6 ms·

> Methane naturally turns into CO2 in the atmosphere After how long? A half-life of a decade, as I understand it? Not exactly the order of magnitude of luxury

> Methane naturally turns into CO2 in the atmosphere After how long? A half-life of a decade, as I understand it? Not exactly the order of magnitude of luxury time we have to spare. > Even if it did increase warming more than CO2 "Even if it did" is strange wording for an established fact. Do you write "even if the sky was blue"? > once methane emissions reach a steady level, reducing methane emissions won't change a thing It's kind of really, really important how high that "steady level" is and how fast we'd reach it though, no? We're not just worried about life 1,000 years from now. We're worried about life 20 years from now. > The narrative is extremely misleading. I find this statement strange after reading your comment.

himinlomax 3y ago
> After how long? A half-life of a decade, as I understand it? Not exactly the order of magnitude of luxury time we have to spare Doesn't matter, if we keep the number of heads of cattle constant, the methane from them in the atmosphere will be constant. If we keep using the same number of ICE cars otoh, the CO2 from them in the atmosphere will keep increasing. We would have to drop the number of ICE cars to 0 to stop the increase.
- cesnja 3y ago
  If the amount of methane in the atmosphere is constant, the CO2 from that in the atmosphere will keep increasing.
  - ant6n 3y ago
    Well unless there‘s a closed loop co2 - soy - animal - co2/methane - co2. Meat production will involve fossil fuels tho.
  - codethief 3y ago
    As the sibling already said: We're in a closed loop. Methane decomposes into CO2, so if you want to maintain a constant level of methane in the atmosphere, energy/mass conservation dictates that this carbon needs to come from somewhere else. Solution: It actually comes from the CO2, via grass growth & the cattle's digestive system. The amount of CO2, averaged over time, therefore cannot increase.
  - himinlomax 3y ago
    Cows don't eat coal or oil.
    - adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
      they eat oil (fertilizer is an oil byproduct).
      - himinlomax 3y ago
        That's not the case for grass fed beef.
        timeon 3y ago
        What is % of grass fed beef? Why is Amazon decreasing?
  - bioemerl 3y ago
    Not if the methane is produced through carbon from plants, in which case methane will stay constant but CO2 being sucked from the atmosphere would occur at the same rate as methane emission. It's sourcing food from petroleum that causes the problem.
codethief 3y ago
> It's kind of really, really important how high that "steady level" is and how fast we'd reach it though, no? (Update: In hindsight I'm not sure you were talking about methane emissions in general or about methane from meat production. Here, I'm focussing on the latter. Meanwhile, fossil methane is of course a huge problem.) As for the second part of your question: When it comes to meat production, we have already reached the steady state. As for the first part: Yes. But it is not that high. Let's say the total amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to cattle (and rice and other types of agriculture) account for a fraction X of the world's yearly emissions. (In Germany, for instance, X = 0.06, i.e. 6%.) Let's assume for simplicity the remaining emissions are exclusively due to fossil fuels and all emissions are the same every year. Let Y be the fraction of agricultural emissions relative to fossil emissions, i.e. Y = X/(1-X). (= 6.4% for Germany) Then, after N years, the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to agriculture, relative to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to fossil fuels (burned during that timeframe) will be Y/N. This is because agricultural greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will stay constant – because we're in a steady state – but greenhouse gases due to fossil fuels will keep on accumulating. Putting e.g. N=20 yields Y/N = 0.3% (for Germany). N=100 yields 0.06%. In short, the amount is negligible. Fossil fuels are a real problem when it comes to climate change, agriculture is not.
- smolder 3y ago
  Fossil fuels are used to make fertilizer on a massive scale as well as power a lot of equipment used, so agriculture is currently a piece of the fossil fuel problem.
- klipt 3y ago
  > When it comes to meat production, we have already reached the steady state. Well yes but also no, we've reached a steady state. If we reduce meat production we would reach a new, lower steady state which would buy some more time.
  - codethief 3y ago
    > we would reach a new, lower steady state That's right but your claim that this > would buy some more time completely ignores my (admittedly back-of-the-envelope) calculation. Please do point out if there's an error somewhere but until then I will stand by my point: Emissions from meat production – even with meat consumption as high as it is these days – are negligible in the grand scheme of things. We better focus our efforts elsewhere. Besides, what kind of food would we replace the meat with? That food would also need to be grown, harvested, transported, and so on. In the end, we might not gain much in terms of greenhouse gases.
machina_ex_deus 3y ago
The narrative is very misleading. There are two directions to look at it: convincing yourself via a convincing story, or convincing yourself via a convincing calculation. The story they tell defies basic thermodynamic intuition, and seems to skip over all the parts that would put the narrative in doubt. The premise is that greenhouse gases absorb black body radiation from the surface. First of all, greenhouse gas is a bad name, greenhouses warm because of air convection. So the "greenhouse" intuition they try to abuse is misleading. Secondly, think about this thought experiment: a layer of pure CO2 gas covers the lowest layer of air near the surface. By how much would that get warmer compared to air? The answer is there won't be any difference. That's because the surface and the air near it are at the same temperature, so they emit exactly the same amount of energy. All systems with same temperature are at an equilibrium. So what can possibly cause warming is only the effect of the difference in temperatures between the CO2 gas and the surface. Which should only be significant in higher altitudes. Which have much less CO2 because it is heavier. And it's also not clear, in this situation, in which direction the weather near the surface will change. But then you realize there are also effects of increasing methane / CO2 which decrease warming. The most obvious effect is that they have higher heat capacity. Heat capacity goes together with absorption: the absorption is possible only because the molecules have more degrees of freedom to vibrate. So it's usually around the same order of magnitude. And higher heat capacity means faster cooling from convection and it means the air requires more energy to heat up. In fact, you can think of the entire climate change claim as a statement about the entire earth heat capacity. So I'm entirely unconvinced by the story. But that should've been OK because there are detailed calculations. There are models. Except these models are dumpster fire. You can download some of them from NASA's website and judge the quality of code for yourself. Old fortran code, all the models copy code from each other, many things which aren't constant physically are constant in the code, functions full of tens of "if else" statements whose physical validity is highly in question. But those models should've been tested? Except they don't. There's no way to test them. From basic software engineering perspective, it is insane to trust these things to make the kind of trillion dollar decisions they make. But all models point to climate change! Well they all copy code from each other. But that's not the only problem. They are all thermodynamic simulations which substitute the full state of the system with average states. In other words, they all, by design, underestimate the entropy of the system. And thermodynamic energy is entropy times temperature, and since they get the energy right (just the sun) you expect them all to get higher temperature. So it is actually expected from all simulations to overestimate warming. There are also other glaring counter intuitive things about the narrative. Somehow CO2 effects continue to work slowly over decades, and the system doesn't reach an equilibrium with the current levels of CO2 until decades ahead. This is completely against normal thermodynamic intuition. Meta stable states exist, yes, and there are out of equilibrium systems. But usually the reason for systems not reaching the more stable state, is that their fluctuations are too small. In this case, the fluctuations are much much bigger than the supposed stable state change. We're talking about barely a degree change over decades in systems that fluctuate by several degrees daily. It makes no sense to claim their equilibrium will only be reached in decades while their fluctuation exceeds the difference to equilibrium daily.
bioemerl 3y ago
Half life of anything is fine. The problem with emissions is their cumulative effect, something like methane sourced from plants isn't a problem. Methane from fossil fuels is a problem, however.

