MAKING NEW ENERGY FROM POOP

Or at least keeping it from burning off the sky.

Potent methane is an overlooked greenhouse gas
David Fogarty, April 30, 2007 (USA Today)

WHO
Farm animals (chickens, pigs, cows, sheep)
from the NY Times (click to enlarge)
WHAT
The decay of animal and organic waste produces methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent than the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuel. The UN’s climate change panel is working on the capture and/or reduction of methane.

WHEN
Methane concentrations up 150% since 1750 and way over normal ranges over the last 650,000 years. Levels are even since 1999, probably due to a simultaneous loss of wetlands.

WHERE
The UN panel will further report on climate change, including the topic of methane, at its upcoming meeting in Bangkok.

WHY
- Capturing methane (from landfills, mines, fossil fuel use and natural gas lines) is thought to be a more practical, economic undertaking than similar ambitions regarding methane from animal waste and irrigated crops or carbon dioxide from fuel-burning.
Diet changes and food additives for domestic animals might reduce their gaseous passings. Altering the habits of irrigation may help. 20% of US methane emissions come from cattle.
- Methane, like natural gas, can be readily used as a fuel. The Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism allows emission credits for funding South American pig farm and Indian poultry farm clean-up. Methane is extracted by an industrial process and used as fuel or flared as CO2, a less harmful emission.
- Large deposits of methane (methane hydrates) are locked under ice and permafrost and in polar regions and seas, so much as to be a danger, with global warming, of releasing it and dramatically enhancing climate change.
Robert Rapier's better idea (click to enlarge)
QUOTES
- Australian climate scientist Paul Fraser: "A fifth of all greenhouse gas-induced global warming has been due to methane since pre-industrial times…"
- Bill Hare, Greenpeace: "It's been argued that the reductions from methane are potentially cheaper than from carbon dioxide…A lot of policy discussion in the USA has focused on methane rather than more difficult problems such as CO2 from coal…There are more difficult areas for methane from livestock and from rice agriculture where, at best, longer time scales are required to change practices in agriculture than you might need in industrial areas…"
- Stephan Singer, World Wildlife Foundation: "What worries me is the increased methane coming out of the stomachs of ruminants, mainly for increased beef consumption within an increasingly wealthy world. The diet of the West has a big impact on the atmosphere."