Charles Hunt wrote:A slightly allied question. We are told not to eat meat because the animals digest vegetation and this produces gases that affect climate.
If not eaten by food animals presumably the vegetation would still grow each year, and then die back and decay. Does this produce the same decomposition gases, or is there something particular about passing through the stomach of a ruminant that produces methane?
Quite so. But the difference is the time it takes to do so. Eg
here.
Letting it rot by itself raises the possibility that there may be so much of it that rots so slowly that it may actually turn into various types of hydrocarbon which can be mined/pumped/harvested and turned into Avgas
And, vice versa,
if we could tap directly into the cows' output we could power the grid...On a related note, marshes and other places with lots of decomposing organic matter are great carbon sinks. There is a discussion in Norway where they are considering building a new road through marshland. Needing to dig down to decent depth for the foundations for that road, the release of captured carbon would be huge and by far more costly to the environment than any cars driving along that road would ever be.
As you hint at, there is a carbon cycle just like there is an oxygen and water cycle. Ultimately, the earth is a closed system* and what comes around goes around.
(*) I know, the earth receives somewhere around 10^8 kg of meteorites each year, but that is really insignificant...
We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.