Methane
Njbunk asks:
How about a post on the effect of methane emissions on global warming? Cows probably contribute as much, maybe more, to global warming as cars. If we’re going to tax carbon emitters, we should tax methane emitters (cows) as well.
I’m not a scientist, or a cow fart expert, but my understanding is that when you see a high estimate of a cow’s contribution to global warming you’re looking at a very broad estimate of the cow’s climactic footprint. Which is to say not just his methane emissions, but the considerable amount of carbon expended in growing and transporting the grain on which he feeds. But, yes, carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas because of the large quantity of emissions but it’s not actually the most pernicious on a per unit level and the case for regulating carbon emissions applies just as well to methane emissions and a few other things. There are obviously some technical issues here that I’m not conversant with, and I’m not sure it’s strictly necessary for me to become conversant with them in order to do the kind of persuasive work I’m trying to do with this blog, but you would want congress and the EPA to look at this sort of thing carefully.
The flipside of this is that one of the under-discussed social consequences of improved environmental policy would almost certainly be a large change in Americans’ beef-consumption behaviors. The difference between eating beef and eating chicken or pork in terms of climate footprint is enormous. If those climactic externalities were priced into the beef, you’d see a lot less beef eaten overall and probably a resurgence of interest in the cheaper/grosser parts of the cow.
75 Responses to “Methane”
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December 29th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
It follows from the above point about the climactic footprint that there is a big difference between US feedlot beef and Central American rain-forest-deforestation beef, on the one hand, and beef that is range finished on permanent pasture.
And the remaining impact can be further reduced with biogas digestion of manure, capturing the methane produce and burning it … as the combustion of methane is a mix of water vapor and CO2 that has substantial less greenhouse gas impact than the methane itself does, and the carbon itself is recycled carbon that was recently captured from the atmosphere.
December 29th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Please stop these “by request” posts if you aren’t going to do anything more than admit you don’t know much about a topic then proceed to write something off the top of your head. We can go to wikipedia and get a much better overview on these things.
December 29th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Cows are part of the carbon cycle. So while they release methane as a part of their digestive system (they are front gut ruminants), they also contribute to carbon sequestering by laying down manure which fertilizes plants.
Methane is CH4, so it would theoretically be taxed under a carbon tax, since it has carbon.
Cows are incredibly useful. They can forage on grasslands that cannot support much other vegitation. Cows are ruminants, so they can digest cellulose, which humans cannot. Cows produce manure which can be turned into high quality fertilizer and methane, which can be turned into clean burning energy. Some farms are starting to see the benefits of recycling cow manure rather than shoveling it into the water table.
I suggest that any environmental issues related to cows and beef consumption should fall under the umbrella of the department of agriculture, which should foster more free range feeding of beef and recycling of cow manure.
December 29th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Tax cows for farting! Can’t they just put those anti-gas strips in their mouths? . . . Or, check with Boone Pickens – he might have a plan to stick a pipe in their butts or something – he is aleady planning to be building wind turbines and solar panels on their grazing land.
December 29th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
I’m not a cow orgasm expert, but I assume you are referring to the cow’s climatic footprint rather than its climactic one.
December 29th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
when you see a high estimate of a cow’s contribution to global warming you’re looking at a very broad estimate of the cow’s climactic footprint. Which is to say not just his methane
I’m not a cow expert either, but I think there’s a mistake in that last sentence.
December 29th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
More like tax cow production.
December 29th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
it’s true that cows emit methane, which is an even more effective greenhouse gas, molecule-for-molecule, than CO2. The reason people don’t worry as much about methane is that it degrades naturally (due to sunlight) in a decade, wheras CO2 lasts for about 1000 years. Thus our CO2 is a danger to our grandchildren and to the long-term climate, whereas our methane isn’t. See here.
December 29th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
If I recall the reason why carbon dioxide is such an issue whereas more physically warming gases like methane and even water vapor are not is the question of where the underlying elements would be existing in the “normal” state. That is, the carbon dioxide we’re pumping into the atmosphere is made of huge quantities of carbon atoms that used to be buried underground and was not part of any natural cycle of circulation except at very long time scales.
In comparison, the carbon atoms in methane released by cow farts were already part of the planet’s natural carbon cycle and so even if we were all vegans and there were no farting cows in the world, those carbon atoms would be part of the natural emissions of some other living creature and cycling in and out of the atmosphere. This is why there’s any chance at all that ethanol, etc, could possibly be a piece of the carbon emissions reduction cycle despite the fact that burning ethanol results in carbon emissions just like burning fossil fuels — that carbon emitted from ethanol burning was previously captured from the atmosphere by the corn plants that become the ethanol, and so less previously-underground-for-tens-of-millions-of-years carbon ends up being dug up and emitted.
