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RedBaron at 00:58 AM on 16 November 2020How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
@5Ugern,
I am a big fan of project Drawdown in general, but there are some flaws in that analysis.
The biggest flaw is in claiming the top two drivers of rainforest deforestation is beef and soy used for other meat production. Well this analysis isn't precisely wrong per se, but as I mentioned above the elephant in the room is the over-production of corn and soy. They are #2 and #3 by the way. Number one is timber. ;-) But they could be considered the #1 and #2 reasons why they don't immediately replant after timbering.
Reducing meat consumption only means more production of corn and soy for biofuels, and the rainforests continue to fall. The real problem is the prime grasslands that could and should be producing forage for animals and a whole host of biology are largely already in commodity crop production, and not being grazed by animals. The industrialised system is NOT land efficient, it is labor efficient. This makes a huge difference and needs to be addressed or we will get nowhere.
“As the small trickle of results grows into an avalanche — as is now happening overseas — it will soon be realized that the animal is our farming partner and no practice and no knowledge which ignores this fact will contribute anything to human welfare or indeed will have any chance either of usefulness or of survival.” Sir Albert Howard
Until we return the animals to the land where they belong, and eliminate the current industrialised agricultural paradigm, we will get nowhere in our fight against AGW or a whole host of other environmental and health issues. Yes I said health too, because those health outcomes you mentioned all used industrialised meat in their studies. Properly raised food on the land, including animals, have never been shown to be unhealthy, quite the contrary. Greener Pastures: How grass-fed beef and dairy contribute to healthy eating
Learn more about it here Welcome to the Future of Agriculture
Reducing meat production in the industrialized system will have little to no effect on rainforest deforestation, because other industrialized uses for that overproduction will instantly take up any gains made there. This so called "solution" is a false hope. It does not adress the main problem, which the Father of Organic agriculture Sir Albert Howard correctly foresaw so many years ago.
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nigelj at 18:52 PM on 15 November 2020How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
Jef asserts: "Eating meat and dairy is by far the most nutritional elements to a diet you can do. To get all of what a meat and dairy dite provides otherwise in out of reach for the poorer half of the world population."
In other words a vegetarian diet is allegedly more expensive than a meat based diet.
This does not appear to be correct. Studies show a vegetarian diet is cheaper then a standard meat based diet as below. I just googled this quickly at random to get a feel for it. However it is fair to say it depends a lot on exactly what ingredients you use. Diets heavy in nuts could get expensive.
medicalxpress.com/news/2018-05-vegetarian-diet-good-youit.html
www.takepart.com/article/2015/10/12/vegetarian-diet-savings
I decided to also check this for New Zealand, out of interest. All prices per kilogram: Beef mince $16.00, Chicken thighs $13.00, fish $35.00 fresh, Fish $15.00 canned, rice $3.50, potato $3.00, Beans $3.00, carrots $4.00. Beef and chicken contain about 350 grams protein per 1kilo. Fish contains about 350 grams protein per 1 kilo fish. Beans contain about 200 grams protein per 1 kilo. I've ignored dairy for the sake of simplicity. It is not an essential in a diet. I've just chosen some key foods to get a rough first approximation of the issue.
It's clear that grains and vegetables are much cheaper than meat. Its clear that substituting canned fish and and equal quantity of beans for meat works out cheaper than meat alone. I'm assuming a vegetarian diet that combines fish and beans as a source of protein, for the sake of argument. I assume you would also need some multi vitamin supplements, but the cost per day is insignificant. The conclusion is a vegetarian diet is cheaper than a traditional meat based diet where I live, although not hugely cheaper.
However there are many things to consider. I'm not promoting a vegetarian diet as such, I just wanted the facts. FWIW I think a low meat diet makes sense with the rest of your protein from fish plus beans etcetera.
"It is all about how the animals are raised. Concentrated industrial livestock production is neither healthy for people or the planet and only serves to enrich a small handful of individuals."
Agreed, but its tricky because organic types of farming are currently typically 47% more expensive than traditional as below, particularly meat production. That is the hard reality. But as these farms scale up I would expect prices to drop.
www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/03/cost-of-organic-food/index.htm
Ultimately we have to transition from industrial agriculture to something organic with less tilling, and much less use of industrial pesticides or we are going to really seriously undermine the biosphere, but it probably has to be a phased transition so that people can absorb the costs.
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ungern at 16:17 PM on 15 November 2020How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
I don't disagree with the fact that animal agriculture is not the largest producer of greenhouse gases as this article rightly points out. However, in terms of solutions to reduce global CO2 equivalent levels to what is needed to stay below 1.5degC IPCC target, animal agriculture plays a larger role than it appears at first (and second) glance.
Project Drawdown (https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions) has a detailed list of well researched and vetted solutions to meet the IPCC 1.5 degC target ranked in order of gigatons of CO2 equivalent reduction. Fourth on the list is plant-rich diet yielding 92 gigatons CO2 reduction out of a total reduction target of 1576 gigatons (by 2050). Sixth on the list is tropical rainforest restoration yielding 85 gigatons.
The 4th and 6th ranked solutions happen to be closely related. The largest driver of deforestation of tropical forests is related to industrial animal agriculture; beef production and soybean production used mainly for livestock feed, rank 1 and 2, respectively, as drivers of deforestation (https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/summer-2018/articles/what-are-the-biggest-drivers-of-tropical-deforestation).
