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Creeps and Cranks noted the small and diminishing leftist extreme that clings to paleo-socialist ideas and so doubts climate change as being a capitalist plot.
The marquee slogan in the new cold war on global warming is that the scientific consensus is virtually unanimous. This is utterly false. The overwhelming majority of climate computer modelers, the beneficiaries of the $2 billion-a-year global warming grant industry, certainly believe in it but not necessarily most real climate scientists-people qualified in atmospheric physics, climatology and meteorology.It was noted that "this puts them in a similar position to some of the right, not allies precisely but singing some of the same hymns, from different hymnals, and so unintentionally supporting one another." For example:
I've long thought that the anthropogenic global warming/overwhelming scientific alarmism campaign involves a nexus between politics and marketing, and that to this end, the average person (especially in the United States) is being kept in the dark as much as possible about how the practical, day-to-day applications of anthropogenic global warming theory might play out.Well, it's also scientific nonsense, and arguing nonsense is taboo in some places. Not all, of course.For example, telling people that they shouldn't eat meat is considered a hard sell (something which might generate voter backlash) and is thus very bad. Never mind that by the environmentalists' own "scientific" data, meat is responsible for more greenhouse gases than cars. People are conditioned to see Big Oil as evil, not farmers. An oil refinery is an evil image; a herd of cattle grazing in a pasture is not. I've argued this before, as I think it's vital to understanding the dynamics of the anthropogenic global warming argument, but there's almost nothing about it in the MSM, and despite the best efforts of PETA and a few other animal rights groups, the AGW evil of meat consumption is pretty much a taboo subject.
Meat is not responsible for green house gasses, except for the trivial amounts produced by animals breathing. It's good to have a planet with lots of animals, even if they do breathe. Joking aside, the CO2 they produce would be produced even if they didn't exist since the organic matter they consume, from which the CO2 comes, would be consumed anyway by aerobic bacteria that would otherwise do the organic matter recycling. That's the carbon cycle. If not for those bacteria the planet would be covered with dead leaves and stalks - mulched to death.
The same is true for CH4 in belches and farts, but it would be anaerobic bacteria doing the recycling. Every mulch pile and wetland does the same. The parts that are aerated support aerobic bacteria that need oxygen to live and work, and the parts that are not support anaerobic bacteria that use different metabolic pathways and produce different gases.
The carbon cycle, in which atmospheric carbon is drawn down by plants and later released back to the atmosphere by bacteria, is not a cause of climate change. It's a closed loop. It is mainly the release of extra carbon that had been sequestered as fossil fuel that increases the working set, the amount of carbon in the loop.
There are other contributors to carbon working set increase. Plowing up the soil to grow crops releases carbon sequestered in soil. Deforestation reduces the amount of carbon held in living organic matter, increasing the amount in the air. A warming climate may increase the rate of bacterial activity in colder regions, and so release carbon held in soils at a greater rate. Fires in peat bogs dried by changing climate can release another sort of semi-fossilized carbon.
The idea that a "herd of cattle grazing in a pasture" causes AGW is simply nonsense. If that pasture was plowed up to grow veggies for food fetishists more gases would be released. A well managed pasture actually reduces atmospheric carbon by building up soil organic matter, sequestering carbon. Over time massive amounts can be taken out of the working set this way. It will eventually all be released back to the air, but the amount held in soil at any given time increases, so the amount in the air decreases. It's like a forest in this sense. The tree will eventually die and rot, but more forest means less carbon in the air since it is busy being tree flesh.
Growing crops to feed to animals, especially field crops such as maize, does not help the atmosphere. The soil is impoverished rather than improved. It doesn't matter whether the crops are fed to meat animals, people, or even used to make ethanol. The result is the same. Atmospheric carbon increases. But permanent pastures growing deep rooted perennial grasses and forbs, maintained by herds of ruminants (cloven hooves, cheweth the cud), can suck massive amounts of carbon from the air over time. Prairie ecosystems such as the (former) Great Plains of N. America created their deep rich soils in just this way. Plowing them up to grow veggies has released the carbon back to the air.
The intellectual wheezes of right cranks are as silly as those of left cranks, and they are sometimes the same. Noting that there are despicable opportunists (such as Al Gore and the rockers) exploiting climate change for personal advancement does not change the scientific basis for concern. Politicians and others (journalists etc.) seek to profit from the issue, and they deserve criticism (an open season would be good), but the issue is independent of them.
We need to cut through the bull to understand just how large a problem it is - something we have little information about at this time - and we need to reject policies - such as carbon taxes and regulations - that achieve no useful purposes. Trivial GHG reductions in wealthy burbs such as Europe achieve nothing while China, already the largest source, is poised to triple its production. This is just political wankery, giving the appearance of "action" while accomplishing nothing at all. "Green" consumer practices or neo-Malthusian hair-shirt self abnegation (it's a feature not a bug!) is merely fashion crime.
If the threat is as great as some suspect then it won't be solved by tweaks and dieting. The Chinese won't diet and can't yet afford tweaks. We need new energy systems that don't emit. We need them anyway to support our growing population, even if there is no AGW. When the politicians and green exploitation gangs start to support such efforts we should listen, AGW or not.
I'm responding to your July 12 post. For some reason, the "comments" link under that post is not working for me.
I don't think anyone is proposing that range or pasture grazed cattle are a problem. The problem is cutting forests and growing corn to feed factory fed cattle in CAFO's. A lot of us could do fine with less red meat and eat beans once in a while.
When I studied microclimatology at NDSU, our prof and ND state Climatologist John Enz taught us, rather convincingly, that water vapor, not CO2 was the predominant GHG. Water vapor is far more abundant in the atmosphere than CO2. Enz was articulate skeptic of AGW.
What bothers me about the current debate is the politicization. The term "denier" is applied to AGW skeptics as though they were on a par with Holocaust deniers.
I do think we are playing a role in warming the planet. Virtually all of the transportation and industrial processes release heat, CO2, water vapor - usually various combinations of of all three to the atmosphere. Urban heat islands, modification of earth surface, irrigation, and many other factors (e.g., variable solar activity) all play a part.
We need less sniping and more better data and dialog.
Cheers.
Posted by: John Freeland at July 22, 2007 03:16 PMHi John,
I close comments once the spammers arrive. It isn't usually a problem to close comments after 5 days or so. Anyone who had a comment already made it. I'll move these comments and reopen.
"I don't think anyone is proposing that range or pasture grazed cattle are a problem."
Then you aren't paying attention. It is only recently that a few of the whackos have grudgingly admitted that they were talking nonsense about pastoral systems.
"The problem is cutting forests and growing corn to feed factory fed cattle in CAFO's. "
The forests are cut to grow soya for export to China to feed pigs and chickens. Or, more recently, to grow feedstocks for ethanol plants.
"A lot of us could do fine with less red meat and eat beans once in a while."
And why is that? Do you have any support for that idea? Have you actually thought it through from a an ecological and human health perspective? When you do you will find that the red meat from those grazed animals is not only good for humans, it's good for the environment, and that growing those beans is environmentally destructive.
"We need less sniping and more better data and dialog."
That would be good, but it won't happen. Too many seek to persuade rather than inform, and have agendas to serve. They have no interest in truth or accuracy; they seek power, wealth, fame, beautiful lovers and salvation - but not truth.
The best we can do is to speak up well and often to debunk their spin. You might think that this is futile, but in less than 5 decades we have been able to get a few of the whackos to recognize that pastoral systems are beneficial. Wait, that does seem pretty futile doesn't it. Never mind.
Posted by: back40 at July 22, 2007 03:18 PM