Biome carbon cycle management

[Red Baron Farms]

That was false because the atmosphere is the single largest sink of methane.

Do you have any idea how silly what you just said sounds in the context AGW? If you insist on saying silly things like that, why even bother posting at all? In the context of AGW and mitigating AGW we are discussing ways the atmospheric methane have increased due to human activity (emissions), and ecosystems on the planet capable of drawing that atmospheric methane down to pre-industrial levels (sinks).

Technically you are right. It isn't actually methane being sunk in the soils. It is methane being oxidized in the soils by methanotrophs (where it no longer remains methane). But your equivocation is noted.

 

[Reality Check]

Do you have any idea how silly what you just said sounds in the context AGW?

Do you have any idea how dumb it would be to forget about the role of the atmosphere in AGW, Red Baron Farms - that would need a double !
In that context: the atmosphere is the single largest sink of methane.

Luckily the posts were moved from an AGW thread that involves the entire world (land + air + oceans) and even (especially?) the Sun. In this thread we are talking about Biome carbon cycle management .

12 March 2015 Red Baron Farms: Please list your sources that state that grasslands are the single largest sink of methane [in ecosystems].

 

[aleCcowaN]

grasslands are the largest sink of methane <conceptually equal to> their livers are the largest source of carbohydrates for humans

certainly, grassland soils are not the main source of atmospheric methane, much less an important sink for atmospheric methane

no matter how intertwined, soil gases are not part of the atmosphere but the soils

the account of all the methane transactions between methanogens and methanotrophs within any type of soils to present those soils as a noticeable methane sink is as ludicrous yet ill-intentioned as the AGW denialist preach that life on Earth generates yearly a hundred times the carbon dioxide humans do so humans are not an important part of that equation.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

I beg to differ.
Methane and nitrous oxide fluxes in native, fertilized and cultivated grasslands

Estimation of global biogeochemical controls and seasonality in soil methane consumption

IMPACT OF METHANOTROPH ECOLOGY ON UPLAND METHANE
BIOGEOCHEMISTRY IN GRASSLAND SOILS

A study of soil methane sink regulation in two grasslands exposed to drought and N fertilization


And more importantly, grasslands even grazed by cattle are net sinks, not net emissions sources.

The role of grazing management for the net biome productivity and greenhouse gas budget (CO2, N2O and CH4) of semi-natural grassland

My point all along is that CAFOs are clear emissions sources, while upland grassland/grazier biomes are net sinks. So switching from a CAFO system to a pasture based system eliminates the methane produced from livestock as a part of AGW.

Domestic livestock such as cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, and camels produce large amounts of CH4 as part of their normal digestive process. Also, when animals' manure is stored or managed in lagoons or holding tanks, CH4 is produced. Because humans raise these animals for food, the emissions are considered human-related. Globally, the Agriculture sector is the primary source of CH4 emissions.[1]

As you can see, agriculture is the PRIMARY human related source of CH4 emissions. Change the way we raise livestock and at least that source of net emissions goes away completely. How much more could be eliminated? I don't think it is well studied as of yet. But it still would be a net sink, not a net methane emissions source.

ETA: I still think that the net CO2 sink effect is more important than the net methane sink though. [2]

 

[aleCcowaN]

I beg to differ.

Then you should read the very link walls you post:

First words in the abstract: Uptake by soils is a relatively small flux in the global budget of atmospheric methane ...

Of course, I could have quoted it as:

Uptake by soils is a relatively small flux in the global budget of atmospheric methane, but CH4 consumption rates in soils could be susceptible to changes in land use and climate.

so you'd be able to go "deedledey-dee consumption rates in soils ... changes in land use ... grasslands rock!" as if the link says otherwise, like a real-state agent who is trying to hide defects in the house he's selling: "look how light and airy this room is" while avoiding the client to step in and learn about its wobbly floor.

Your ideological campaigns about use of soil are indeed counter-productive: they are basically innumerate, pretty anti-scientific and they have the quality of statements like this one: "garlic has shown antitumoral activity so it may be used for cancer prevention and treatment".

Since I came across your doodles in these fora and Wikipedia, I have come to think much less of soil use change as part of the solution regarding global environmental problems. And I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Then you should read the very link walls you post:

Of course, I could have quoted it as:

so you'd be able to go "deedledey-dee consumption rates in soils ... changes in land use ... grasslands rock!" as if the link says otherwise, like a real-state agent who is trying to hide defects in the house he's selling: "look how light and airy this room is" while avoiding the client to step in and learn about its wobbly floor.

