Cows Are the Cause?

By: Justin Taylor

Let’s start with some background into this issue. Everyone should be aware that one of the main causes of Global Warming is the increase of methane into the atmosphere. So here we are left with the question as to how is there so much of this getting into the atmosphere? Some other common causes of global warming are emissions from cars, energy used by people, and some forestry practices. There have been various studies to show that livestock produce a large amount of the greenhouse gasses that are being put into the atmosphere. According to Matt Blitz of Gizmodo.com, of all of the ruminants, more commonly known as livestock, cows tend to produce more methane gas. “Due to the sheer number of cows on the planet, along with the large size per cow, our tasty friends produce more methane gas than all other ruminants combined.” Judging from this article it seems to be pretty cut and dry as to who (or what I suppose) is the largest producer of methane in the ruminants-the cows. So what do you think is the greatest producer of greenhouse gasses?

Through some more research we will be showing if cows produce the most amount of methane of the ruminants, as well as exploring some possibilities for solutions to the issue of methane production in livestock across the world.

            So let’s get into this now. According to timeforchange.org, they say that “a cow does on average release between 70 and 120 kg of methane per year.” In a study done by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, summarized by the NPR, “the bulk of emissions- 55 percent- came from beef cattle. [talking about emissions from livestock] Dairy cows, buffalo, sheep and goats accounted for the rest.” So by this article we now know that the large part of emissions is caused from beef cattle. So what might this mean? Something that we can conclude from this is that cows are actually the leading cause for the production of methane in livestock. So now that that is proven let’s talk about the consequences for this. According to the GHG  the cause for this much emission is from humans. It is due to the increase of meat that is needed to continually feed people eating from fast food restaurants and such. Because of this need for meat, the number of livestock needed to keep up with it has gone up, causing this increase in greenhouse gasses produced by cows and other livestock. A study done by the EPA https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/us-greenhouse-gas-inventory-report-1990-2014 in finding the sources of greenhouse gasses showed that only 9% of all greenhouse gas emissions was caused by agriculture.

Overview of Greenhouse Gases 1 picture

  Tying this back to the main question, are cows the cause of the increase of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere? Simply yes, but it is the humans who caused the need, so, in a sense, it is us who should find a way to fix this issue. Some ways to solve this have been proposed.  

Some solutions that have been proposed are a more methane suppressant diet for cows, so as to produce less methane while digesting. That would include a higher garlic diet, due to the fact that garlic is a natural methane suppressant. Some other solutions proposed by the Union of Concerned Scientists, “Increase the percentage of Legumes in forage mixtures, Avoid the use of low-quality, mature pasture crops for grazing, breed better pasture species to improve nutritional quality, plant birdsfood trefoil.” The Birdsfoot trefoil is similar to garlic in that it produces tannins which reduce emissions and risk of disease, therefore keeping the cows healthy, as well as helping to keep the world cleaner. These are just some of the ways that could help to bring down the release of methane in beef cattle.

In conclusion, we can see that the original article is actually telling the truth. We can see in livestock specifically that cows are the leading cause of methane release. From our sources we can see that beef cattle cause 55%, plus dairy cows which was not specified. We also explored some of the causes for this increase as well as some solutions that have been put in place. So now you know some of the causes for global warming as well as some of the solutions that could help to bring down the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

Trumped Up Climate Change

By: Heather Reid

Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump has stated in many different ways and at different times that he does not believe in human-made climate change. Trump has even referred to climate change as being a hoax. During the first Presidential debate, Hillary Clinton said that Trump believes climate change is a hoax made up by the Chinese for their benefit. Trump denied it, but still stands by the claim that it is just weather naturally changing. He does not see validity in the claim that climate change is real and is an issue America needs to address. Trump has shared his opinion on many occasions and the following example is from the Palin Update on August 3, 2015.

"You look back and they were calling it global cooling and global warming and global everything, but you look back and the biggest tornados were in the 1890s, the biggest hurricanes were in the 1860s and 1870s. It's weather. You're going to have bad weather. So often I watch the evening newscasts and every time there is a rainstorm some place, and then they wonder why they don't do well, they say, 'It's raining here and it's raining there,' usually leading the program. I call it weather. Maybe there's a little bit of change, I don't happen to believe it’s manmade."

Trump simplified the issues. He did not look into weather change or the human contribution to climate change. Trump made it clear that he does not think it is the country’s responsibility to do anything regarding climate change, primarily because of his belief that it is not real.

Some people agree with Trump in thinking that climate change is a man-made idea. Why is this still something people believe? Is global warming simply an issue of the weather naturally changing? Are humans contributing to the issue? Is the problem actually more serious than changing weather?

