CNN had an article about cows being bad for the environment:

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by SH@UN

1) Cow poop = methane

2) Methane = bad for environment

Depending on how the cattle is raised, it becomes easier to handle the manure and process it with biodigesters to recover most of that methane and use it as a fuel. The same goes for poultry and pork residues.

Of course, all the cow feces in the world isn't probably as bad as one day of car exhaust from a city like New York or Los Angeles. It's all relative.

Methane has a longer half-life than CO², though I don't remember how it compares to NO².

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Ecky

It doesn't hang around forever though - it breaks down into CO2 after a few decades.

Less than that - the residence time is less than a decade. And as I keep trying to point out, biogenic methane is a natural part of the Earth's biosphere. It it wasn't being produced by cows - say they all were killed off by a vegan conspiracy - it would be produced by other animals, bacteria, wetlands, plants...

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Less than that - the residence time is less than a decade. And as I keep trying to point out, biogenic methane is a natural part of the Earth's biosphere. It it wasn't being produced by cows - say they all were killed off by a vegan conspiracy - it would be produced by other animals, bacteria, wetlands, plants...

Just like how oil is a natural part of the environment - if we weren't digging it out of the ground, it would eventually make its way out on its own, through tectonic activity - like in Alberta and Venezuela.

Expect the rates aren't the same. Sure, methane exists in nature, but if we're producing more of it than would naturally happen, there will be more of it in the atmosphere.

See what's wrong with that argument?

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Ecky

Expect the rates aren't the same. Sure, methane exists in nature, but if we're producing more of it than would naturally happen, there will be more of it in the atmosphere.

See what's wrong with that argument?

What's wrong is that the rate of biogenic (from cows, termites, wetlands &c) methane generation is not more than would naturally happen, just as CO2 emission from animal metabolism is not more than natural. It's the non-natural things, like natural gas leaking from oil wells, that's causing the increase.

[rmay635703]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliso_Canyon_gas_leak
https://www.google.com/amp/www.popul...let-continues/

Then you also have nonsense like the 2 above events where we pump gas underground without a containment vessel.

Aftermath from the above releases outweigh annual passenger car emissions

[Xist]

"Okay, Google, how much co2 do humans exhale a year?"

"The average human exhales about 2.3 pounds of carbon dioxide on an average day."

Grrr... Make me do math...

2.3 pounds * 365.25 * Oh wow, we hit 7.5 billion. Did we have a party? = 3 150 281 250 short tons

Wait, why did it give me four different answers? Which one is it, Google?! What are you trying to hide?!

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by Xist

Oh wow, we hit 7.5 billion. Did we have a party!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXA7yklaANo

[freebeard]

rmay635703 —
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayou_Corne_sinkhole

Bayou Corne was being used for natural gas storage:

The ecological effects of these developments on local flora and fauna are yet unstudied, but the sinkhole continues to destroy nearby cypress trees, swallowing them during expansion. The Atlantic’s Tim Murphy has summarized the incident thusly: “Bayou Corne is the biggest ongoing industrial disaster in the United States you haven't heard of.” One class-action lawsuit led to a proposed $48.1 million settlement in 2014, although some residents felt that the legal fees to be awarded ($12.03 million) were too high a percentage of the total.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur

Lake Peigneur also involved a salt dome, but they were drilling for oil.

The resultant whirlpool sucked in the drilling platform, eleven barges, many trees and 65 acres (26 ha) of the surrounding terrain. So much water drained into those caverns that the flow of the Delcambre Canal that usually empties the lake into Vermilion Bay was reversed, making the canal a temporary inlet. This backflow created, for a few days, the tallest waterfall ever in the state of Louisiana, at 164 feet (50 m), as the lake refilled with salt water from the Delcambre Canal and Vermilion Bay. Air displaced by the water flowing into the mine caverns erupted through the mineshafts as compressed air and then later as 400-foot (120 m) geysers.

[PaleMelanesian]

There is NO way a goat can live on 500 square feet of grass. It'll be bare dirt within a month. If that plot of land is their only source of food, they need more like an acre. It also varies by season. If they overgraze it in summer or winter, the grass may not recover in the good seasons.

Source: I raise sheep and cattle.

[PaleMelanesian]

Coconut palms can grow in a small space. They're tall and thin. 20 ft by 20 ft is plenty, so the 7 palms discussed above could fit in 2800 sq ft, or about the size of a suburban home. They can also grow in nothing but salt water and sand, land unsuitable for just about anything else.

source: I grew up on a tropical beach with coconuts all around. See my username.