How many animals does each human currently require? Is this what is warming the planet?

[MyUncle]

These question came about during a discussion with an engineer friend of mine. I was arguing that until we dramatically decrease the number of humans, we have no chance of decreasing the upward curve of CO2 emmissions and having any significant impacts on Global Warming.

My contention is that the 6 billion humans have about 5x-10x mammals and birds each to "sustain" us. Those would include cows, horses, pigs, goats, cats, dogs, sheep, fur animals chickens, etc. Including humans, each one of them inhales ambiant temperature atmosphere and exhales body temperature atmosphere that is most often higher in termperature than what they inhaled. Each exhalation of each animal has more CO2 going out than what they inhaled. So we have 30-60 billion organic "machines" raising air termperatures and increasing CO2. How do we even stand a chance to decrease rising CO2 without decreasing the number of humans and the # of our support organisms?

I purposely do not even mention machines, oil, etc.

He says that this is preposterous and that compared to machines animals are a blip. I just can't see it when I think about the math that needs to be factored in to just the organic impact of humans and their support organisms.

50,000,000,000 x these factors
- volume of air inhaled vs volume of air exhaled that increases air temperature
- volume of air inhaled vs volume of air exhaled that increases CO2 levels
- # of breaths per animal per day plus lifespan of animal
- increases in ambient temperature due to body temperature differentials
- other increases in air, water and ground temps due to excretions

I think the affects are enormous. What do you all think?

[Taverner]

1. I do question the Cow Fart = Doom hypothesis

[kestrel91316]

11. Cow farts are not fossilized CO2. IMHO grassfed cattle are carbon neutral.

The fossil fuel inputs are the problem.

[Taverner]

15. Mmmmmm Canadian Grass Fed Beef

:)

[OnlinePoker]

20. I wish.

7 years ago during the mad cow scare, when Canadian ranchers were losing their shirts because they couldn't export their beef anywhere, it was cheaper here in BC to buy New Zealand grass fed beef than it was to get it from Alberta.

[guardian]

19. more DENIER bunk

http://www.earthsave.org/globalwarming.htm

Vegetarianism as the Most Effective Tool Against Climate Change in Our Lifetimes

The conclusion is simple: arguably the best way to reduce global warming in our lifetimes is to reduce or eliminate our consumption of animal products. Simply by going vegetarian (or, strictly speaking, vegan), , , we can eliminate one of the major sources of emissions of methane, the greenhouse gas responsible for almost half of the global warming impacting the planet today.



EVERYTHING is both a cause and a result of global warming. I'm surprised to hear such denialism coming from you.

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. 'Cow farts' warm more, per molecule, than carbon dioxide

If plant material is turned into methane, it is definitely worse than if it becomes carbon dioxide (which it will, eventually, become, but in the mean time it will have warmed the atmosphere). Cattle, and human agriculture in general, are not neutral as far as global warming goes.

The IPCC reckons the radiative forcing of CO2 and methane at 2005 levels were 1.66 and 0.48 W m-2 - methane is about 18% of the total greenhouse gas forcing. And methane concentration is rising almost as fast as carbon dioxide, and has already been increased significantly by humans:

Also, more than half the atmospheric CH4 load is due to changes wrought by mankind. Atmospheric methane concentration had stabilized from about 1999 to 2007, but recently began rising again, as reported in Rigby et al (2008).


Data collected since their report has confirmed that CH4 began rising in 2007.

http://tamino.files.wordpress.com.nyud.net:8080/2011/05/rawfit.jpg

Human agriculture produces more methane (from ruminants like cattle, and paddy fields) than the ecosystem without us.

[kristopher]

27. A bit more on the details...

Overview from NASA of methane as a GHG

Methane: A Scientific Journey from Obscurity to Climate Super-Stardom
By Gavin Schmidt, September 2004

The first survey in 1971 on the possibility of inadvertent human modification of climate stated that "Methane has no direct effects on the climate or the biosphere it is considered to be of no importance". The gas did not even appear in the index of the major climatology book of the time (Lamb's Climate Past, Present and Future). Yet in the 2001 IPCC report, large parts of multiple chapters are dedicated to examining the sources, sinks, chemistry, history and potential future of this humble molecule. New papers are published every month relating paleo-climate changes to methane variability and discussing the possibility of significantly reducing future anthropogenic climate change by aggressively managing methane emissions. New hypotheses such as the "clathrate gun hypothesis" (more below) place methane variability at the centre of the debate on rapid climate change.

