Methane Cycle ignored

They may laugh, but you'd be right in what you are saying.

If cattle numbers remain the same, then methane levels remain the same. Even though the cattle are belching it out 365 days a year. So how are they "creating" methane if the amount doesn't change?

Stumped? Right. If methane amounts aren't changing because cattle amounts aren't changing, how are they creating methane if methane amounts remain static?

I dunno. I don't get what your saying, despite being previously in research groups into methane and animal agriculture in the EU and further afield. I'll be sure to pass on your info to those still there.

The fart one I don't get. I'm not sure on the science behind the farts but it's usually caused by the breakdown of the food, which would have captured carbon to be grown for you to consume, and I assume the farts will convert back to gases and be used to grow more food in future. Just because it's smelly doesn't mean there's more there. It just means it's smelly! This point is moot though if what you ate is some ultra processed factory made in a vat of some sort, using a lot of energy in the process. In that case, most likely you are adding to the problem.

Burning creates methane. Those timber blocks that you buy that make the claim of being carbon neutral because they took that carbon from the atmosphere create methane when burned.

Petrol, diesel, aviation fuel, heating oil create methane when burned as well as the obvious carbon dioxide that was locked up underground.

Creating new bog and wetland creates methane.

Those three have backers though and those that will fight tooth and nail in their defence because it doesn't involve killing and eating an animal or using their products.

But get a ruminant farmed (Wild get a pass because they're not farmed by farmers who own land) and it's damnation that it eats a plant that took down carbon that converted it to protein rich milk and meat for humans. Whilst that plant most likely was perennial and was very favourable to soil carbon accumulation than if that same land required an annual crop to be bought from merchants and diesel and machinery to till that land releasing soil carbon whilst doing so.

Secondary producer financial logic.

Just a question, what we're the numbers of ruminant animals globally before plastic etc

Say buffalo etc

Excellent post as always Say My Name, if Methane was such an issue why are the same people pushing for rewetting large areas of peat lands that will realese vast amounts of Methane for up too 70 years before it stops and starts to sequester and store CO2.

These same vegans who only eat plant based foods cannot get to grip with soil carbon values from constant planting and spraying of crops as opposed to perennial grass, and the drastic impact of low Soil Carbon content soils on leaching and water quality.

Hopefully. These conversations need to be had. They can be painful, frustrating and repetitive. But it must be done. The other side of this conversation will feel the same

I think there were more ruminants (buffalo) in the US 400 years ago than there are cattle today. It's the intensive method of farming that may be the issue. The best use of land from a biodiversity and carbon viewpoint is grazed animals. In that, the methane part is on the negative side of the scale, but that is outbalanced by the carbon sequestration on the other.

If we can apply science to reducing the methane escaping from cattle, then the balance tilts further in a positive way.

When the powers that be allow things like age limits which only further intensifies farming I often wonder why they preach one thing and support regulations that have the opposite effect.

Do you think there's any merit to the idea that decaying plant matter emits 6 times more carbon into the atmosphere than all human emissions?

Interested to hear your thoughts on the notion that decaying plant matter in soil with more open structures releases Nitrous Oxide as bacteria break down the decaying matter in the presence of water....supposedly its climate change potential 300 times greater than CO2?