BTW kasphar, buffalo culling is back on the agenda due to methane emissions. Last time it was due to bruxellosis. That’s nteresting.

Here’s the weird angle; nearly everyone who supports retention of old growth forests appears to be rabidly anti-nuclear. However it hasn’t been on their front page lately http://www.wilderness.org.au/

http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/08/11/australias-most-powerful-climate-forcing-agent-its-not-coal/

Also a recent science paper (just 2 pages, but it packs a wallop!)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/326/5952/526

If you aren’t a subscriber, then email me (geoffrey.russell@gmail.com)

2) a single lifestyle choice (e.g., eating meat) has impacts that are generally
smeared across multiple categories (ag+trans+deforestation+energy).
A recent WorldWatch paper revised the Livestock’s Long Shadow
estimate of 18% as the combined forcing due to livestock upwards to
51% of total anthropogenic forcings. They included a component that they
shouldn’t have, but missed some others, so the result is close
to the mark, even if the method wasn’t correct.

3) the Science paper above shows how critical it is to tackle both short term
and long term forcings.

4) Methane’s indirect effects are complex and a paper last week calculates
that the full forcing due to methane has been underestimated by about
50%, perhaps even more:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;326/5953/716

“the biggest issue is not this, it’s reducing the huge carbon output of coal and natural gas and then, transportation fuels.”

As is shown in the source below, the carbon output from deforestation is just as important as from electricity generation and transport. In fact it’s about 35% higher than transport and 74% as high as coal generated electricity. Emissions from agriculture are equal to that of transport, for that matter.

% of world GHG emissions:-
Electricity & Heat – 24.6%
Deforestation – 18.3%
Transport – 13.5%
Agriculture – 13.5%

source: http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/world-greenhouse-gas-emissions-by-sector
(it’s 2000 data but I doubt the ratio from one to the other has changed significantly).

I’m sure programs, such as the one in Malaysia, are great (in terms of conservation) but in terms of climate change mitigation it sounds to me like the equivalent of promoting solar power to replace coal fired electricity generation – it effectively does nothing.

It needs to be pointed out that much of these secondary and tertiary growths ARE like old growths in their diversity as they regrew naturally and were not planted… and there is an issue of conservation here as well.

Prairies also have amazing carbon sink, greater than some forests actually, since so much CO2 as someone mentioned here is in the soil.

But the biggest issue is not this, it’s reducing the huge carbon output of coal and natural gas and then, transportation fuels. My concern for forestry is more one of conservation than of carbon issues per se in the advanced countries.

In the tropical areas, this is very much a more serious problem and it deals with something I wrote about previously that has to do with the insane marketization of ‘everything’ a growing thinks like soybeans in the Matto Grasso are of Brazil to feed to cows to make big macs in the US. That, folks, is the free market as a reactionary force. But this destruction of the forest is not about wood products but about protein. So protection of forests and clear cutting has to be stymied by extreme law enforcement.

People like Chico Mendes, radical socialist rubber tapper died in Brazil because of his defense of the forest and the productivity of it as a forest. I have no problem with this at all even if the ‘market’ demands his trees to be cut down.

The issue there is providing stable and growing incomes for people that are simply not destructive to the rain forest. There are, of all places, a Malaysian program that is very comparable with tropical agriculture and doesn’t require creating huge swaths of palm oil trees to make fuel.

“Wood production, since you brought it up, can be absolutely managed and increased. ”

I’m curious as to how this is possible? Even selective forestry, while great for local biodiversity, has a high carbon footprint. And selective forestry can’t be scaled up that much. Even if we replace native forests immediately by planting new trees it takes a minimum of decades for it to compare to the carbon sink capacity of the originial forest. And monocultures simply don’t cut it, as a carbon sink or for biodiversity.

I agree: “You stop ‘consuming’ wood like this when we mandate better recycle programs of deconstructed buildings”. This is precisely the type of change in consumption that we need to see. The “Cradle to Cradle” concept, if you like (a book I highly recommend!). But once again, this is an efficiency argument, and I don’t see it as all that different to more efficient/intelligent consumption in agricultural terms.

You make some good points, and I’m certainly not trying to advocate the “imposing” of anything of the sort you mentioned above.

