Emissions- Humans Have Lots of Help

Scrapping all the cars, SUVs, minivans, and pickup trucks in American could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 2%. Extinguishing the fires that burn unchecked at coal deposits around the world could reduce emissions by 2 to 3% without the economic devastation. (1)

Coal mine fires are underground smoldering of coal mines. Mine fires can burn for very long periods of time (months or years), until the seam in which they smolder is exhausted. They propagate in a creeping fashion along mine shafts. Because they are underground, they are extremely difficult and costly to reach and put out. Some in China have been burning naturally for thousands of years, but others are being set alight by small-scale mining operations seeking to cash in on soaring coal prices. Together, these perpetual fires are letting off a total amount of carbon dioxide each year equal to all the cars in the USA. (2) Indonesia, a major exporter of coal to the Pacific Rim, has many thousands of coal fires. In eastern Borneo the number might be as high as 3,000 but researchers think this estimate is far too low. The real number is so astronomical that no one would believe it. The published numbers are about one percent of what could actually exist say some researchers. (3)

Burning Peat Deposits

---

The burning of peat deposits, which can be an extraordinary 20 meters thick, is another large source of emissions. In 1997, a fire consumed 8,000 square kilometers of mostly peat land in Borneo. Researchers estimated 0.2 Gt of carbon were released in this one area that year, and that carbon emissions from fires across Indonesia in 1997 emitted between 0.8 and 2.5 Gt or 13% to 40% of the size of global human fossil fuel emissions. (4) Other researchers looked at fires around the world during the El Nino year and estimated that 2.1 Gt of carbon were released, which explained the 66% plus or minus 24% of the extra carbon dioxide emitted globally that year. (5) And some researchers estimate fires produced emissions around 50% of the size of human emissions. (6) To put all this is perspective, total human emissions of carbon in a year is about 8 to 10 Gt. Of this, China's are 2.5 Gt and increasing by 100 mt each year. India puts out 500 mt, increasing by 50 mt each year, (7) and this will undoubtedly increase as India is opening a mine a month as it races to double coal output by 2020. (8)

Livestock

“It's a silent but deadly source of greenhouse gases that contribute more to global warming than the entire world transportation sector, yet politicians almost never discuss it, and environmental lobbyists and other green activist group seem unaware of its existence,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “Livestock are a leading source of greenhouse gases. Why isn't anyone raising a stink.” In the report, “Livestock's Long Shadow,” The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported that raising and processing cattle, hogs, poultry, and other animals produces 18 percent of greenhouse gases; by comparison 13 percent comes from trucks, cars and other transportation. (9) Carbon dioxide and all the bad things we humans do with fossil fuels is what we hear about, not that cows and other ruminants, such as sheep and goats, are walking gas factories that take in fodder and besides putting out carbon dioxide also contribute methane and nitrous oxide. The livestock sector generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which is 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of carbon dioxide. Most of this comes from manure. And it accounts for 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as carbon dioxide), which is largely produced by the digestive systems of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain. (10)

Volcanoes

Lastly, another source is volcanoes. The published estimates of the global carbon dioxide emission rate for all degassing subaerial (on land) and submarine volcanoes lie in a range from 0.13 Gt to 0.44 Gt per year. (11) These data support the case that some events can significantly affect atmospheric carbon worldwide and throw a monkey wrench into most global temperature modeling strategies. They are not presented to excuse all the bad things humans have done and are still doing regarding emissions. However, it is important to note that we have lots of company: underground coal fires, burning peat bogs, and emissions from animals and volcanoes. Jack Dini Livermore, CA References 1. “Coal fires”, Civil Defense Perspective, 23 (2), January 2007 2. Susan Watts, “A coal-dependent future,” BBC News, March 9, 2005 3. Kristin Ohlson, “Earth on Fire,” Discover, January 4, 2011 4. Susan E. Page et al., “The amount of carbon released from peat and forest fires in Indonesia during 1997,” Nature, 420, 61, November 7, 2002 5. “Continental-scale partitioning of fire emissions during the 1997 to 2001 El Nino/La Nina Period,” Science, 303, 73, 2004 6. Bowman et al., “Fires in the earth system,” Science 324, 481, 2009 7. Joanne Nova, “Forest fires may produce as much CO2 as half of all fossil fuels burned,” joannenova.com, July 2015 8. Krishan N. Das and Tommy Wilkes, “India leads Asia's dash for coal as emissions blow east,” uk.reuters.com, October 6, 2015 9. Henning Steinfeld et al., “Livestock's long shadow,” Food And Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 2006 10. Christopher Matthews, “Livestock a major threat to environment,” FAO Newsroom, November 29, 2006 11. “Volcanic gases and climate change,” volcanoes.usgs.gov, accessed May 7, 2015