110 kgs of methane, but with about 100 million cattle in the U.S. and 1.2 billion large ruminants in the world, ruminants are one of the largest methane sources.

In New Zealand, emissions from agriculture are responsible for half of all greenhouse gases.

Source: Ruminant Livestock – Frequent Questions – How much methane is produced by livestock? – US Environmental Protection Agency

Date: Retrieved 29 March 2010

Source: Potent methane is an overlooked greenhouse gas – Reuters

Date: 30 April 2007

CO2 emissions are actually having roughly zero effect on global temperatures in the near-term, due to the cancelling effects of aerosols, which are produced by fuel burning such as in cars and power plants.

The EarthSave International Report “A New Global Warming Strategy” states:

“[O]ther greenhouse gases trap heat far more powerfully than CO2, some of them tens of thousands of times more powerfully. When taking into account various gases’ global warming potential—defined as the amount of actual warming a gas will produce over the next one hundred years—it turns out that gases other than CO2 make up most of the global warming problem.

Sources of non-CO2 greenhouse gases are responsible for virtually all the global warming we are going to see for the next half century. Even this overstates the effect of CO2, because the primary sources of these emissions—cars and power plants—also produce aerosols. Aerosols actually have a cooling effect on global temperatures, and the magnitude of this cooling approximately cancels out the warming effect of CO2.

The surprising result is that sources of CO2 emissions are having roughly zero effect on global temperatures in the near-term”.

It goes on to say:

“[S]ources of non-CO2 greenhouse gases are responsible for virtually all the global warming we’re seeing, and all the global warming we are going to see for the next fifty years. If we wish to curb global warming over the coming half century, we must look at strategies to address non-CO2 emissions.

The strategy with the most impact is vegetarianism.“

Source: A New Global Warming Strategy – Noam Mohr for EarthSave International – Abstract – Full report (PDF) – (Further references given on pp 4, 5)

Date: August 2005

While the 23-times figure of Methane’s CO2  equivalence is still widely cited, this figure is not reflective of methane’s true global warming potency, as it is based on a 100-year activity window.

However due to methane’s short half-life, a 20-year window is more appropriate.

In the IPCC’s 2007 assessment report, the recalculated figure for methane was shown to be 72 times higher than CO2 over 20 years.

This also implies that methane reduction would offer a much more realistic and efficacious reduction strategy than CO2 reduction.

Source: IPCC 2007 Assessment Report – Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing (P. 212) (PDF)

Date: 2007

Source: Beyond Kyoto: Why Climate Policy Needs to Adopt the 20-year Impact of Methane (PDF) – EcoCycle Position Memo

Date: 17 March 2008

Vast amounts of methane are locked in permafrost layers of Siberia, Northern Europe and North America. Global warming could trigger thawing that could release billions of tons into the atmosphere resulting in Arctic feedbacks that intensify warming with the potential for accelerating climate change effects. Total global methane emissions, natural and human-induced are at 500-600 million metric tons per year.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) states:

“The balance of evidence suggests that Arctic feedbacks that amplify warming, globally and regionally, will dominate during the next 50 to 100 years. As warming continues, these feedbacks will likely intensify. We may be approaching thresholds that are difficult to predict precisely, but crossing such thresholds could have serious global consequences.”

Source: Melting of permafrost could trigger rapid global warming warns UN – Mongabay.com

Date: 21 February 2008

A ton of methane emitted today will exert more warming in one year than a ton of CO2 emitted today would exert until 2075.

In the article “Methane controls before risky geoengineering, please“, UC Berkeley’s Dr, Kirk Smith writes:

“A tonne of methane eventually turns to 2.75 extra tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere. Even without taking this into consideration, a tonne of methane emitted today will exert more annual warming than a tonne of CO2 emitted today until 2075. Not until the year 7300 will the cumulative warming exerted by the two become equal. It is truly carbon on steroids.”

It is therefore clear that methane reduction is a vital strategy in rapid climate change mitigation.

Source: Methane controls before risky geoengineering, please – Dr Kirk Smith New Scientist Magazine – article preview – GoodPlanet.info – full article

Date: 25 June 2009

Source: Global warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario NASA site – abbreviated version – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) – full article

Date: 2001

In the article “Global warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario“, world-leading climatologist James Hansen looks at the effects of non-CO2 on climate change. Citing this and other findings, Dr Kirk Smith penned an article highlighting how methane causes almost 100 times more warming in a 5 year span than CO2 and can be removed more quickly than CO2 as it has a half-life of 8.5 years, compared with many decades for CO2.

According to Dr Kirk Smith, also a world authority on non-CO2 GHG:

“Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. A tonne of methane is responsible for nearly 100 times more warming over the first five years of its lifetime in the atmosphere than a tonne of CO2. Methane is removed from the atmosphere much more rapidly than CO2.”

