What can individual people do about global warming?

[wobs]

PS There are regulations against selling any food products fertilised by human waste in the USA (animal waste too for that matter). Local laws may vary. Most of these laws are reasonable precautions, some are not. While urine is pretty benign generally, be sure you don't break any laws or regulations.

This is very much the case in the EU as well with regard to composting.

 

[wobs]

It gets the process going and heats the compost up, which gets other chemical processes active and (hopefully) kills off bacteria and weed seeds.

I wouldn't rely on a domestic compost pile to breakdown weed seeds. Our weeds go straight into the brown bin for the council to take of. Think it goes for anaerobic digestion somewhere, which have more aggressive bugs.

 

[wobs]

Most people don't want large families, and population is set to level out in the coming years, so world population is not such a big issue.

Energy efficiency often leads to more consumption (Jevons Paradox). If you can save money by cycling or using LEDs etc fine, but efficiency has limited effect at best. when it comes to saving carbon emissions.

What we can do easily is not become rich. Wealth breeds consumption, and pushes up energy use, and by extension carbon emissions go up.

Limit what you make in terms of money, but live well and enjoy the free things in life. Its not just holidays abroad that pushes your carbon footprint up, its your bank account.

If you do have oodles of money, consider renewable energy technology to invest in.

Just to expand on this a bit...

Lowering your consumption of goods is an important part of lowering your carbon footprint. Earning less is a key part of course, but also, we need to expose ourselves to less advertising.

While we all like to think we are immune to adverts, we are not. Companies would not spend billions on it if it wasn't.

Here in the UK, we are quite lucky, in that we can watch the BBC stations, which are advert free.

Try to develop a lifestyle that exposes you to less adverts. Turn off the TV, go to advert free activities (such as walking in the country or heritage sites), and live well, without people trying to sell you things.

You'll probably have a less stressful life in the process.

Basically unplug from mainstream media.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Notice how you provided no evidence that you or any other farmers actually can tweak a system that is NET sequestering (really net, not just counting soil CO2 like you tried before). You were unable to in the previous thread as well. This is what we call woo.

No one asked. But it is easy enough.

Grazing management impacts on vegetation, soil biota and soil chemical, physical and hydrological properties in tall grass prairie

Multi-paddock grazing had higher soil carbon, water- and nutrient-holding capacities.

Oh and BTW I showed this on the other thread as well. The problem you are having is in you wholehearted belief in Meat industry (CAFO) propaganda. Shameful coming from a Vegan such as yourself. Very poor critical thinking skills indeed. It is like a smoker believing the tobacco industry propaganda maintaining that smoking is healthy. But you do it because it serves your purpose of advocating the extermination of all domestic food animals to extinction. Better for you to maintain all cows can do is pollute the environment. Doesn't matter if it is true or not.

But I very clearly said, "refuse to eat any CAFO product". This is worded in just such a way as to INCLUDE vegetarians. It really doesn't matter to me honestly. If you wish to be vegetarian, go for it. If you wish to still eat meat, all's good as long as it isn't CAFO raised. The important thing is to do what you can to reduce your negative impact on the environment. That's why I have repeatedly said, don't blame the cow. It is the fault of us humans improperly raising that cow.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

No one asked. But it is easy enough.

Grazing management impacts on vegetation, soil biota and soil chemical, physical and hydrological properties in tall grass prairie

Oh and BTW I showed this on the other thread as well. The problem you are having is in you wholehearted belief in Meat industry propaganda. Shameful coming from a Vegan such as yourself. Very poor critical thinking skills indeed. It is like a smoker believing the tobacco industry propaganda maintaining that smoking is healthy.

But I very clearly said, "refuse to eat any CAFO product". This is worded in just such a way as to INCLUDE vegetarians. It really doesn't matter to me honestly. If you wish to be vegetarian go for it. If you wish to still eat meat. All's good as long as it isn't CAFO raised. The important thing is to do what you can to reduce your negative impact on the environment. That's why I have repeatedly said, don't blame the cow. It is the fault of us humans improperly raising that cow.

