With all due respect to Big Al Gore and his carbon dioxide and global warming theories, researchers in Norway now claim that a grown moose (or were they looking at Big Al?) produces 2,100 kilos of methane a year. I have no idea how much a kilo is, but I suspect it is a bunch. This would be equivalent to the amount of CO2 caused by an automobile on an 8,077-mile trip so says der Spiegel.
The moose, Norway's national animal, as you would expect releases methane out of both ends -- through burping and flatulence. Cows have the same problem, but I haven't been able to determine a moose to cow ratio, but I would think that the sizes of the moose and cow would figure into the equation.
This huge amount of burping and flatulating of methane is thought by the Norwegians to be more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide.
There are estimated to be over 100,000 moose in Norway -- by my math that's 210 million kilos of methane floating around the heads of 4.6 million Norse people. Going on with this math problem we find that is over 4 1/2 kilos per man, woman and child. I might say that is a lot of burps and flatulence to deal with as one goes about his/her daily activities. But all of this is Norway's problem, and we have problems of our own -- don't we Big Al?
I have no idea nor do I care about the population of moose in the United States and Canada, but I do know that according to a joint report of the National Statistics Service (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture) and the Canadian equivalent agency there are 111.3 million cows and calves combined (give or take a few) in the two countries as of January 1, 2007. This is good stuff -- I waded through some pretty dry research to get these numbers.
Now let us suppose a cow/calf on average burps and flatulates about half as much as a moose. Using that same Norwegian math I calculate that the Americans and Canadians are wallowing around in about 116 trillion 865 million kilos of methane just from our bovine population. Surely all animals (including homo sapiens) produce methane with those same bodily functions.
Big Al, let me throw something else at you. Methane is a relatively potent greenhouse gas with a high global warming potential. Big Al, if you'll take that chicken leg out of your mouth, you'll see where this is going. When averaged over 100 years each kilogram of CH4 (methane) warms the Earth 25 times as much as the same mass of CO2. But let's be fair to Big Al -- there is 220 times more CO2 in the atmosphere as CH4. But here is where it gets hairy -- CH4 contributes to the presence of CO2 because it has a half life of 7 years, so every 7 years half of the methane in the atmosphere is converted to CO2 and H2O. Don't you like it when a plan comes together?
I could go on and on with this stuff and probably will at a later date, but I'm getting tired and want to wrap this thing up. I am suggesting to Big Al as a start toward turning around this global warming thing we kill all the moose in Norway. Mind you it is just a start, but it has to be started somewhere, and it will probably be more effective than those environmental credits that you are buying and selling.
As I see it, and I ain't real smart, if a company or individual wants to throw more junk in the atmosphere or waste more energy, it or he/she just pays for the priviledge. Those enviromental credits are sold and traded just like stocks on Wall Street, and people like Big Al get richer and fatter.
Ain't this country great!
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7 comments:
Mr. Clark,
I had written a long comment about methane breakdown in the atmosphere, but clicked on somethign and lost the whole thing. Here's a quick breakdown:
Though the combustion of CH4 in the presence of oxygen (O2) does result in CO2 and H20, atmospheric CH4 does not result in CO2 and H2O for two reasons. First, atmospheric CH4 does not exist in the presence of oxygen, but in the presence of ozone (O3), and there's no way to get that equation to balance out (believe me, I tried this morning). Second, atmospheric CH4 can't undergo combustion because there's not enough heat in the atmosphere to make me it combust. The atmosphere is much colder than the surface temperature, and CH4 at surface temps is stable.
Another interesting thing is that methane is not evenly distributed across the atmosphere (see this website: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16827). It would seem to me that it would have an exponential effect in places along the equator, but less of an effect at the poles. So perhaps, this isn't as big a concern.
It is funny however, that consideration of methane production in agriculture and livestock has been widely considered (check out MSU sister school Texas A&M professor's paper at http://agecon2.tamu.edu/people/faculty/mccarl-bruce/papers/728.pdf). Admittedly, the agreement in inherently flawed (yes, I'm looking at you China--you know you're not a developing nation, so stop trying to use dirty coal), but I certainly see nothing wrong with making people more accountable for their actions. And this Rick and Bubba attitude about "Well, I'm going to drive my unnecessarily large truck because I've got to get to work somehow" is unacceptable. Drive whatever you want (that's what the market is all about), but be prepared to pay for your actions.
Carbon dioxide levels are most definitely up, as are methane levels and most other greenhouse gases, but I think this is largely a biproduct of the industrial age of the developed world. Now, we are into the postindustrial age, where issues like this become more important and the factory and factory worker is possibly going the way of the wood stove heater. Yes, we'll always need them, but we will rely on them less and less, and rely on information and service workers more and more.
Finally, the funny thing to me is while people are complaining about increased energy consumption, no one seems to connect the dots that there are more people to consume the energy. When I was in 3rd grade, we were told that Earth's capacity was 6 billion people--we've hit that already, and we're still going. We think everyone should have the best healthcare and live as long as they possibly can, but somehow, we shouldn't be using more total energy? You've got to confront the tradeoffs, and no one seems to want to do that. It's not that we should let everyone die, but you've got to decide for one or the other.
The most important thing in all of this for everyone to remember, and I think you make a good point of it, is our environment is intricately connected within itself. Methane keeps ozone molcules lower, warms the earth, and combines with halogens to eliminate them as problems. We need all three of these things to keep everything balanced. A simple checklist of dos and don'ts or a criteria of goods and bads aren't the way to fix things--our earth, like our Creator, is way more complex than that.
By the way, here is the website for atmospheric methane production:
http://www.igac.noaa.gov/newsletter/21/methane_sink.php
Caleb,
Gosh I can really count on you to set the record straight. You do a lot more research than I do -- guess I'll have to delve into the whole thing a little deeper.
The whole point of the blog is that I think Al Gore is a fraud -- no bones about it.
Thanks for the comments.
I absolutely agree about Gore. He's a terrible fraud, but it makes me sad when his arguments are chalked up as having no merit. No, he didn't invent the idea about global climate change, but he is doing more for raising awareness than anyone else. It's just one of a myriad of issues in our world that need attention.
In addition, I don't think many of his ideas will work because, like I said, our earth is way too complicated for a simple checklist. Solving one problem through government commonly causes a problem somewhere else. For example, one of the stories discussed in the book Freakonomics is about the last Romanian dictator. In the 1960s and 1970s, he outlawed abortion. In 1989, he was assassinated by a group of young activists, the very people he had guarenteed the right to life. Without his policy, it was very likely that they would have been killed (prior to his rule, birth control was illegal and aboritions were cheap).
Government signed treaties may work in a vacuum, but establishing goals to be met 15 years later (when you're not in office) is unlikely to work, not to mention the multipolicity of personal interests that exist within the policy process that approves such actions. As John Wesley said, "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can". Fixing our world's problems--environmental, physical, emotional, spiritual--will take many individual actions, not large government-mandated ones.
I LOVE the conversations between little daddy and caleb.
Caleb,
atmospheric breakdown of methane in the presence of ozone isn't possible because YOU can't balance the equation? SERIOUSLY?! It took me less than two minutes to come up with
3(CH4) + 4(O3) => 3(CO2) + 6H2O
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