The climate change debate continues.

[old man emu]

“A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness—

O, Wilderness were Paradise enow!”

 

It was alright for Omar Khayyam to praise bread and wine in the 11th Century, but in these days when the emission of carbon dioxide is turning our world into a re-run of the Jurassic, should we be adding to the atmospheric load by baking bread and fermenting wine?

 

Here's how making these foods adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

First the starch in flour is converted to glucose

 

Then the glucose is converted to ethanol, which is used by the yeast, and carbon dioxide, which is expelled into the air.

 

Starting with 162 gms of starch, the process emits 88 gms, or 54% of its mass as carbon dioxide. The basic bread recipe calls for 500 gms of flour of which 68% is starch, or 340 gms. That produces (340 x 2.1) gms of glucose - 714 gms.

 

714 gms of glucose will produce (88 x 3.96) gms of carbon dioxide - 348.5 gms

 

Keep making bread and wine for a growing world population and Omar's Paradise with be a tropical one.

 

[facthunter]

You could power a rocket with sugar plus oxygen. I always call it rocket fuel. Nev

Edited November 30, 2021 by facthunter

[old man emu]

3 hours ago, facthunter said:

You could power a rocket with sugar plus oxygen. I always call it rocket fuel. Nev

And here's how you do it:

 

[red750]

Where does carbon dioxide really come from?

[Jerry_Atrick]

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/24/news-corp-columnists-climate-denialism-called-out-by-press-council should address his credibility. And his opening about us trying to control CO2 is misleading - we cannot in anyway control it.. we are trying to control our emissions of CO2 it is the straw that is breaking the camel's back. How can anyone claim to be trying to control the earth's natural emissions of CO2?

 

[facthunter]

CO2 IS chemically the same wherever it's made. Carbon has 3 allotropic forms. We CAN complicate that as carbon is used for dating. NOT the on line kind . Nev

[old man emu]

I often wonder what effect those gigantic herbivorous dinosaurs had on green house gas concentrations during their long existence.  In Australia, direct livestock emissions account for about 70% of greenhouse gas emissions by the agricultural sector and 11% of total national greenhouse gas emissions.

 

At present there are about 26 million head of cattle, 104 million sheep and unknown numbers of goats and camels. If you make a conservative estimate of the average weight of a beast to be 750 kg and a sheep at 50 kg, then you could guess at the number of sheep or beasts that would equal the 25 tonnes of an herbivorous dinosaur such as a Diplodicus, which was a mid-sized dinosaur. It's too bad that we don't have annual population numbers, but they were around for 135 million years and in the later stages of their existence became immense, up to 60 tonnes and more.  From that number of modern animal equivalents, you could estimate the amount of methane old Diplo would produce.

 

Dry Sheep Equivalent (DSE) is a standard unit frequently used in Australia to compare the feed requirements of different classes of stock or to assess the carrying capacity and potential productivity of a given farm or area of grazing land. The unit represents the amount of feed required by a two-year-old, 45 kg (some sources state 50 kg) Merino sheep (wether or non-lactating, non-pregnant ewe) to maintain its weight. If you measured the daily methane output of one sheep you could equate DSE to methane output, and from that get a rough guess of the methane output of old Diplo. That, of course depends on the efficiency of Diplo's digestive system.

[Marty_d]

So it wasn't the meteorite... the dinosaurs farted themselves into extinction?

[nomadpete]

All that methane.....

 

The meteorite was the source of ignition......

 

Dinosoar extinction explained. It came to me in a flash!

[Marty_d]

9 hours ago, nomadpete said:

All that methane.....

 

The meteorite was the source of ignition......

 

Dinosoar extinction explained. It came to me in a flash!

That'll teach you to sit too close to the fire after the eggs & baked beans!

[facthunter]

Methane was often known as "Marsh Gas"... Nev

[onetrack]

The history behind "jack-o-lanterns" is interesting. There were a vast amount of swamps and bogs in the earlier centuries, all of which would have been oozing gases like methane and CO2.

We don't see huge areas of swampland today, thanks to earthmoving equipment, and massive drainage works.

 

Even as kid in the 1950's, I can remember when the Perth Coastal Plain was full of swamps, stretching for hundreds of kms. They're nearly all gone, swallowed up by housing developments, roads, carparks, airports, etc. The few left were converted into parks with landscaped "lakes" in the centre. Drainage of the majority of the Coastal Plain has reduced water levels by tens of metres.

 

https://www.popsci.com/jack-o-lanterns-marsh-lights/

 

I'll wager in the dinosaur eras, our planet was a real jungle. There was much more water around, and all the major continents were smaller and had large numbers of major rivers, and even seas divided some of them. When you see all the prehistoric fossils, they nearly always show signs of a watery environment.

I wonder if the paleontologists ever considered that the dinosaurs died of thirst, as the amount of good quality water reduced, and the seas receded, and became saltier? I've never seen any info on how much water the dinosaurs needed to drink, to stay alive.

 

Every expedition in earlier centuries was governed by good water supply availability. I bet the early seafarers placed primary emphasis on adequate water supplies.

I've often wondered how even the First Fleeters went for water supplies, it must have very important to catch any rainwater that fell. These are little-mentioned things that affect the continuance of life.

 

https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/what-was-dinosaurs-world/

 

Edited December 21, 2021 by onetrack

[facthunter]

Maybe the aboriginal "Min min" Lights have something to do with it? Nev

[Yenn]

The methane produced by ruminants must depend upon what feed is used. Does a cow eating dry grass in the paddock produce the same amount of methane as one in a feed lot? I doubt it.

The marsh gases may have been methane and CO2, but what is visible on those boggy places is water vapour. In some places gases can get to dangerous levels in boggy places and could have been responsible for the deaths of Bogle and Chandler. Who knows?