Of course, there is also a lot of carbon trapped in the ground that could escape from large methane traps that were previously out of the natural cycle but could get released by feedback mechanisms if we reach some tipping point from the fossil fuel carbons being emitted. And if that happens apparently we’d be screwed well beyond even our current likely bad scenarios.
December 29th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Bruce is on to something at the end of his comment above and it points to the fundamentally flawed thinking behind the “cow farts contribute substantially to global warming” arguments. It is the fact that the methane produced by the cows is made of carbon that was found in plant material. These plants “fix” or capture the carbon used to make the cow (and its flatulence) from CO2 the air. In other words, the NET contribution of cow flatulence to global warming gas accumulation is less than advocates of the argument make due to the fact that it is a natural carbon cycle (not withstanding the fact that methane is a more potent green house gas than CO2). It just doesn’t add an appreciable amount to carbon to the atmosphere because that carbon originally was taken out of the atmosphere to begin with. And around we go!
What does contribute significantly is the removal of long dead organic material sequestered in the earth’s crust (oil, natural gas and coal) and burning it. That creates a massive NET increase in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere that dwarfs the effects of cow farts.
December 29th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Another reason that methane is a much smaller concern than CO2 is that it constitutes a much smaller proportion of the atmosphere, around 2 ppm for methane vs around 380 ppm for CO2. So although it is 20 times as effective at trapping heat as CO2, a doubling in atmospheric methane would have the equivalent effect of only a 10% increase in CO2. And a 10% increase in atmospheric CO2 is much more likely than a doubling in atmospheric methane.
December 29th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Damn, Will. You beat me to it, but spot on. Thanks!
December 29th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
The problem of flatulent cows is not so much a general cow problem as it is a corn-fed cow problem. Cows doing the normal cow thing and eating grass aren’t nearly as much of a problem as cows eating corn. The easy solution to this isn’t necessarily to tax cows, but rather to just stop subsidizing corn so heavily such that cows can be fed corn cheaper than grass.
December 29th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
In line with Will Hutchinson and phanticone, and contra Mike, the next two decades are going to be fairly critical ones, so it is a concern if the CO2 starts in the atmosphere and then is recycled into methane gas.
Unlike natural gas, methane produced from manure, whether naturally or in a biogas digester, is not changing the CO2 balance of the atmosphere, so the CO2 impact of biogas is entirely the footprint of the activities in producing the feed. If the feed is corn, that footprint is likely to be quite high … if the feed is newly established permanent range, the footprint could even be negative, as permanent grasses continue to grow their their root systems for quite a long period of time.
However, releasing methane rather than burning it is a very bad idea, since that is emission of a gas that is far more effective as a greenhouse gas over the next decade or two.
The good news is that, because of the shorter time period, progress we make now could have much quicker payoff in terms of reducing an atmospheric greenhouse gas.
The bad news is that there is methane trapped in permafrost that could well provide a big kick in the wrong direction if we hit periods when that permafrost is not quite as permanent any more.
December 29th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Just for the record: About 90% of a cow’s methane emissions come from burping, only 10% from flatulence. Referring to it as “cow farts” makes it more difficult to treat the issue seriously.
December 29th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
…whereas “cow burps” really brings out the Serious?
December 29th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Grass-fed cows fart less than corn-fed cows.
December 29th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
In case anyone is interested, here is the article that inspired my question.
Apparently the EPA is already looking into methane taxes.
December 29th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Yes, joe, but do people who eat grass-fed beef fart less than people who eat corn-fed beef?
December 29th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Just to correct some misconceptions here: methane from cows is not greenhouse gas neutral like biofuels could potentially be. That’s because CH4 is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, so actually sucking CO2 out of the system via plants and releasing it back as CH4 acts as a multiplier on the system.
December 29th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I also have to wonder about the carbon footprint of liberal blog posts on cow farts. The amount of electricity required to power the computers used by conservative bloggers who enjoy mocking liberal anti-cow-fart blog posts is probably pretty considerable.
December 29th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Cows produce methane primarily from “belching”.
