No more beef

[Jollygoodfellow]

3 hours ago, Tommy T. said:

Also the burning down of jungles in third world countries is a double whammy - my opinion. Add the carbon to the air through the burning, and destroy the "batteries" that naturally recharge the oxygen through reducing carbon... trees!

Yes but go back before civilisation and a lightning strike hits the trees then it burnt everything until it could burn no more or rain perhaps put it out so my guess smoke from fire has been around since the beginning of time and not to mention all those active volcanoes giving off emission. 

[Gary D]

My personal view is that we are not causing climate change, we are accelerating climate change.

[robert k]

4 hours ago, Kuya John said:

Question I can't find an answer too

What is the average engine size of an American car or pickup truck, note: not one beefed up!

Standard production models.

Before we ban the production of beef cattle there must be other ways, to try first.

Some people believe Climate Change is a load of Bull-sh**

The size of an engine isn't really relative to how efficient it is. so there isn't that much to be gained there. If you have to move 2.5 tons, it doesn't matter if a 5 liter widget does the work @2,000 rpm for one minute or a 2.5 liter widget does the work @4,000 rpm for one minute. It's going to take the same amount of fuel and air generally with minor differences according to how the widgets are designed. In fact the larger engine has an unfair advantage as it's larger displacement could be largely in stroke which is using a bigger lever and thus more efficient than any small engine. Small engines generally wind up in smaller vehicles that require less energy to move, which may make them appear to be more efficient, but they are not necessarily more efficient, except possibly in a small car.

If you are going to start telling people what size car they can have? It's not a big leap to soon you will be telling them how many children to have, or whether they can have a car at all. Best not to travel those paths.

[robert k]

5 hours ago, Tommy T. said:

Careful with your question Kuya...You may need to define it a bit further. Engine size today does not mean so much... It is power output and torque, whether you define it in horsepower or kilowatts... You can have a fairly small four cylinder engine putting out a measely 150 horsepower (sorry, I am locked into that version) because it is naturally aspirated. You can find similar sized, or smaller or larger four cylinder engines popping 350-400+ horsepower because of modifications including one or more turbo-chargers, super-chargers...etc.

Not criticizing you Kuya... I see what you are saying and agree with you. It seems to me that powerful vehicles seem to be getting a bit crazy in recent times...Especially us Americans are extremely wasteful with energy. There have been studies showing the energy use of Americans compared, say, to Chinese and other less developed countries (but they are catching up fast) and the American use was some crazy high ratio - like 10:1 or worse. Sorry, just guessing on that - it's already been a year or more since I read about that so - like so many things, my memory fails me... But it is significant.

I can't imagine giving up burritos!!!!

You should check out Tony Heller on Youtube. Also science has said that CO2 was higher during the ice ages than it is now. How does that work? CO2 is not the regulator knob. More than 100 years ago, sea level rise was determined to be 3mm a year, naturally. Guess what the sea level rise is now? It's still on the order of 3mm a year. There is a reason the climate change people graph heat from 1970, because the temperatures really aren't the hottest on record. It was hotter in the 30's and the 50's. These climate people are getting really shrill because we are about to enter a cooling period and there is limited time to convince people to give up control of their lives. If we still have ice caps in 10 years, will any thinking person still believe these people know their bodily exit from a hole in the ground? What if the ice caps grow as we progress through the Maunder Minimum? Will anyone still believe them then? 

You said compared to less developed countries? If the energy were available, do you think they wouldn't be using it too? If they had plentiful energy, do you think they would still be "less developed"? Also you should remember that many Chinese are still farming by hand just as in the Philippines. I saw an appalling estimate of how many in China have no real access ....To their own economy.

India is doing it's level best to catch up to the first world and I applaud them. It takes cheap plentiful energy. It really is too bad they have to spend such a disproportionate amount on defense while they are trying to grow but with unfriendly neighbors who don't wish to see them succeed, there's nothing else they can do.

[Tommy T.]

8 hours ago, Dave Hounddriver said:

I suppose they are saying that in a roundabout way so as to be politically correct.  If that is indeed the problem then we need to cull some of that overpopulation.  Unfortunely that does not work.  The Chinese tried it with their "One Child" policy from 1980 to 2016.  They concluded it to be unworkable.  So if they could not do it, and we did not like the Nazi's solution, then our planet is in big trouble.

Possibly, Dave, if overpopulation is THE problem, if may solve itself.

I remember a science project in Biology 101 in high school. We all took petri dishes and then went around touching various things and seeding the agar with whatever we touched. Almost invariably, some sort of colourful and creepy bacteria grew in the nutrient. It expanded until it filled the dish, then it expired in its own waste... I think back on that lesson, for whatever it's worth...

[Mike J]

11 hours ago, Kuya John said:

Before we ban the production of beef cattle there must be other ways, to try first.

I think we should fit all the cows with catalytic converters at each end.  

[Tommy T.]

6 hours ago, Jollygoodfellow said:

Yes but go back before civilisation and a lightning strike hits the trees then it burnt everything until it could burn no more or rain perhaps put it out so my guess smoke from fire has been around since the beginning of time and not to mention all those active volcanoes giving off emission. 