What has fueled the rapid rise of methane from an obscure trace gas to a major factor in past, present and future climate change? As is usual in science, it is the conflation of multiple lines of evidence, that only when taken together do the connections and possible feedbacks seem obvious.
Methane as a Greenhouse Gas

First some basics: methane (CH4) is a very simple molecule (one carbon surrounded by four hydrogen atoms) and is created predominantly by bacteria that feed on organic material. In dry conditions, there is plenty of atmospheric oxygen, and so aerobic bacteria which produce carbon dioxide (CO2) are preferred. But in wet areas such as swamps, wetlands and in the ocean, there is not enough oxygen, and so complex hydrocarbons get broken down to methane by anaerobic bacteria. Some of this methane can get trapped (as a gas, as a solid, dissolved or eaten) and some makes its way to the atmosphere where it is gradually broken down to CO2 and water (H2O) vapor in a series of chemical reactions.

Although methane was detected...

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/200409_methane/

[99th_Monkey]

2. First off, you need to remove Breitbart

In order to get a statistically valid answer to this question "How many animals does each human currently require?",
make sure that Breitbart isn't in the sample population, or it will skew the results astronomically.

Just sayin'

[Rincewind]

4. Speaking of Breitbart,

didn't I read somewhere on the internet that he has syphilis?

[provis99]

5. more precisely, I have read he has tertiary syphilis.

He hasn't denied it, so it must be true.

[JohnWxy]

28. here is a quick way to covert cow fart methane to CO2 (less heat trapping capacity than methane) -

....only for the brave....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XYiC6n0CCk

[arcane1]

3. I don't think breathing increases CO2

since the CO2 animals exhale is the same CO2 that's inhaled by the plants (which the animals eat, even if indirectly)

[MyUncle]

6. That is a possiblity, but in the aggregate

I'd argue that more humans = less not more plants so the net effect is more CO2, less O2.

[wtmusic]

8. CO2 looks the same, whether it's from a car or from a human

The CO2 contributed by humans breathing is about 1/20 of the CO2 contributed by all fossil fuels.

The CO2 contributed by livestock is more than all of the CO2 from fossil fuels used for transportation.

It's substantial.

[kestrel91316]

12. Animals are carbon neutral. As biological life forms, all the CO2 they exhale

or otherwise produce was already in the atmosphere before some plant captured it and then the animal took it in.

The only thing about animals of any kind that results in a net increase in atmospheric CO2 is THE BURNING OF FOSSIL FUELS IN THEIR HUSBANDRY.

But then, I suspect you knew that.

[MyUncle]

17. I think you are incorrectly ascribing the same behaviour of

"wild" animals as opposed to the farmed/domesticated animals we use to sustain us. The vast majority eat processed foods are kept in climate controlled environments. I am not quite following the carbon neutral argument. I will think harder about that though in respect for your statement.

[kestrel91316]

18. Every molecule of carbon exhaled or farted by a cow ultimately started out in the

atmosphere as CO2 already, basically a millisecond ago in geological time. It briefly became part of the cow's body structure as proteins, carbs, fats, bones, etc (or just food eaten and crapped right back out). It is of no more importance to global warming than plants inhaling CO2 during the day and exhaling some back out at night, ot inhaling it and turning it into wood and then that wood being burned. It's all part of a very short-term carbon cycle.

What we need to worry about is the VAST amount of fossil carbon, tied up underground for MILLIONS of years, suddenly being released into an atmosphere and biosphere unable to handle it without global scale change.

Firewood is a carbon-neutral heating source. Plants and animals are carbon-neutral food sources.

[wtmusic]

22. That logic is equivalent to saying there can never be population growth

because everyone ultimately dies anyway. By your rationale, the Earth is "population neutral".

If people reproduce faster than they die, the population grows. Similarly, if CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere faster than it's absorbed by plants, CO2 concentrations grow.

More people make it grow faster, as do more animals - and their CO2 is no better for the environment than that emanating from a smokestack.

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. You are failing to take into account the hundreds of billions of animals

that no longer exist because of man. There may be 90 million cattle in the US today, but that compares to hundreds of millions of bison that preceded them. A single herd might have 10 million in it.