Taken together, plant-based diet and the resultant reduction of the main driver of rainforest deforestation combine to top the list of solutions proposed by Project Drawdown with a combined reduction of 177 gigatons of CO2 equivalent. Of course, 177 gigatons reduction is only a tenth of what is needed in total, but unlike revamping the electrical generation system, the transportation systems or industrial process, often individuals can move toward a plant-based diet and policies can be enacted to encourage it with near term results.
I disagree with the conclusion that going vegan is the easiest thing one as an individual can do to lower their impact on global emissions is not worthy of recommendation. Of course, there will be exceptions depending on individual and regional situations, but as a general rule, policies that encourage plant-based diets should be strongly supported as this represents upwards of 10% of the overall solution to reach IPCC targets. It is also in many cases the simplest step individuals can take to make meaningful strides in reducing atmospheric CO2 equivalent.
In addition, from a health perspective, plant-based diet is consistently shown to produce better health outcomes (e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26853923/) which can be an indirect help in this struggle.
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jef12506 at 11:28 AM on 15 November 2020How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
Eating meat and dairy is by far the most nutritional elements to a diet you can do. To get all of what a meat and dairy dite provides otherwise in out of reach for the poorer half of the world population.
It is all about how the animals are raised. Concentrated industrial livestock production is neither healthy for people or the planet and only serves to enrich a small handful of individuals.
Safe, sound and humaine animal husbandry will provide the world with fulfilling jobs and complete nutrition.
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John Hartz at 09:44 AM on 15 November 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46
Jonas: Thanks for catching this glitch and for providing the correct url. The OP has been fixed. Also, thank you for being a loyal follower of this series.
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RedBaron at 07:40 AM on 15 November 2020How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
Sorry the typos
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RedBaron at 07:39 AM on 15 November 2020How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
Worse yet, both actually omit the methane cycle, ie Methanotroph activity, but counting only emissions there too.
You could draw an almost identical graph as the one showing the CO2 cycle including both plants and animals, and simply adjust this by substituting CH4 for CO2 and Methanotrophs for plants. (the numbers vary, but the cycle is very similar)
Any analysis of methane emissions that omits methanotrophs is just as misleading as any analysis of CO2 emissions that omits plants.
Couting natural emissions only give misleading
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Jonas at 06:20 AM on 15 November 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46
Hi John, the Link "20 climate change documentaries you need to watch because this planet is NOT fine" from Monday does not work. It should probably point to https://sea.mashable.com/social-good/13137/20-climate-change-documentaries-you-need-to-watch-because-this-planet-is-not-fine
Using the opportunity to thank you and the whole SkS team too, again: I regularly read the news roundup and more of SkS and share parts of it to my own (small) multiplication channels.
Greetings,
Jonas -
Alan Russell at 23:59 PM on 14 November 2020How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
I'm glad to see this article but I think you should reconsider your reference to Poore & Nemecek in the link posted above (LINK).
I applaud Poore and Nemecek for their efforts to collate and present this information but I believe that any study that uses 100 year emission factors for methane and does not account for the carbon sequestration potential of grazing land (using the best available current evidence) should not be cited without review and correction. Note that accounting for methane GWP correctly, and modelling livestock grazing using best practice (the Savory Institute and Regeneration International have good information on this) wouldn't just change the picture slightly, they would be likely to change the representation of livestock farming into a carbon sink. From review of Poore and Nemecek's Science article that the data has been taken from, you can see in the Erratum that they originally had underestimated the carbon sink potential for land not used for food, but neither in the report, nor the Erratum have they noted the carbon sink potential for grazing land. This is probably mostly because the study is a meta-analysis and understanding of soil microbiology has advanced in recent years so findings based on meta-analyses of outdated information are unlikely to reflect the best of evidence.
On the representation of methane GWP, methane has a half-life in the atmosphere of about 10 years, so if cattle herd sizes remain the same over the lifetime of methane in the atmosphere they will maintain the same amount of additional methane in the atmosphere year on year. In terms of their contribution to warming, this, in a very simplistic sense, is equivalent to a closed power station (LINK, LINK). Note that the number of cattle in Europe and North America is actually lower than it was in the 1960's whilst India has fewer cattle than it did in the 1980s, LINK, so their associated methane emissions have actually dropped. I put the misrepresentation of methane GWP down to laziness - it's much easier to apply a single figure per head of cattle than to look at how herd size has changed over time.
Moderator Response:[RH] Shortened and activated links.
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brnielsen at 13:57 PM on 14 November 2020What did 1970’s climate science actually say?
It is interesting to note the reduction in aerosols correlates to 1980 and beyond, as this is the area where warming effects, such as sea level rise, have accelerated. What I have noticed in reporting on climate (such as CSIRO state of the climate reports, 2010 to 2020) is the use of number of record temperature days, rather than warming per se, presumably to highlight the changes. I find this interesting, as that metric would seem to relate more to change in cloud cover, than radiative heat transfer caused by GHGs.
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nigelj at 07:18 AM on 14 November 2020What did 1970’s climate science actually say?
