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Eat Skippy to Save the Planet ? What a cruel Joke.

Ross Garnaut understanding that under the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme rural and regional Australian communities are “Rooted” .

He has sunk to the depths of ridiculous in ways he believes Australian farmers can benefit from the scheme.

Read the Garnaut report, in it he indicates that those farmers running cattle and sheep are in for a very tough time from day one and will be completely un – viable after Agriculture is bought into the scheme around 2013. From that point farmers will have to buy permits to cover their livestock Methane emissions.

His solution is laughable – switch from cattle and sheep grazing to Kangaroos.

AUSTRALIANS should replace beef and lamb on the dinner table with kangaroo to fight climate change, Kevin Rudd’s chief climate change adviser says.

They conclude that by 2020, beef cattle and sheep numbers in the rangelands could be reduced by seven million and 36 million respectively, and that this would create the opportunity for an increase in kangaroo numbers from 34 million today to 240million by 2020,” he says.

Below is a photo of Skippy fattened on Salt bush.

Australian Red Kangaroo

Garnaut in his report is desperate to find some glimmer of hope for farmers. This purely fanciful suggestion is testamony to that.

Garnaut notes there are some barriers to the switch to Roo meat. As stated by the good professor they are:

Livestock and Farm Management issues

Consumer resistance

and a gradual Nature of change in food tastes.

This whole business would be hilarious if it wasn’t such deadly serious nonsense. Farmers need solutions to their long term viability now not in 3 generations time when consumer food tastes change.

Garnaut knows farmers are the “sacrifical lambs” in this ETS sham. Garnaut admits the ETS will have zero impact on Global climate.

He also knows that Farmers and rural communities will be crucified by the scheme, which is chiefly desinged to give the Rudd Government global green kudos and Australian Urban dwellers a warm and fuzzy green glow.

What a national disgrace.

(thanks to Agmates reader MattB)

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Tags: Emissions Trading Scheme, ETS, Farmers, Farming, Kevin Rudd, Methane, Ross Garnaut, Rural and regional Australia

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Agmates News, Australian Federal Politics, Beef News, Climate Change, Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Comments on “Eat Skippy to Save the Planet ? What a cruel Joke.”

jenna says:

September 22, 2009 at 2:51 am

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Rashida Khan says:

October 8, 2008 at 8:54 am

Hi Shane,

You raise some interesting points however there are good reasons for the changes that have occured in Agriculture.

In the early 60s (around 1960) the farm gate price (what the producer got in hand, this is before slaughter, etc) of an average bullock would pay one man 6 weeks wages. Now the farm gate price of the average bullock will pay just over ONE weeks wage to one man.

Why is this you ask, well we must keep the price of food low for consumers so instead of the government subsidising farmers (as they do in many other 1st world countries) the Aussie government just lower what the farmer gets on the bottom line.

So in effect they are subsidising the consumer.

Free ranging roos or cattle for that matter, without fences would make GOOD management very difficult. The reason for controlling our stock and having individual properties is that we can control disease , through isolation and treatment.

We also ensure that we deliver a consistent and quality product. This “perfect product” concept is consumer driven. Ever seen a urban housewife in Woolworths bail up at a tomato with a spot on it, god forbid a worm!. Or bananas that have a slight dark patch indicating that they are ripe! A piece of steak with a dark patch from lack of oxygen coz its plastic packed and not because its off will turn alot of potential buyers.

Steak must be cherry red and look like a drawing in a kids book before people will confidently buy it.

The profit margins in agriculture are small and having inconsistency in production can leave the producer bankrupt. This is why we have cattle fenced in or out, to stop over grazing, erosion, stop unplanned matings (calves born in July in the North can mean the death of the cow and the calf).

We control the spread of cattle tick (which can live on roos). Managed production systems have far higher environmental and economic benefits than just throwing everything out bush and praying.

Remember that in the days when the landholders let animals free range they didn’t have to sell as many to make a profit, they didn’t have to turn out a product to match consumer perception of quality. People weren’t worried about slight blemishes to goods as long as they were fresh and wholesome.

As to the roos they are free range now and the environmental carnage created by large mobs suggests that if they were to become a commercial venture, the same people who suggest we eat them would be screaming about the damage large mobs do.

Kangaroos eat closer to the ground than cattle as roos have flexible lips and top teeth, cattle have no top teeth or lip and are restricted to eating a couple of inches from the ground.

Any grazing herbivore is carbon neutral. Remember “Matter cannot be created nor destroyed” So the whole idea of livestock or wildlife being responsible is truly ridiculous.

By the way the kangaroo has one of the most energy efficient ways of moving in the world so maybe the townsfolk should have their pollution belching cars removed and they can ride roos to work!! I bet Garnaut is wild he didnt think of that one (that was a joke not a serious suggestion for those out there with a sense of humour)

PS. My computer and office is run on solar power so thats me covered how bout you?

shane says:

October 7, 2008 at 11:04 pm

…and all the brain-power and research and typing energy by Agmates readers and there references, on how much goes in and comes out of a bovine, probably produced more CO2 than the cow in question!

Step back occasionally peoples - I too like facts and figures, but don’t get too passionate about defending them, it’s an insidious energy consumer! Who will pay the carbon tax for Agmates bloggers then?

I think roo farming would have environmental benefits (range them like buffalo or something, let the herds follow the good seasons and landholders share the loot around so to speak, don’t worry with fences, heck, that’s how the drovers first started their cattle isn’t it?)… but to use C emissions as an argument for this change???!!?! What?!

Cows or kangaroos still digest, and still (erm), dispose of C in solid and/or gaseous states! reduce cow numbers, up go the roos. shift the CO2 from one bum to another.

But must not get carried away, I’ll be the hypocrite that told everyone else not to burn energy getting passionate about the topic!