Your ideological campaigns about use of soil are indeed counter-productive: they are basically innumerate, pretty anti-scientific and they have the quality of statements like this one: "garlic has shown antitumoral activity so it may be used for cancer prevention and treatment".

Since I came across your doodles in these fora and Wikipedia, I have come to think much less of soil use change as part of the solution regarding global environmental problems. And I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

#1 I didn't say a damn thing about garlic...ever. Nor anything close to woo like that. I expect an apology for telling that lie. #2 Pastured livestock production compared to CAFO livestock production does rock and the scientific foundation is solid as a rock as well. #3 Yes I am well aware of those quotes you posted. Not only that, but I know why as well. Oxidation of methane occurs in the atmosphere due to sunlight and O2. However, that isn't enough to prevent methane from increasing due to human activity, primarily agriculture. Changing agriculture from an emissions source to a sink will correct that imbalance at least with regards to agriculture. Whether it will be enough to also correct the imbalance over all for some things like forcing caused by melting methane clathrates or other sources unrelated to agriculture is an open question. I made no claims about that. #5 What your personal opinion is about the subject is irrelevant. Just an obvious argument from ignorance. I produced several sources that show the grassland biome taken as a whole even including the livestock is a methane sink. That's enough, because the CAFO system taken as a whole is an emissions source. I addressed the issue primarily because of the myth and woo that is often repeated by many. Namely the myth that livestock are necessarily a problem with regards to AGW. Sure they are now, due to the production methods used, but they don't have to be. There are alternatives that do not cause AGW and might even help mitigate AGW. If you were not able to figure that part out, then fix your ignorance with education. Don't pester me personally about it.

 

[aleCcowaN]

#1 I didn't say a damn thing about garlic...ever. Nor anything close to woo like that. I expect an apology for telling that lie.

Do you really need clarification about that?

Don't you think you don't have the monopoly on mistaken claims?

#2 Pastured livestock production compared to CAFO livestock production does rock and the scientific foundation is solid as a rock as well.

that's a collection of bits combined as a piece of advertisement

#3 Yes I am well aware of those quotes you posted. Not only that, but I know why as well. Oxidation of methane occurs in the atmosphere due to sunlight and O2. However, that isn't enough to prevent methane from increasing due to human activity, primarily agriculture. Changing agriculture from an emissions source to a sink will correct that imbalance at least with regards to agriculture.

That net sink doesn't exist. It's just your wishful thinking holding notions you fabricated from the misinterpretation of little bits from assorted sources, all within the context of your innumeracy (your figures only show here when you fabulate an argument, like this one).

Whether it will be enough to also correct the imbalance over all for some things like forcing caused by melting methane clathrates or other sources unrelated to agriculture is an open question. I made no claims about that.

Good for you not mistaking apples with pears.

#5 What your personal opinion is about the subject is irrelevant. Just an obvious argument from ignorance. I produced several sources that show the grassland biome taken as a whole even including the livestock is a methane sink.

You introduced ... you believe they show ....

That's the whole point. Your Energizer Bunny preach here boils to that: you're sloppily educated, if educated at all, in the elements you need to sort out good from bad regarding these subjects. But that doesn't stop you for making stupid assertions and when confronted with the real substance of them, moving along with the next unsupported fantasy.

That's enough, because the CAFO system taken as a whole is an emissions source. I addressed the issue primarily because of the myth and woo that is often repeated by many.

CAFO is just the shiny pebble you chose recently to play with. In a matter of weeks of months you will be obsessed with a different subject while applying the same technique: misunderstanding and out-of-context quotation of papers, articles and garden-type links in a total absence of numbers.

Namely the myth that livestock are necessarily a problem with regards to AGW. Sure they are now, due to the production methods used, but they don't have to be. There are alternatives that do not cause AGW and might even help mitigate AGW. If you were not able to figure that part out, then fix your ignorance with education. Don't pester me personally about it.

I said it and I repeat it: You are an AGW denialist, sir. One of a few I know that claim AGW is real. That's why your interventions in the global warming thread are so frequently flushed into threads like this one. For you, AGW is just a convenient frame for your passionate beliefs about soil use. If AGW were in the way of your pet theories, it would become a myth for you through your very typical ways of argumentation.

 

[Reality Check]

Still outstanding: 12 March 2015 Red Baron Farms: Please list your sources that state that grasslands are the single largest sink of methane [in ecosystems].

 

[Reality Check]

And more importantly, grasslands even grazed by cattle are net sinks, not net emissions sources.