Tom Segalstad, from the University of Oslo, Norway, suggests the atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) is only about 5 years. Segalstad comment is based on a compilation by Sundquist that lists the results of 36 separate studies, based on a number of different measurement methods, that give an atmospheric CO2 residence or turnover time ranging between two and 25 years.

So where does your 100 years come from and what is the basis for this assertion? Thanks, in anticipation.

Just to clarify that I am interpreting correctly, what you are saying is that allowing a fixed number of carbon atoms, whether they bind with two Oxygen or 4 Hydrogen makes a difference to their radiative forcing in favour of the latter?

Secondary question — is it clear that if one compared 100 typical feral buffalo and 100 typical grass fed poll herefords for meat production that the CH4 produced in the ruminants of the 100 feral buffalo would exceed the methane produced by the poll herefords?

After all, the ferals would have to take pot luck. Maybe they would go hungry for a time, not put on weight etc, whereas commercial cattle can’t be allowed to do that.

Comparing both with those fed on commercial grain, notwithstanding what you say about CH4, wouldn’t the grass fed poll herefords have a lower footprint overall?

Just wondering

Coaleen was bound up as CO2 for 100 years. Ethan was bound up as methane for 10 years and CO2 for 90 years.

Which one, Coaleen or Ethan, would have the greater climate forcing effect over this century?

I may have misread, but AIUI, although each mol of CH4 is more potent than each mol of CO2 there are fewer of the former afet about 8-12 years.

So, if you have a carbon atom, called “Coaleen” which is respired as a CO2 molecule, then after 100 years there’s a good chance she’ll still be airborne and doing her GHG thing. Over that period of time, she’ll have enjoyed a relative forcing of “1″.

If she’d been bound up in a methane molecule after a visitation to the rumen, she’s have been forcing at some rate higher than 1 — the precise rate would depend on how long she’d stayed with her hydrogen chums before shedding them and uniting with a couple of oxygen gals. On average, that relative rate would be 23 when levelised over 100 years, or 72 when levelised over 20 years, but for a given molecule it could be higher or lower.

Either way, that carbon atom, and many like her, can be better or worse climate forcing agents, all depending on what other atoms they’re bound up with, and for how long. Same atom, different GHG impacts.

While methane is certainly a more powerfuil GHG than CO2, in stoichiometric terms the carbon content is the same. Eventually, the methane reduces to CO2 but AIUI the mass of the resultant gas is lower so although the short term perturbation is greater over the longer term (a century) it’s the same. The ruminant can’t add any carbon beyond what it consumes and if that is all naturally occurring biomass … essentially it’s a solar-powered feral animal.

Do I think buffalo should be culled humanely? Sure because like all ferals they do other damage, but let’s not put that under GHGs. The commercially raised ruminants on the other hand …

Like you I have been meat-free for a long time — nearly 30 years and have raised two children this way.

http://jas.fass.org/cgi/content/abstract/77/6/1392

John Nicol: Sorry John, but this blog is a little unusual in that people actually tend to attempt to prove what they say with evidence. e.g. I’m living proof that meat protein isn’t “very necessary” (QED). I think my various posts on this blog demolish everything you say. I’m guessing you haven’t read them. If you want more detail, then you can buy a copy of my book :) (http://perfidy.com.au).

See also the call in October 23 Issue of Science contains a strong recommendation for a multipronged attack on short lifetime greenhouse gases:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/326/5952/526

Its one of a growing number of such calls.

kasphar: sheep and cattle have driven most species extinction in Australia … its usually called “habitat destruction” and nobody mentions the livestock. The ratio of nitrogen from livestock to that from wildlife was quoted in “Livestock’s Long Shadow” as 23:3, this gives some indication of how totally we have replaced wildlife by livestock. In the case of ruminants, they provide about 1.7% of global calories (FAOSTAT). So much destruction, so little food.

Some of what David says is fair enough, but we must protect our old growth forests and likewise ensure that we arfe using all the resources we take sustainably.

I see no hypocrisy here. There’s no conflict between people voluntarily taking action and also having a sumptuary cost or perhaps a quota imposed on the activity.

Stop eating meat and you can add a few more species to the endangered list.

Unlikely. In fact, you could take a few off the endangered list since loss of habitat is a key driver of endangerment.

And are they also going to start culling the buffalo and the wildebeast in the interests of methane reduction?

I can’t see why they would. They are only recycling CO2 not digging it up in the form of fossil fuels.