Tim Curtin says:

October 4, 2008 at 11:14 pm

Correction, there was a transcription error in my last, the actual rate of growth of the rate of growth of fossil fuel emissions (.e. 2nd derivative) from 1959-2006 was 2.12% p.a. against only 0.25% pa for the increase in the global concentration of CO2, an even bigger discrepancy than I mentioned previously.

Getting back to Skippy and ruminants: Haughton, the IPCC, and Garnaut are all dedicated to the proposition that cattle and other livestock produce methane from what they eat, to the tune of around 85 million tonnes of methane p.a. (i.e 85 tera grams p.a.).

But the seminal paper by Keppler et al (Nature, Jan. 2006, p.189) reports their discovery that methane is present in most if not all terrestrial plant matter in very large quantities, at up to 236 tera grams p.a.

It follows that ruminants may well be absorbing more CH4 from their feed than they emit. The FAO has similarly noted that livestock are carbon neutral (in their report linked by Haughton).

It would be surprising if livestock emitted more CO2 and CH4 etc than they absorb, since weight gain is the aim of most livestock producers (except in the Alice in Wonderland world of the Garnaut report).

So I think we can all get back to our grilled steaks without adopting the vegan diets proposed by Hansen, Brook, Singer, Russell, and (secretly) Garnaut.

Best

Tim Curtin says:

October 3, 2008 at 11:01 pm

Dear James Haughton, I do hope you have not been runover by a bus or a Melbourne train, not having heard from you for 5 hours or so?

Meantime I have just discovered that the Garnaut Review has at last (almost a year after it was produced) published the truly amazing CASPI (Uni. Melbourne) commissioned paper “The Science (sic) of Climate Change” by Bodman, Falk, David (the ineffable) Karoly, and Settle.

I was once offered a job by Uni Melbourne, a fate worse than death as it turns out. This “Science” “overview” cannot bring itself to make ANY mention of any such inconvenient truth as the existence of photosynthesis which to this day accounts for around 56% of all CO emissions. With Science like that we have no need of enemies.

BTW, James, your helpful link to Raupach Canadell and Le Quere (2008) reveals that their “proportional growth rate” (sic) (i.e. as you noted, but they did not, the 2nd derivative) of the “airborne fraction” (AF) of CO2 emissions was 0.24% p.a. while that of the emissions was 1.9% p.a. (1959-2006), i.e. EIGHT times larger than the AF.

This statistic is what enabled them to prove the biospheric sinks were “saturated”, to the delight of Ross Garnaut.

On the subject of Ross, flowing on from my previous post, you may not be aware that the pain he proposes to inflict on our pastoralists their children (and the rest of us and our) children to 2050 for the benefit of our grand- (or great-grand) children in 2100 is based on Stern’s near-zero discount rate, which in turn is based on his and Garnaut’s devotion to the early 19th C economist Bentham.

The latter propounded the notion of declining marginal utility of money (allegedly it’s worth less the more you have of it). I myself do not feel even at the margin poorer now than when I was a student, but evidently Garnaut now suffers real hardship (at the margin) as he pockets his 6-7 figure fees for his Report, on top of his US$255,000 p.a. from Lihir and similar amounts from SDP (owner of 51% of Ok Tedi, and similar again from Ok Tedi itself), not to mention ANU and sundry other Institutes in the USA.

Perhaps James you could start a fund to which we could all contribute to compensate Ross for his diminishing marginal utility? I am sure you will find a ready response from pastoralists with their higher incomes as they gratefully shift from cattle to Skippies.

Tim Curtin says:

October 3, 2008 at 7:11 pm

James H:

I’m sorry I have forgotten to thank you for your most useful links to Canadell et al 2008 and FAO.

Is it OK if I include you in my list of acknowledgments in my forthcoming critique of the Garnaut Report?

I won’t give you the ref. until it appears given the track record of Brook & cronies in trying to suppress whatever I write and try to publish by threatening editors – Krystall Nacht and Gobbles (sic!) are both alive and well at Brook’s taxpayer funded centre.

Reverting to Brook-Russell-Singer, I would only add that their paper has done a grave disservice to Australian primary industry by willfully failing to note that the growth of methane emissions as measured at Capes Grim & Ferguson was negative from 1983-2005 and barely positive at Mawson.

All that rubbish about 72 rather than 21 is vitiated when you admit that all new emissions from Australian and other livestock have for 25 years been more than offset by reductions/uptakes here and elsewhere (see CSIRO Atmospheric Research and Bureau of Meteorology).

Tim Curtin says:

October 4, 2008 at 12:33 am

James Haughton:

referring to your helpful link to Raupach Canadell & Le Quere (2008, acknowledged above), I note that their “proportional growth rate” (i.e 2nd derivative as you spotted, why do they have to change the Newton-Leibniz terminology, just to show how clever they are I suppose, apart from deliberately throwing mud into our eyes?) is 0.24% p.a. for the increase in the growth rate of the airborne fraction (AF) of CO2 emissions from 1959-2006.

The latter was conveniently an El Nino year (when biospheric uptakes of CO2 are always less than in La Nina years). Meantime their “proportional growth rate” for CO2 emissions growth is 1.9% p.a., 8 times higher than the rate for the AF.

What is your take on this kind of reporting? Would you agree that on the whole the “proportional growth” of uptakes keep pace with emissions?

BTW, I have now found that Garnaut has at last released the “CASPI” reports he commissioned from Uni Melbourne (I was once offered a job there, a fate worse than death as it turns out!).

The first, on “The Science (sic)” manages to avoid the word photosynthesis, so as in the Garnaut Report itself this is an unmentionable concept. The second manages 3 references, only to dismiss it as irrelevant, as here:

“the ability of terrestrial systems to respond by taking up more carbon is expected to decline”.

Needless to say no evidence is offered for this ex cathedra statement, which in fact flies in the face of the available data since 1958.

It remains to note only that the CASPI papers were never peer reviewed, any more than the Brook-Russell-Singer Submission to Garnaut.