Except not in Europe, Red Baron Farms as you cited before in the AGW thread on 11 March 2015 !
I pointed this out on 12 March 2015:

[2] Mitigating livestock greenhouse gas balance through carbon sequestration in grasslands has
Figure 1 Carbon fluxes (g C/m2 per year) in managed European grassland systems studied by Soussana et al. (2007).
On the left bottom of the diagram is a cow in a field with F_CO2 = 290 sink, F_CH4 = 5 source, F_{animal-products} = 5 source (according to the arrows). European grazed grasslands are a source of methane.

 

[Reality Check]

And more importantly, grasslands even grazed by cattle are net sinks, not net emissions sources.

The role of grazing management for the net biome productivity and greenhouse gas budget (CO2, N2O and CH4) of semi-natural grassland

Nothing at all about these upland semi-natural grasslands being a net sink of methane, Red Baron Farms .
There is the emission of methane:

Taking into account the LW gain of the cattle and the C loss through methane emissions,... Emissions of nitrous oxide and methane reduced by 89 and 55% the atmospheric sink activity of the intensive and extensive treatments, respectively.

N.B. The only methane that was measured was from the cattle so of course there is no net measurement (e.g. including soil)!

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Sorry for the delay in replies. I realise I have probably poorly stated my argument. So I will start over. I found a presentation explaining it online. I realise the presentation is not the same weight as a scientific study or even a synthesis. But I hope this will explain my position with more clarity. Please explain to me where you believe this guy is wrong. That will give you context and me a place to start digging for empirical evidence.

 

[aleCcowaN]

It's there a transcript? I'd like to go straight to the meaningful bits. The linguistic babble around 1:15 talking of word stems (humus/human/humility -did he include humvee?) put me instantly off.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Sorry for the delay in replies. I realise I have probably poorly stated my argument. So I will start over. I found a presentation explaining it online. I realise the presentation is not the same weight as a scientific study or even a synthesis. But I hope this will explain my position with more clarity. Please explain to me where you believe this guy is wrong. That will give you context and me a place to start digging for empirical evidence.

I lost 20 minutes of my life and: that's is just a piece of propaganda, not "a presentation" that has "not the same weight as a scientific study".

I hope you re-examine the bit "this will explain my position with more clarity" because it means you have no position other that being enthusiastic about and assortment of items, more disparate than you think, which in fact is what I came to conclude since late 2013, early 2014 about your participation. On the other side, it's a pretty innumerate "presentation" and that's not bad because it's just propaganda, and propaganda is not bad itself: it's just propaganda.

And I don't disagree with most of that piece of propaganda. If I have to do it myself it would be much less cheesy but maybe 70% of the content would overlap. But it's still propaganda, and I don't really do propaganda, there's no need to. Education is more permanent.

My conclusion about the video and your introductory words is that you don't want to discuss anything here but to try propaganda that cause excitement in you against our education and sceptical muscle. Anything one can possibly take from it and say "badly evaluated; not justified; less important than X; not amounted, etc." you will google and come with a couple of links that'll look serious but deal with the subject tangentially, to start again a waltz where one corrects your errors for you move your right foot a bit back and your left foot a bit forward dropping more links and quotations to complete a new slide.

You don't count with me -and I hope with nobody else here- to play your game, pal. In fact, if half a dozen of us started a discussion among us ignoring you we could come to some interesting conclusions and a good summary in less than a month, what we couldn't do dialoguing with you in a decade. I hope new features promised for these fora will allow that.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

I lost 20 minutes of my life and: that's is just a piece of propaganda, not "a presentation" that has "not the same weight as a scientific study".

I hope you re-examine the bit "this will explain my position with more clarity" because it means you have no position other that being enthusiastic about and assortment of items, more disparate than you think, which in fact is what I came to conclude since late 2013, early 2014 about your participation. On the other side, it's a pretty innumerate "presentation" and that's not bad because it's just propaganda, and propaganda is not bad itself: it's just propaganda.

And I don't disagree with most of that piece of propaganda. If I have to do it myself it would be much less cheesy but maybe 70% of the content would overlap. But it's still propaganda, and I don't really do propaganda, there's no need to. Education is more permanent.

My conclusion about the video and your introductory words is that you don't want to discuss anything here but to try propaganda that cause excitement in you against our education and sceptical muscle. Anything one can possibly take from it and say "badly evaluated; not justified; less important than X; not amounted, etc." you will google and come with a couple of links that'll look serious but deal with the subject tangentially, to start again a waltz where one corrects your errors for you move your right foot a bit back and your left foot a bit forward dropping more links and quotations to complete a new slide.

