SE QLD Farmer and Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition Viv Forbes writes:
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Viv Forbes
Australian farmers pay livestock levies, research levies, marketing levies and taxes on every product they sell. These support an army of officials supposedly representing their interests, the Meat and Livestock Corporation, the Wool Corporation, CSIRO and the numerous state and federal agriculture departments and politicians.
But not one of these has defended the industry from the obviously fraudulent claim that animal emissions play a significant part in causing global warming.
It does not take even high school science to understand that all animals are part of the natural carbon cycle that uses plants to take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and then uses solar energy to convert this to plant sugars and proteins. The carbon is then taken up by animals that live on plants, and finally returned to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane as these animals exhale, excrete or expire.
Carbon dioxide is a harmless natural plant food. Methane is another harmless natural gas which is oxidised in the atmosphere to carbon dioxide and water. Then whole cycle starts again with no net addition to so-called greenhouse gases.
The phrase ‘ashes to ashes and dust to dust’ expresses more understanding of the carbon cycle than all the failed computerised climate models that rate animal emissions as significant factors in climate change.
Animals and plants have always been cycling carbon dioxide and methane with no long term or permanent effect on climate. The wild herds of mammoths, aurochs, reindeer, wildebeest, zebra, bison, antelope, wild sheep, warthogs, horses, camels, rabbits and kangaroos have just been partially replaced by domesticated cattle, sheep, goats, buffalo and pigs.
All are part of the natural world and none of them have any long term effect on the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
To threaten a carbon tax on animal emissions without recognising an equal credit for the carbon dioxide extracted by them from the atmosphere is shoddy science and shoddy accounting. Surely for all the taxes and levies they pay, farmers can get at least one government scientist, official or carbon accountant willing to state the obvious:
‘Cattle and sheep are as green as grass and trees and should not be penalised by any future carbon tax on their emissions’.
Governments should state this clearly now and stop including animal emissions in their spurious carbon accounting.
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Have Your Say!
May 26, 2009 at 11:19 am
I always love reading Viv Forbes articles. Are you aware that if we were to taking grazing stock out of the equation and let grass take its natural course, that once it became old and rank and started to break down, it to would release methane back into the atmosphere. How is it the Agriculture in Australia has allowed itself to be pushed around by poor science and agenda pushing. When will the consumer start respecting the food we produce? My guess is only after it has gone because we can’t afford to produce products that we get paid below the cost of production for, and be expected to paid tax after tax after tax, becuase we decided to feed the masses of people. Something has to change, before it is too late.
May 26, 2009 at 1:03 am
Cattle and sheep certainly don’t deserve the focus they’ve been given, particularly when compared to emissions from energy production. Energy derived mainly from carbon sequestered long ago.
I’m not really up to date on it all, but methane accounts for 18% of human induced global warming, to whatever degree that is. Lame pun unintended – but left just the same.
Where it gets interesting is agricultural emissions are said to be 40% of that 18%, say 7% of GW. Thats from all agriculture according to IPCC data presented here. Take away rices contribution to methane (supposedly 8% of methane) and we’re left with livestock producing 5% of GW. Or to put another way we’d only have to trim fossil fuel emissions, production and consumption, by 11% to completely negate all livestock emissions. After all whats more important than eating. Seems funny that with a world approaching food shortages govt’s want to make it harder to produce that food.
Australian data shows that energy emissions rose 40% between 1990 and 2006. Agriculture rose less than 4%.
Methane levels had been static for the last decade or so prior to the last couple of years. I’m not a livestock producer but I don’t think global herd size has increased much in the last couple of years.
May 25, 2009 at 10:37 pm
the article by viv forbes is very worthy. perhaps our grazing animal industry representatives have been busy fighting this, but considering the rural sector is under attack from many different government decisions and green groups they are probably suffering a lack of resources and manpower.
we should be like the u.s.a. and refuse to recognise that the emissions from the mouth of a living breathing animal could be considered a climate change problem