Really NET, not just one cherry-picked (gave you the study showing there are studies like this and studies with the opposite results in the previous thread) study counting soil CO2 like you tried before.

Hm, that statement feels so familiar...

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Really NET, not just one cherry-picked (gave you the study showing there are studies like this and studies with the opposite results in the previous thread) study counting soil CO2 like you tried before.

Hm, that statement feels so familiar...

Edited by Lisa Simpson: 

Edited to remove incivilit/personal remark.

Most people are smart enough to understand that if soil carbon is increasing long term, this is a net sequestration sink. Since cows foraging on pasture don't burn fossil fuels, the carbon in that soil must have come from the atmosphere by way of photosynthesis and methanotrophs. Animals being a key component in that properly functioning carbon cycle.

ETA PS You are confusing the debate over "tweaking" the pasture system to be an even greater sink with the non controversial fact that a properly functioning grassland biome actually does sequester carbon. In other words, yes, there is controversy over how much and at what rate carbon can be sequestered. But there is no doubt regarding net carbon sequestration into the soil sink of a grassland biome (which includes animals).

 

[aleCcowaN]

Are you sure?
Is there some kind of selective killing going on, because I thought bacterial action was an essential part of the composting process?

Think in fermentation and other processes like making wine, or vinegar or how a caries evolves. Nothing or little of the peak micro-organism population is kept.

In composting there are many goal. The heating of the pile kill weed seeds and most micro-organism, but anyway there are a lot of infections compost can keep. For instance, plants with mosaic viruses must be burnt instead of composted, as there's no guarantee you'll get rid of the disease by the composting process. Some bacteria have strains that are resistant to temperatures above 70°C and aerobic composting can't get rid of them.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

I think the best way individuals can make a difference, is to promote public policy that will make a difference. Instead of riding your bike and not having a car or buying a hybrid or electric vehicle, we should look at these things from a public policy standpoint:
-Sensible urban planning and prevention of urban sprawl that requires people to commute long distances to get to work and buy groceries.
-Invest in public transportation: light rail, subways, buses, etc
-Invest in bike lanes and bike friendly ways to get around town
-R and D investment in electric cars and so on
For electricity, instead of telling people to live an austere lifestyle and make austere choices, instead do things such as:
-phase out coal power via taxes or other clean air regulations
-oppose the proposed export of coal and oppose the Alberta tar sands
-promote a system such as a carbon fee and dividend http://citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-fee-and-dividend-faq/
-Promote nuclear, and if you are against nuclear, other alternatives to fossil and support R&D for power storage to make wind and solar more useful technologies

In that case, my OP question becomes, what can individual people do to influence and promote public policy that will make a long term difference? Who do you talk to? What have you done? How do you convince others to vote your way?

 

[GlennB]

Most people are smart enough to understand that if soil carbon is increasing long term, this is a net sequestration sink.

I have no trouble accepting C sequestration through soil improvement. I have a lot of trouble accepting that it's a process that leads to net sequestration endlessly.

Is there a way to test this? Can we look at the rich grasslands in (say) parts of Africa, grasslands that have been grazed for a million years without human interference, for example. How deep is the soil? Would the Serengeti be a suitable place to study?

 

[Red Baron Farms]

I have no trouble accepting C sequestration through soil improvement. I have a lot of trouble accepting that it's a process that leads to net sequestration endlessly.

Is there a way to test this? Can we look at the rich grasslands in (say) parts of Africa, grasslands that have been grazed for a million years without human interference, for example. How deep is the soil? Would the Serengeti be a suitable place to study?

Cenozoic Expansion of Grasslands and Climatic Cooling

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Cenozoic Expansion of Grasslands and Climatic Cooling

Shockingly, you toss out one of your bookmarked studies that is only tangentially related to the question asked.

