So it’s even worse than we thought:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is spewing 50 percent more methane — a potent heat-trapping gas — than the federal government estimates, a new comprehensive scientific study says. Much of it is coming from just three states: Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
That means methane may be a bigger global warming issue than thought, scientists say. Methane is 21 times more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, the most abundant global warming gas, although it doesn’t stay in the air as long.
Much of that extra methane, also called natural gas, seems to be coming from livestock, including manure, belches, and flatulence, as well as leaks from refining and drilling for oil and gas, the study says. It was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
The study estimates that in 2008, the U.S. poured 49 million tons of methane into the air. That means U.S. methane emissions trapped about as much heat as all the carbon dioxide pollution coming from cars, trucks, and planes in the country in six months.
That’s more than the 32 million tons estimated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Administration or the nearly 29 million tons reckoned by the European Commission.
“Something is very much off in the inventories,” said study co-author Anna Michalak, an Earth scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, Calif. “The total U.S. impact on the world’s energy budget is different than we thought, and it’s worse.”
Someone asked the other day about how we could stop “burning crap” and still keep warm, visit the intertubes, and drive our cars? 1) Kill the coal industry. Convert every coal fired power plant to oil and natural gas. 2) Increase the use of solar power. Install solar panels on every new home and building under contruction. Convert all existing homes and buildings to solar power. 3) Ramp up the construction of wind farms, hydroelectric power plants, geothermal plants, etc. We do those three things and within a short period of time it will become unnecessary to burn any fossil fuel. All of the conversion, construction, and installation can be subsidised with (wealthy) tax dollars. The additional employment that will be created will be massive.
“…Something is very much off in the inventories…”
Hey, imagine that.
We’re cooking the books.
For real.
Oh – regarding the contribution from livestock – if we would let the grazing animals graze, and eat grasses as they would naturally, and not feed them corn which is not part of their natural diet and which they have trouble digesting – and for that matter the corn has to have massive amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients dumped on it anyway which grasses do not – that emission problem would be significantly reduced.
It’s time we got rid of these “Auschwitz for Animals” feedlots.