Posted on 03/01/2003 7:11:51 AM PST by aculeus
Save the planet – stop cows burping. Unlikely as that sounds, it's a serious scientific mission.
Cattle around the world produce huge amounts of methane, a powerful gas, which accounts for about a fifth of the greenhouse effect.
The methane cows belch out every day floats into the stratosphere to join carbon dioxide and other gases holding in the Sun's reflected heat and causing the Earth's temperature to soar, with potentially disastrous effects. But researchers at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen say they are close to producing a bovine belch-inhibitor.
It is a combination of sugars and a novel oxidising bacterium. The scientists believe that, when added to cows' feed, the new substance might reduce the gaseous emissions substantially.
Let's hope so. Bad breath is one thing. Wrecking the atmosphere for us all is another
I'd say the environuts have gone too far, but this is actually one of their more moderate proposals.
Cattle around the world produce huge amounts of methane, a powerful gas, which accounts for about a fifth of the greenhouse effect.
Strange how they always want to leave out Water Vapor when counting up the effect of "greenhouse" gases.
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
Water vapor overwhelms
all other natural and man-made
greenhouse contributions.
3. Table 3, shows what happens when the effect of water vapor is factored in, and together with all other greenhouse gases expressed as a relative % of the total greenhouse effect.
TABLE 3.
Role of Atmospheric Greenhouse Gases
(man-made and natural) as a % of Relative
Contribution to the "Greenhouse Effect"
Based on concentrations (ppb) adjusted for heat retention characteristics Percent of Total Percent of Total --adjusted for water vapor Water vapor ----- 95.000% Carbon Dioxide (CO2) 72.369% 3.618% Methane (CH4) 7.100% 0.360% Nitrous oxide (N2O) 19.000% 0.950% CFC's (and other misc. gases) 1.432% 0.072% Total 100.000% 100.000%
Putting it all together:
total human greenhouse gas contributions
add up to about 0.28% of the greenhouse effect.
5. To finish with the math, by calculating the product of the adjusted CO2 contribution to greenhouse gases (3.618%) and % of CO2 concentration from anthropogenic (man-made) sources (3.225%), we see that only (0.03618 X 0.03225) or 0.117% of the greenhouse effect is due to atmospheric CO2 from human activity. The other greenhouse gases are similarly calculated and are summarized below.
TABLE 4a.
Anthropogenic (man-made) Contribution to the "Greenhouse
Effect," expressed as % of Total (water vapor INCLUDED)
Based on concentrations (ppb) adjusted for heat retention characteristics % of All Greenhouse Gases % Natural
% Man-made
Water vapor 95.000% 94.999%
0.001% Carbon Dioxide (CO2) 3.618% 3.502%
0.117% Methane (CH4) 0.360% 0.294%
0.066% Nitrous Oxide (N2O) 0.950% 0.903%
0.047% Misc. gases ( CFC's, etc.) 0.072% 0.025%
0.047% Total 100.00% 99.72
0.28%
What idiot wrote this?
Methane as a greenhouse gas constitutes aproximately 1/278th(.36%) of all greenhouse gases, not 1/5th(20%).
At only 900 btu/cu.ft. it's useless & worthless unless mixed with more powerful complex hydrocarbons, like, say, envirowackos, now you've got something to burn!
Methane is the "best possible hydrocarbon" fuel in the sense that it has the highest hydrogen-to-carbon ratio (4:1) of any hydrocarbon. Kerosene/gasoline are roughly 2:1. Propane is 8:3 or 2.67.
Countering this is methane's low density--about half as dense as gasoline, which makes it "least powerful" on a volume basis--not on a mass basis.
Methane is the best rocket fuel of all the hydrocarbons. It is superior to RP-1 (basically refined kerosene) in terms of performance. It requires larger tanks, though.
Methane is a superior coolant to kerosene, propane, and every other hydrocarbon. Only pure hydrogen is better as a coolant. This is important in propellant-cooled rocket engines.
--Boris
As the smallest link in the hydrocarbon chain it's great, but it is, after all, only a link.
Love the CH4!
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