Nick Palmer makes a some good points. I regulary come across the terminology "scientists say this" or "experts say this" in all sorts of discussions, and not just on climate. The terminology doesnt say some scientists say this or most scientists say this so its ambiguous. It doesnt lie by claiming all or most scientists say this when they dont, but the denialists are probably hoping it leaves the impression all or most scientists are saying this. Its a tactic regularly used by all sorts of lobby groups in my experience. They obviously dont want to get caught out in an obvious lie and get challenged or sued so they do the next best thing, they create an impression.
And thats the thing. I would say most of the hard core, regular denialists are linked to lobby groups and are quite unscrupulous in what they say for whatever reasons, perhaps because their pay cheque depends on it, or they are sociopaths or libertarian fanatics.
I agree it is not whether warm or cold climates are dangerous. They both cause problems. The real problem is a rapid shift to a new form of climate that is so fast adaptation becomes very difficult, perhaps impossible.
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Nick Palmer at 23:10 PM on 13 November 2020What did 1970’s climate science actually say?
Norm Rubin @2 Both an 'ice age' or unmitigated anthropogenic global warming would be dangerous for civilisation but in different ways. Our civilisation, and the ecosystems, agricultural zones etc we depend on 'evolved' and grew up due to the relatively stable temperatures we've had for 100s of thousands of years+.
Any significant departure from that 'Goldilocks zone' either way is likely to be very risky -
Norm Rubin at 22:45 PM on 13 November 2020What did 1970’s climate science actually say?
For this MIT-graduate retired environmentalist who lived through the popular 1970s global cooling scare, there are several powerful lessons from that experience that are not addressed or debunked by this essay, or elsewhere on this site AFAICS. Among them the most troubling for motivating a political consensus for strong action now is probably the fact that the experts whose cooling fears were amplified by the press in the 70s (primarily Ehrlich, Holdren, and Schneider, according to my admittedly aging memory) seemed so convinced that lower average temperatures were strongly correlated with "scarier" and more deadly weather conditions, while the previous unusually warm period was unusually benign. Of course today's popular and press and political narrative justifying strong and urgent climate action is widely associated with the exact opposite correlation - that we have lived through a long period of unusually benign weather because it has been unusually cool, and that a relatively small amount of global average warming - too small for most "normal people" to notice as increased warmth - will necessarily bring a very significant increase in "scary" deadly weather conditions.
At least on the High School Science level on which most people and media and politicians (and striking students) seem to operate, there seems to be a choice between those two correlations: EITHER warm average temperatures are benign and falling temperatures threaten the world with scarier weather, OR cool temperatures are benign and rising temperatures threaten the world with scarier weather. But it seems unlikely that both are true.
I think it is also as true today as it was in the 70s that political action in the world's democracies is much more powerfully influenced by the press and politicians and the testimony of leading (=~ famous) scientists' sworn testimony to government committees than by the counting of peer-reviewed journal articles. Indeed, since virtually none of us is obviously capable of distinguishing between the roughly 50% of peer-reviewed articles that will eventually be proven false and the half that will be proven true, it seems that we must all rely heavily on the opinions of experts and "opinion leaders" on most complex policy issues.
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Nick Palmer at 22:23 PM on 13 November 2020What did 1970’s climate science actually say?
As any one will find out when dealing with 'hard core' deniers (as opposed to the gullible majority of 'sceptics'), who repeatedly post the same misinformation even after having been corrected multiple times, it's hard not to be driven to the conclusion that they are actually deliberately using deceit and insinuation to drive their readers to certain conclusions.
In this case the desired conclusion they want their audiences to jump to is that if scientists changed their mind once before, then it's unsafe to rely on what they are saying now, particulary about science based policy that is being planned to globally make big changes.
The insinuation and deceit is in how they frame their assertion. It uses a form of the 'magnified minority' technique (here's John Cook Tweeting about it twitter.com/johnfocook/status/1314301046756384794)
The misleader will say or write something like this
'but, but, but scientists predicted an ice age in the 70s - it was in Time and Newsweek - now they've changed their minds, so how can we trust them now?'
The thing about this deceit, like the best propaganda, is that it's technically true but rests upon the ambiguities of language to mislead.
The nitty gritty of the deceit is that the word "scientist's" can be taken to mean all scientists or as few as two. It gives no idea of the relative numbers, yet the insinuation in the 'imminent ice age' meme is that all, or the majority of, scientists supported the hypothesis.
The mention of the Time and Newsweek articles, which the public are infinitely more likely to remember and be far more familiar with than the consensus scientific view in the literature at the time, is highly likely to tip the undecided 'quantum state' of the public's appreciation of the topic towards their accepting that the scientific consensus back then was different to what it actually was... -
adrian at 01:48 AM on 12 November 2020Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’, confirms IEA
There seems to be two charts missing: CO2 emissions and transport emissions
Moderator Response:[DB] Fixed.
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factotum at 06:01 AM on 11 November 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #45
Given the topic this week, I do not think that this is off topic, though it is kind of political:
Not quite like I thought but really close.3.5M so Not over 4M popular vote margin
Here if Forbes betting on electoral vote result
Total electoral votes for Joe Biden
Over 310.5: -150
Under 310.5: +110
And indeed most predictions were well over 310. So when Pennsylvania comes in and Biden wins at 290 then my (well the great spirits really -— I am but a conduit via my aspergers pattern recognition) prediction of over 300 will turn out to be one of the most accurate of the night :-) I am, of course not unique, -— here is a site with a list of predictions. Note that if you split the tossups, almost all Biden predictions are well over 310 :-)
https://www.ajc.com/politics/election-projections-with-14-days-left-trump-gets-a-little-bump/B6GTZN3F7FC2VI4DAIOTJHXHZA/
The great spirit who moves through all things knows all, sees all. :-)
On 11/2/20 11:50 AM, Doug Nusbaum wrote:
>
> "The Great Spirit Who Move Through All Things" (TGS) Wishes to advise you of the following:
>
> Stupid is inconvenient, TERMINAL Stupid kills!!!
