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Global warming

  • Thread starter Lauderdale
  • Start date
Click on the link below and scroll down to the second article "Now U.N. says it's cows and not cars that are worst polluters".
I would like to know if any of you agree with the United Nations on this subject?

http://www.amcostarica.com/morenews4.htm

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I recently also kinda heard this, but I haven't read the article, but I heard that cows exhale methane, rather than CO2, which messes up the ozone layer or something more than CO2 does.

-Ben
 
I don't know what to think....lies or truth.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Drosera36 @ Dec. 03 2006,10:18)]I recently also kinda heard this, but I haven't read the article, but I heard that cows exhale methane, rather than CO2, which messes up the ozone layer or something more than CO2 does.

-Ben
CO2 out the front, can you guess where the methane comes from?
 
I'm extremely skeptical of it; while ruminant herbivores do produce a lot of methane, and methane is worse than CO2 for greenhouse effects, the quantity being produced by ruminants is only slightly more than 1/3 of human methane emissions.

Also methane has a net lifetime in the atmosphere of only 8.4 years due to reaction with hydroxy radicals (produced due to the effect of solar radiation in the upper atmosphere), while CO2 is a completely oxidized compound, and won't break down any more; it can only be removed by 'sinks' such as plant life.

Mokele
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (JustLikeAPill @ Dec. 03 2006,10:36)]
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Drosera36 @ Dec. 03 2006,10:18)]I recently also kinda heard this, but I haven't read the article, but I heard that cows exhale methane, rather than CO2, which messes up the ozone layer or something more than CO2 does.

-Ben
CO2 out the front, can you guess where the methane comes from?
Oh, I know that part, lol. Just that my science teacher said they exhale methane when they breath. But, he is pretty weird, so who knows.

-Ben
 
They burp and fart methane (man, such scientific terms here), but they do not exhale it as they breath.

I find it hard to believe that cows are worse than cars. If it's true, we need a hybrid cow. Part cow, part eco-friendly fuel cell.
 
We are finding alot of sources of methane that we did not know about it before. Most of it is natural.
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Yeah, like the frozen methane at the bottom of the ocean. People are afraid it will (or is) melting and being released into the atmosphere, further cotributing to the problem.
 
  • #10
Ya know what I find real interesting is that global warming is only bad for the human species; once we die off it'll be just fine, the forests will regrow, and the temp might stay the same, but heck, it's only bad for us.

-Ben
 
  • #11
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Drosera36 @ Dec. 03 2006,2:08)]Ya know what I find real interesting is that global warming is only bad for the human species; once we die off it'll be just fine, the forests will regrow, and the temp might stay the same, but heck, it's only bad for us.
Umm, I think you might need a new science teacher.
 
  • #12
Lol, if we go everything is gonna go with us buddy. sure some things will live and the world will regrow, but most things will die, contributing to the problem even more as they decay and release more gasses.

"I've i'm going out, i'm taking you all with me!!!!"
 
  • #13
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Ya know what I find real interesting is that global warming is only bad for the human species; once we die off it'll be just fine, the forests will regrow, and the temp might stay the same, but heck, it's only bad for us.

This quite bluntly incorrect.
 
  • #14
For why it's incorrect, consider that many reptile species have temperature-dependent sex determination. Incubate an egg hot, it comes out male, cool makes females (in some species this is reversed), and most clutches are buried at the temp necessary to make about a 50-50 mix. If the climate warms, it won't be a 50-50 mix anymore, and might even become all male or all female, which is obviously bad for the species.

This isn't trivial species, either. It's things like turtles (a major food-chain component) and crocodilians (a keystone predator without which the ecosystem collapses).

Mokele
 
  • #15
another mass extinction, all our fault. Its the earths way of purging the problems!
 
  • #16
I should just point out that the article states only that "cattle rearing" produces more greenhouse gases than "transportation". That's the only claim being made here. It's not about "cows" per se, but "cattle rearing", meaning the industry. And it's only being compared to "transportation", an area where new technologies have greatly decreased emissions.

I don't know that I'd consider this good or bad news - but it isn't too horribly surprising, considering the land, water and energy devoted to rearing cattle worldwide.

Capslock
 
  • #17
I find it hard to believe that raising a cow causes more ecological damage than driving a SUV, "silly usless vehicle".  Just think of the damage caused by mining the metals, rubber and producing the plastics of just one vehicle.  Not to mention obtaining the oil and the polution it causes.  I am just not buying it.

Like there are not other situations, Darfur, Somloia, AIDs, poverty, Muslim extremists and a host of other world problems that the U.N. should be adressing?  Their time...and your tax dollars...could have been much better spent.  
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  • #18
Strange as it may sound I sort of agree with Drosera36.

Mokele is correct in his assesment that temp changes can have impacts on some species but in the long run if the Earth gets inhospitable for us then we die and some other things die but we can not kill everything even if we try. So we cause and extinction and have the good grace to die as well and then in a few score million years evolution fills in the holes and life goes on.

So in a way, yes global warmming is only really "our" problem and by and large Earth and Nature couldn't care less (as silly as that anthropomorphism sounds). Earth abides... Nature adapts...
 
  • #19
... possibly without carnivorus plants... but 'sall good
 
  • #20
I am no chemist by any stretch of the imagination but wasn't it the UN back in the 70's that got the auto industry to install catalytic converters so that our cars produce MORE CO2 and less CO ? We were saving the world from acid rain right ? Instead we end up causing more greenhouse gas to cause global warming.

I think the real issue is that we need to gentically modify grass so that the cows produce a sweet non polluting gas rather than methane.

Then again maybe we should have bubble cows so that all their emissions can be harnessed to power my alternative fuel car ? That's it a car that runs on methane and cowchips !
 
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