himinlomax 3y ago

> After how long? A half-life of a decade, as I understand it? Not exactly the order of magnitude of luxury time we have to spare Doesn't matter, if we keep the number of heads of cattle constant, the methane from them in the atmosphere will be constant. If we keep using the same number of ICE cars otoh, the CO2 from them in the atmosphere will keep increasing. We would have to drop the number of ICE cars to 0 to stop the increase.

cesnja 3y ago
If the amount of methane in the atmosphere is constant, the CO2 from that in the atmosphere will keep increasing.
- ant6n 3y ago
  Well unless there‘s a closed loop co2 - soy - animal - co2/methane - co2. Meat production will involve fossil fuels tho.
- codethief 3y ago
  As the sibling already said: We're in a closed loop. Methane decomposes into CO2, so if you want to maintain a constant level of methane in the atmosphere, energy/mass conservation dictates that this carbon needs to come from somewhere else. Solution: It actually comes from the CO2, via grass growth & the cattle's digestive system. The amount of CO2, averaged over time, therefore cannot increase.
- himinlomax 3y ago
  Cows don't eat coal or oil.
  - adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
    they eat oil (fertilizer is an oil byproduct).
    - himinlomax 3y ago
      That's not the case for grass fed beef.
      - timeon 3y ago
        What is % of grass fed beef? Why is Amazon decreasing?
- bioemerl 3y ago
  Not if the methane is produced through carbon from plants, in which case methane will stay constant but CO2 being sucked from the atmosphere would occur at the same rate as methane emission. It's sourcing food from petroleum that causes the problem.