Reply

Rashida Khan says:

October 3, 2008 at 6:43 pm

Without delving into the science of climate change Id like to point out that we just had a crisis with an over population of roos in Caberra of all places (how rude)

Yet no environmentalists popped up with bbqs, steak knives, or rifles (oh thats right shooting them is cruel)! Interesting. Maybe those roos weren’t good enough for the carbon community…. by the way its illegal to breed native Australian animals without a license.

Roos cause massive amount of damage to the environment when in large numbers just think how many roos need to be bred and then die to equate to the amount of meat on one steer!

Our current domestic livestock have proved over thousands of years to be the easiest and most economical to use for our purposes. Some animals are just not cut out to be captivly bred and regularly handled.

If we are to eat roos lets also quickly find a way to get rid of the worms that are present right through the actual meat.

MattB says:

October 3, 2008 at 5:51 pm

Lets not forget that sceptic hero Mockton wants Hansen et al put on trial for genocide for their role in slowing the world economy…

Tim Curtin says:

October 3, 2008 at 5:34 pm

Thanks Agmates.

BTW, I have never ad hommed James. But he sails close to the wind when he calls me a “consultant” to the “corrupt” PNG forestry industry, I am not nor ever have been. I have never been paid a dime for what I have written on PNG forestry. James, who “misrepresents the facts”?

By contrast Ross Garnaut is lucky that the remunerations he receives from the PNG mines he heads up (Lihir, Ok Tedi) are beyond the range of his ETS, unlike the “criminals” (Hansen’s term) who head up Santos, BHP, Rio, Woodside & co here.

Following are 2 extracts from pres reports:
(1) by Ed Pilkigton in The Guardian 23 June 2008: (UK)

“…James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech (pdf) to the US Congress – in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming – to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the “perfect storm” of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable.

Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.”

In an interview with the Guardian he said:

“When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that’s a crime.”

(2) by Rex Murphy, (Globe & Mail, Canada, 27 June 2008):

“Dr. Hansen is overfond of the specious and chilling analogy: He has written of the “crashing glaciers serv(ing) as a Krystal Nacht” and, although he later repented of the metaphor, compared coal trains to “death trains – no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.”

This week, Dr. Hansen went a step even more noxiously forward. He called for a tribunal, or as I prefer to call it, an Inquisition, to put on trial for crimes against nature and humanity, the CEOs of the big oil companies who, according to Dr. Hansen’s frantic view of things, feed the public “misinformation” about the climate crisis.

Again the implicit model is to Nuremberg, as the man attempts to put concern for a future – let us call it a probability – on a moral and factual par with the unquestioned, historical, shattering enormity of the Nazi Holocaust.”

Agmates, take care, Haughton & Hansen have you in their sights if they think you accept the IPCC figure of 21 for the greenhouse effect of CH4!

Now from the Brook, Singer and Russell Submission to Garnaut which prompted his attack on the livestock industry, we have that

“Australia’s livestock produce about 3.1 mega tonnes of methane annually (out of our total of 5.4), mostly through enteric fermentation in the guts of our sheep and cattle, but also via manure and savanna burning. This has a warming impact bigger than all of our coal fired power stations” (p.5).

It follows that the pastorlists are more guilty than the coal miners of emulating Hansen’s death trains, and since the 3.1 mega tonnes of methane have a warming equivalent 228 megatonnes (i.e. 3.1*72)of CO2, which is more than that of any other single sector, (e.g. residential 55.7 Mt, transport & storage 38.7, mining 46.3, manufacturing 69),

Us Agmates have a lot to answer for. But then Brook et al have no compunction in inventing numbers. My data come from Penny Wong’s Dept of Climate Change and show that the total CO2e (i.e. including CH4) emissions in 2005 of ALL of agriculture, forestry and fishing in 2005 was only 128 Mt, not Brook’s 228.

But what are a 100 Mt here or there when you are scientists like Hansen & Brook with an agenda? If anybody misrepresents data they do.

Hansen for example still insists that the Airborne faction of CO2 emissions since 1958 has been at least 57% when all data sources including even Canadell & co show 44%.

James Haughton says:

October 7, 2008 at 2:30 pm

OK. I apologise for the implication then -

I know you’ve consulted in PNG and that you’ve written pro-logging pieces, I put two and two together and got 5. my mistake. And yes, Garnaut’s mines could do with better inspection.

Your farrago of quotes, however, doesn’t establish in any way that Hansen claimed livestock producers were “guilty”, “wicked” or “evil”.

Hansen, when he made his “tribunal” proposal, is complaining about systematic misinformation being foisted on the public, which is surely false advertising or fraud at a minimum. I’m not aware that livestock producers have been throwing their weight around like Big Coal has. (And I’ll believe anything by Rex Murphy the day after I see a flying pig.)

You’ve got a very bad track record on the numbers and maths so far Tim – I’d suggest you double check everything before you go accusing people of “inventing numbers” or “misrepresenting data”.

To be frank, given that your work often appears (to me at least) to be full of holes, I’d rather you left my name out of it.

Reply
- Tim Curtin says:
  
  October 7, 2008 at 10:03 pm
  
  Thanks James Haughton, I really value your links and comments, even though you rarely respond to mine item by item.
  
  Re my consultancies, all from 1988 to 2002 were for the GoPNG, whether financed by World Bank, UNDP, OECF, AusAid or GoPNG itself, apart from one 4 day stint for the East Sepik PG in 2002, and two days last year on tariff – not logging – issues for PNGFP, a processing (non-logging) company of which I used to be the unpaid GoPNG alt. director.
  
  Re your most valuable explanation that Canadell et al were doing 2nd derivatives, why did they not say so? But assuming you are right, how come the 2nd d. of the actual Mauna Loa data on atmos. CO2 is only 0.71% between 1959 and 2007, not their 1.89% p.a.? I know I am bad at numbers, as you rightly insist, so I really need your help.
  