[Old Koreelah]

Every problem creates opportunities, but our politicians seem too afraid of Mocking Murdoch to push this truth.

After Scomo recently ruled out any Australian support for methane reduction, the ALP meekly agreed- throwing away a golden opportunity to support a whole new industry:
https://www.csiro.au/en/research/animals/livestock/futurefeed

 

https://www.industry.gov.au/data-and-publications/from-beaches-to-burps-native-australian-seaweed-key-to-reducing-methane-emissions-from-cows

 

 

 

 

[Marty_d]

Whether or not the government will support it, if they can make methane-reducing feed then cattle farmers will see an opportunity to reduce their greenhouse emissions.  If it's reasonably competitive with other stock feeds, do you really think they won't go for it?

[old man emu]

Ruminant livestock can produce 250 to 500 litres of methane per day. Methods to control this are being studied, and the use of red seaweed (Asparagopsis) have been promising. During a short study, by feeding steers only about 60 - 70 gms of the seaweed daily, methane emissions from cattle on high-forage diets (free range) decreased by 33% to 52%, depending on how much seaweed they consumed. Emissions from cattle fed low-forage diets (feedlot) fell by 70% to 80%.  The steers in the study converted feed to body weight up to 20% more efficiently than cattle on a conventional diet. A producer finishing 1,000 head of beef cattle – that is, feeding them a high-energy diet to grow and add muscle – could reduce feed costs by US$40,320 to $87,320 depending on how much seaweed the cattle consumed.

 

As yet the mechanism of this change on methane production has not been fully identified, but, as with a lot of things, the scientific explanation of a phenomenon often comes long after it has been put into practice.

 

Maybe Sally will soon cease selling seashells by the seashore and settle into scything seaweed.

[nomadpete]

She syths seaweed,

By the sea shore......

 

All we need for this plan to work, is a team of underpaid FIFO foreign workers. It'd make a change for them. They were getting bored with fruit picking

[pmccarthy]

Future generations will wonder how this insanity spread and took hold.

[Old Koreelah]

Which insanity is that PM?

[nomadpete]

I wonder if the cattle farmers have read about this? They should be lining up to try it. A 20% improvement in returns at auction, for a small investment in a new feed suppliment, is fantastic.

Edited December 21, 2021 by nomadpete
spell fix

[onetrack]

I hate to think how much red seaweed would be needed to support the proposed scheme. Have these seaweed food proponents ever counted the number of cattle in the world?

Then there's the threat of massive red seaweed and sea food chain destruction, as the reefs are stripped bare of red seeweed. Maybe the proponents envision huge seaweed farms?

 

There are a reported 28M head in Australia's current beef herd. At 70 gms a day each (that's providing you could supply it to all the free range cattle roaming the interior of Australia), that amounts to a seaweed requirement of nearly 2000 tonnes a day. That's 730,000 tonnes of seaweed annually. I can't see it being a viable or practical operation.

 

Edited December 22, 2021 by onetrack

[old man emu]

There may not be a need to harvest the seaweed. In fact, that might be the most uneconomical approach. Bromoform is known as an inhibitor of methanogenesis and is a common component of seaweed. Following research by CSIRO and its spin-off FutureFeed, several companies are now growing seaweed, in particular from the genus Asparagopsis, to use as a feed additive for livestock to reduce methane emissions from ruminants.  Bromoform (CHBr3) is brominated organic solvent. It  can be prepared by the haloform reaction using acetone and sodium hypobromite, by the electrolysis of potassium bromide in ethanol, or by treating chloroform with aluminium bromide. So lots can be produced by industrial chemical manufacturers. 

 

Another technique is through the genetic modification of the bacteria E.coli. The genes from Asparagopsis are inserted into the E. coli and the new strain of E.coli is grown into massive numbers of individuals. Then the bacteria are collected, dried and packed into capsules, "bacteria bombs", that are administered to cattle at a young age. Once ingested, the bacteria become part of the normal gut population, living, reproducing and dying as long as the beast lives. All the time they are producing bromoform which reduces methane production and gives the added benefit of converting more of the food eaten by the beast into the nutrients needed for meat, mild or wool production.

 

The only moral problem with these industrial approaches is that there were plans to have developing countries go into Asparagopsis cultivation as a source of income and all that follows from its generation. However, if the manufacture of bromoforms, or growth of modified E.coli is undertaken, it will be in the advanced countries which will rake in the cash and leave the Developing countries with nothing to improve their lot.

[Yenn]

Why worry about cattle producing methane. Due to the many dry years we have a shortage of cattle. You may have noticed they are fetching record prices, but that is because there are so few of them. What cattle there are now are being held as breeding stock to build up the national herd. Around where i live which is basicly  dry grazing country, there are hardly any cattle. Both the owner of the airstrip and my next door neighbour seem to be destocked.

That may please the vegans in the world, but I see it as a harbinger of real trouble. Our government controls who lights a fire to reduce the fuel available and I see it building up at a massive rate. Historiclally the fuel has been allowed to build up right alongside towns and subdivisions, with no thought about fire breaks. I have spent the morning slashing my paddock so that when the time comes I will be able to back burn with a better chance of controlling what happens, but I don't see others doing that. They will rely on the firies to come and save them when it gets a bit drier.

[old man emu]

I've used figures for the Australian ruminant livestock numbers, but you have to remember that we are not the only country with them. Worldwide, numbers of wild ruminants number at least 75 million and are native to all continents except Antarctica and Australia. The population of domestic ruminants worldwide is greater than 3.5 billion, with cattle, sheep, and goats accounting for about 95% of the total population. When our numbers are reduced by sell-off due to drought, there are still plenty elsewhere. And as soon as drought conditions ease, our numbers will slowly start to increase until they approach those prior to the recent drought.