>
> You have been acting in a manner that is terminally stupid, absolutely refusing to learn from new things that NATURE (As in "Nature can not be fooled" -— R Feynman) shows you like a changing climate. Nature decided to present you with what she calls symptoms of what this could lead to. Hence Donald Trump, who better than almost anyone on the planet, is an avatar of stupid.
>
> Then rather than simply remove him with, say a terminal stroke (caused by "the deep state"), she then gave you COVID-19 so that the evidence of his and your terminal stupidity would be clear and unavoidable, and you would act appropriately. And she will make sure that the message that you send is unassailable by giving to Biden a margin Victory of over 300 votes in the electoral college, as well as a popular vote margin of over 4M votes.
>
> Douglas Nusbaum
>
> A conduit :-)Moderator Response:[DB] Too far off-topic and too-political.
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RedBaron at 10:57 AM on 10 November 2020New rebuttal to the myth 'Holistic Management can reverse Climate Change'
@51 Phillip,
Your new question:
"is it possible to integrate in any sustainable fashion the roughly 1 billion heads of cattle (estimates vary) we have right now in a holistic agricultural management model?"
The answer is yes.
The industrial model is labor efficient, not land efficient. Holistic management has shown to be land efficient. So land efficient in fact that we will even have the possibility of first reversing desertification then potentially rewilding large areas of degraded land.
However, the elephant in the room is corn/soy. The over-production of corn and soy will need to stop. The land to be restored to grazing needs to be non-human food use commodity crops like corn/soy for biofuels and CAFO feeds, not forests.
Currently any reductions in corn use for animal feeds is immediately picked up for biofuels and other industrialized uses, rather that actually giving the land the rest it needs to recover.\
Scientific America had an interesting article about this:
Fertilizer Runoff Overwhelms Streams and Rivers--Creating Vast "Dead Zones"
The nation's waterways are brimming with excess nitrogen from fertilizer--and plans to boost biofuel production threaten to aggravate an already serious situationBy David Biello on March 14, 2008
"Christopher Kucharik of the University of Wisconsin–Madison predict that nitrogen pollution from the Mississippi River Basin—the nation's largest watershed—will increase as much as 34 percent by 2022 if corn kernels continue to be the source of a growing proportion of ethanol fuel that U.S. energy legislation mandates." (underline mine)
I have tried to explain to people many times that the real issue here is corn not cows. And specifically corn for ethanol. And drop of meat use in the industrialized system we have now (fed by grains) is quickly taken up for ethanol production. That's what must end. Solar wind hydroelectric etc.. are all much more efficient choices for our energy needs. Then farmers have the option to raise food in a land efficient manner. In fact for a while we may have too few animals back on the land to optimally restore it. Especially since the vast wild herds are about 90%+ gone. But Holistic management, which includes Holistic planned grazing, (but not only) does have a way to deal with that too, while the wild herds, grassland birds, insects, soil food web, etc have a chance to recover.
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Philippe Chantreau at 04:28 AM on 9 November 2020New rebuttal to the myth 'Holistic Management can reverse Climate Change'
Your silliness accusation (a little condescending, I have some clue about these issues) is not warranted, because the boundaries of the discussion were not adequately defined. The subject of this post is clearly agricultural resources management and more specifically livestock. Holistic management therefore has here been understood here as holistic mangement of such resources. The climate stabilization wedges concept put forth initially by Pacala and Socolow include that and much more. I understand what a holistic approach is (I have to do it in my work all the time), but here we are treating more specifically of livestock (or we were, from the posts preceding mine).
I agree that there is some misunderstanding, and even possibly some level of strawman in the OP; they seem to have understood the initial claim as the ability of holistic grazing management to single handedly stop and reverse warming. I don't think they are wrong in their argument that it is not enough. Savory and yourself felt this was wrong amd missed the point, because you understand holistic management in a much more inclusive way, extending far beyond grazing alone; I get it. It's a very different claim. I note, however, that Allan Savory's post higher in this thread is focused on agricultural resources, whereas you expand to even larger horizons.
My question, the most important part of the post you taxed with silliness remains unanswered: is it possible to integrate in any sustainable fashion the roughly 1 billion heads of cattle (estimates vary) we have right now in a holistic agricultural management model? How much land and water does that take? Other agricultural production need water and land too. Do the numbers add up? Perhaps Mr Savory has done the maths, and I missed it in his earlier contribution, in which case a reminder will be welcome. If not, then that needs attention.
I agree that a holistic socio-economic model is the best approach, that is very much convergent with the sustainable development goals that OPOF has discussed at length; different name, similar idea. However, you shouldn't accuse me of being silly just because I stuck to the subject at hand, as did Mr Savory himself.
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RedBaron at 01:36 AM on 9 November 2020New rebuttal to the myth 'Holistic Management can reverse Climate Change'
@48 Phillipe,
Please read Allan's post again carefully. Holistic management is not just a grazing strategy.
