Cow Power Not the Answer?

I thought it WAS?

Hey folks,

Remember the Sunday Preview for 111509? According to Reuters - Cow dung to power more Dutch homes

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A plant that converts cow dung into energy for homes opened in the Netherlands Friday.

Manure from cows at a nearby dairy farm will be fermented along with grass and food industry residues, and the biogas released during the process will be used as fuel for the thermal plant's gas turbines.

The heat generated will be distributed to around 1,100 homes in the area around Leeuwarden in the north of the Netherlands, the plant's operator Essent said in a statement.

Firms in Europe and elsewhere have been investing in biogas plants and this is the second of its scale running on cow manure in the Netherlands. It follows another plant that Essent opened in January.

I said this.

"No. Wait. Never mind. This is the Leeuwarden. Al Gore and the Chicken Little Crowd would be against this here. Why? That would be a lot of Cow farts. You know, Carbon Dioxide. We have to cap how much we BREATH, or PAY them lots of money to say we are no longer breathing."

Well, well, well. According to Daily Finance - U.S. to Capture Cow Farts to Save the Planet By SARAH GILBERT

In the future, America will harness cow farts to curb pollution and power the grid. What? It sounds like a joke, but it's actually a real promise. By 2020, dairy industry emissions will be reduced by 25%, largely by persuading dairy farmers to capture methane gas, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced at the Copenhagen climate change summit this week. Farmers will be able to buy anaerobic digesters that convert cow, errr, emissions into electricity.

But the writer of this, Sarah Glibert is not happy with the concept. Read on.

You've heard the over-simplified message from vegetable-positive environmental groups: eating animal products is a big cause of global warming. Indeed, 7% of the greenhouse gas emissions produced from U.S. sources are from agriculture. The dairy industry is ripe for change, with only 2% of the farmers whose operations are suited for methane capture currently making use of it.

A Drop In the (Milk) Bucket

Just how bad a problem are dairy emissions? Well, it's a greatly increasing problem -- up 40% in the past decade. But compared, say, to the driving a car or even a tractor, dairy pollution is pretty insignificant. Of the 6.7% of overall U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2007 attributed to agriculture, 10.7% were from the methane of "manure management," mostly from pork and dairy farms.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the growth comes from a general trend in manure management to use liquid systems, which tends to produce greater methane emissions. "The increase in liquid systems is the combined result of a shift to larger facilities, and to facilities in the West and Southwest, all of which tend to use liquid systems," the EPA says.

Reducing dairy industry emissions by 25% over the next decade would reduce overall emissions by something less than one-quarter of 0.71%, or about one-tenth of 1%, in 10 years. That wouldn't do much as it would only get us back to what would be about 10% more greenhouse gas emissions from manure management than we generated in 2000.

I love all these numbers. NONE are provable. Not to mention Cow Farts are NOT a Pollutant adding to the killing of the planet. But this Idiot most likely believes this garbage.

Vilsack calls his agreement with the dairy industry a move that "will help us achieve the ambitious goal of drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions while benefiting dairy farmers." He goes on to say that the harnessed emissions from one farm could power 200 homes.

As they are doing in the Netherlands. Here is where Sarah REALLY starts telling us what she thinks.

Treating Symptoms, Not The Disease

I have many words for this reduction, but "drastic" is not one of them. I must leave aside the pie chart of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions that is now incinerated on my brain in which burning fossil fuels for electricity (coal) and transportation (cars) is responsible for 59.9% of 2007's total pollution.

Which is TOTALLY made up BS.

But the moves being made to capture methane are neither an effective way to avert climate change nor a sensible way to address the problem of methane production. It's addressing the symptoms, not the disease.

Changing the way farms work would be a far more sensible manner to reduce methane production. In the bargain, this would eliminate the many other destructive side effects of the so-called liquid systems of manure management. At issue is not the poop itself, but the volume, concentration and makeup of the poop.

Over the past half-century, more animals have been forced onto smaller grazing areas. Cow food has been switched to corn and soy from the traditional range feed (grass, alfalfa, clover and the like). And meat cows have grown in size. All this has contributed to the precipitous rise in greenhouse gas emissions from dairy farms and pork and beef producers.

Get this.

Worry About Farms, Not Cow Poop

The answer to this problem is simple, really, and is there between the lines in the reports from the USDA over the years. One, from 1995, promises to reduce greenhouse emissions by 50% by 2000. That didn't happen, obviously.

Neither have we WARMED since then. It's all a SCAM Miss Gilbert.

But if animals are getting bigger, farms are more concentrated and specialized and the nutrient content of the manure is changing, well, by Jove, farms should become smaller. They should also become more diverse and adopt a wider variety of species of animals that grow more slowly and end up smaller.

You arrogant, ignorant, TWIT! Who are YOU to dictate to Farmers, how big their Farms are? Seriously. Based on the SCAM that is Global Warming, Sarah here feels that she, or the Government, should regulate how big Farms should be. Forget the fact they OWN the Land, produce food for all, and it is their living, they are to big for Twits like Sarah.

Turning dairy cow poop into electricity -- and the pitifully small greenhouse gas reductions that result -- may make a nice (also funny) headline. But it's a cartoon-character Band-Aid approach to the festering, infected wound beneath. Vilsack should stay focused on his patient's long-term health; not this week's media appearance.

She is nothing more than a typical Lib. Arrogant and ignorant. Thinking that she has the inherent Right to dictate to others how they should live their lives. You know, it's time folks. It really is time, to tell Sarah and the rest of the Liberal Kooks out there, "Screw off." You have the Right to live your life however you choose. I will live mine the way I choose. YOU will not choose for me. Especially since you are no where near my intelligence level. I deal with reality. You deal with ideology, lies and deceit. I deal with Logic. You deal with "feelings." I deal with FACTS. You blindly follow others without question. Yet, you really think I care what you think about me and the way I choose to live?

What is more intelligent Sara? Spending Billions or Trillions, that we do not have, giving up Freedom, allowing OTHER COUNTRIES to dictate to us who we should live, which WOULD include you, meanwhile losing everything we have, based on something that NO ONE can even show the data that they used to come up with the SCAM? OR, doing nothing, because there is a thing called Natural Cycles in Nature. There has been more animals, all farting by the way, in the past than there are today. We have been warmer, cooler, warmer, cooler, we are getting cooler now. It rains, it doesn't. It snows, it doesn't. There is NO MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING!

Which makes more sense to you? Look around and actually SEE what is going on? OR, blindly follow others that tell you something that they can not PROVE? Feel free to eat Alfalfa, live in a tent, and ride a Huffy. Me? I'll live my life unconcerned about if the World will be here tomorrow, because I know the TRUTH. There is no threat of it ending because a Cow farted. Then again, every time I eat a steak or a Burger, that's one less Cow farting. So I guess I AM doing my part in saving the planet after all. {Smile}
Peter

Sources:
Daily Finance - U.S. to Capture Cow Farts to Save the Planet