codethief 3y ago

> It's kind of really, really important how high that "steady level" is and how fast we'd reach it though, no? (Update: In hindsight I'm not sure you were talking about methane emissions in general or about methane from meat production. Here, I'm focussing on the latter. Meanwhile, fossil methane is of course a huge problem.) As for the second part of your question: When it comes to meat production, we have already reached the steady state. As for the first part: Yes. But it is not that high. Let's say the total amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to cattle (and rice and other types of agriculture) account for a fraction X of the world's yearly emissions. (In Germany, for instance, X = 0.06, i.e. 6%.) Let's assume for simplicity the remaining emissions are exclusively due to fossil fuels and all emissions are the same every year. Let Y be the fraction of agricultural emissions relative to fossil emissions, i.e. Y = X/(1-X). (= 6.4% for Germany) Then, after N years, the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to agriculture, relative to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to fossil fuels (burned during that timeframe) will be Y/N. This is because agricultural greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will stay constant – because we're in a steady state – but greenhouse gases due to fossil fuels will keep on accumulating. Putting e.g. N=20 yields Y/N = 0.3% (for Germany). N=100 yields 0.06%. In short, the amount is negligible. Fossil fuels are a real problem when it comes to climate change, agriculture is not.

smolder 3y ago
Fossil fuels are used to make fertilizer on a massive scale as well as power a lot of equipment used, so agriculture is currently a piece of the fossil fuel problem.
klipt 3y ago
> When it comes to meat production, we have already reached the steady state. Well yes but also no, we've reached a steady state. If we reduce meat production we would reach a new, lower steady state which would buy some more time.
- codethief 3y ago
  > we would reach a new, lower steady state That's right but your claim that this > would buy some more time completely ignores my (admittedly back-of-the-envelope) calculation. Please do point out if there's an error somewhere but until then I will stand by my point: Emissions from meat production – even with meat consumption as high as it is these days – are negligible in the grand scheme of things. We better focus our efforts elsewhere. Besides, what kind of food would we replace the meat with? That food would also need to be grown, harvested, transported, and so on. In the end, we might not gain much in terms of greenhouse gases.

machina_ex_deus 3y ago

The narrative is very misleading. There are two directions to look at it: convincing yourself via a convincing story, or convincing yourself via a convincing calculation. The story they tell defies basic thermodynamic intuition, and seems to skip over all the parts that would put the narrative in doubt. The premise is that greenhouse gases absorb black body radiation from the surface. First of all, greenhouse gas is a bad name, greenhouses warm because of air convection. So the "greenhouse" intuition they try to abuse is misleading. Secondly, think about this thought experiment: a layer of pure CO2 gas covers the lowest layer of air near the surface. By how much would that get warmer compared to air? The answer is there won't be any difference. That's because the surface and the air near it are at the same temperature, so they emit exactly the same amount of energy. All systems with same temperature are at an equilibrium. So what can possibly cause warming is only the effect of the difference in temperatures between the CO2 gas and the surface. Which should only be significant in higher altitudes. Which have much less CO2 because it is heavier. And it's also not clear, in this situation, in which direction the weather near the surface will change. But then you realize there are also effects of increasing methane / CO2 which decrease warming. The most obvious effect is that they have higher heat capacity. Heat capacity goes together with absorption: the absorption is possible only because the molecules have more degrees of freedom to vibrate. So it's usually around the same order of magnitude. And higher heat capacity means faster cooling from convection and it means the air requires more energy to heat up. In fact, you can think of the entire climate change claim as a statement about the entire earth heat capacity. So I'm entirely unconvinced by the story. But that should've been OK because there are detailed calculations. There are models. Except these models are dumpster fire. You can download some of them from NASA's website and judge the quality of code for yourself. Old fortran code, all the models copy code from each other, many things which aren't constant physically are constant in the code, functions full of tens of "if else" statements whose physical validity is highly in question. But those models should've been tested? Except they don't. There's no way to test them. From basic software engineering perspective, it is insane to trust these things to make the kind of trillion dollar decisions they make. But all models point to climate change! Well they all copy code from each other. But that's not the only problem. They are all thermodynamic simulations which substitute the full state of the system with average states. In other words, they all, by design, underestimate the entropy of the system. And thermodynamic energy is entropy times temperature, and since they get the energy right (just the sun) you expect them all to get higher temperature. So it is actually expected from all simulations to overestimate warming. There are also other glaring counter intuitive things about the narrative. Somehow CO2 effects continue to work slowly over decades, and the system doesn't reach an equilibrium with the current levels of CO2 until decades ahead. This is completely against normal thermodynamic intuition. Meta stable states exist, yes, and there are out of equilibrium systems. But usually the reason for systems not reaching the more stable state, is that their fluctuations are too small. In this case, the fluctuations are much much bigger than the supposed stable state change. We're talking about barely a degree change over decades in systems that fluctuate by several degrees daily. It makes no sense to claim their equilibrium will only be reached in decades while their fluctuation exceeds the difference to equilibrium daily.

bioemerl 3y ago

Half life of anything is fine. The problem with emissions is their cumulative effect, something like methane sourced from plants isn't a problem. Methane from fossil fuels is a problem, however.