  You also said above: “if a cow takes in 100 molecules of CO2 equivalent in the form of grass, it (or rather its stomach bacteria) only has to emit 6 molecules of Methane (CH4) to cause net warming, because methane is 20 times more potent and 6*20=120 which is greater than 100.” But what if the cow takes in 100 kg of feed which itself contains both CO2 and CH4 (see your own link to FAO, and Keppler et al, Nature, Jan. 2006)? As the FAO nobly points out, if the global herd is growing, it is a net sink of CO2 (and CH4). (Keppler et al show that grass etc emit CH4 in huge amounts, so ruminants perform a valuable service in eating anough to reduce those emissions and storing them while emitting rather less themselves, as like us they do more than just eat and excrete/exhale).
  
  Reply
  - James Haughton says:
    
    October 8, 2008 at 10:48 am
    
    Hi Tim,
    
    That I don’t answer you line-by-line is chiefly because this is an issue I explore for a few minutes at a time during my coffee breaks at work (hence my absence over the long weekend).
    
    So I just address what I think are the main points in the bits I know something about (Physics). It’s nothing personal. Nor do I know why Canadell phrased things in a confusing way. Maybe s/he is just not a very clear writer.
    
    I think talking about cows, grass, etc “storing” CO2 or CH4 confuses the issue. What gets stored is carbon, in the form of various complex hydrocarbons (which if buried turn into coal and oil). When we breathe we combine C from our bodies with O2 from the air to emit CO2.
    
    Trees reverse the reaction and store the carbon. Gut Bacteria presumably take in hydrocarbons (H C and O) and water (H20) and emit CH4 as the result of some chemical combination (shows how much biology and chemistry I remember…)
    
    The point being that carbon dioxide and methane are not stored in that form, they are produced as the result of biological activity. The greenhouse potential of a gas doesn’t relate to how many carbon atoms it has but to its form or molecular structure, which determines its absorbtion/emissivity, and to how saturated the atmosphere is with it already.
    
    This is why cows etc can absorb lots of carbon and still be net emitters. Personally, I’m hoping for some combination of more roo and a medical/genetic fix to the intestinal bacteria.
    
    Re the 100 kg feed example; the grass feed can’t both be an emitter and a container of methane, since if it contains methane it must have absorbed it from somewhere. Can’t have it both ways.
    
    The FAO quote on page 95 is
    “This continuing growth [of the world herd] could be considered as a carbon sequestration process (roughly estimated at 1 or 2 million tons carbon per year). However this is more than offset by methane emissions which have increased accordingly”.
    So I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that cattle are a methane sink from.
    
    As to whether grasslands emit methane: I note from Wiki that this is a “hot topic” with lots of research on either side (footnotes 14-17 of the wiki article on methane).
    
    I therefore hesitate to draw any conclusion, although it seems a bit implausible to me – if both plants and bacteria are net emitters of methane, where is it all going? Or is it that pasture, but not forest, emits methane, so the increase is a result of land clearing?
    
    The general one-off impact of grasslands is their creation, when forests are cleared and the carbon from trees is emitted.
    
    Reply
    - Tim Curtin says:
      
      October 8, 2008 at 5:09 pm
      
      Thanks once again James Haughton for valuable info. and links. Too bad about Keppler, I had rather liekd the guy!
      
      Back to the FAO: its Table 3.2 shows that 110 GtC of Carbon are transferred from atmosphere to earth by photosynthesis, 50 GtC are emitted back to atmosphere by respiration from plants and animals, and just 2 GtC by deforestation. Its Chapter 3 goes on to claim large emissions from production of fertiliser, from land use chnage, use of fossil fuels etc etc which are all then debited to agriculture and pastoralism consistent with the bias in the report’s title (Livestock’s long shadow). BTW, atmospheric CO2 can be shown to be a strong competitor for commercial fertilisers, as world consumption of the latter is weakly correlated with the FAO index of world food production (1980-2003), whereas atmos. CO2 is very strongly correlated. Be that as it may, Chap.3 does not so far as I can see provide data on consumption of carbon by livestock, only when we have data on this can we begin the blame game, and try as I might I cannot find any, least of all in any publication of the AGO/DCC. However Table 3.6 does show that total livestock emissions of CO2 are 3.16 GtCO2, and Table 3.7 shows emissions of methane amounting to 85.6 million tonnes, for a ratio of CO2:CH4 of 37:1. Hence no doubt the determination of Brook-Singer-Russell to raise the IPCC’s GWP ratio of CH4:CO2 from 21-25:1 to 72:1.
      
      Reply

Von Curtis says:

October 3, 2008 at 5:21 pm

Yes I will try to remember that but I get angry with the crazy stuff going on depressing and affecting family farmers. I’ll try to behave. We certainly are fighting an information war around the world.

Agmates says:

October 3, 2008 at 5:25 pm

Hey Von,

Thanks I know its difficult not to get angry about the raw deal farmers and Rural & regional Australians have gotten over the past decade and now going forward.

You are correct in saying that we are fighting an information war, but you are playing your part helping to correct that with your involvement in Agmates.

So thank you for caring enough to get involved.

Cheers – Steve

Reply

Von Curtis says:

October 3, 2008 at 4:56 pm

Guano the corporate mining neo- con fascist globalist ( I could add more ) would love it if family farmers died, went broke and fled to the city and he and his mining giant cronies had open slather to dig up or plant trees on the best soils of the Darling Downs and right across regional Australia.

Guarno in his business suit is an EXTREMELY DANGEROUS man for my children’s future.

Agmates says:

October 3, 2008 at 5:11 pm

G’day Von,

I’m pleased you didn’t (add more), remember Von at Agmates “we play the ball not the man”.

Cheers – Steve

Reply

Jeff says:

October 3, 2008 at 3:58 pm

Maybe not “wicked”, but we knew Hansen would be in there somewhere:

James Hansen is the Responsible NASA Official.

Lentils anyone?

