Quote:
Originally Posted by Quagmire
then we need to stick corks in cow bums and not worry about the SUVs
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Sorry, you've completely misunderstood the problem. Let me explain it.
Cow methane does not come from fossil or stored carbon. Cows eat biomass and convert some of it to methane - but that biomass was already part of the current carbon cycle, so it doesn't add anything to the total of greenhouse gasses.
If the cows were eating oil or coal, then farting methane, that would be a problem, but they are just eating plants, and therefore have a small effect on the gas balance of the atmosphere.
It's only when fossil or stored methane is released that there can be a net increase in the greenhouse gases.
The big methane problem is the stored methane in the northern permafrost bogs - hundreds of thousands of years of methane can be released all at once as the north warms up.
There are trillions of tons of carbon stored in rain forests and mud and biological formations of all kinds - but those typically represent a few thousand years of stored carbon, enough to be trouble, but not on the scale of the hundreds of thousands and hundreds of millions of years of stored carbon in the permafrost, clathrates, and of course the fossil carbon.
The even bigger methane problem is the clathrates. But lets hope that doesn't get released, because the consequences of that would mean an end of days scenario. So lets not even mention it. Lets hope the ocean floors remain cold enough to keep the clathrates stable.