One stop shopping post on methane Part 1

There is an old fake-science idea doing the rounds again at the moment.

This is that cows are culprits in the global warming narrative. The problem, however, is that the scary image of cows destroying the planet with their carbon emissions doesn’t fit with how the planet actually works.

No cow alive today, nor any cow that has ever existed, nor any cow that will ever exist, can add a single atom of carbon to the atmosphere that wasn’t already there in the first place.

At one point of the carbon cycle, it is true that cows emit carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) to the atmosphere, each of which contains one atom of carbon. This is a basic fact of biology – but what about some other basic facts to go with it?

It would seem the fact that ruminants emit carbon gases is regarded as the clincher argument by people like Rosemary Stanton and Kris Barnden, who recently published an article on the ABC News website damning cattle. The problem is they fail to put this isolated fact together with others to give it context and, in this way, create a misleading impression. They fail to describe how a cow exists within the carbon cycle. They fail to ask a fundamental question; ‘Is the carbon a cow emits new carbon to the atmosphere?’

The believer/activists don’t explain that cows eat plants and that all the carbon in a plant comes from the atmosphere, not the ground. The carbon in the leaves comes from the minute traces of carbon dioxide in the air around them via the process of photosynthesis. Even the carbon in the roots of plants comes from the atmosphere and even the carbon in the carbohydrate sugars that the roots exude to soil microbes in a swap for nutrients, comes from the air above us. The energy for this is captured by the plant’s own solar panels – its leaves.

The believer/activists don’t explain that when a cow eats a plant it is vicariously ‘eating’ carbon from the atmosphere. They don’t explain that, when that cow exhales carbon dioxide or belches methane, the carbon in those gases goes back to where it ultimately came from – the air around them.

The implications of photosynthesis are not divulged to the public by the cows-are-culprits believer/activists. They don’t explain where animals get their energy from and how their food sources become laden with energy. (Hint: it’s ultimately from the Sun and it involves the carbon cycle, the water cycle and photosynthesis.)

Plants combine carbon, hydrogen and oxygen to make carbohydrate chains or ‘sugars’. (C6H12O6)

Cows and other animals consume these carbohydrate sugars and ‘burn’ them as energy to run their bodies. As a result of this ‘combustion’ the by-product of carbon dioxide is produced and exhaled to the atmosphere. We humans do the same thing. Once in the atmosphere, the carbon dioxide again becomes available for photosynthesis in plants, and so the cycle starts over again. This is an example of sustainability in plants and animals.

So, with regard to the carbon dioxide the cow breathes out, it goes straight back to where it came from – the atmosphere.