You don't count with me -and I hope with nobody else here- to play your game, pal. In fact, if half a dozen of us started a discussion among us ignoring you we could come to some interesting conclusions and a good summary in less than a month, what we couldn't do dialoguing with you in a decade. I hope new features promised for these fora will allow that.

Actually it is a TedTalk. So obviously I understood that it is a motivational power point presentation, (all TedTalks are). What I would actually prefer is an assessment in where the presentation is actually empirically wrong.(or potentially needs more empirical evidence)

 

[aleCcowaN]

Actually it is a TedTalk.

A TedTalkX, that's why there's no transcript. It's propaganda (via pep talk). It's full of empty facts because you can find examples whatever the assertion is ("women are faithful" with a picture of Lucretia, "women are untrue" with a picture of Thaïs).

There's nothing there. Move on (unless you're trying us to make some sort of "proofwatching")

 

[marplots]

Watching that clip has me wondering about farmers markets. He advocates buying there to "put a face on our food." Is there anything to prevent someone with a stall from just buying non-local (like the supermarkets do) and selling the stuff in their booth? Is there some regulation where produce is tracked?

I have four produce wholesalers within an hour's drive from me, and there is a local farmers market a mile away where I could sell at inflated prices. Of course, I'd do the customers the favor of removing any offending stickers.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Watching that clip has me wondering about farmers markets. He advocates buying there to "put a face on our food." Is there anything to prevent someone with a stall from just buying non-local (like the supermarkets do) and selling the stuff in their booth? Is there some regulation where produce is tracked?

It does happen. Some farmers' markets try to stop it, by inspections of the farm and making the farmers declare if it is resell or not. However, as far as I know there is no government laws preventing it per se., at least not enforced. Farmers markets do side step certain government regulations, and certain things wouldn't be legal if they were produced off farm and resold. For example a farmer can sell his own eggs he produced himself, without getting them graded, direct from his farm or at a farmers market. But resold eggs would need to be graded. Things like that mean that mostly the produce found at farmers markets are produced by that farmer. Usually the people who try and cheat are found out, not by the government or consumers, but by the other farmers at the market. It's a good way to get kicked out of a market. Usually you'll sign a contract stating no resells allowed. Depends on the market though.

I have four produce wholesalers within an hour's drive from me, and there is a local farmers market a mile away where I could sell at inflated prices. Of course, I'd do the customers the favor of removing any offending stickers.

Not saying it hasn't been tried before, but pretty good chances you'll be found out and booted, sometimes before you sell your first tomato. Those guys are fairly easy to spot.

ETA: I have actually been angrily accused of that at my own stand in front of my own house! Which was very funny because I simply pointed to the plants! The reason the person was so angry is because most the other local growers were having crop failures or very low yields due to the weather that year. I was getting a flood of their customers at my stand! I had a bumper crop of high quality tomatoes because I use some unusual methods that resist fluctuations in weather, particularly heat and drought. So even that almost a month of 100+ F weather shut everyone else down, I still had good production, not record production, but pretty good. And guess why? Because I am a carbon farmer using permaculture methods I developed and am still developing myself.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Great read by Dr. Christine Jones
SOS: Save our Soils
Dr. Christine Jones Explains the Life-Giving
Link Between Carbon and Healthy Topsoil

ACRES U.S.A. Why have many soil
scientists denied the phenomenon of
rapid soil-building?
JONES. Because they do their research
in places where it’s not happening,
where the carbon is running down and
the soils are deteriorating. We need
to measure carbon on farms where
soil-building is occurring and see what
the farmers and ranchers are doing to
make that happen.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Video form:
The Science Behind Healthy Soil: NRCS' Soil Health Literature Review Project

And in written form all the literature reviewed:
Soil Health Literature - The Science Behind Healthy Soil

 

[Red Baron Farms]

"Soil from a calcareous site (pH 7.4) under deciduous woodland (Broadbalk Wilderness wooded section) oxidized CH4 6 times faster than the arable plot (pH 7.8) with the highest activity in the adjacent Broadbalk Wheat Experiment (with uptake rates of −80 and −13 nl CH4 1−1 h−1, respectively). The CH4 uptake rate was only 20% of that in the woodland in an adjacent area that had been uncultivated for the same period but kept as rough grassland by the annual removal of trees and shrubs and, since 1960, grazed during the summer by sheep."[1]

Basically in summary, the forest did oxidize CH4 6 times faster than the cropland, but that was still only 20% of the grazed savanna biome. Quite the difference don't you think? Or am I reading it incorrectly? I can't get past the paywall.