Since the industrial revolution, the Earth has been changing and the greenhouse gases have significantly increased. Human activities have contributed to an increase in greenhouse gases, mainly because of the burning of fossil fuels. The human caused increase in the greenhouse gases is linked closely with the warming of the surface temperature of Earth. The temperature has risen about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 140 years. Something that is confusing is that people see isolated colder weather and instantly assume that climate change is a hoax. Along with climate change, the weather changes in different places. A certain area can experience differences from year to year and cooling is something that illustrates the difference in weather. Localized cooling is not something that devalues climate change.

Recent climate change is greater than naturally occurring global warming. The rate at which carbon dioxide levels are rising is also important to notice. In 2012, the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide amounted to 40% more than in the year 1900. Historically, temperature and carbon dioxide levels have fluctuated, but more recently, the increases have been steadier and are       changing more quickly. There has not been this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for over 800,000 years. The burning of fossil fuels and deforestation both contribute to the increase in carbon dioxide. A problem with removal of the carbon dioxide is there are not many current working ideas on how to remove the carbon dioxide from the environment.

A difficult part of addressing climate change is that people want to simplify the problem. The reality is that climate change is complex and deals with more than just the weather changing. It deals with the physical, biological, and chemical processes that take place on the planet. All of these affect the atmosphere and environment. Some of the concerns of climate change are a warmer climate, the oceans rising, and more extreme weather events.  Another concern is the oceans are acidifying because they are managing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The carbon cycle as illustrated below explains why this is happening. The acidification makes it so shells and coral have difficulty growing and are likely to dissolve, disrupting ocean life of many types. The acidification of the oceans may have more repercussions than we currently recognize and needs to be studied more.

      Carbon dioxide moves in a cyclical manner. The ocean handles a large portion of the carbon dioxide generated by human activity.

Created by NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Climate change is not something we can ignore and only address when it becomes too severe. Some of the problems are irreversible and decisions have to be made prior to the appearance of a crisis situation. Ignoring the claims of climate change does not reverse the effects or help in any way. A difficult thing to accept is that if humans were to stop use of all fossil fuels and eliminate carbon dioxide emissions, the world still would get warmer. In order to reverse global warming, it would take complete stopping of greenhouse gas and human emissions over an extended period of time to reduce carbon dioxide to acceptable levels. In the meantime, the problem is that carbon dioxide levels continue to rise.

Trump may not believe in man-made climate change, but science backs up the claim. Climate change is undeniable. The truth is that climate change affects our lives and will continue to affect them even more. We can ignore the significant amounts of carbon dioxide in the environment, or we can continue to research and try to find solutions for the problem. Trump may think the weather is only as deep as the puddles the rain makes, but this issue of climate change is real and a serious problem in our future as well as our lives today. The time is now to address the issues and figure out how to improve the problem. Trump ignoring science is not going to get us anywhere. 

Clean Energy: Not A Waste Of Time

By: Miguel Ramirez

            In sept 26. 2006, at New York first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the two candidates were asked bout how to bring jobs back to our economy. Within Hilary's segment the idea of "clean energy" was mentioned and Trump responded as following:

            "She talks about solar panels. We invested in a solar company, our country. That was a disaster. They lost plenty of money on that one. Now look, I’m a great believer in all forms of energy. But we’re putting a lot of people out of work. Our energy policies are disaster. Our country is losing so much in terms of energy, in terms of paying off our debt." -Trump

            Now to get into the what exactly Trump said, by calling clean energy a disaster is essentially

Relative Emissions rates of CO2 by burning fuel products

saying that clean energy is dumb and a waste of time and money. Further back within Dec. 30, 2015 Trump said,  "global warming and … a lot of it's a hoax. It's a hoax. I mean, it's a moneymaking industry, OK? It's a hoax, a lot of it.' " The purpose is to wether or not establish that we do have global warming concerns and to decide if clean energy is essential and needed as a replacement to our low quantities of fossil fuel.

            First of all, we need to understand the purpose of Carbon-Dioxide (Co2) and other green house gases in our atmospheres. The main idea of their purpose is to warm up our environment to the point life can exist. In addition to this; plants, bacteria and other organism use the Carbon to preform Photosynthesis in which they release oxygen. So far this sounds like a good thing, however this is no longer at equilibrium. With the rise of the industrial revolution the country demanded an increase of goods and thus needed more energy, this was later fulfilled with coal. One of the by-products of coal energy are Co2, depending on the type of dirty energy you burn or combust may yield different rates of Co2 emissions. The table below refers to some of the most common used fuels provided by EIA.(US Energy Information Administration)

Notice how coal is one of the largest Co2 emitters and how coal counts as three different products, this is an example of different forms of coal. Remember coal in general is easy to mine and it's a common source of fuel for. The world.