" Firstly that will get you realising the Holistic Management framework that enables us to manage complexity at any level from household to governance is not some sort of grazing strategy as you believe."-Savory
So lets look at the framework. Particularly #4 as it addresses your question.
#4 "Don't limit the management tools you use. The eight tools for managing natural resources are money/labor, human creativity, grazing, animal impact, fire, rest, living organisms and science/technology. To be successful you need to use all these tools to the best of your ability."
Please note this is the wiki page on Holistic management, the exact wording between sources like wikipedia, HMI, and Savory Institute varies slightly, but is substantially the same. However, wiki is subject to edits from people just as ignorant about Holistic management, so this reference may change often. Better to buy a book from the Savory institute and study it.
As you can see, even asking the question, "In other words, can HRM make that much difference without using all the other "wedges" already known? Should HRM not be treated as another "wedge"?" is really a little silly. You can't even be following Holistic management unless you are using all the tools available/appropriate to you! Or as you called them "wedges".
I often get frustrated in these forums and elsewhere when people try to discuss Savory's work without any knowledge of it. Holistic planned grazing is not the same as Holistic management.
Rather a better highly simplified way to look at it is that Holistic management is what made it possible to take Voisen's rational grazing system and make it beneficial and possible over a much wider range of complex environmental, social, economic, and cultural conditions.
We can take any complex problem like global warming and manage it more effectively by using Holistic management. Thus it is sort of silly to ask if Holistic management is just a wedge. No, it is the way we manage all those wedges and combine them together to achieve our goals....in this case reversing global warming and manmade desertification of the land.
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Geoffrey Cruickshank at 19:57 PM on 8 November 2020New rebuttal to the myth 'Holistic Management can reverse Climate Change'
I can't really help you there Phillipe. I am a simple farmer, and my understanding of climate science is much the same as anyone who consumes news. In an attempt to educate myself a little more than that I bought an introductory textbook a few years ago and read it enough times until I thought I had the gist of it (A First Course in Atmospheric Radiation, Grant W Petty). So in that regard, a total neophyte.
I believe that raising Soil Organic Carbon by 1% over 1 hectare = 42 tons of CO2. This seems an easy ask if your SOC is 2%, but what prospect there is of doing it when levels are say 6% I don't know. But at present the lower level is pretty usual, so there is much immediate potential.
Using various carbon calculators and googling for other information I have come to the conclusion that my farm enterprise + lifestyle usage is a net sink, without allowing any soil sequestration from pasture (which I haven't measured for cost reasons) due to trees mainly and very low energy use coupled with a distaste for consumer toys. I feel like a pretty good carbon citizen, yet I feel that my farming is under attack from Bill Gates (whose investments emit how much CO2?) and Richard Branson (who made his money how? Air travel? Really?) and their joint investments in fake meat. Gates would have us believe this is all philanthropically motivated, but I think he's probably suffering from some sort of megalomania, in which all his solutions and only his solutions are are correct. I don't know what Branson would have us believe- probably that we deserve an overseas holiday flying Virgin.
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Philippe Chantreau at 00:02 AM on 8 November 2020Skeptical Science New Research for Week #44, 2020
No idea. Was wondering about that too.
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michael sweet at 06:52 AM on 7 November 2020Skeptical Science New Research for Week #44, 2020
This is off topic. Does anyone know how Tamino is doing? There have been no new postings on his website for a long time.
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nigelj at 11:26 AM on 4 November 2020How you can help to keep Climate misinformation on Twitter in check
I also avoid social media like Wol does. We still get a lot of climate denial in our general media. It looks very organised, like it comes from lobby groups. It has a certain polite tone and structure that is consistent with a lot of public relations input.
Some of the angry hostile stuff looks more like it comes from lone operators with an axe to grind. Some is just pure trolling and some is clearly coming from people who are on medication :)
Many people say ignore the denialists, dont feed the trolls, and facts dont convince people anyway. However I'm inclined to think if we leave incorrect assertions unchallenged, they are likely to gain traction with the public. People who dont defend themselves in court usually loose. I see no reason why the climate science community would be different. Of course we also need a positive messsage, and to not always be defending and explaining.
And the claim fact's dont convince people is a little bit too simplistic for me. I'm sure most of us became convinced about the theory of evolution and plate techtnics for example based on considering the factual evidence. Screaming at people or calling them names doesn't usually work and I dont like manipulating peoples emotions.
That said, its unlikely you would ever convince a denialist troll, so its only really informing other people reading the page. And theres a risk of engaging the troll and giving them a platform to spew more nonsense.
I think how one responds might depend on the nature of the particular forum. If a climate denailist annoys me on general news media websites, I tend to respond with just a very short strictly facts based response, often only one or two sentences, and with a single link to the relevant science or graph, and I mostly avoid getting into lengthy, impassioned debates with these people. Never let them provoke you into calling them idiots, even although its tempting and often true. It's not a good look.
On websites like this it sometimes instinctively seems more useful to go into more detail. Sometimes it generates interesting discussion.
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nigelj at 11:01 AM on 4 November 2020How you can help to keep Climate misinformation on Twitter in check
Nick Palmer @1, I wasn't responding to you Nick. Neither did I say climate scientists are tweeting sceptic stuff. In fact I explained why its very unlikely they would be tweeting sceptic stuff!