“[W]hen it comes to climate change they have a dark secret. Forget cars, planes or even power stations, some of the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitters wander idly across rolling pastures chewing the cud, oblivious to the fact that their continuous belching (and to a lesser degree, farting) is warming the planet.” New Scientist Magazine http://preview.tinyurl.com/8mcdct
Chickens and Kangaroos (don’t laugh yet.. it’s part of an important aspect that may be key in setting policy) produce very little GHG per pound of meat. Organisms in Cow’s guts (rumen, specifically) are primarily methanogens, which produce methane. Kangaroos guts are dominated by acetogens. If we could make the acetogens dominate cow’s guts we would solve methane emissions and increase meat production by up to 8%. Acetogens produce compounds that can be utilized for fuel and tissue building. Methane goes up the esophagus and is lost to the atmosphere.
Dan
P.S. Re: Methane being a smaller concern. Any GHG is a big concern. We may have already reached the tipping point where disastrous climate change is inevitable. Dire reports issued in the past few weeks from a multitude of sources are alarming in their consistency – faster than anticipated and rapidly accelerating despite La Nina’s and solar minimums.
December 29th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
This New Scientist article lays out the problem of greenhouse gas emissions from livestock and describes some ongoing research on treatments for livestock that could reduce their gas output. If a carbon tax (or equivalent) was in place, this type of research could be highly lucrative, and hence the focus of a great deal of R&D efforts.
December 29th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Beaten. Should’ve refreshed.
December 29th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Rob;
Congrat’s on being in total agreement!! We need to repeat the best information from the best sources.
I’d love to include links to the truly disturbing reports from the American Geophysical Union convention, and the half dozen others that emerged just as the news was dominated by the economy, Rick Warren, and the public distracted by Christmas.
We’re fighting for the future of humanity and stuck with brains that are most effective at dealing with fast moving crises. Homeland Security being a prime example – an organization trying to prevent the last attack.
December 29th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
I figured this would come up, but didn’t want to clutter up my original comment. Yes, CH4 is a more potent GHG. But, in the grand scheme of things, the CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels is a much greater concern than flatulence (rectal or oral) because of the points made by myself and others (the carbon cycle, shorter duration in the atmosphere, etc.). My point is that global warming deniers like to throw up the supposed terrible effect of cows on global warming because it sounds scientific until you think about the situation more closely. It is a distraction. Pure and simple.
We can discuss industrial farming and deforestation’s affects on global warming, but cow (or any other animal’s methane production…I know a few humans that contribute significantly in this regard…you know who you are!) flatulence in itself just doesn’t rise to the level of major concern. Stay focused on fossil fuel consumption. That’s where the real action is and it is from this discussion that we are being distracted.
December 29th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Methane’s atmospheric lifetime is considerably lower than that of other greenhouse gases. This means that reducing methane emissions has a much higher short-term impact. So you’d expect more action on it, but that we don’t see.
This is one of the reasons looking at climate change from an economics point of view have a proper place. If we considered the question ‘how do we best achieve stabilisation at 450ppm carbon dioxide equivalents within the next 25 years?’, cost benefit analyses can be useful.
Wiki, which is indeed better than this Yglesias post, says that ruminants account for about 1/3rd of man-made emissions. Strangely, wiki counts ricelands among natural sources.
December 29th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
‘how do we best achieve stabilisation at 450ppm carbon dioxide equivalents within the next 25 years?’
It’s 350ppm now.
December 29th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Over geologic time CO2 ranges from 150-280ppm, just for reference.
December 29th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Re: Over geologic time CO2 ranges from 150-280ppm
How long is that “geologic time”? If we’re talking the lifetime of the human species (~2 MM years) that may be right, but I believe that it was much higher than that in the Mesozoic (and the Earth was also of course much, much warmer as a result).
December 29th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Cows, eating grass, are the most efficient digesters of cellulose among the ruminants (cows should not be fed corn, unless you’re keeping one as a pet and giving it a treat).
Their manure (assuming grass fed) is about the finest fertilizer available, with no extra processing needed. And roaming on pasture means it doesn’t need de-thatching or areating.
In other words, properly managed (not overgrazed) they are one of the best ways to rebuild weak topsoil. Which is probably not getting added into their rather poor marks from New Scientist. Rebuilding topsoil is a skill we need more of, not less.
Besides, they taste better than most alternatives.
December 29th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
The 350.org website refers to 350ppm carbon dioxide, not carbon dioxide equivalents. Important differences! I see even the New Scientist blunders for not doing so (compare Scientific American).
350, well, it’s a worthy campaign, I’d have liked it better if they campaigned as 450, but you can’t have everything.
December 29th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Humans as a species have been around that long. Human civilization has only been around for a little over 10,000 years, a period of very stable CO2 levels. Dispersed human populations 50,000 years ago could suffer extinctions due to dramatic climate change with little on other populations. That won’t be the case now.