Source: Methane controls before risky geoengineering, please – Dr Kirk Smith New Scientist Magazine – article preview – GoodPlanet.info – full article

Date: 25 June 2009

Source: Global warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario NASA site – abbreviated version – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) – full article

Date: 2001

Given that only half of global warming is due to CO2, while another half is caused mainly by methane, world-leading scientists such as Professor of Global Environmental Health Kirk Smith and NASA’s  Prof. James Hansen call for methane reduction strategies, for instance through reducing livestock, to be implemented rather than risky and untried geoengineering carbon sequestration strategies.

Dr Smith writes:

“One tonne of methane is responsible for nearly 100 times more warming over the first five years of its lifetime in the atmosphere than a tonne of CO2. Methane is removed from the atmosphere much more rapidly than CO2, with a half-life of 8.5 years compared with many decades for CO2.”

According to NASA article entitled “Global warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario“, co-authored by Professor Hansen:

“Rapid warming in recent decades has been driven mainly by non-CO₂ greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), Methane (CH₄₎, and Nitrous Oxide (N₂O), not by the products of fossil fuel burning. If sources of Methane and Ozone (O₃) precursors were reduced in the future, the change in climate forcing by non-CO₂ GHGs in the next 50 years could be near zero.”

Source: Global warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario NASA site – abbreviated version – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) – full article

Date: 2001

Source: Methane controls before risky geoengineering, please – Dr Kirk Smith New Scientist Magazine – article preview – GoodPlanet.info – full article

Date: 25 June 2009

While less than half of the warming in the next 20 years will be caused by CO2, other gases such as methane, and black carbon particles (soot) will have the greatest effect.

According to Professor Kirk Smith, writing in the New Scientist Magazine:

“Less than half of the total warming expected over the next 20 years will be caused by CO2. Methane, along with other gases such as carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and black carbon particles, will cause most of the changes.”

Source: Methane controls before risky geoengineering, please – Dr Kirk Smith New Scientist Magazine – article preview – GoodPlanet.info – full article

Date: 25 June 2009

Source: Global warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario NASA site – abbreviated version – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) – full article

Date: 2001

The livestock sector produces 37% of all human-induced methane (a much more strongly warming greenhouse agent than CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants such as cattle. In addition, livestock are responsible for 65 per cent of human-related nitrous oxide(N2O), another powerful GHG.

The UN’s Livestock’s Long Shadow report also states:

“Livestock now use 30 per cent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 per cent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 per cent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.”

Source: Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars, UN report warns – UN News Centre

Date: 29 November 2006

Source: Livestock’s Long Shadow (UN FAO) – Full Report

Date: 2006

According to a paper presented to the Society of Animal Feed Technologists (UK), food production from farm to fork is responsible for up to 31 percent of EU greenhouse gas emissions and 20% of UK emissions. Livestock production is responsible for around half of these emissions. The more meat we produce and eat the bigger that carbon footprint will get. The paper states that:

“[C]rops which are suitable for human consumption are currently used to feed animals, and this is an inefficient process. A shift away from livestock based production is likely to lead to a reduction in food related greenhouse gas emissions.”

and also:

“[F]rom an environmental perspective, a reduction in livestock production can lead to important greenhouse gas reductions”

The paper also explains the primary and secondary impacts of livestock on GHG emissions, such as:

• fertiliser production and transport for feed crops and pasture (CO2 and N2O)
• feed manufacture and transport (CO2)
• livestock (enteric fermentation) (CH4)
• manure and urine (CH4 and N2O)
• slaughtering
• processing
• refrigeration
• transport
• cooking (CO2 and refrigerant gases)
• and non-EU soya imports (mainly from South America) which account for 75% of the UK’s oilcake imports and 24% of total feed imports.

Source: Animal feed, livestock and greenhouse gas emissions: What are the issues? (PDF) – T. Garnett , Food Climate Research Network, Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey

Date: 25 January 2007

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies have found that that methane concentrations have increased 150% since 1750, far exceeding the natural range of the past 650,000 years. In line with these findings, Australian Climate scientist Paul Fraser has stated that a fifth of all greenhouse gas-induced global warming has been due to methane since pre-industrial times. This however may be seen as a conservative figure in light of new findings.

The figure below (from  NASA research feature “Methane: A Scientific Journey from Obscurity to Climate Super-Stardom”) shows the increases in methane over the past 1,000 years, as determined by historical methane concentrations in Antarctic ice cores and other sources. The significant rise in methane concentrations can be easily seen starting in the 18th century (coinciding with the industrial revolution(s)) and continuing up to the present day.

