UN downgrades man's impact on the climate

by daystar 15 Replies latest social current

• 

  funkyderek

  Abaddon:

  Replacing cows as a food source is, well, a cow of a different colour. You cannot have alternate forms of power for cows (the rocket-powered cow being an exception :-P ).

  You're thinking about it all wrong. We don't need alternative forms of power for cows; we need them for humans; i.e. something to replace cows.

  Unlike finding alternative forms of transport or electricity, the solution to this problem is simple, obvious, environmentally and economically sound and can be implemented almost immediately. Instead of growing crops to feed cows, and then eating the cows, what we should do is cut out the middleman and just grow crops for ourselves. This is around ten times more efficient, not to mention healthier and more humane.

  And eventually, we can all learn to love tofu burgers.
• 

  nelly136

  shame they cant just recycle the cow ommisions to run the cars and have it come out the exhaust in a better gas than it went in.
• 

  SixofNine

  "shame they cant just recycle the cow ommisions to run the cars and have it come out the exhaust in a better gas than it went in."

  There are some feedlots and dairy farms doing something akin to that. Using what once was waste products, they are now net energy producers. This should be a minimum standard for any farming done at a certain scale.
• 

  Kudra

  The articles daystar posted are blank in my screen...
  
  but I think they might be talking about methane which cows (and rice fields) produce tons of. Even though it is a stronger GHG than CO2, there is exponentially more CO2 than methane so that's why putting controls on CO2 output from cars (and factories!) would be so much more effective.
  
  sixofnine has a good article referenced there about it!
  
  -K
• 

  Zep

  My reading says that Telegraph article is inaccurate. The author has got his figures mixed up. There has been no change in the IPCCs estimates. The IPCC still has an upper estimate of 5.8 degrees C for the next 100 years. The author has quoted the figure for climate sensitivity to c02 ( the amount of warming you get when the level of c02 in the atmosphere is doubled ) as the figure for 100 years. The upper estimate for climate sensitivity when c02 levels are doubled is still 4.5 C

  "It also says that the overall human effect on global warming since the industrial revolution is less than had been thought, due to the unexpected levels of cooling caused by aerosol sprays, which reflect heat from the sun."

  ^^this is inaccurate too. The human effect is the SAME as has been thought. The current warming has been partially countered by aerosols (dust and pollutants) thereby masking the true warming effect of co2. How much aerosols are masking the warming effect of c02 is, i believe, uncertain. But there has been no downgrade of human influence on climate.
• 

  Zep

  Just to add the 4th IPCC report is due out very soon. There has been a lot of speculation as to what it might or might not contain. Mostly, it seems, from sceptics. The above article <i>has</i> confused projections for warming for the next 100 years with co2 sensitivity (when its concentration in the atmosphere is doubled). Doubling of co2 in the atmosphere is something that is anticipated to happen around 2050, depending on what man does about emissions. However there <i>is</i> apparently one change in estimates of this co2 sensitivity. Warming use to have a range of about 1.2 to 4.5 for a doubling of c02 in the atmosphere. The range has now been narrowed. The upper limit is still 4.5, however the lower limit is NOW 2 C. The article still seems confused about aerosols and their impact (they have a cooling effect in that they block solar radiation).