THAILAND, AUGUST 6, 2020

THIS POST IS A CRITICAL REVIEW OF TWO ARTICLES ON THE EFFECT OF BOVINE ENTERIC FERMENTATION AND DIET ON ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING  OF THE INDUSTRIAL ECONOMY. THEY ARE …

(1) THE COWS THAT COULD HELP FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE [LINK]   

(2) COW FARTS AREN’T THE ONLY FOOD RELATED CLIMATE CULPRIT [LINK]  

PART-1: WHAT THE ARTICLES SAY

1. Article #1 says that “a hefty slice of global greenhouse gas emissions come from enteric fermentation of livestock but a vaccine can kill the gut microbes that provide the enteric fermentation function for the cattle and thereby reduce or eliminate their methane emissions.  [LINK]   
2. Article #2 says that a fifth of each person’s carbon footprint comes from food that are sources of greenhouse gas emissions. These foods are identified in the two charts above where the items “red meat” and “dairy” refer to enteric fermentation but the list adds new sources not usually seen in the climate change literature that pretty much encompass all food types including grains and vegetables. It says that to fight climate change we must adjust our diet. A vegan diet will have the largest emissions reduction but where a full vegan diet is not possible, the chart above may be used to make food choices wisely to fight climate change.  [LINK]  

PART-2: CRITICAL COMMENTARY

1. In a related post it is argued that AGW climate science derives from and is a continuation of the anti fossil fuel and pro renewable energy movement of the 1960s [LINK] . The reasoning is that climate change serves only as the rationale for climate action and so the real movement is for climate action with climate action restricted to a single option, that of getting rid of fossil fuels and moving the global energy infrastructure to renewables. There is no alternative form of climate action.
2. This connection establishes the relationship between AGW and the anti fossil fuel environmentalism of the 1960s that had subsided but was never really over. Climate action continues to link AGW to environmentalism.  It is thus that we find an environmentalism interpretation of AGW by environmentalists of all colors with each movement interpreting AGW climate action in terms of their cause.
3. In a prior post on this subject [LINK] , we presented a similar argument for the interpretation of climate action by vegans in terms of veganism. In that post it is shown that the interpretation of climate action by vegans differs from climate action prescribed in AGW and that therefore the assumed connection between veganism and AGW does not exist. The difference is that in climate science, climate action requires reduction in fossil fuel emissions but in veganism climate action the proposal is to reduce carbon cycle flows.
4. In the current analysis we find that both articles, the livestock vaccine article and the climate friendly diet article, have made exactly the same error in their interpretation of AGW as the veganism article in the prior post. The fatal error in all three articles in their interpretation of climate action is that in climate science, climate action means to reduce fossil fuel emissions. It does not mean to reduce carbon cycle carbon flows that flow from the surface to the atmosphere.  The difference between fossil fuel emissions and carbon cycle flows in the context of AGW is explained by NASA climate scientist Dr. Peter Griffith in the video below.
5. The importance and key role of fossil fuel emissions in AGW is explained thus by Dr. Griffith:  “This is a chunk of coal. It was also made by plants. It also contains carbon dioxide that was in the atmosphere. BUT THE CARBON IN THIS CHUNK OF COAL WAS TAKEN OUT OF THE ATMOSPHERE 350 MILLION YEARS AGO AND SINCE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION WE’VE BEEN TAKING IT OUT OF THE GROUND AND USING IT FOR FUEL. THE BURNING OF FOSSIL FUELS WHETHER IT IS COAL, OIL, OR NATURAL GAS, HAS RELEASED THIS VERY VERY OLD CARBON BACK INTO THE ATMOSPHERE.
6. This statement by Dr Peter Griffith is the essence of the theory of AGW climate change and it is important and necessary that climate action proposals be true to this theory and consistent with what Dr Griffith is saying here. What he is saying is that it is the external carbon, the 350 million year old carbon from under the ground that does not belong in the current account of the carbon cycle, that drives AGW, not carbon cycle flows. Carbon cycle flows are natural that always was and always will be and not a creation of the industrial economy and not anthropogenic. The point is that the injection of this very old carbon that is not part of the current account of the carbon cycle causes an artificial perturbation of the carbon cycle that reaches across time for millions of years to raise atmospheric CO2, and causes warming.
7. Climate action must therefore be understood in terms of this AGW causation mechanism of the industrial economy and not in terms of pre-industrial carbon cycle flows like respiration or enteric fermentation. In that context, the attempt by environmental activists with an ex ante environmental activism bias against certain natural carbon cycle flows to the atmosphere, to interpret anthropogenic global warming of the industrial economy in terms of their activism needs is inconsistent with AGW theory and cannot be understood as climate action. Such insertion of unrelated environmentalism into AGW climate change cannot be understood as climate action.
8. CONCLUSION: The extreme focus on land based carbon cycle intervention as climate action overlooks two significant issues. They are that most of the world’s photosynthesis occurs in the ocean, and secondly that the theory of anthropogenic global warming is very specifically the impact of fossil fuels.
9. We also show that the climate action propositions of the two articles – the vaccine to control enteric fermentation and the dietary advice for low carbon cycle carbon flows from nature, are invalidated by the analysis presented above because the proposed climate action does not address anthropogenic fossil fuel emissions of the industrial economy that drives AGW.
10. Natural and pre-industrial carbon cycle flows are irrelevant in the AGW climate change context. 

THE NASA VIDEO LECTURE BY DR. PETER GRIFFITH

RELATED POST:  AN EXCLUSIVE RELIANCE ON FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS OVERLOOKS NATURAL CARBON FLOWS. [LINK]