Source: Methane: A Scientific Journey from Obscurity to Climate Super-Stardom – NASA — Figure/Graph – NASA

Date: September 2004

Source: Potent methane is an overlooked greenhouse gas – Reuters

Date: 30 April 2007

Methane gas molecules locked in cages of water ice are in such a concentrated form that when ice melts they expand to 164 times their frozen volume and are 72 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a GHG.

Source: IMPACTS: On the threshold of abrupt climate change – e! Science News

Date: 18 September 2008

Significant amounts of methane found to be leaking from permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf could push the world closer to the tipping points for abrupt climate changes. According to a study published in Science journal this week, about 7-8 million tonnes of methane are being released from the Arctic Shelf each year – about the same amount that the entire world’s oceans release annually. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas considered to be one of the largest contributors to climate change.

The fear is that should these leaks turn out to be new, due to rising temperatures, it’s possible that considerably larger pockets of methane will be released from thawing permafrost. Further studies will be necessary to determine whether the methane leaks are due to global warming.

“Regardless of the cause, methane is increasing,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, “and this gas is more than 20 times more powerful than CO2 in warming the climate.”

These fast-action measures include reducing emissions of short-lived climate forcers such as black carbon soot, tropospheric ozone, and methane produced from activities such as agriculture, coal mining, and production of oil and natural gas. Because they are short-lived, implementing aggressive mitigation measures can lead to major near-term climate benefits.

A 2008 study on methane funded by the National Science Foundation found that over 600 million years ago, a sudden release of methane from ice sheets set in motion an abrupt change in climate, transforming the Earth from a cold environment into a much warmer one. While the scientists involved in the study noted that there is no way to determine how much methane it would take to reach that threshold, the current trend of rising emissions is deeply troubling.

“We can’t afford to wait and see what happens,” added Zaelke. “Taking fast action on powerful, short-lived pollutants, capturing carbon through biochar, and reducing the absorption of solar radiation by increasing urban albedo – this group of strategies is our critical insurance policy against abrupt climate change that can offset the effects of CO2 by as much as 40 years or more.”

Source: Abrupt Climate Change Could be Brought About by Leaking Methane – Azocleantech

Date: 6 March 2010

Source: Extensive Methane Venting to the Atmosphere from Sediments of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf – Science

Date: 5 March 2010

Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars.

“Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems”,

said Henning Steinfeld, senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) official.

Source: Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars, UN report warns – UN News Centre

Date: 29 November 2006

Methane is 23 times more harmful to the climate than CO2 averaged over a 100 year period.

Source: Livestock’s Long Shadow – Environmental Issues and Options

Date: 2006

Climate scientists have long warned that global warming could unlock vast stores of the greenhouse gas methane that are frozen into the Arctic permafrost, setting off potentially significant increases in global warming.

Now researchers at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and elsewhere say this change is under way in a little-studied area under the sea, the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, west of the Bering Strait.

Source: New York Times

Date retrieved: 4 March 2010

Climate change emissions from meat production are far higher than currently estimated, according to a controversial new study that will fuel the debate on whether people should eat fewer animal products to help the environment.

In a paper published by a respected US thinktank, the Worldwatch Institute, two World Bank environmental advisers claim that instead of 18 per cent of global emissions being caused by meat, the true figure is 51 per cent.

They claim that United Nation’s figures have severely underestimated the greenhouse gases caused by tens of billions of cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry and other animals in three main areas: methane, land use and respiration.

Their findings – which are likely to prompt fierce debate among academics – come amid increasing from climate change experts calls for people to eat less meat.

In the 19-page report, Robert Goodland, a former lead environmental adviser to the World Bank, and Jeff Anhang, a current adviser, suggest that domesticated animals cause 32 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), more than the combined impact of industry and energy. The accepted figure is 18 per cent, taken from a landmark UN report in 2006, Livestock’s Long Shadow.

“If this argument is right,” write Goodland and Anhang, “it implies that replacing livestock products with better alternatives would be the best strategy for reversing climate change.”

“In fact, this approach would have far more rapid effects on greenhouse gas emissions and their atmospheric concentrations than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.”

Their call to move to meat substitutes accords with the views of the chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, who has described eating less meat as “the most attractive opportunity” for making immediate changes to climate change.

Lord Stern of Brentford, author of the 2006 review into the economic consequences of global warming, added his name to the call last week, telling a newspaper interviewer: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources.”

Scientists are concerned about livestock’s exhalation of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Cows and other ruminants emit 37 per cent of the world’s methane. A study by Nasa scientists published in Science on Friday found that methane has significantly more effect on climate change than previously thought: 33 times more than carbon dioxide, compared with a previous factor of 25.

According to Goodland and Anhang’s paper, which has not been peer-reviewed, scientists have significantly underestimated emissions of methane expelled by livestock. They argue that the gas’s impact should be calculated over 20 years, in line with its rapid effect – and the latest recommendation from the UN – rather than the 100 years favoured by Livestock’s Long Shadow. This, they say, would add a further 5bn tons of CO2e to livestock emissions – 7.9 per cent of global emissions from all sources.