Agmates says:

October 3, 2008 at 3:27 pm

Hey Guys,

Just a friendly reminder – on Agmates we stick to “playing the ball, not the man”.

I am loving the debate – just remember “its all about playing nice”

Tim Curtin says:

October 2, 2008 at 5:18 pm

James H:

interesting to find via Google confirmation of a couple of my points above.

“….the biosphere is acting as a 50% stronger sink if [the model's] subroutine grazing is activated. An explanation could perhaps be sought in that the model inputs larger quantities of litter into the soil of grasslands than it does for forests. Thus grazed grasslands would have higher carbon storage than the woody vegetation types”.

From: Lagerstedt, The effects of managed ruminants grazing on the global carbon cycle and greenhouse gas forcing.

The author also notes the 30% increase in livestock numbers since c1980, but not that methane growth has leveled off.

In short, and not the only instance, the Garnaut Report has got it wrong. The explanation is the undue credence RG gave to the Submission to his Review by Brook, Singer and Russell, each with their own very special personal agendas.

Garnaut’s plan to tax ruminants out of existence flows directly from their Submission (which unilaterally changes the CH4:CO2 forcing ratio from 21 to 72, and thereby produces their claim, endorsed by Hansen, that livestock producers are more wicked even than coal miners and oil CEOs).

James Haughton says:

October 3, 2008 at 10:21 am

The reasons for methane growth slowing are given here.
The forcing ratio has not been “unilaterally changed”. It’s a question of how many years you calculate it over, because of the shorter lifespan of methane in the atmosphere. Over 20 years the figure is 72. If Garnaut is trying to assess what we can change in the near future, it’s a good number to use.
And you, as a consultant to the loggers of Papua New Guinea forestry industry, one of the most corrupt forestry industries in the world, wouldn’t have a “very special personal agenda”, would you Tim?

Reply
James Haughton says:

October 3, 2008 at 3:01 pm

the ratio is not “unilaterally changed”; it changes according to the time horizon you are looking at emissions over, due to the different average lifespans of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere.

And since you’ve descended to ad hominem attachs, as a consultant to the PNG forestry industry, one of the most corrupt forestry industries on the planet, you wouldn’t have a “very special personal agenda”, would you Tim? You wouldn’t have, say, a vested interest in opposing anything that might stop the clearfelling of tropical forests and the bribing of PNG politicians?

Show me one page, one SENTENCE, by Garnaut, Hansen, or Brook, which says “livestock producers are more wicked even than coal miners and oil CEOs”. No paraphrases.

It’s got nothing to do with who is “wicked”, it’s about the relative impact on the atmosphere and the resultant environmental change. The only “wicked” people are those who wilfully misrepresent the facts.

Reply

Von Curtis says:

October 2, 2008 at 3:08 pm

Guano (aka garnaut) is full of s***.

At the moment we have idiots, clowns and criminals in powerful positions being assisted by an ABC and Murdoch media in bed with them.

Today on the ABC country hour they had foolish Primary Industries minister Tony Bourke saying that farmers won’t be forced to graze kangaroos but they will have to get the methane emissions in their cows under control.

And then after that the stupid ABC went back to telling farmers they will have to sequester carbon in their soils. Every day on the country hour they bombard us with carbon nonsense – it has got really bad – there is nothing else they talk about – you do wonder what it will take to stop this madness.

Jeff says:

October 2, 2008 at 2:17 pm

While all this hoo-haa is going on about CO2 and CO2e, I’m just wondering when the next wave of alarm comes out about NOx – (NO & NO2 gases) ie. Nitrogen.
After all it is part of the Kyoto

Now that could be a good money spinner for the ETS mobs.
Outgassing of Nitrogen based fertilizers (surely a Nitrogen levy on that).
And that doesn’t omit organic methods, as breakdown of cow pats and plant material, broken down by soil bacteria also emits a NOx.

Part of auto exhaust gas (more levy on automotive fuels).
Part of industrial exhaust stacks (more greenhouse levy).

That should provide some more guano for the pile.

Tim Curtin says:

October 2, 2008 at 1:21 pm

MattB:

The accepted science is that in the quotes I gave from Pompe & co at Jen’s Blog. And you could use your schoolboy science to help the IPCC explain what it admits has defeated it, namely “the reasons for the decrease in the atmospheric CH4 growth rate [even to negative] …are not understood” (WG1, p.142)..

If you let me have your full details I could nominate you to serve on the next IPCC so you can help them understand this and many other of their grey areas, eg their total failure to measure directly the hydroxyl free radical(OH) which gets rid of CH4 and HFCs and HCFCs very quickly.

What is annoying to the IPCC – shown by its refusal to admit this – is that the atmos OH level is clearly growing and soaking up CH4 etc as it goes on its merry way. What they need from you is help to show that OH is not increasing and does none of the above, so that CH4 increases again and accounts for more GWP than any other source, hence need for Guano’s switch to road kill for his and our next barbies.

BTW, I see from your post at Bawwy’s that you seem not to be aware that we are already at 455 ppm CO2e (IPCC WG3 and Guano), which means that according to IPCC etc we should already have 2.1 oC higher temps than in 1900 and an extinct GBR.

Can you
(1) point me to GISS data showing this temp rise already apparent, and
(2) explain why tourists are not already demanding refunds from GBR operators at Cairns etc, given that Ove Ghastly-Gulberg says the GBR is dead at 2.1 oC?

Back to school mate – and I suggest you stick to French.

MattB says:

October 2, 2008 at 1:30 pm

Tim,

I think you are confusing CO2 and CO2e… There is a good post coming up at Barry’s on the topic that you can read in your gagged silence at that site.

I know you’ll take this as an admission I’m wrong, however I’m really doing my best to not get in to a drawn out debate with you, one which you have had on many many blogs with many many well credentialled climate scientists, and time and time again have been shown exactly where your errors are, only for you to repeat yourself ad-nausem, or move on to the next blog to cut and paste your wares all over again.