December 29th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
“his methane emissions”? Let’s be honest (and brutally sexist) very little cow belching and farting is done by bulls.
December 29th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
I believe that the biggest concern with methane is a massive catastrophic release of methane gas from the permafrost or from underwater sources due to underwater landslides. These massive releases are the primary way enough methane could enter the atmosphere quick enough to impact climate change given the 10 year shelf life. Most methane in the atmosphere does not come from ruminants, it comes from biomass, permafrost and underwater sources. Another factor that hasn’t been mentioned is that methane has both direct and indirect effects on climate change due to the way it interacts with water vapor in the atmosphere. So Methane is a serious concern, but the biggest danger does not come from ruminants. The consensus seems to be that human caused methane should be reduced, but it should not be given similar priority as C02.
December 29th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
The references to cow farting and orgasms make it somewhat hard to ruminant about these weighty issues but having to put up with the bull repeatedly referring to cows as male left me not wanting to hear any moo. Better stay with city subjects Matt.
December 30th, 2008 at 12:27 am
The real problem is underpriced parking and public transportation. Every meal eaten in a major American city has traveled an average of 1500 miles. EVERY MEAL. Population growth in major urban areas is unsustainable. As I recall, this became a big problem for Athens, then Rome.
December 30th, 2008 at 1:06 am
Just Karl, do you think that the distance travelled by a typical meal in a rural area is significantly less? I doubt it. In fact, if food distributers and processors use a hub-and-spoke system of shipping with major cities as hubs, major cities might have a lower number of miles travelled per meal.
I’m not sure exactly where the idea comes from that ruminant enteric fermentation as a significant source of greenhouse gases is some form of obfuscation by the real villains (coal-fired power, etc). Yes, it makes sense to point the finger at everyone else when you can if you’re a big part of the problem, why should the well-documented effect of livestock on the environment be subjected to standards beyond the usual ones applied to other activities like aviation, refrigeration, etc?
December 30th, 2008 at 1:48 am
Just Karl, do you think that the distance travelled by a typical meal in a rural area is significantly less?
Yes, there are fewer Chinese restaurants in the sticks. My guess is that rural-types are not only much more likely to prepare their own meals but they are also more likely to kill their own food, whether by fishing or hunting or farming, than city dwellers.
December 30th, 2008 at 1:51 am
What next, a Pigouvian tax on bean consumption?
But seriously, I would like to see the price of meat reflect the true cost of our meat-eating habits.
December 30th, 2008 at 2:02 am
Just Karl,
The rural-type that you are referring to does not exist in sufficient enough numbers to make a difference.
In smaller towns (let’s say 50 people and up) they still shop primarily at grocery stores buying highly processed foods that were probably made in the urban areas. Any benefit from farm-country (venison, fresh corn, and fish -which by the way are not native to rural lakes but rather are stocked there by the game commission) is easily canceled out by rural dependence on the processed foods made in the cities.
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December 30th, 2008 at 7:54 am
For those who feel strongly about this issue, the Australians are considering replacing much of their food supply (currently beef and lamb) with kangaroo meat, precisely because ‘roos produce so much less methane.
December 30th, 2008 at 9:07 am
A few questions before we blame the bovines …
How many cows are in North and South American pastures today? Compare that with the number of bison running free over North and Central America in the days before Columbus.
2. What’s the difference between cow farts and bison farts? Seriously.
3. If the numbers of cattle today and bison pre-1492 are comparable, and their digestive/intestinal systems are the same, then what’s the problem?
December 30th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
I seem to recall that some dairy farmers and the like burn the methane from cow dung to actually create electricity for their farms. In the end it is a somewhat renewable energy resource which exists in the atmosphere for much shorter periods of time.
December 30th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
The rural-type that you are referring to does not exist in sufficient enough numbers to make a difference.
The goal is to create sufficient numbers to make a difference, right? Which means discouraging unsustainable modes of living.
I for one, still believe that the rugged American outdoorsman still exists and based on no evidence whatsoever I will claim that he eats 3-5 more meals a week of locally produced food items (locally caught shrimp, or BBQ, or cornbread, or applesauce) than his urban dwelling counterpart. If we say it’s 3 meals then that’s 4500 miles(3×1500miles/meal)per week saved per person. Over a year it becomes 234,000 miles saved per person. This is a huge difference in carbon footprint here. The rural-type can drive to work in the old Camaro, run dirt bikes, and that 1971 Johnson outboard motor and still never approach a footprint of 234,000 miles.
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