Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation – October 30, 2009
Give Up Meat to Save the Planet?
By E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D.
Methane is about 0.00017% of the atmosphere–that’s 1.7 parts per million (ppm). Granted, it’s 23 times more powerful as an infrared absorber than carbon dioxide, which is now about 385 ppm. That means the 1.7 ppm methane have the radiative forcing power of 39.1 ppm of carbon dioxide.
Between 1979 and 1999, methane’s atmospheric concentration increased by about 0.0011 ppm per year (or 0.022 ppm over the 20-year period), according to Auburn University’s David Smith (“Do Cattle Really Increase Methane in the Atmosphere?”). At that rate of increase, it would take about 39.5 years (1/23 = 0.04347826; / 0.0011 = 39.5257) for methane concentration to add as much greenhouse effect as 1 ppm of carbon dioxide.
About 26%, or 0.000286 ppm, of annual methane emissions due to human activities was from ruminants (cattle, etc.). If we assume that all of these anthropogenic methane emissions remain in the atmosphere, it will take about 151.9 years for ruminant methane emissions to increase the greenhouse effect as much as 1 ppm of carbon dioxide. How much is that?
Well, it is widely estimated that a doubling of carbon dioxide from pre-industrial levels (from about 270 to 540 ppm) would increase average surface temperature, before feedbacks, about 2.16 degrees F, or about 0.008 degree F per part per million. So it would take about 151.9 years for ruminant methane emissions to raise temperature 0.008 degree F, or 18,987.5 years to raise it 1 degree F, before feedbacks.
What about those feedbacks (things like clouds, precipitation, evaporation, winds, convection, evapotranspiration, etc.)? Do they increase or reduce the greenhouse effect?
If Earth had no greenhouse effect, average surface temperature would be 0 degree F. With its natural greenhouse effect, but no feedbacks, it would be about 140 degrees F; with both its natural greenhouse effect and its natural feedbacks, it is about 59 degrees F. This means climate feedbacks eliminate about 58% of the greenhouse effect. They are strongly net negative.
So instead of raising temperature 1 degree F in 18,987.5 years, ruminant methane emissions would, after climate feedbacks, raise it only 0.42 degree F; it would take another 13,749.6 years, or a total of 32,737 years, to raise it the full 1 degree F.
And economist Nicholas Stern, whose Stern Review, which called for drastic and immediate action to reduce climate change, was widely condemned by economists as “the greatest application of subjective uncertainty the world has ever seen” (Martin Weitzman in Journal of Economic Literature, 45 [2007]: 703-724), not based on “solid science and economics” (Robert Mendelsohn, in Regulation, 29(4) [2006], 42-46), and “alarmist and incompetent” (Richard Tol, in Energy & Environment, 17(6) [2006], 977-981), wants to raise the price of meat, thus making its high-protein benefits to the human diet less affordable especially to the world’s poor, who routinely suffer stunted growth and poor muscle development because of inadequate protein in their diets, to cut consumption to cut methane emissions to avoid this looming disaster. Pardon us if we are slightly less than impressed.
Public date: October 30th, 2009Categories: News
Tags: Calvin Beisner, CO2, Cornwall Alliance, environmentalism, global warming, meat, vegetarianism