Bawwy, guano, it seems you are the one still stuck in the schoolyard Tim.

Reply
- Rosalie says:
  
  October 2, 2008 at 10:06 pm
  
  Hey Matt,
  How about a dissertation on the climate changing impact of methane emitting dinosaurs, American buffalo, and termites?
  
  Reply
  - Matt says:
    
    October 2, 2008 at 11:45 pm
    
    Rosalie you need to come back to school with me. Everyone knows either:
    
    1) dinosaurs never existed…. their bones are jsut tricks of the devil to make us not believe in creation.
    
    or
    
    2) they breathed in Methane and out Oxygen and THAT is what caused the ice age…
    
    also I just had my house zapped for termites so I’m doing my bit.
    
    Reply

MattB says:

October 2, 2008 at 12:00 pm

I just use Jen M as English was not my best subject and her surname is a killer.

MattB says:

October 2, 2008 at 11:59 am

Phew – fortunately I got my school’s high school french award too!

Jeff says:

October 2, 2008 at 11:50 am

C-i-o-t-o, MattB.

It’s how you spell junket, similar to Bali 07 (is that like Kevin07 ?)and Copenhagen 2010.

Read Christopher Monckton’s comments on above for a good laugh.
Note you also use “Jen M’s sceptic blog”
Was that meant to be derogatory? Nah, couldn’t be.

Jan Pompe,
According to Wikipedia (Greenapedia) – I use it ’cause it’s cheap.

Ruminants – cattle, sheep produce methane as a by-product of their digestive process.
Macropods – kangaroos etc. due to a different bacterial method of digestion, the hydrogen part of the equation goes into ‘acetate’. No chemical explanation.

The concept of using gut bacteria from kangaroos to change the digestive process of cattle has been put forward.

The latter should be worthy of lots of funding from the wide and deep pool of “Climate Change” funding, no doubt.

MattB says:

October 2, 2008 at 11:44 am

actually Tim…

if you read the thread I asked you for your “proof” 1st… and given that it is you who is challenging the accepted science on the matter I’d say that is a fair expectation.

Tim Curtin says:

October 2, 2008 at 11:41 am

MattB: merci, toujours la politesse.

I see your stunning school grades have not enabled you to respond to the challenge I set of proving the GWP of ruminants’ CH4 exceeds that of their absorption of CO2.

James Haughton says:

October 2, 2008 at 12:35 pm

Tim, you don’t seem to understand the arithmetic.

Methane, being a different shaped molecule, stops different wavelengths of IR than CO2. In addition, there is less of it in the atmosphere, so adding each additional molecule has a greater proportional effect than adding each additional molecule of CO2. The upshot of all that is that methane, molecule for molecule, is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas.

Now last time I looked cows were not trees – they breath in oxygen and breathe out CO2. Nor are they made of wood, so they aren’t all that great at storing carbon, as you seem to think they are. So since what a cow does is eat grass that has taken CO2 from the atmosphere already, the BEST a cow can be is carbon neutral, if it not only didn’t emit any of the carbon from the grass, but somehow absorbed the carbon from its breath.

But leaving that aside for a moment, if a cow takes in 100 molecules of CO2 equivalent in the form of grass, it (or rather its stomach bacteria) only has to emit 6 molecules of Methane (CH4) to cause net warming, because methane is 20 times more potent and 6*20=120 which is greater than 100.

It could “store” 94% of the carbon, or as Mott put it “The majority of the carbon in the grass will be converted to energy used by the animal in metabolism, movement and weight gain” and still contribute to global warming.

Reply
- Tim Curtin says:
  
  October 2, 2008 at 4:17 pm
  
  James Haughton:
  
  Still waiting for your tutorial on growth rates please. Re cows and CO2, of course they make use of what has been photosynthesized already, but that encourages new growth (ever mowed a lawn?), and graziers have an incentive to improve their pastures, leading to more uptakes.
  
  Not sure about roos in that regard. Cows like us cannot emit more than they have consumed, and it is indeed curious that their and our CO2 breath is omitted by Canadell & co from their carbon budgets; if our and their CO2 emissions from breathing out were brought to account, that necessarily (given the datum of 384 ppm at Mauna Loa) increases the uptakes by the sinks on the other side of the ledger, but which according to Canadell & co 2007 are already “saturated”. That would mean Mauna Loa must be understating the CO2 level.
  
  More generally, in regard to your final comment, is it not the case the biosphere and atmosphere are recursive systems which do not have just uni-directional forcings and feedbacks as often inferred eg by Garnaut?
  
  I think the claimed 20 times greater potency of CH4 than of CO2 is an overcooked statistic.
  
  I see you did not tell us how much CH4 is actually emitted per 100 molecules of CO2. As my previous post here (responding to Matt) noted, even the IPCC admits the growth rate of CH4’s atmos. concentration is declining, despite the huge increase in livestock numbers since 1990.
  
  Perhaps you can tell us what are the drivers of the immeasurable OH?
  
  Reply
  - James Haughton says:
    
    October 2, 2008 at 5:11 pm
    
    What’s to tutor? You claimed Canadell was using a wrong figure – I pointed out that (if you’d bothered to try to find out you would find) this figure was the second derivative, not the first.
    What is “the immeasurable OH”?
    Why the growth rate of methane has declined: see here.
    “An overcooked statistic” – talk is cheap. Prove it.
    No, I didn’t give exact figures for cows. I’m not an expert on cattle biology. I just noticed that your argument that cows couldn’t be net emitters due to conservation of mass was nonsense, because only a small number of CO2 molecules need to have their carbon converted into methane to have a greater effect. You don’t need to know the exact figures to realise the hole in your argument. But if you want them, I suggest you read this report.
    (PS A quick check of Wikipedia shows that Mott was wrong (suprise suprise) and the figure is 25 times more efficient over 100 years, not 20. So a cow would only need to emit 5 molecules of methane per 100 of carbon absorbed to be a net greenhouse emitter.)
    