To answer the question, and your earlier assertion that the soil carbon number is enough to analyze the situation:

Among the most recent HM claims is that livestock grazing will lead to sequestration of large amounts of carbon, thus potentially reversing climate change [2]. However, any increased carbon storage through livestock grazing must be weighed against the contribution of livestock metabolism to greenhouse gas emissions due to rumen bacteria methane emissions, manure, and fossil fuel use across the production chain [85,*86]. Nitrous oxide, 300 times more potent than methane in trapping greenhouse gases [87], is also produced and released with livestock production. The livestock industry’s contribution to greenhouse gases also includes CO2*released by conversion of forests to grasslands for the purpose of grazing [86].

Worldwide, livestock production accounts for about 37 percent of global anthropogenic methane emissions and 65 percent of anthropogenic nitrous oxide emissions with as much as 18% of current global greenhouse gas emissions (CO2*equivalent) generated from the livestock industry [85]. It is estimated that livestock production, byproducts, and other externalities account for 29.5 billion metric tons of CO2*per year or 51 percent of annual worldwide greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture [88]. Lower amounts of greenhouse gas emissions due to livestock may be estimated by using narrower definitions of livestock-related emissions that include feed based emissions only and exclude externalities [89].

Some suggest that grass-fed beef is a superior alternative to beef produced in confined animal feeding operations [90]. However, grass provides less caloric energy per pound of feed than grain and, as a consequence, a grass-fed cow’s rumen bacteria must work longer breaking down and digesting grass in order to extract the same energy content found in grain, while the bacteria in its rumen are emitting methane [89]. Comparisons of pasture-finished and feedlot-finished beef in the USA found that pasture-finished beef produced 30% more greenhouse gas emissions on a live weight basis [91].

It is estimated that three times as much carbon resides in soil organic matter as in the atmosphere [92], while grasslands and shrublands have been estimated to store 30 percent of the world’s soil carbon with additional amounts stored in the associated vegetation [93]. Long term intensive agriculture can significantly deplete soil organic carbon [94] and past livestock grazing in the United States has led to such losses [95,*96]. Livestock grazing was also found to significantly reduce carbon storage on Australian grazed lands while destocking currently grazed shrublands resulted in net carbon storage [97]. Livestock-grazed sites in Canyonlands National Park, Utah, had 20% less plant cover and 100% less soil carbon and nitrogen than areas grazed only by native herbivores [98]. Declines in soil carbon and nitrogen were found in grazed areas compared to ungrazed areas in sage steppe habitats in northeastern Utah [84]. As grazing intensity increased, mycorrhizal fungi at the litter/soil interface were destroyed by trampling, while ground cover, plant litter, and soil organic carbon and nitrogen decreased [84]. A review by Beschta et al. [20] determined that livestock grazing and trampling in the western USA led to a reduction in the ability of vegetation and soils to sequester carbon and also led to losses in stored carbon.

Conclusion. Livestock are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Livestock removal of plant biomass and altering of soil properties by trampling and erosion causes loss of carbon storage and nutrients as evidenced by studies in grazed and ungrazed areas.

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijbd/2014/163431/

 

[GlennB]

I see nothing in that paper to suggest higb-carbon grassland soils simply get deeper and deeper indefinitely. In fact the thicknesses of the buried paloeosols mentioned suggest the opposite. Perhaps I missed it?

But look at well established grasslands of the present day - how deep does the soil run?

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Shockingly, you toss out one of your bookmarked studies that is only tangentially related to the question asked.

To answer the question, and your earlier assertion that the soil carbon number is enough to analyze the situation:

Funny how that review couldn't find any science.

This review could find no peer-reviewed studies that show that this management approach is superior to conventional grazing systems in outcomes.