            So what's happens to all this Co2 released? It goes to our atmosphere where it concentrates in layers. In-fact, the Co2 traps and absorbs heat from our sun and causes what we know today as global warming. Key-point to point out, global warming simply refers to the warming of the Earth, so if I were to take a giant hair dryer and point it towards a selected area it would warm, the idea is the same but instead of having s humongous hair dryer you have Co2 that acts as our hair dryer that's has long term problems. With a slight 2 degree rise in temperature, look at the damage it can do; Rising of sea levels over 1500ft, the change of climates affecting cash crops and general food, and bleaching of tropical reefs all over the world which is the expulsion of Algae. These organism accounts for a great amount of Oxygen levels released into our Earth, they also help absorb some of the Carbon Dioxide around. Relating to what we recently learned in class, we can see what would happened if Oxygen slowly degrades in production over time. This is a big concern to us all as we are the cause to tip the scales of equilibrium of Co2.

            One of unmentioned contributors to our vast build up of Co2 come as cows. It's funny, I know but a typical cow fart is mainly made up of Methane a green house gas. Livestock can speed up global warming by methane expulsion aka farting, which speeds up the climate change. Farmers and scientist worked together with the agricultural community and advocate

http://www.motifake.com/cattle-farts-methane-

to change the by-product of the livestock into a more environments friendly gas. This is done by modifying the cow's food.

Again the idea of cleaner emission is acknowledge and incorporated. 

            Now that we have establish that we do have an issue with climate change and that is sped up by Co2 emissions, one of many solutions are renewable energy and solar energy. Donald's idea on clean energy fails to say that we are running out of fossil fuel, and eventually we are going to have to invest time and money into solar power and clean energy. It's best to start developing early, in other ways to generate such replacements. One of the biggest Issues that environmental friendly countries run into are the cost of the clean energy operations. Second, is the fact that emissions are not properly contained and thus spread within diffusion. Co2 acts as a green house and traps extra heat and in short, warming the temperatures.  Article -The Carbon Capture fallacy proposes a plan on demonstrating using an alternative way to look into the Co2 diffusion using coal power-energy. How this works it traps the fumes/emission into a condensing machine to form a kempar, this can be condensed several times over and has proven to show less rates of Co2 by-product. Developing an alternate form of a cleaner coal, can be sold and distributed to the main areas of concentrated coal burning plants and reducing emissions. Recently, California's laws has incorporated solar energy as a 20% rate of clean energy consumption. Even though the solar power movement failed in terms of Trump, to see such a heavy populated area such as California using solar power is incredible, they have projection for the next 20 years to use 50% clean energy.

Pie chart sections are composed all the current generated energy in California, solar energy accounts for almost have graph followed by wind.

California's current projection of clean energy usage. By 2030's they expect to have 50% energy made from solar energy

To conclude the earlier statement, Donald trump in terms energy plan were a disaster was false, the Chinese inventing global warming was false. We are preparing ourselves as we speak to reduce Co2 emissions and other green house gases in our atmospheres by changing coals burning products and modifying livestock food supply. We have seen and predicted drastic climate changes and are looking into new cleaner energy sources to our fast depleting fossils fuels. It is not a joke and we are the ones who are going to suffer the consequences in terms of generations than older generations.  If you stop and think about it, wasn't it a good idea to have started in the research for a cleaner environmental friendly energy now? Even places here in Utah we have solar panels ,turbines and other eco-friendly energy sources to help aid in a transitional movement of clean energy.

Republican Candidate “Trumps” Climate Change

By: Julia Flint

Many of you are more familiar with this terms runner for the republican party than you would like to be. Notorious for his rants and outbursts, but exactly how accurate are his claims? In an article from the League of Conservation Voters, they took direct quotes spoken from both Candidates on their opinions on scientific issues, such as climate change. Below is a quote spoken from Donald Trump on his personal views. Here is the article in its entirety including more views from Trump, and some from Clinton.

“I think there’s a change in weather. I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I’m not a great believer. There is certainly a change in weather that goes – if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming. They call it all sorts of different things; now they’re using “extreme weather” I guess more than any other phrase. I am not – I know it hurts me with this room, and I know it’s probably a killer with this room – but I am not a believer. Perhaps there’s a minor effect, but I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change.”

After reading this I was curious myself. Does he have a method behind his madness? Are we all just being a bunch of paranoid worry warts? Not convinced I decided to check into this statement and in a sense fact check the validity, if there be any, behind it. What I found was not surprising in the least. Paper after paper, research after research most, if not all, scientists agreed that there is a need to worry and that we are not in the clear when it comes to the fate of our environment and ecosystem. Below are some of the resources and articles that I found.

Stone Cold Evidence

In an article found on the NASA website, there is fact after fact listed leading to the acknowledgment of global warming and climate change. Emphasizing on the evidence that it is in fact due to human activity and the ever increasing number of the human population, it is very informative and convincing, not to mention an incredible source with lots of science and data behind it. You can read the rest of the article here.

