David Attenborough: 'Climate Change 2007 predictions for 2020

Yeah the hockey stick is CO2 over a couple of hundred years of observations, anything in the past prior to that is reconstructed or inferred via the geological record.

Mitloenher chooses his framing he seems to have a problem with the comparison of livestock agriculture to the aviation industry, I have stated over and over that the CO2 problem is our use of technology based on fossil sunlight, the arguments I have in relation to beef are broader and are about damage it is causing particularly to the likes of the Amazon rainforest, its not all about climate.

They have more efficient stomachs and output methane at the lower end of the range compared to other ruminants, there aren't that many genetically pure as in original American Bison left.

From a greenhouse perspective methane breaks down into water and CO2 in about 20 years but while in the air it is an extremely potent greenhouse gas.

I've read enough about that era and I understand about the high CO2 levels and the couple of hundred metres of extra water in the oceans and the overall much higher temperatures, I've known about that for a long time, none of that happened overnight the earth transitioned through a couple of snowballs long before the Cretaceous, really complex life only started to appear around the start of the Cambrian although some recent evidence is arising pushing that back a few hundred million years now.

That complex life by the time we got to the Cretaceous laid down the layers of hydrocarbons that we now burn, that fossil sunlight as I tend to call it, I'm not quite sure what you are driving at here, I almost get the feeling that you are trying to support the 'it's a natural cycle' argument and we should just let it happen.

If so things are different this time, this planet is only likely to be habitable for another few hundred million years because we live right on the inside edge of the habitable zone in this solar system and the sun's activity will only increase as it gets older, if humanity were to reach some kind of equilibrium with the planet we could have been around as an intelligent species for that kind of timespan and perhaps longer if we spread out through the solar system in which case we would be on a par with the dinosaurs for longevity, but it's looking like we could exterminate ourselves and the vast majority of that complex life in the blink of an eye over a problem that we are aware of and that we know and knew (past tense) how to solve.

A quick search says Bison numbers are up to around 500,000 but the implication is that they are not wild type.

Well I would try it after all I have had reindeer in the past and that was very nice but overall I am not a huge meat eater, I don't relish a big slap up restaurant steak these days.

I agree with almost all of it, my only point is that it doesn't matter if the ruminant generated carbon is short cycle if we decide to relentlessly breed more cattle because the more people who become more affluent want expensive protein, more farmed cattle is not part of any natural cycle and multiplies the land cost and the industrial cost and the CO2 cost.

Remember I think it is too late, I know that South American farmers are going to erase the Amazon rainforest, I know that deep down in my soul, I have convinced myself that this is the future, but for anyone that wants to put forward a plan of action to potentially avert the looming disaster then reducing the cows even if it is not their actual fault would be amongst the options for making a dent in the CO2, less cows less methane, less industry, less CO2, more cows more methane more industry, more CO2.

If you had ten dials you could turn, to turn up or turn down greenhouse gasses what do you do, well you would probably be turning down the oil and coal dials and turning up the nuclear, solar, wind and tidal dials, ah but you need those coal and oil dials for the industry you need now those same industries that will allow you to turn up the nuclear, solar, wind etc. dials later because you have a hell of an economic investment to make and the energy you need for that investment is the old sh*tty kind of energy so you are a bit screwed because we have not reached a self sustaining equilibrium with those new energy sources and to get there we have to keep using the old sh*t, so if one of the other dials is turning down the ruminants you might just think hell I might have to do that.

It's this intrinsic drag, intrinsic inertia, in world energy supplies that makes me so fatalistic about it, we needed to be spending all that crappy carbon 30 to 40 years ago building the new world and instead we had a big party getting rich and fat and seeing the world in big dirty aeroplanes and now we want to tell the developing world oh hang on you can't have all that nice sh*t we had 30 years ago because hey man the place is starting to look a bit rough.

I come back to those 3 CMO's the 3 or so Cubic Miles of Oil that we have to replace every year, that's for everything, all the energy we are using for transport, industry, heating, cooling, agriculture, everything we do on this planet, so far we have replaced a tiny little corner of one of those cubes, that's the scale of the problem and I have no optimism about humans succeeding at overcoming that problem.

I really don't care about the cows, I would be turning up the Nuclear dial to maximum and beyond if I could, damn the nuclear waste that's a solvable problem Thorium reactors could burn up most of the waste and we could run them for several thousand years we are not short of the fuel it would let us get to that self sustaining equilibrium needed for solar/wind etc.

But it is all too late and the Earth is going to solve our problems for us.

Listened to a good piece today that was detailing another kind of denier, the fundamentalist Christians who welcome the climate disaster because Jesus is about to return and will save all teh righteous and put in place a 1000 years of perfection.

Yeah I am aware of changes that can be made to reduce the methane we might as well do that if it helps.

From the New Scientist this week (a much diminished publication since the Mail takeover) an article on Real Milk no Cows required: Lab based dairy products now a reality.

Fermentation tech is now capable of producing Milk and egg products the real thing, called 'precision fermentation', a quote from the article “What can we actually make with fermentation?” “The answer is, essentially whatever we want. If an animal can make it, it’s likely that we can produce at least a relatively faithful facsimile with fermentation.”.

Interesting stuff.

I find new Scientist full of garbage adverts and bad actor links since the takeover and I can feel some pressure on their editorial freedom in the type of articles and stories they cover and publish, I'm considering ending my subscription.