Similarly, they claim that official figures are wrong to ignore CO2 emitted by breathing animals on the basis that it is offset by carbon photosynthesised by their food, arguing the existence of this unnecessary animal-based CO2 amounts to 8.7bn tons of CO2e, 3.7 per cent of total emissions.

On land use, they calculate that returning the land currently used for livestock to natural vegetation and forests would remove 2.6bn tons of CO2e from the atmosphere, 4.2 per cent of greenhouse gas. They also complain that the UN underestimated the amount of livestock, putting it at 21.7bn against NGO estimates of 50bn, adding that numbers have since risen by 12 per cent.

Eating meat rather than plants also requires extra refrigeration and cooking and “expensive” treatment of human diseases arising from livestock such as swine flu, they say.

While looking into the paper’s findings, Friends of the Earth said the report strengthened calls for the Government to act on emissions from meat production. “We already know that the meat and dairy industry causes more climate-changing emissions than all the world’s transport,” said Clare Oxborrow, senior food campaigner.

“These new figures need further scrutiny but, if they stack up, they provide yet more evidence of the urgent need to fix the food chain. The more damaging elements of the meat and dairy industry are effectively government-sponsored: millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is spent propping up factory farms and subsidising the import of animal feed that’s been grown at the expense of forests.”

Justin Kerswell, campaign manager for the vegetarian group Viva!, said: “The case for reducing consumption of meat and dairy products was already imperative based on previous UN findings. Now it appears to have been proven that the environmental devastation from livestock production is in fact staggeringly more significant – and dwarfs the contribution from the transport sector by an even greater margin.”

“It is essential that attention is fully focused on the impact of livestock production by all global organisations with the power to affect policy.”

Source: Study claims meat creates half of all greenhouse gases – The Independent UK

Date: 01 November 2009

Farmers and meat companies across Britain reacted with a mixture of anger and exasperation yesterday after one of the world’s leading climate change campaigners urged people to become vegetarian to help to fight global warming.

The offensive by Lord Stern of Brentford in The Times was especially timely as about 100 leading meat and farm industry figures sat down to breakfast in the elegant Cholmondeley Room in the House of Lords to celebrate champions in the pig industry.

The occasion was also an opportunity to show the vegetarian Farming Minister, Jim Fitzpatrick, the efforts being made to reduce the carbon footprint of livestock farms.

Serving the right bacon and sausage was therefore important, and industry leaders chose Bedfordia Farms, which is pioneering technology in farming. The group pumps slurry from pig units to an anaerobic digestion plant, where it is combined with other waste from the food chain to produce renewable energy and bio-fertiliser. These type of plants are increasingly being seen as one of the ways to help British farming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

It was the lack of acknowledgement about what the industry is doing to help to fight climate change that made senior farming leaders so outraged by the comment by Lord Stern. The reaction in Whitehall, however, was muted. The remarks were a personal view from Lord Stern, who is an economist, one senior insider said.

It was left to Professor Robert Watson, chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to set the record straight and make clear that stopping people eating meat was not on the government agenda. The professor, who eats meat, fish and cheese but admits that he consumes more fruit and vegetables these days, made clear that eating a balanced diet that was good for health and the environment was the key. However, he did not flinch from Lord Stern’s view that the nation had to reduce its carbon emissions.

“There’s no question we need to reduce greeenhouse gas emissions, not only the way we produce energy and use energy, but also from avoiding deforestation and our agricultural sector. Livestock globally could account for as much as 18 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions.”

“When you look at the livestock industry, it’s not just the cows burping methane, it’s transporting the meat, it’s cooking the meat, it’s storing the meat. It’s not stopping eating meat. It’s how do we get a balanced diet that reduces the environmental footprint.”

The Soil Association; Compassion in World Farming; the food and farming campaign group, Sustain; and VIVA, vegetarian campaigners, were united that everyone should have one or two meat-free days a week.

The word on meat

“Eating a vegetarian diet is a lot cheaper than a meat one. Let’s face it — the most expensive foods on the average families shopping lists are meat and dairy” — Jonte Jay

“Thanks for the good and scientific article. More people should be vegan. I hope all people take \ up soon, before it’s too late” — Sean Lee

“Those who refuse to give up meat are contributing significantly to the destruction of the planet” — Peter Radcliffe

“If we quit breeding large herds of animals for meat, population goes down, less animals producing less methane gas. Unfortunately, there will still be Lords and politicians producing more than their fair share of gas . . .” — Dbrent Willis

“Tell me I’m having a bad dream and not living in such a ridiculous country” — Nicholas Fox

Source: Critics round on Lord Stern over vegetarian call – The Times UK

Date: 28 October 2009