Today, human sources are responsible for 60% of global methane emissions, coming primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, decomposition in landfills and
www.nasa.gov
I find this discussion very informative in many ways 👍 Also a rabbitt hole that leads to an endless amount of questions and queries when it turns to the future of mankind and Our time on this planet. Maybe its my beef fed brain? Or the 3 garbage bags I carry to the mailbox. causing the ruin of my body and Earth. I can never come up with a harmonious relationship of modern man and mother earth unfortunately. Is this reality? Should I feel guilty for the way I live? Should I feel overwhelmed or turm myself into a super human somehow? Maybe I should be asking chatgt what the answer is? Or should i call a professor? See , I'm in the rabbit hole. I kinda like it tho. Kinda like enjoying a cheeseburger that my wife cooks on the bbq. Is she trying to kill Me or the planet? Is she evil or a super wife? So many questions....
Rice production creates more methane than beef /dairy production.
WILL they come for rice ?
There is a method to reduce methane production in cattle by 99% by feeding them a chemical from seaweed.
Sounds like the cows don't like the taste.
Further study is needed to determine if the cattle can pass the the seaweed chemical to human via our consumption of the meat and milk. The chemical is a carcinogen to humans.
Will it be better to eliminate cattle or rice?
Or is it both?
But the seaweed that I start eating might cause cancer? We can make it so cows come off the "Bad" list but the world lives on rice i think?
What the hell is a guy to do? Is this life even mine or do I live my life for someone else's life? So many questions. I'm back in that rabbit hole aren't I? Am I asking too many questions? Don't mind me, I'm human.
Seaweed is the answer but it's not the answer?
Let's find the answer. or f#$k the answer ?
Having a beer should be good, but I had 2 on Monday.
Is there even an answer to humans living forever on Earth? Is forever real?
What's a guy to do? I think I will have a beer. A smoke and beer go great together. But that will kill.me. If I separate them in a 20 minute interval is that better than having them at the same time? So many questions.....
I'm going to bed. Maybe I will have more answers tomorrow. Or maybe I won't?
Maybe we can figure this all out together, or maybe someone has and they are keeping it a secret? Is there a perfect age to live to? Me and Earth. So many questions...Do I ever really die? Damn rabbit.
The end .....or is it?
Right on. We all have to think about our own health, that of our families, and our impact, and try to make the decisions that are right for us.
Rice cultivation DOES release methane. Scientists can see in antarctic ice bubble methane when the Chinese first started large scale rice-production thousands of years ago, and the decent amount of global warming that that has caused ever since! They can also see the signals from the multiple Black Deaths and forest regrowth in Europe centuries ago. And the extra carbon added in the 1800s from harvesting and burning most of the world's whales.
Humans have been messing with the atmosphere and changing the climate for millennia.
I would say that without a moral implication, neither good nor bad.
I guess I would try to summarize it like this. We have remade the natural/wild world to suit our needs, and now control it, if perhaps poorly. We get the weather and biosphere that we make.
We are in OVERSHOOT. If the total mass of all land animals (birds and mammals) and fish 10,000 years ago was X, then nowadays just the mass of humans is 3X. The mass of all the animals we raise for food is 6X. So the Earth is generating and supporting 9X the amount of 'meat' that it did prehistorically!
And yet we walk around thinking that WE are living sustainably in balance with nature, or almost so. Our beef is grazing sustainably on some land that is not suitable for agriculture. The fish we eat is caught from a sustainable wild fishery. That the grains we eat could be grown organically without the addition of chemical fertilizers (e.g. just crop rotation and manure).
And NONE of those things are remotely close to being true bc of overshoot.
We have taken over MOST of the arable land in the entire world, and by bathing synthetic fertilizers on it (including mined phosphate), we are extracting 9X the human and animal feed biomass than the natural world used to produce for millions of years! We are extracting fish protein from the seas to the point that most stocks are badly depleted around the world. The waste and runoff of the 9X fertilizer and animal manure is running into the seas and creating huge algae blooms and dead zones.
And social media is saying that if we recycle our cardboard and switch to metal straws, global warming and the ocean will be just fine.
The major environmental organizations are telling people 'happy stuff' to keep the donations coming. And stuff where we can blame others (those terrible electric utilities and oil companies). And they are collecting big money from the Ag and food companies. Those companies aren't as stupid as the Tobacco and Oil companies... they captured the USDA, the school lunch program and the Sierra Club and Greenpeace (!). Imagine if they were handing out cigs in elementary school instead of govt cheese and chocolate milk. That is the world we live in.
The actual state of food production in the overshoot world is NUTS. We can talk about the merits of crop rotation, or organic farming or grazing animals sustainably... and all of that would work OK maybe in a world with about 300 million people in it, not 8000 million.
So we shouldn't be surprised that this effort of feeding 8 billion large mammals (humans) and another 80 billion food animals will perturb the atmosphere in a significant way. Its almost impossible to engineer an agriculture system that DOESN'T.
So, what we will do is go after different foods and methods of production that have the highest AGW impacts FIRST, and work our way down.
Maybe rice will need to go, or how it's grown will need to change.
As for beef, the methane problem is DUE to their cellulose digestion. Grain-fed beef on a feedlot are WAAAY greener, even if it doesn't appeal to our sustainable low impact beef FANTASY in overshoot world. The land required to grow the feed is a lot smaller, and the methane release is a lot less. So if we eliminated GRAZED cattle, we could reduce the AGW footprint of beef significantly. Most beef production NOW is already feedlot cattle (by pounds produced, not by land use). And of course, with animals grown indoors, we can capture and remove any methane, if we like, in principle. And those dead zones from manure (pigs and chickens), well, we could build sewage systems to process that waste (currently 10X the volume of human sewage, and mostly untreated).
But, but... won't that cost a lot? Yup. But probably not as much as we think.
Summary: Meat/fish production as currently is not sustainable, and has large negative 'externalities' for the natural world, in overfishing, land degradation, habitat destruction, sewage runoff and global warming. The industry does not pay for these externalities AND gets large govt subsidies to boot.
Sounds like the fossil companies, doesn't it? I suspect that politicians fear an increase in the price of meat as much as the price of gasoline.
So we will need to reduce the impacts of meat/fish production. That will be a combination of reduced consumption (which is good for our health) and engineering more sustainable production (which will look LESS natural). The true price of meat and fish is already far higher than we think (bc of subsidies and externalities), and our consumption is thus also a market failure. It needs subsidy reduction, and better engineering through regulation of land use, gas emissions and sewage runoff. And let the prices rise 2-3X.
People will then eat less (or pay more if they prefer), and they will be healthier for it.