    Reply
  - James Haughton says:
    
    October 3, 2008 at 10:12 am
    
    Dunno what happened to my previous reply.
    
    If you want to know what is believed to have caused the decline in growth rates of methane, you can look here.
    
    I don’t claim to know the biology of cattle in detail – I’m just pointing out that your argument from conservation of mass that they can’t be net greenhouse gas emitters is a pile of methane-emitting cattle byproduct.
    
    If you want to be educated in cattle biology and its precise impact on the climate, you could read this. It took me about 5 minutes to find these references, by the way – have you ever considered doing some research before asking these questions?
    
    “an overcooked statistic” – such talk is cheap. Prove it. (btw according to Wiki Mott got it wrong, surprise – the figure is 25 times more potent over a 100 year period, not 20).
    
    Reply
    - Tim Curtin says:
      
      October 3, 2008 at 1:55 pm
      
      James Haughton:
      
      Thanks for the ref. to that FAO report (your 2nd link). Did you refer to it yourself? I see from the following that it confirms all I have said:
      
      “3.2.2 Carbon emissions from Livestock rearing
      
      “Respiration by livestock is not a net source of CO2″.
      
      CO2 [release from] from respiratory process of livestock…”3 bn tonnes of CO2 or 0.8 bn tonnes of carbon (sic)”.
      
      “However emissions from respiration are part of a rapidly cycling biological system, where the plant matter consumed was itself created through the conversion of atmospheric CO2 into organic compounds. Since the emitted and absorbed quantities are considered to be equivalent, livestock respiration is not considered to be a net source under the Kyoto protocol. Indeed since part of the carbon consumed is stored in the live tissue of the growing animal, a growing global herd could even be considered a carbon sink… the standing stock livestock biomass increased significantly over the last decades from about 428 million tonnes in 1961 to around 699 million tonnes in 2002. This continuing growth could be considered a carbon sequestration process” as indeed it is so long as the livestock stock is growing.
      
      Typically however in any work produced by a committee, the FAO then thinks like you that methane exhalation is not respiration and in no way results from carbon absorption. So we are asked to believe that in the permanent absence of feed, cattle etc would still exhale CH4. No doubt you also believe that.
      
      Mott is right:
      Wiki is not a primary source: his 21 comes from the IPCC (WG1), while 71 comes from the shady computations of Barry Brook. According to the FAO, gross emissions of CO2 from all livestock were 3.161 billion tonnes in 2002, and from methane. To talk of 100 years as Brook does when CH4 stays aloft for a max. of only 8 years is pure persiflage.
      
      Current emissions of CO2 are at least 55% taken up in year of emission simply because those are more accessible than CO2 of previous years which is higher up.
      
      Reply
      - Tim Curtin says:
        
        October 3, 2008 at 2:00 pm
        
        Sorry, the FAO’s methane emissions figure got lost, here it is, 85.63 million tonnes in 2004, just 2.7% of the CO2. But by all means switch to skippy steaks, and enjoy your tapeworms.
        
        Reply
        
        MattB says:
        
        October 3, 2008 at 2:14 pm
        
        Wow tim, amazing insight, you.ve managed to find some joy in an article that says breathing does not contribute to rising CO2 levels, when it clearly opposes your CH4 opinions.
        
        Reply

MattB says:

October 2, 2008 at 11:06 am

Tim – well you’ve got me there, a link to some bloggers on Jen M’s sceptic blog… looks like you may have to share your Nobel after all…

As for my education… well lets just say I’d be fairly confident comparing old school reports if you insist…

They eat carbon, and bacteria turn a fair whack of it in to methane (which they did not eat)… methane is a strong greenhouse gas. No one is talking about magically creating “carbon”. Thankfully methan is shorter lived as I understand it, but that is well represented in the climate models.

Tim you have to understand that on the level of the climate change debate, your interjections are the mental equivalent of questioning the spelling of Kyoto...

Tim Curtin says:

October 2, 2008 at 10:55 am

Matt:

I wonder what if anything you were taught at school, certainly not much in thew way of chemistry, biology, and accounting, or that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Livestock cannot produce more than they consume, if their methane was a free product, it would solve the world’s energy problems at no cost.

The following are extracts from the similar thread at http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog:
Comment from Jan Pompe:
Time October 2, 2008 at 9:23 am

“Cattle and sheep really are carbon neutral they don’t produce more than has been taken from the atmosphere in the first place by the plants hey eat. Same goes for kangaroo and the whole animal kingdom.

There might well be other reasons for eating kangaroo but reducing carbon emissions has to be one of the silliest ones I’ve seen in a while.”

Comment from Ian Mott
Time October 2, 2008 at 10:19 am

“The interesting thing about the ‘Roo vs Cattle carbon accounting issue is the fact that, once again, the IPCC lacks consistency.

On one hand they accept that the carbon emitted when animals eat grass is the same carbon that the grass absorbed as it grew, just a month earlier. This cannot form a net emission because it is a continuous cycle of absorption and emission.

But …when the animal turns a portion of that grass carbon into a by-product called methane, they seem to forget that the inputs came from a recent absorption.

Methane is given a climate weighting of 20 times the CO2 equivalent based on a modelled warming potency 20 times greater than CO2.

But we are only talking about a methane by-product. The majority of the carbon in the grass will be converted to energy used by the animal in metabolism, movement and weight gain. And it is in the farmers interest to ensure that as much of this carbon input goes to weight gain as possible.

So it is only the conversion of CO2 into the more potent methane that has any relevance in greenhouse accounting. And that means the raw methane volume must have the equivalent metabolised CO2 volume deducted from it.”

Comment from Jan Pompe
Time October 2, 2008 at 10:25 am

“They also forget that methane fairly quickly oxidises to CO2 + H2O which can then be absorbed by other plants to feed the next cow that comes along.”

