Part Two: Methane & The Meat Tax
In Part 1 of this series, we established the importance of distinguishing between ‘ancient’ and ‘current’ carbon when considering whether a farming system is contributing to an overall rise in atmospheric carbon. It is always essential to ask, is the system being pumped full of ‘ancient carbon’ or, as with 100% grass-fed systems, does it rely largely on ‘current carbon’ being cycled between the atmosphere and farm ecosystem?
We also look at the vital role of healthy grasslands in drawing down carbon, and locking it into the soil. Grazing lands across the world, managed under regenerative principles, is the best available option for rapid global carbon sequestration.
Meat Tax and Measuring Methane
Any animal gut is an anaerobic-digester, all of which produce methane. We don’t have to go too far back in history to find atmospheric methane (CH4) stable at 700 parts per billion, which was the case for at least 10 million years, when there were many millions of large herbivores on the planet.
The science and thinking that has led to the demonisation of meat as contributor to climate change, is not just to do with the lack of understanding the role grazing animals play in cycling carbon into the soil; and the lack of distinction between ‘ancient’ and ‘current’ carbon; but also the outdated techniques being used to measure global warming gases.
Semantics too are essential in this discussion, nothing is simple, linear, good or bad. We can’t talk about Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and the greenhouse effect being bad, because we have depended on the greenhouse effect for millions of years to provide us with a warm stable climate.
Up until recently the scientific world has used Global Warming Potential 100 (GWP100) as its benchmark measure for the gases that create the greenhouse effect. GWP100 means that any gas, be it CO2 from a power station burning fossil fuels, or methane from cows, within an intensive or indeed grass-fed system, are measured by simply working out what their ‘Carbon Dioxide Equivalence’ in warming potential is, then extrapolates that over 100 years. Methane is understood to have 28x the warm equivalence of CO2, so is calculated as 28 x 100.
However the problem is, this does not account for the fact that Methane is a short lived gas, and in fact will break down within a decade. Whereas the CO2 from a coal fired power station, will perpetuate in the atmosphere for 1-2 centuries.
The misleading nature of GWP100 has led to understandable alarm about the potential contribution that livestock make to climate change. But this is the red-herring that detracts from the fact that the two biggest causal factors with climate change are the combustion of fossil fuels and the degeneration and desertification of land across the world, the latter of which we will cover more in part three.
Back to measuring methane, researchers at Oxford University, have recently created Global Warming Potential * (GWP*), which does take into account the lifespan of gases, and the results give a much closer correlation to what is actually being measured in the atmosphere. This means that ‘pollutants’ can now be linked far more accurately to their actual warming potential. Figure 1. show the comparison of GWP100 and GWP* against atmospheric measurements. It is clear that GWP* is far more accurate.
Meat Tax
There is a strong drive in Britain and Europe to introduce a meat tax, to take into account the methane contribution made by the meat industry. Our concern is that this does not distinguish between different production systems, those that are pump-primed with ‘ancient carbon’ and those that are not. Intensive beef systems use huge amounts of fossil carbon in their systems.
The meat tax will detract from the essential role played by herbivores in helping grasslands sequester massive amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. 100% grass-fed systems would do far more to offset global heating, than the methane the animals in such a system produce. But economics is always driving farm production towards intensification, and a meat tax will be no different, as farmers battle for ever decreasing profit margins.
Upsurge in Methane
Since 2007 there has been a global upsurge in Methane, and scientists still don’t fully understand where it is coming from. For one thing it turns out that extraction and leakage of fossil fuels, in particular in natural gas and shale extraction, contributes far more methane to the atmosphere than previously understood.
It is in fact possible to distinguish between methane that comes from fossil sources and current biological activity because they vary in isotopes concentrations. What is baffling scientists is that there has been an upsurge in methane from biological activity, mostly in the tropics. This could be from a myriad of sources from the enteric bacteria in the intestines of animals, to increased bacterial activity in wetlands and rice paddies due to higher temperatures, to landfill sites and anaerobic lagoons of pig manure.
Due to the urbanisation and increased wealth of global populations, there has been an increase in intensive meat production. But we can say with some confidence that enteric methane from livestock alone is not responsible for this rise in atmospheric methane, as the changes in livestock numbers through this reference period were gradual. Ruminant numbers have increased in less industrialised societies, and have stabilised or reduced in the industrial world. Cattle numbers saw their steepest global increase between 2000 and 2006, when methane levels were flat.Even though scientists are unsure of the source of increased atmospheric methane, all this focus of CO2 and CH4 means that the conversation about carbon sequestration by soils never gets to take the main stage. It is imperative that it does because with ever increasing temperatures we are seeing the rapid-thawing of permafrost in the arctic, which releases CO2 and CH4 as microbial activity kicks in. This source of atmospheric carbon, which will release ever more rapidly, possesses by far the greatest threat yet to global climate stability.
What happens to methane in the atmosphere?