There once were flocks of birds so thick they literally darkened the sky when they flew. How does that compare to 400 million chickens on farms?

I agree that human overpopulation has a horrific effect, but the numbers of our domesticated animals is comparable to the numbers of wild animals that were here before us.

[MyUncle]

9. You could be right, I won't disagree.

that just leaves us with 6 billion humans and increasing. Is that enough to tip the scales of warming and CO2 levels.

[kestrel91316]

14. Animal and plant life are carbon neutral. It is the release of CO2 from FOSSIL FUEL

COMBUSTION that causes a net increase in atmospheric CO2.

Every molecule of CO2 exhaled or otherwise produced by animals started out very recently as atmospheric CO2 and was taken up by plants, which then found their way into the food chain.

BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES on the whole are carbon neutral. IT'S THE FOSSIL FUELS THAT ARE THE PROBLEM.

[One_Life_To_Give]

10. Back of the Envelope

Average person say 1500kCal per day or 6.27megJ
7 billion people collectively 44 Billion Megajoules per day. Which is the equivalent energy of 338 million gals of gas per day.
Global oil production and consumption currently stands at 80 million bpd or roughly 3360 million gals per day.
If each person had 1350 lbs of animal(s) supporting them. Then the amounts of CO2 generated by the people and their animals would be about the same as that generated by fossil fuel consumption.

The Earths atmosphere is about 5.3 * 10^18 kg.
burning 338 million gals of gas consumes 1.4 * 10^10 kg air. So about every 10 million days people would of breathed the entire atmosphere once. Or daily we breath 1/10 of 1 millionth of the total earth atmosphere. While a home heating system turns over the entire volume of air in the house every couple of hours.

Looks like we are a small but significant (10%) source of CO2. Heating the air requires the power of the Sun, we are just an insignificant part in direct heating of the atmosphere.

[kestrel91316]

16. Humans do not "produce" CO2. They take in carbon that used to be CO2 before plants

took it up a millisecond ago in geologic time. The problem we need to focus on is the CO2 that has been sequestered for MILLIONS OF YEARS in fossil fuels and is now quite suddenly being released into an environment that cannot soak it all up without being vastly altered.

[damntexdem]

13. Sometimes it pays to listen to the engineer.

This would appear to be such a case.

[GliderGuider]

21. The 30.6 billion tonnes of CO2 we put into the air each year come from stored carbon i fossil fuels.

The biosphere, including vegetation and animals, as others have noted is essentially a steady state carbon processor. The global operation of photosynthesis is seen in the sawtooth shape of the Keeling curve. If we weren't releasing stored carbon back into the atmosphere, the Keeling curve would look like a horizontal sine wave instead of a rising sawtooth curve.

You can see the relative biomass of various species here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_(ecology)

Humans and all domesticated animals amount to something like 850 million tonnes of wet biomass. Taken together, ants, marine fish and krill and outweigh us and all our domesticated familiars by at least 10:1.

[wtmusic]

23. Actually, a little over a billion tons comes out of people's mouths.

About 1/20 of all fossil fuel burning combined.

Can you tell which CO2 molecule came out of a mouth, vs. out of a smokestack?

[GliderGuider]

24. It's the excess over and above biological processes that counts.

Roughly 11 billion tonnes of additional CO2 stays in the atmosphere each year - about a third of what we generate by burning fossil fuels. Without fossil fuel use there would be no problem with the carbon balance, regardless of the number of people and cows.

[wtmusic]

26. Yes and no.

That's assuming that all of the carbon we exhale is the result of CO2 pulled from the air, and not organic matter present for decades or centuries in soil.

We're quickly moving that carbon from soil to the atmosphere - by breathing.

"Their findings for the Morrow Plots are confirmed in published literature from field studies that included initial soil organic carbon data. 'In numerous publications spanning more than 100 years and a wide variety of cropping and tillage practices,' said Boast, 'we found consistent evidence of an organic carbon decline for fertilized soils throughout the world and including much of the Corn Belt besides Illinois.'""

http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/news/internal/preview.cfm?nid=4185

[JohnWxy]

29. A quick way to convert cowfart methane into less Heat-trapping CO2 (only for the brave or foolhardy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XYiC6n0CCk