Methane - why bother?

Greenpeace misses the mark

The last day of parliament this past week was briefly interrupted by Greenpeace protestors who dangled a banner over the balustrade in the public gallery which said, “Too many cows, Climate Action Now.”

The protestors were removed from the gallery on the instructions of the Speaker and have been trespassed from Parliament for two years. They want to advocate for a “climate election.”

Frankly, they’re pushing it up hill, because New Zealanders rank climate change as a not overly important issue in this election. According to the Ipsos Issues Monitor published in June, where those surveyed were asked about the top 3 issues facing New Zealand today, 63 percent said inflation and the cost of living is the major issue.

Crime and law and order placed second on 40 percent. Healthcare and housing tied for third on 31 percent and climate change came in 5^th at 23 percent.

So the issue arousing the ire of the protestors at Parliament and on various roads around the capital in the last few days is quite a way down the list of importance.

But seeing as how Greenpeace calls dairy farming “industrial” and accuses it of all sorts of environmental crimes and being “our worst polluter”, how about a few facts?

Number 1: New Zealand dairy production is the most emissions efficient in the world. According to AgResearch, New Zealand farms produce 0.77 kilograms of CO2 equivalent per kilogram of fat and protein corrected milk, (FPCM) which is 46 percent below the average of 18 countries surveyed.

By comparison, Uruguay is second on the list at 0.85kg CO2e/kgFPCM.

Number 2: the IPCC says the impact of methane, the gas emitted by ruminant animals such as dairy cows, on global surface temperatures has been overstated by up to 400 percent.

It’s all there on page 1016 in Chapter 7 of the IPCC’s 6^th Assessment Report, the AR6, easily accessible online.

It reads “expressing methane emissions as CO2 equivalent emissions using GWP100 overstates the effect of constant methane emissions on global surface temperature by a factor 3 to 4.”

(GWP100 is jargon for the Global Warming Potential of a greenhouse gas, compared to CO2, over 100 years)

So according to the Holy Grail of climate science, the IPCC, methane’s impact on global temperature has been overstated by 300 to 400 percent.

What more evidence do you need that New Zealand dairy farmers are being hammered for not much at all?

Just to reinforce that, the University of California at Davis says that if livestock herd numbers are not increasing, which they are not in New Zealand, there is no additional warming coming from livestock.

Remember also that methane makes up 1.7 parts per million of the atmosphere or 0.017%, compared to CO2’s 420 ppm and that 78 percent of the atmosphere’s natural methane emissions are caused by wetlands.

So if you think New Zealand dairy cow emissions are having any impact at all on the world’s climate, then I have a calculator I can sell you. You can use it to work out the miniscule fraction of a percent New Zealand’s animals contribute to the atmosphere’s irrelevant gas, methane.

(A clue: it is approximately 0.0000285%)

The Greenpeace protestors in Parliament this past week were an insult to New Zealand and the economic benefit this country derives from exporting dairy products.

A two year ban is the least they should have been slapped with.