The Environmental Protection Agency has produced many articles on this topic. This particular one acknowledges the natural ways that the climate could change, but has a bigger emphasis on the manmade climate changes that have and currently are changing our environment. Giving many examples, like the rising temperature, increase in sea level, and melting ice caps backed with a lot of data and research. This article, along with several others on this topic can be found here.

On a more media friendly not the Rolling Stone issued an article called “The Point of no Return: Climate Change Nightmares Are Already Here”. This humorous article is written not only to inform the general public about the serious threat and danger that it includes, but puts it into an easy to follow, even humorous format. Not only is it convincing, but also includes loads of data. You can find the entire article here.

Even the New York Times has gotten involved multiple times on this literal hot topic. In this particular article, it primarily focuses on whether or not future climate changes should matter to us today, in present time. Written by Andrew C. Revkin, it discusses and links to a podcast between him and two other scientists from different areas debating and discussing this question. Both entertaining and informative I think it is worth a read and a listen. You can find his article here.

This last piece of evidence really holds some merit. It has been published, and peer reviewed by the scientific community. Yup, this right here is the real freaking deal. Published as part of Cambridge University Press, a long list of more than qualified scientists are responsible for the publication of this article. Not only acknowledging that it is a problem, they insist that it will only get worse, and the real kicker most of it is manmade. Chalked full of facts and data this is a great example of the scientific communities opinion on the matter. You can find the article here.

I think it is clear from these articles that this is not an issue that we can just shake off and ignore. Although there is still some controversy following this topic, it is apparent that at least in the scientific community, it is a no brainer. It looks like Trump’s infamous ignorance does not disappoint in his statements pertaining to Global Warming and Climate Change. In my opinion as a society we should take a lot from these writings. We should make a greater effort to be greener and try to help conserve our resources and take care of our planet. It is, after all, the only one we’ve got!

The Chinese Hoax Known as Climate Change

By: Morgan Branch

Global warming seems to be a taboo topic towards the current presidential election, as well as for past elections. During the 2012 election, current Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump made the comment “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”  It is unclear whether or not Donald Trump ever did research 

himself on the subject of global warming, but it is questionable after he tweeted this statement on November 6,  2012. Believe it or not, to this day this quote is still being brought up when Donald Trump is questioned on his opinion on global warming. During the October 9th debate, audience member      Kenneth Bone asked the presidential

candidates what means they were going to take to prevent global warming. Both Trump and Hillary Clinton neglected to answer, therefore dodging the question with words of nonsense. Although the majority of scientist agree that global warming is indeed a threat, there are many individuals who believe it to be a hoax.

LiveScience.com puts it easy, “Global warming is the gradual heating of Earth's surface, oceans and atmosphere.” LiveScience continues with the statistic that 97% of climate change scientists believe global warming to be the cause of the rise of temperatures. The evidence is clear. Temperatures are indeed rising. According to National Geographic, 2015 was the hottest year, surpassing the previous year for record breaking temperatures. National Geographic then continues to mention 2015 set record breaking temperatures in every month with the exceptions of January and April. These rising temperatures are affecting much more than previously set records. The Worldview of Global Warming carefully brings to light the negative side effects and evidence which is not limited to; decline in bird species, the disintegrations of the Great Barrier Reef, the rising of sea levels, and the death of overall ecosystems. Livescience.com makes note of the loss of national parks such as Glacier National park. NASA agrees that global warming is an actual problem and lists evidence that supports the theory of global warming such as; warming oceans, shrinking ice sheets, glacial retreat, and others that were mentioned by The Worldview of Global Warming. 

Many of these negative side effects have been linked the rise of carbon in the atmosphere. Humans are continuing to consume more fossil fuels which is directly linked to the rise of carbon. When there is more gas being made that is unable to return to other forms of gases. This then creates the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere maintaining too much of one gas. With the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the earth is able to maintain and hold more of it’s heat, thus creating a rise in temperatures. This rise in temperatures, due to greenhouse gases, causes the melting of ice, the rise in sea levels, and the death of ecosystems as mentioned before.

Trump invoked the idea that the Chinese were the ones who created the idea of global warming, but according to NASA, there has been an exponential rise in greenhouse gases in the past 1,300 years. Every country that uses fossil fuel is a contributor to the rise in greenhouse gases. While it could help boost manufacturing had China come up with this theory, considering the fact that majority of scientists believe global warming to be true, it is hard to think one country could contribute to such a big hoax.

The majority of those who are rejecting the theory of global warming are those who do not clearly see the evidence. While an average human might deny it, scientist see the signs regardless of their political party. Donald Trump had no idea what he was saying when putting the blame on the Chinese, when it is clear all of humanity has a part to play in the destruction of our planet.

Ten indicators of global warming.