My comment was because many people I come across still mistakingly think about 50% of climate scientists are in the sceptics camp so they probably mistakingly think some of these tweets come from climate scientists, or their allegedly evil minions wanting a new world order in partnership with the Illuminati. (sarc, please dont take that literally).
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Wol at 08:58 AM on 4 November 2020How you can help to keep Climate misinformation on Twitter in check
I don't "do" Twitter, Facebook or any of the so-calld "social" media so can't comment on those. However the anti-science brigades are pretty active on online newspaper comments columns, which amounts to the same thing.
Frankly I think it's pointless entering into debates in any internet sites: because you are not face to face any debunking you put forward is either ignored, the subject is changed to another and/or often a heap of abuse is thrown.
A TV debate is better - but even here it's usually the science versus (for balance, you understand) an equal number consisting of of a genuine scientist denier and a crowd of pseudoscience deniers.
Even then you can see how rational argument is up against ignorance: Brian Cox talking to Malcolm Roberts on Australian TV's Q and A is a good example.
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Nick Palmer at 08:36 AM on 4 November 2020How you can help to keep Climate misinformation on Twitter in check
Ermm... The climate scientists I mentioned, that Botsentinel identifies as problematic or disruptive, are not tweeting 'sceptic' stuff! They are defending the science against deniers! That's why I suggested that Botsentinel is next to useless - it identifies 'Friends of Science' as 'normal' fer chrissakes...
link to wiki on FoS -
BaerbelW at 08:02 AM on 4 November 2020New Slideshow on Myth Debunking for Educators and Science Communicators
Melanie Harwood @15
Can you please send us a message via the Contact Us form about the apparently broken link for the PPTX? We can then more easily check with the authors by forwarding your question via email Thanks!
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nigelj at 05:41 AM on 4 November 2020How you can help to keep Climate misinformation on Twitter in check
The public get bombarded with messages on the climate issue with some being sceptical, and people are trying to sort fact from fiction while living busy lives. I can appreciate its frustrating.
This website gives some good tips on logical analysis, but if people are too busy to do this, its worth noting that the sceptical material most probably comes from a small group of hired guns. Its not coming from hordes of climate scientists. Studies show between 90 - 95% of climate scientists say we are warming the climate, eg Verheggen et al., 2014, Powell, 2013, John Cook et al., 2013 ,Farnsworth and Lichter, 2011 Anderegg, Prall, Harold, and Schneider 2000, Doran and Kendall Zimmerman, 2009, Bray and von Storch, 2008, Oreskes, 2004.
So any climate scientists tweeting scepticism are in a very small minority if there are any at all. Instead its more likely that the scepticism originates with lobby groups with powerful vested interests in keeping fossil fuels going, people whos self worth is very much tied to status and making money at all costs, people with libertarian very small government views, and scientific cranks. They certainly dont seem worried about distorting the truth.
The people who actually tweet sceptical information could be hired guns desperate for money, and with personalities that are not troubled by distoring the truth or they just dont know much about the issues. They remind me of the internet and phone scammers / fraudsters.
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Philippe Chantreau at 04:27 AM on 4 November 2020New rebuttal to the myth 'Holistic Management can reverse Climate Change'
Nice to see a vigorous debate where people actually substantiate their arguments. From what I read, it seems there is a lot of good to be said about holistic management from the non climate point of view.
However, looking quantitatively at the bigger picture I have the following questions: is it realistic to imagine the entire world cattle inventory managed under such regime? How much CO2 storage can actually be accomplished? How does that compare to emissions in a BAU scenario (we're not that far from what was considered BAU a few years ago)?
In other words, can HRM make that much difference without using all the other "wedges" already known? Should HRM not be treated as another "wedge"?
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Nick Palmer at 00:56 AM on 4 November 2020How you can help to keep Climate misinformation on Twitter in check
Actually should have written 'BotSentinel'...
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Nick Palmer at 00:40 AM on 4 November 2020How you can help to keep Climate misinformation on Twitter in check
I don't think Sentinelbot is of much use for this at all! I put myself @NickAPalmer into Sentinelbot and discovered that I was "questionable". I'm currently in a very active Twitter group of 49 that sometimes includes Robert '1000frolly' Holmes (questionable) and Ned Nikolov (normal) also the highly deceptive 'Friends of Science' is, unbelievably, 'normal'. Skepsci's own Rob Honeycutt is 'disruptive'. Most of the actual scientists, or those who quote them are 'disruptive' or even 'problematic'...
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Melanie Harwood at 00:11 AM on 4 November 2020New Slideshow on Myth Debunking for Educators and Science Communicators
Please can you make the slideshow available.
I would like to share this with the eduCCate Global Sustainability & Climate Change Teachers (currently 329,000 in 43 countries) so that they can deliver this to their pupils in their schools.
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Geoffrey Cruickshank at 15:08 PM on 3 November 2020New rebuttal to the myth 'Holistic Management can reverse Climate Change'
Yesterday domestic livestock were occupying one 138th of the area of my farm. Today when I moved them, based on observing yesterday's grazing, I allowed them one 145th. Depending on the next few days, I'll be revisiting the overall plan shortly as it is rapidly departing from the last iteration. Hard to see how you could plan a comparison grazing study with this going on.
on the matter of hooves, I was sceptical myself. However I have observed that where I have single wire electric fences permanently set up, the stock graze under them, but don't trample. These narrow strips are not benefitting to the same extent, and tend to be poorer in species and in growth. So unless the electric fence is somehow causing that, I would say that Mr Savory is right about the hooves.