Matt: Thus it is for you to show that the GWP of ruminants’ CH4 exceeds that of their absorption of CO2. If you can, perhaps Peter Singer will bestow on you a share of his Nobel.

Tim Curtin says:

October 2, 2008 at 12:35 am

Garnaut (aka Guano) exhibits what appears to be the total inability of Australian academe to recognise the difference between Gross and Net (of all phenomena).

For example, it’s evident that he has been nobbled by the Peter Singer/BawwyBwook/AndwewGlikson/GeoffWussel mob who want us all to become if not vegans then at least avoiding red meat.

The Bwook clan is incapable of noting that ruminants cannot emit more (in molar terms) than they have consumed, so that even if their CH4 is a more potent GHG than CO2, since they emit much less pro rata than the CO2 they have consumed, they are at worst GHG neutral (in fact they are negative, consuming much more CO2 (per GWP) than the CH4 emit, because they do other things besides belching CH4, but then Bawwy Bwook knows nothing about energy).

It is sad but true that Australian science is wholly innocent of such basic facts that I learnt in my prep school in South Africa c.1950.

Matt says:

October 2, 2008 at 12:52 am

I’ll humour you Tim. Can you explain why they emit much less pro-rata than the CO2 they consume? In fact how have they consumed CO2?

Lets face it in 1950s prep school in South Africa you probably learned that blacks were on the planet to be your slave… so they’ve been wrong before those Saffie schools.

It just staggers me once again that you are not a widely published nobel prize winning scientist with all this cutting edge science you have up your sleeves… you are wasted on Agmates…

Either that or you are sprouting rubbish…

It it were pretty basic science then it would be easily proved that Beef herds were carbon neutral and they would face no costs under an ETS… problem solved Agmates you should post this on your Crikey blog so the world can find out the wonderful news that cows are carbon neutral and in fact their CH4 burps are actually global coolers.

The sad thing is, of course, that you’ve already posted a thread claiming Tim as a credible expert in the field… sadly when you are in the sceptical camp you do tend to attract the nutters…

I’d be interested in your take here Steve… do you think Cows are carbon neutral at worst…

Reply

Jeff says:

October 1, 2008 at 4:16 pm

I suppose the suggestion of picking up your roadkill and taking it home and cooking it, is a bit out of bounds?

It would achieve a few things, reduce the dependence on methane belching, cudd chewing cattle for meat(appeases Ross Garnaut), cleans up the roadside (reduces costs of cleaning up the roadside by RTA or council), gets rid of a lot of livestock producers (keeps the Greens and the Wilderness gumnuts happy).

See, simple answers for everything. LOL, LOL.

Sorry for the levity, it is a serious subject, I must show more respect.

Agmates says:

October 1, 2008 at 4:24 pm

G’day Jeff,

I actually think your showing it about the respect that it deserves. As I said the suggestion to anybody who knows anything about Rural Australia is – Laughable.

Reply

Von Curtis says:

October 1, 2008 at 3:14 pm

Yes that ZERO CREDIBILITY could be very handy …..

MattB says:

October 1, 2008 at 2:52 pm

Hey what have I done to be thanked for regarding this article? You could lose me some serious cred here Steve

I’m going to do my bit by only eating Roo now – give the industry a head start.

“whats that skip – ahh stir fried with some mushrooms, capsicum and pak choi… mmm mmm sounds great.”

Agmates says:

October 1, 2008 at 3:08 pm

G’day mate,

The link to the west Australian. As for eating Roo – go for it. make sure you let us know how the stir fry goes. Try the Kangaroo tail soup. It really looks attractive (the roo tail) sitting in your fridge.

You know the suggestion of Roo farming is just madness. Just think of the enormous cost of refencing the rangelands of Australia with 6 foot netting fence. A standard 4 wire cattle fence costs around $5,000 a kilometre. You could double that at least for a Roo proof fence.

A 100km Fence would cost $1m to build. A 100km fence on Most outback stations would only just get around the boundary without any internal fencing. Then there is the infastucture costs of Roo Yards, trucking facilities etc.

The suggestion shows Garnaut is grasping at straws. It has zero credibility to anybody with one ounce of knowledge of how farming works in Australia.

Reply
- MattB says:
  
  October 1, 2008 at 4:09 pm
  
  It would only be my grandmoter’s generation where fridges we full of things that would be rejected by today’s homogeised consumers. Pig’s trotters, tongues, sweet meats, giblets…
  
  I can see your point when you think of that scale… but surely there are farmers out there today who roo-farm… or is it all just rifle-shot wild beasts?
  
  I mean those farmers have obviously done the sums and figured there is a quid in it. PLus the cost may well be small relative to the costs of current practice under a trading system… and the globe IS going to want to still eat meat = demand.
  
  I mean thankfully we have an option (as flawed as you see it). Farmers in Britain are hardly able to decide to farm Badger or stoat?
  
  I’d always imagined that roo farms would be far more “open plan”.
  
  Anyway – this is an interesting link – that of course totally backs up your arguments. Written by animal welfare lobby
  
  contrasted with a much more pro roo website:
  
  And Here
  
  Reply
  - Agmates says:
    
    October 1, 2008 at 4:20 pm
    
    Hey Matt,
    
    What are you talking about Grandmother – I grew up with Pigs Trotters, Tongues, Liver, Tripe etc – Those meats were a wonderful treat for those of us that grew up on Mutton Chops and gravy for Breakfast, Cold Mutton for lunch and Mutton Chops, mash patato and frozen peas for tea.
    
    Grew up with 1,000’s of Roos on the place – but would never eat one. Ever skinned a Roo you’d know why?
    
    Enough said.
    
    Reply
    - MattB says:
      
      October 1, 2008 at 6:10 pm
      
      “What you talkin’ about Granmother” – whoa there I thought I’d stepped in to bronxmates
      
      I probably wouldn’t eat much beef if I’d ever skinned a cow either… ah my suburban bliss of everything nicely packaged
      
      Reply

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