by Kerry Thomas
January 21, 2009
The
Clean Energy States Alliance, “a nonprofit group that promotes the development
of clean energy,” has named Wisconsin as the nation's leader in the number of
farm-based anaerobic gas digester systems, with 18. These systems collect “greenhouse gases” from decaying manure,
and use these gases to generate power.
These 18 manure digesters have the effect of keeping 132.5 million pounds of
carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere annually. They also keep 353,000 pounds of NOX (a mixture of nitrogen dioxide and nitrogen
monoxide) out of the air.
By generating electricity from methane instead of coal, these digesters have
the effect of keeping more than 298 tons of sulfur dioxide out of the air. These 18 digesters keep more than 27,000
tons of coal from being burned each year.
That equates to 108,768 barrels of oil.
These methane digesters and their associated generators produce approximately
55.2 million kilowatts of electricity a year.
The Global Warming faithful hail this
announcement. They say these digesters
are helping to solve the “problem” of “global warming.”
If the Global Warming faithful really cared
about “global warming,” they’d be calling for an end to dairy farming and
cattle ranching all together.
According to “Livestock’s Long Shadow” (4.95 Mb pdf file), a 390-page
report issued by the United Nations, one of the world’s leading sources of
global warming is cows!
According to the United Nations, utilization of the
resources necessary to develop and maintain domesticated cattle and dairy farms
accounts for 9% of the Earth’s emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common
greenhouse gas. 37% of all methane
emissions (which has 23 times the effect of CO2 on global warming)
and 65% of the NOX emissions (which
has 296 times the effect of CO2 on global warming) also come from
cows.
Additionally, cows also produce more than 100 other
polluting gases, including 64% of the world's emissions of ammonia. Cattle and dairy farms causes water
pollution that contaminates drinking water, kill coral reefs, and create
"dead zones" in the oceans, one of which covers more than 800 square
miles in the Gulf of Mexico.
It is clear that elimination of dairy farms and cattle
ranches would do more to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions and solve the “global
warming” crisis than all these digesters.
Just remember, all these “greenhouse gasses” together make up
less than 1% of the Earth’s atmosphere, which is composed of 78% nitrogen and
21% oxygen.
And all these figures and predictions come from
computer models. Such computer models
have been shown to be highly inaccurate over the past ten years. In fact, the Earth’s temperature has
actually fallen since 1998.
I’m reminded of the April
28, 1975 article in Newsweek by Peter
Gwynne, warning us all about global cooling and the coming ice age.
According to that article, “There are ominous signs
that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically….The
evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so
massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it.”
A year ago, Russian
scientists began predicting a coming new ice age. One of these scientists said “By 2041, solar activity will reach
its minimum according to a 200-year cycle, and a deep cooling period will hit
the Earth approximately in 2055-2060. It will last for about 45-65 years.”
At least the Russian scientists allow for the possibility
that the energy emitted from an unenclosed fusion reactor a million times the
size of our small planet and only eight light minutes away might have some
influence on our climate, moreso than anything Man – of Cattle – can possibly do.