On infiltration. Last autumn we had a dry period followed by a four inch rain one afternoon. My neighbour had a lot of runoff and one of his small dams failed. My paddocks absorbed the rain almost too well- I could have done with a little more run off to freshen the storage.
Don't judge Mr Savory purely on the twenty minute TED talk. Go and find someone who is doing this And open your eyes.
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Geoffrey Cruickshank at 14:42 PM on 3 November 2020New rebuttal to the myth 'Holistic Management can reverse Climate Change'
As this is your first post, Skeptical Science respectfully reminds you to please follow our comments policy. Thank You!
I am one of thousands of farmers who have taken on holistic management. It has been absolutely astonishing to watch new species taking hold and the increase in perennial grasses over the past five years. I find it rather sad that you set out to debunk a management process that you plainly have not seen in action and don't understand enough about to make an intelligent analysis.
Farmers don't actually need your approval to continue holistic management. But it is sad that you are actually working against a bunch of people who have converted to running farms with regard to ecological outcomes, all the birds and native animals, and trying their best to store some carbon deep in the soil.
In holistic management, a plan is made for the season ahead, but this will be varied as the season develops. Hence it would be impossible to design a controlled experiment in advance and stick to it. Thus it an only really be studied by means of case studies.
There are plenty of these. It works.
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michael sweet at 07:31 AM on 3 November 2020CO2 effect is saturated
ChezProvence:
As you can see if you read the comments directly above yours, this paper was rejected from peer reviewed ournals and is poorly written. I doubt anyones mind will be changed.
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:07 AM on 3 November 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #44
Prometheus 1962 appears to be a victim of, or perpetrator of, attempts to 'raise doubt about and smear the Other Leaders' by claiming they are just like the 'type of Leader they like' - a version of the False Equivalency scam.
The full set of evidence differentiating the Leadership candidates makes it hard for them to defend what they like. That can be especially true if the general population is becoming more aware that Leaders should be pursuing increased awareness and understanding applied to help develop sustainable improvements for the part of humanity they lead that does not negatively impact any other parts of global humanity (and understanding that the global future generations are the biggest part of humanity to avoid harming).
Those harmfuly selfish people, liking harmful actions they hope to benefit from, have to claim the Others are the same, are equally bad. They even try to create the appearance that the Others are worse by making-up scandalous gossip where there is little evidence or where they fabricate the evidence and the story by Cherry-Picking or taking bits out of context.
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ChezProvence at 23:37 PM on 2 November 2020CO2 effect is saturated
Oops. I was on the wrong page … Happer's work is already logged in.
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ChezProvence at 23:30 PM on 2 November 2020CO2 effect is saturated
So now we have this: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.03098.pdf
Change anyone's mind? It probably should cause deep reflection at a minimum.
Moderator Response:[DB] In order to facilitate a proper dialog, it is incumbent upon you to first provide your synthesisized interpretation of that paper for others to then weigh in on. What-about-this-ism does not advance the conversation.
Further, operating multiple accounts here is forbidden by this site's Comments Policy.
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ubrew12 at 12:58 PM on 2 November 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #44
Prometheus 1962@1 said "To think a Democratic administration would... be... interested in saving our climate..." They've already expressed that interest, and the GOP has just as firmly expressed its disinterest. So the only thing we really know, is that no solution will come from the GOP (because interest is a necessary, incomplete condition for solution). Meanwhile, here's a quote from the guy who wants to lead the Democratic Party, speaking of the climate challenge: "A time of real peril but also a time of extraordinary possibilities. We've seen the light through the dark smoke. We never give up. Always, without exception, we succeed... when we try."
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nigelj at 05:58 AM on 2 November 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #44
"If Bill McKibben thinks Joe Biden and the DNC are ever going to put the Green New Deal into a bill and put it up for a vote, he must be...."
Forgive me I dont live in America so may have this all wrong, but I do recall the democrats did actually put a version of the GND to a senate vote here but sadly it lost. This may have been because of the socioeconomic content, as opposed to the climate content.
However it does show the democrats are interested in advancing this GND, so its not clear why it wouldnt happen again with Biden. Only time will tell of course. If we want him to advance the issue, encouragement and some nagging might be better than implying hes a useless fool
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Eclectic at 23:01 PM on 1 November 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #44
Prometheus @1,
you might care to check this website's Comments Policy.
IIRC, the Comments Policy was somewhat against Concern Trolling.
Besides ~ "concern trolling" is very boring, doncha think?
Moderator Response:[BL] Please think twice before responding to baiting, and leave the moderation to the moderators.
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Prometheus 1962 at 21:10 PM on 1 November 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #44
If Bill McKibben thinks Joe Biden and the DNC are ever going to put the Green New Deal into a bill and put it up for a vote, he must be on some serious mind-altering drugs.
The Democrats conspired to destroy the one Democratic candidate who was pushing the GND, not once but twice. To think a Democratic administration would even be mildly interested in saving our climate is wildly delusional.
Moderator Response:[BL] Accusations of this sort really aren't appropriate.
Thank you for taking the time to share with us. Skeptical Science is a user forum wherein the science of climate change can be discussed from the standpoint of the science itself. Ideology and politics get checked at the keyboard.