Atmospheric methane levels are checked by hydroxyl radicals (OH), which are responsible for the short lifespan of CH4. One of the key ways that OH forms is when atmospheric water droplets are exposed to sunlight. OH creates a chain reaction breaking methane down into water (H2O) and CO2, and cycling OH radicals back into the system. So OH radicals are the air-cleaner that keeps on giving.
Through evapotranspiration from leaves, a healthy pasture will produce 100x the OH radicals required to break down methane produced by the animals grazing that pasture.
We know that healthy ecosystems support the OH cycle, what we don’t know so well is what the consequences of poor land management and desertification have on the atmosphere’s ability to clean itself. Could the loss of forests and healthy ecosystems be causing the atmosphere’s cleaning systems to falter and therefore atmospheric methane to increase?
Assessing the impact of land management is challenging at global level, due to the vastly different contexts, but it can be achieved effectively and objectively on a farm by farm basis.
Methodologies such as Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV), developed by the Savory institute, take a systems science approach to monitoring ecosystem health. EOV offers a way of measuring the complexity of nature, through empirical and tangible outcomes, which in turn provide the farmer with ongoing feedback from which to make better management decisions. EOV measures and trends key indicators of ecosystem function, which in aggregate, indicate positive or negative trends in the overall health of a landscape. Healthier landscapes = a healthier climate.
A word on Nitrous oxide (N2O)
Nitrous oxide has also been under scrutiny in recent years for its role in climate warming. Nitrous oxide is 300x more potent than CO2’s warming potential, and stays in the atmosphere for an average of 114 years, before being removed by a natural sink or destroyed through chemical reactions in the atmosphere. It is important that we look at this too, especially because its major source is from the land.
Nitrous oxide has been heralded as another reason that we should introduce a meat tax, and while we are in total agreement that meat from industrial sources is a problem, this again is a tricky issue, because N2O is part of the natural circulation of nitrogen between the atmosphere, plants, animals, and microorganisms that live in soil and water. Nitrogen takes on a variety of chemical forms throughout the nitrogen cycle, including N2O. Natural emissions of N2O are mainly from bacteria breaking down nitrogen in soils and the oceans.
N2O is removed from the atmosphere when it is absorbed by certain types of bacteria or destroyed by ultraviolet radiation or chemical reactions. But it is important to maintain things in context, agriculture in Europe, according to the European Environmental Agency, still only contributes 10% of global warming gases.
If we look more closely at how N2O is produced in farming, what is clear is that although it is a natural bi-product of biological processes, the use of chemical nitrogen fertiliser, the mis-management of animal manure (created in intensive systems), and poor soil management are the main drivers behind why N2O emissions from agriculture have increased. Again, a shift to extensive, regenerative system would mitigate this rise, as well as drawing down CO2 into the soil.
For every gram of excess (not taken up by plants) nitrogen fertiliser added to the soil, 30g of carbon is oxidised from the soil to the atmosphere in the processing of that nitrogen.
Conclusion
- It is easy to use and misuse statistics to support any arguments when it comes to climate change.
- Methane levels have increased alarmingly in the atmosphere, but this cannot be blamed on enteric methane from livestock. Of much more concern is the methane leakage from gas, and fracking industry, and the warming of the arctic where permafrosts are emitting CO2 and CH4 at increasing rates as the climate warms.
- If we focus on N2O we become alarmed by the fact it has a far greater warming potential than CO2, however it is still a small player in the bigger picture, and N2O is a natural part of the nitrogen cycle, so can detract from more important issues.
- If we take in the whole picture we can see that there are two primary casualties in climate change:
- The use and leakage of fossil fuels.
- Poor land management creating bare soils – this topic will be the focus of part three where we will take an in-depth look at this through the water cycle.
- It is essential that we disentangle regenerative agriculture from the climate change blame game, because it offers the greatest opportunity available for warming mitigation, through carbon drawdown into soil sinks.
References
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/pdfscache/1180.pdf
Methane & GWP
https://www.faifarms.com/podcasts/ruminant-methane-gwp-global-warming/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0026-8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwEToq05L2k
Meat Tax
Hydroxyl Radicals
http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/djj/book/bookchap11.html
https://scitechdaily.com/researchers-clarify-recycling-mechanism-for-hydroxyl-radicals/
Rise in Methane
https://e360.yale.edu/features/methane_riddle_what_is_causing_the_rise_in_emissions
https://bg.copernicus.org/articles/16/3033/2019/
http://www.fao.org/3/y4252e/y4252e07a.htm#TopOfPage
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146978/methane-emissions-continue-to-rise
https://www.wired.com/story/atmospheric-methane-levels-are-going-up-and-no-one-knows-why/
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018GB006009
https://lachefnet.wordpress.com/2018/05/04/ruminations-methane-math-and-context/
Nitrous Oxide
https://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0
http://www.icopal-noxite.co.uk/nox-problem/nox-pollution.aspx
https://www.aeroqual.com/meet-the-nitrogen-oxide-family
https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2134/csa2017.62.0413
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/7/2/024005/meta
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/9/10/105012/meta
Soil carbon and water cycle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3Z430GFyZg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=123y7jDdbfY
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