Who knows more about bovine emissions and climate science than a French Administrative Court? Before we answer that, the Cour des Comptes has declared that France cannot achieve its climate goals with all these cows mulling about emitting Methane.
The court asked the Ministry of Agriculture to “define and make public” its strategy “to reduce methane emissions…[which] necessarily requires a significant reduction in the herd”.
The court admitted that the ministry had already communicated its aims to reduce the number of cows in France from 17 million today to 15 million in 2035 and 13.5 million in 2050.
The number of cattle has already dropped by 10% in the past six years, the court noted, but said that this has “not been done due to any real scheme from the state, and is also happening to the detriment of farmers.”
Funny thing about that. The research I’ve done indicates that Methane has a very short atmospheric half-life (6-9 years, depending on whom you believe). That matters because, for successive decades, Methane’s atmospheric concentration was nearly flat (in some years negative) without any measurable change in human activity (or farting French Cows) to account for it.
Before anyone else decides to do something dramatic, shouldn’t you work out why that was? The years 1992 to 2013 were peak climate alarmism years (they all are now), but the so-called gas that’s x times more dangerous than C02 went on an atmospheric holiday.
And no comment from the climate cult fair trade peanut gallery? No science to explain the science from the hockey stick-waving Mann-Made Warming camp?
Nope, and they’d rather you not bring it up, so I had to go on the hunt for more methane facts.
David Archibald, at WUWT, reminds us that rising CO2 results in a significant increase in plant life—the greening of the earth. It is super fertilizer for plants. Its rise coincides with once-thought inhospitable landscapes seeing a 30% increase in plant life. That’s a lot more green. As those plants die, they release Methane: more plants, more Methane – not man caused at all.
The second point he makes is that Methane’s arch-nemesis is ozone, whose rise and fall are linked to increases or decreases in solar activity. As the sun cycles through its natural processes, ozone levels rise and fall, and Methane is more quickly depleted from the atmosphere when there is more ozone.
Professor Myles Allen, a lead author of IPCC SR 1.5 (2018), indicated, “Traditional greenhouse gas accounting ignores the impact of changing methane emission rates while grossly exaggerating the impact of steady methane emissions.” And –
“Climate policy the world over has traditionally treated every tonne of methane as supposedly “equivalent” to 28 tonnes of carbon dioxide… It isn’t.
If it ever were a concern, and I doubt it is, nature is more than capable of managing without us culling herds.
And I need to do more reading on this, but I can’t escape that twenty-year methane drought. Absent a human explanation, there’s no sensible reason to cull cows or cattle unless your war is on meat, and Methane is just a poor excuse.
And there is a war on meat, and neither of their plans to replace it with plant-based alternatives or lab-generated fakes is better for the environment