Here are two, one I already posted:
Grazing management impacts on vegetation, soil biota and soil chemical, physical and hydrological properties in tall grass prairie

Comparing the effects of continuous and time-controlled grazing
2 systems on soil characteristics in Southeast Queensland

So obviously I would question the quality of a review that excluded any study that showed a positive result? But more importantly is they are comparing grazing systems, not grazing to CAFO. Huge difference. You can leave the tweaking of grazing systems to the ranchers to argue what is the absolute best. They'll sort it out in the end. Just make sure you boycott CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation) produced foods. I am sure as a Vegan you do, so all is good. No matter the grazing system (assuming not overgrazed), pasture raised is net sink, CAFO raised net emissions source. This has little to do with what is happening above ground. It has everything to do with what is happening deep in the soil rhizosphere.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

I see nothing in that paper to suggest higb-carbon grassland soils simply get deeper and deeper indefinitely. In fact the thicknesses of the buried paloeosols mentioned suggest the opposite. Perhaps I missed it?

But look at well established grasslands of the present day - how deep does the soil run?

1) There is no where near enough CO2 in the atmosphere to make the soils reach 5%-10% +/- C deeper and deeper forever. Best you could hope for is a few feet deep before you trigger a glaciation period. Not really the issue we are dealing with now.

2) Most the established healthy grasslands are gone, either degraded by the plow, or degraded when humans extirpated the great megafauna herds. But before they were degraded, typically between 60–80 cm in depth for the A horizon. Mollisols And much deeper B horizon.
In either case though, much more sequestration potential in grassland soils than Forest soils, and much more sequestration in soil and for a much longer time than vegetation (whether grass or forest). For example compare an alfisol with a mollisol. That dark color is carbon, mostly Humus which "has reached a point of stability, where it will break down no further and might, if conditions do not change, remain as it is for centuries, if not millennia." Of course we have disturbed it. So most agricultural soils are highly degraded, and no where near what they were. Actually turning what should be a sink into an emissions source that is actually larger than fossil fuels, not by rate, but by total carbon released. (human activity has been releasing soil carbon far longer than the industrial age)

3) So again, what can an individual do? Besides the other things mentioned by many here, a person can refuse to eat any CAFO produced animal food. Those CAFOs are being supplied by agricultural practices that cause AGW and are also a source of AGW themselves. Worse, that CAFO system replaces the biome that can help mitigate AGW. So it is a double whammy. Very bad on both sides of the carbon cycle with regards to AGW. If you feel like you should take it to the extreme and go full vegetarian, that's fine. Most people won't, so if not that extreme, there is the option of organic pasture raised.

 

[Soapy Sam]

1.Don't have kids.
2.Plant trees.

 

[aleCcowaN]

1.Don't have kids.
2.Plant trees.

"...but the firs shall inherit the land."

I'm not sure what Darwin would have thought of that reproductive strategy.

 

[r-j]

Of course we have disturbed it. So most agricultural soils are highly degraded, and no where near what they were.

Have you discussed terra preta de Indio yet? When I first read about Terra preta and how it is still productive, after hundreds of years, I thought it was sheer genius. Keep some of that valuable carbon in your soils, rather than letting it go fertilize elsewhere.

While most seem to worry about fossil fuel burning, I've always thought the destruction and drastic changes to the ecosystems is a more immediate and dangerous situation than the eventual slight warming from changes to the atmosphere. Fighting to protect reefs, oceans, forests and wetlands is something anyone can do.

I find the overwhelming attention on fossil fuels to distract and sidetrack real efforts to do something about actual real problems that are happening right now.

Like tropical disease. It's not climate change that is causing the spread, it's air travel, and people bringing back both the disease as well as the vectors, introducing them into the entire world. This was happening before any climate change. Telling people the solution is to reduce fuel use is both false and useless.

It's the spread of disease by people that is the problem, not carbon.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Have you discussed terra preta de Indio yet? When I first read about Terra preta and how it is still productive, after hundreds of years, I thought it was sheer genius. Keep some of that valuable carbon in your soils, rather than letting it go fertilize elsewhere. Fighting to protect reefs, oceans, forests and wetlands is something anyone can do.

