Owen Jennings
Capturing the relative size and significance of very small fractions can be challenging. Discussing parts per million or percentages with a number of zeros can become meaningless. Sometimes the analogy is very useful.
One example is trying to collect atmospheric methane size or just ruminant methane which, later on, has received bad press from green groups hungry for new antagonist.
All methane in the atmosphere is 0.00018% or less than two parts per million. What does that look like in terms of relevance?
Imagine the entire atmosphere is a car ride from Los Angeles to New York or 2,778 miles. That’s 4,471 km if you prefer metric. All of the planet’s methane would be just 26 feet from the starting point. That’s about 8.5 meters. That’s a very small amount by any measure.
Some of these methane emissions are natural, but more than half are attributed to humans. There are several sources of anthropogenic emissions including biogas from ruminants. They account for about 15% of all methane emissions. Some of these numbers vary widely with coefficients of +/- up to 50%, so be careful when quoting them.
Using the road trip analogy for ruminants from around the planet involves a journey from LA to NY just 4 feet or about 1.3 meters. With the United States, home to 10% of the world’s ruminants, they would form a tiny 5-inch (13 cm) piece out of a total of 2,778 miles.
In my home country, New Zealand, where agriculture is a key feature of the economy and is falsely claimed to produce 48% of the nation’s greenhouse gases, the emissions of our ruminants would be the equivalent of half an inch in a trip from LA to NY.
The simple point is that meat protestors, vegetarians, vegans, anti-agriculture voices along with climate catastrophes who are too famous for farming to survive. Planetary scientists need to apply some rational thinking to how 5/176,000,000 can impact anything they don’t want to try and magnify the effect of the methane molecule.
What is even more remarkable is that methane is completely obscured on the electromagnetic spectrum, where water vapor, in particular, and CO2 significantly reduce its radiated power. Methane absorbs over a narrow band between 7 and 8 microns at less than 50%.
In contrast, water vapor absorbs over a very wide region of the spectrum.
There is another important problem related to methane in ruminants. Vegetation (mainly grass) eaten by ruminants relies on the natural carbon cycle, where photosynthesis converts CO2 from the atmosphere into plant material. Ingesting this green matter produces methane that is released into the atmosphere where it oxidizes to the CO2 and water vapor needed to grow grass.
With methane remaining for less than 12 years in the atmosphere, a stable ruminant population would not contribute any additional greenhouse gases or any warming. Ruminant populations in the United States have been declining for more than 20 years, which means that US farmers should be commended by climate change extremists for actually contributing to mild cooling.
A similar situation is occurring in New Zealand, where ruminant methane levels have stabilized and are on a downward trend. However, the Government is still determined to tax farmers at levels that will affect farmers’ decision-making. The idea and rules of salary checks are cumbersome.
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