Please take the time to review the Comments Policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
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John Hartz at 09:45 AM on 31 October 2020Warmer climate and Arctic sea ice in a veritable suicide pact
Recommended supplemental reading including three stunning graphs...
Why the record low Arctic sea ice this October is so alarming by Lili Pike, Energy & Environment, Vox, Oct 28, 2020
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RedBaron at 07:29 AM on 31 October 2020A Skeptical Science member's path to an experiment on carbon sequestration
the DOI will be
DOI: 10.18258/15503
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RedBaron at 07:13 AM on 31 October 2020A Skeptical Science member's path to an experiment on carbon sequestration
Thanks very much to all who helped, either with donations, or information! I couldn't have done it without your support!
Sorry it took so long to reply, but Oklahoma got hit with a record breaking ice storm this week! over 300,000 without power and the roads were full of broken tree limbs. I couldn't even check on my own project myself! But my friends came through in the end and I am eternally grateful!
First order of business is grab a chainsaw and finish clearing a path of the tangled mess of tree limbs so I can safely enter my front door. Then when I finally get finished thanking everyone, I will get to work on the project.
Thanks again everyone.
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nigelj at 06:05 AM on 31 October 2020Warmer climate and Arctic sea ice in a veritable suicide pact
Prometheus, one of the problems with the current pace of climate change is its very rapid compared to most past periods, and we are not adapted to those rapid rates of change. We have a lot of expensive fixed infrastructure, like buildings and these are not designed to be moved like a tent, and they are designed to last at least 50 years.
If we trigger the worst outcome such as multi metre sea level rise this century, which is entirely possible, many buildings will be abandoned well before their "use by" dates and there will be far more rebuilding work that we humans normally undertake. This means we have less economic resources to do other things. Building construction is slow and very expensive.
Some small buildings can be relocated, at a cost but peoples investments in the land have been wiped out and that land cost forms the majority of the price of many house purchases! The loss of land will also add up over time especially alluvial plains used for farming.
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Eclectic at 22:07 PM on 30 October 2020Warmer climate and Arctic sea ice in a veritable suicide pact
Prometheus, as you are probably thinking yourself, the Eemian interglacial of 120,000 years ago had warm conditions extending further south than the Arctic sea. Fortunately for the plants animals and humans of those times, the Eemian interglacial's peak temperature came and went very slowly ~ unlike the rocket speed of today's anthropogenic global warming. Eemian global human population was not today's 7,000+ million, but probably around a quarter million or less . . . and they were hunter-gatherers, easily able to move their territory, as conditions gradually changed. (Slightly different from today ~ when potatoes complain about having to move from their couches when the remote's battery goes flat.)
The rapid AGW from fossil fuel usage which ( judging by the swift decisive action of today's politicians ) will continue to cause more acidification of the oceans . . . leading to greater ecological deterioration of oceans, with accompanying major reduction of fish stocks & other marine foodstocks for humans.
Eemian conditions had a global sea level 5 or more meters above current level. We could get there in a few centuries, and possibly rather faster than that. Which will lead to massive migration of refugees.
And massive loss of fertile farmland.
Resultant colossal financial & social costs (spread over several centuries, though).
Extinction of large swathes of plant & animal species (but this may not be of interest to the fiery mind of Prometheus).
# Please place a cross against any of the above points which seem unimportant.
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Prometheus 1962 at 20:52 PM on 30 October 2020Warmer climate and Arctic sea ice in a veritable suicide pact
Great article! So now I'm wondering if the record will be broken next year.
Can someone explain to me why it was okay for the Arctic to have no sea ice in summer 120,000 years before the last ice age, but it's not okay now? After all, if the Earth could cool naturally after such an event, surely it could do so now, if we were to stop warming the planet (and I realize that's easier said than done). What was the big difference (other than the fact that the current warming is happening much faster and is caused by human activity and not by other natural forces) that makes our current situation a major cause for concern?
Moderator Response:[DB] 2016 temperatures had exceeded those of the Eemian interglacial. Further warming this century, all driven by human activities, takes us far beyond those of the past several million years. Earth has lost 28 trillion tons of ice in just the past 23 years.
Hansen 2006, updates to 2020:
Under all foreseeable greenhouse gas emissions pathways society might follow over the next hundred years, a remnant portion of the Antarctic Ice Sheet endures even 10 thousand years from now, albeit greatly reduced in area, thickness and volume.
Under all emissions pathways, including Low emissions pathways, the Greenland Ice Sheet disappears entirely (ranging from between 1 to 6 thousand years to entirely waste away).
This implies that global sea levels will eventually rise from between 25 and 52 meters (82 to 170 feet) over the next 10,000 years, with most of that rise in global sea levels occurring during the next 3,000 years.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2458/why-a-half-degree-temperature-rise-is-a-big-deal/
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2923
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9059
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/43/15296.short
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0466-0
https://www.carbonbrief.org/sea-level-research-says-only-a-brief-window-to-cut-emissions
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scaddenp at 13:57 PM on 30 October 2020A Skeptical Science member's path to an experiment on carbon sequestration
So now we can look forward to a published paper some day on the subject. Well done Scott. I hope the experiment proceeds smoothly.
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dana1981 at 13:06 PM on 30 October 2020Warmer climate and Arctic sea ice in a veritable suicide pact
Thanks Doug!
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