I have started a thread, it is in my signature. Terre preta (biochar) is in that thread. It is a bit more complicated than you might suppose though. I have experimented with it a bit. Mixed results. The research on it is promising, but hardly mature enough to get consistent results, and certainly not something most individual people could do much about except maybe in a garden, if they have the space.

The second part of you post about reefs oceans forests etc.... Is all good from a policy viewpoint, and agricultural practices certainly have the largest impact on all those things. But again, most individuals are consumers of agricultural products, not producers. They have limited influence except maybe in political influence with their vote.

Lastly regarding Fossil fuels. I personally think it is just as big a fallacy to downplay the fossil fuel effect on the environment as it is to downplay the agricultural effect. To solve the problem BOTH have to be addressed in equal parts. Stop all fossil fuel use tomorrow, and we will still have AGW and still have environmental degradation. Fix agriculture tomorrow, and we still have AGW and climate change. But address both simultaneously (without completely eliminating the bad effects from either 100%) and you can generate a positive feedback that regenerates the land.

This is because the problem with AGW is a carbon cycle. It is not just what gets put in the atmosphere, it is also what gets taken out by our ecosystems. Working on either side alone (or primarily) is doomed to fail, in my opinion. However, it is true the the most immediate and fixable side is the environmental side. I personally think if the environmental side was addressed, the urgency for the fossil fuel reductions would be dramatically less. One of the great things about carbon in the soil (both living and in various stages of decomposition) is that it mitigates the adverse effects of climate change dramatically. Won't necessarily stop it, but the drought, storms, floods, etc....are all moderated by functioning healthy biological systems.

That is also the biggest fight I have had on these forums by far. Nearly all the AGW posters on this forum and even in other AGW discussions have focused almost entirely on FF use, and largely ignore the greater damage to the environment caused by agriculture. Ironically, agriculture is by far easier to fix, at least from a technology POV. But it does require regulatory, infrastructure and educational changes that society seems to be resisting very stubbornly.

IMO the only way an individual can fight that is with their shopping dollars. If it concerns you, and you know it is harming the environment, don't buy it. Economics is a powerful tool. Think about just one product. Dolphin safe tuna. People refused to buy tuna unless it was labeled dolphin safe. If no dolphin safe tuna was available, they simply went without tuna. The other tuna wouldn't sell at any price. Overnight that one small issue was largely corrected. If people refused to eat CAFO products, overnight millions of acres of deteriorating cropland would be put into pasture and begin to regenerate the soil. That cover on the soil would reduce erosion, reduce pesticide, herbicide, insecticide, haber process nitrogen use and runoff into our waterways and wetlands. The dead zones in our oceans would have a chance to recover. All of which have an effect on AGW. The chain of events and trophic cascades that single act would start really isn't calculable, but it certainly would be positive.

 

[r-j]

I have started a thread, it is in my signature. Terre preta (biochar) is in that thread. It is a bit more complicated than you might suppose though. I have experimented with it a bit. Mixed results.

It's seems obvious that biochar isn't much like terre preta at all. See the Wikipedia for details. But, it certainly would count as something one could do to reduce carbon in the air, and increase food production. Terre preta that is, not biochar.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

Nothing.
Next question.

While statistically accurate I would phrase this answer differently.

We can each chose to be one seven-billionth of the problem or one seven-billionth of the solution. That said, some of us manage to increase our footprint disproportionately. I used to be obsessive about recycling but after working at a big box retailer for a few months I stopped caring about every single tuna can lid. One night I threw half a bunk of twisted 1x4 lumber and a BBQ grill with a missing wheel into the crusher. The same thing is true for carbon footprint - one nasty old '74 pickup truck cancels out the benefit of something like ten Prius.

So, nothing, effectively, but we can at least try not to be part of the problem.