You make a good point JGF.

However, consider now that there are still lightning strikes (and rogue power cables and idiots with matches or lighters) that start huge fires. Some of these areas (think California, for one) have been "managed" for how many years to keep fires from starting or spreading. In addition to those fires, we add how many millions of tons of smoke into the air from cars, industry and so on, that did not exist back in those times.

And sure, there were more volcanoes earlier in this planet's history. But there are still some nowadays too.

My point is that "civilization" is possibly (or likely) worsening the whole equation - all the billions of tons of carbon that has been locked inside the earth for millennia since the dinosaurs and now we are releasing it into the atmosphere. How can this be a good thing? Maybe the earth is warming, maybe not... but our activities are unprecedented in history...

[Hobbit112]

17 minutes ago, Tommy T. said:

My point is that "civilization" is possibly (or likely) worsening the whole equation - all the billions of tons of carbon that has been locked inside the earth for millennia since the dinosaurs and now we are releasing it into the atmosphere.

Locked away Tommy?  Not really as Mother Nature has been perpetually recycling carbon through the millennia or we would not be here as we are all carbon-based.

An interesting read:  https://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/methane-cow.htm

"Cows emit a massive amount of methane through belching, with a lesser amount through flatulence. Statistics vary regarding how much methane the average dairy cow expels. Some experts say 100 liters to 200 liters a day (or about 26 gallons to about 53 gallons), while others say it's up to 500 liters (about 132 gallons) a day. In any case, that's a lot of methane, an amount comparable to the pollution produced by a car in a day."

So, 1 cow=1 car in methane emissions.  And I think that would apply to all ruminants, ie., goats, sheep, buffalo, etc.

Edited August 14, 2019 by Hobbit112

[Tommy T.]

5 hours ago, robert k said:

You should check out Tony Heller on Youtube. Also science has said that CO2 was higher during the ice ages than it is now. How does that work? CO2 is not the regulator knob. More than 100 years ago, sea level rise was determined to be 3mm a year, naturally. Guess what the sea level rise is now? It's still on the order of 3mm a year. There is a reason the climate change people graph heat from 1970, because the temperatures really aren't the hottest on record. It was hotter in the 30's and the 50's. These climate people are getting really shrill because we are about to enter a cooling period and there is limited time to convince people to give up control of their lives. If we still have ice caps in 10 years, will any thinking person still believe these people know their bodily exit from a hole in the ground? What if the ice caps grow as we progress through the Maunder Minimum? Will anyone still believe them then? 

You said compared to less developed countries? If the energy were available, do you think they wouldn't be using it too? If they had plentiful energy, do you think they would still be "less developed"? Also you should remember that many Chinese are still farming by hand just as in the Philippines. I saw an appalling estimate of how many in China have no real access ....To their own economy.

India is doing it's level best to catch up to the first world and I applaud them. It takes cheap plentiful energy. It really is too bad they have to spend such a disproportionate amount on defense while they are trying to grow but with unfriendly neighbors who don't wish to see them succeed, there's nothing else they can do.

Hmmm...obviously this is a hot topic?

First off, I agree with you, Robert, that nobody should try to use micro climate data to make conclusions about macro climate - in other words, what happens for 10 or even 100 years is small time in the order of world climate that evolves over thousands of years. I remember winters when I thought it was the new ice age... then it warmed up again...

Regarding less developed countries verses USA and other "developed" countries? Of course anyone anywhere would - and does - use as much energy as they can. One of the limiters, as you say, is the poverty... Driving in some places not far from the city and the rice is all worked by hand, caribou help till the earth here... But are we making a good example by making super fast cars, boats, aircraft, cell phones that do everything but cook meals and wash dishes? Then we try sending our rubbish to Philippines, China or anywhere just to get rid of it and forget about it? That all took energy to create and will take energy to dispose - should we ever try to do that.

I didn't quite follow your point regarding India except that they increasingly rely on more energy... was that it? If so, notice too that in India, how much they have developed recently. Yes... there is still an enormous amount of poverty but, as a nation, they are working to pull themselves out with education - where people can afford it. They just launched something to the moon while many people are still starving in the cities.

[robert k]

26 minutes ago, Tommy T. said:

Possibly, Dave, if overpopulation is THE problem, if may solve itself.

I remember a science project in Biology 101 in high school. We all took petri dishes and then went around touching various things and seeding the agar with whatever we touched. Almost invariably, some sort of colourful and creepy bacteria grew in the nutrient. It expanded until it filled the dish, then it expired in its own waste... I think back on that lesson, for whatever it's worth...

I agree about overpopulation will be self regulating if busybodies don't interfere. Law of unintended consequences when families had 10 children because 7 died young, introduce advanced medicine and 9-10 out of ten survive. One might think they would have fewer children, but that hasn't happened.

Don't forget that you are talking about a sealed ecosystem in that petri dish. Those wastes broken down could make excellent plant food. That might have provided sugars for the bacteria, yeasts and molds. It wasn't an ecosystem.