Methane emissions have become a focal point of the climate debate, triggering absurd agricultural regulations negatively affecting farming communities worldwide. Targets for abuse are ruminant animals, including cattle and sheep, that produce methane (CH4) through enteric fermentation – a natural digestive process that converts grass into protein-rich meat and milk for human consumption.Even farmers from my family in India are possible targets of anti-methane assaults on agriculture that have … [Read more...]
Taxing Sheep and Cow, Uh, Burps
Get ready, farmers. The climate catastrophists are after you!New Zealand's Ministry for Environment on June 8 released a draft plan to tax farmers for the methane their sheep and cattle produce---because, of course, that methane causes climate change, aka global warming, and we all know that's an existential threat to humanity.Except that the moderate warming actually to be expected from rising greenhouse gas levels will bring benefits as well as costs, and it's entirely possible that the … [Read more...]
Go Ahead and Eat Your Beef
No doubt you've heard that raising cattle (for beef or any other purpose) contributes to global warming because the critters have the nasty habit of emitting methane by belching and---well, what they do from the other end.A new paper by our friends Will Happer and W.A. van Wyngaarden at the CO2 Coalition quantifies global methane emissions' warming effect and finds it negligible.Each methane atom has about 30 times the heat (infrared) absorption capacity of each molecule of CO2, causing many … [Read more...]
