Camels Killed for Carbon Credits

[CuttingEdge100]

Australia Poised to Allow Camel Cull

Killing a camel to earn a carbon credit may seem a curious way to tackle climate change, but one country is poised to allow investors to do precisely that.

The camel culling plan is one of the first to arise under the Australian government’s new “carbon farming initiative”, a scheme that lets farmers or investors claim carbon credits if they can show they have cut greenhouse gas emissions."

So they're culling down the camel population to cut down on carbon-footprints? How long before they start culling down the human population?

This is one of those things that has made me nervous about the whole carbon-footprint reduction. All life is effectively made of carbon, and all animal life including humans produce carbon dioxide.

 

[Marc]

It's a stupid idea in one sense but there is a problem in the outback areas with non-indigionous animals such as camels going feral.

Even the natives are in need of a cull (the kangaroos hit plague proportions than then the drought hits they die slowly from stavation and dehydration).

There are even places where the need to kull Koalas (Kangroo Island in South Australia is a prime example - they were introduced there, no natural predators so they've just breed out of control and the island can hardly supprt them).

 

[Jadzia]

Culling animals won't affect any carbon footprint, because biology is carbon neutral.

The carbon dioxide is produced by the breaking down of vegetation, ie grass that the camel eats.

That grass either decays in the field, releasing it's carbon dioxide there, or it is metabolised inside the animal, releasing it's carbon dioxide there. Overall there is no difference, which is why biology is carbon neutral.


But if anything, animals are a carbon buffer, just like trees, grass and fossil fuels are. They store carbon in their biomass, and the self-propagation of the biomass ensures that carbon store is relatively constant.

Having carbon stored in biomass is better than having it in dioxide form in the atmosphere, surely?

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Jadzia

Culling animals won't affect any carbon footprint, because biology is carbon neutral.

The grass either decays in the field, releasing it's carbon dioxide there, or it metabolised inside the animal, releasing it's carbon dioxide there. Overall there is no difference, which is why biology is carbon neutral.

But if anything, animals are a carbon buffer, just like trees and fossil fuels are. They store carbon in their biomass. Surely having carbon stored in biomass is better than having it in dioxide form in the atmosphere?

The people interested in the whole carbon-footprint/carbon-credit/carbon-tax thing aren't confused by mere facts

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Culling animals won't affect any carbon footprint, because biology is carbon neutral.

So the beef industry is off the hook for breeding more cows = cow burps/farts = greenhouse gas? I'm gonna have a Big Mac to celebrate!

 

[{ Emilia }]

Culling animals won't affect any carbon footprint, because biology is carbon neutral.

So the beef industry is off the hook for breeding more cows = cow burps/farts = greenhouse gas? I'm gonna have a Big Mac to celebrate!

Those cows eat metric f**ktonnes of grain, though while 1 billion people suffers from hunger.

Hey, I eat meat, too but that's not enough reason for me not to make you feel bad about it.

 

[PlixTixiplik]

Ruminants (animals that use bacterial fermentation in their gut), such as camels, effectively turn carbon dioxide into methane. As such they are certainly not carbon-neutral; in fact, industrial beef production is a non-trivial contributor to global warming.

 

[Jadzia]

Culling animals won't affect any carbon footprint, because biology is carbon neutral.

So the beef industry is off the hook for breeding more cows = cow burps/farts = greenhouse gas? I'm gonna have a Big Mac to celebrate!

Firstly, it's not an industry I support. Secondly, it's not that simple.

There is more to that industry than animals chewing their cud and reproducing.

For example the grain used to feed them is transported using powered vehicles, which burn fossil fuels. The grain is farmed and harvested using powered vehicles, which burn fossil fuels. Use of fossil fuels is not carbon neutral.

The production of your big mac involves many additional small uses of fossil fuels, to transport stuff to the shop, to fire the ovens to bake the buns and cook the burgers, and all of the peripheral uses in advertising the brand, lighting the shop, and manufacturing the silly hats the staff wear.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Yeah, killing a few camels will help stave off global warming.

 

[prento]

That carbon thing is such a scam. Watch Penn and Tellers episode on it. They totally debunk it and they expose the money making scammer called Al gore. It's a scam, just like Global warming. They just use these tactics to scare us

 

[{ Emilia }]

That carbon thing is such a scam. Watch Penn and Tellers episode on it. They totally debunk it and they expose the money making scammer called Al gore. It's a scam, just like Global warming. They just use these tactics to scare us

So global warming is a Scam?


Wow, just when you think you've seen it all...

 

[Jadzia]

Ruminants (animals that use bacterial fermentation in their gut), such as camels, effectively turn carbon dioxide into methane. As such they are certainly not carbon-neutral.

I guess it depends how we define carbon neutrality. The way I've always thought about it is by measuring the net flow of carbon from buffer states (fossile fuels & biomass) into atmospheric states (gases). In the long term, this is what we need to be zero.

This makes the most sense to me because it is by name the carbon footprint, rather than the greenhouse footprint.


What this definition doesn't do is distinguish between different gases and how powerful they are as greenhouse gases. To me, this is beyond the scope of the carbon footprint, and constitutes an independent goal.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

That carbon thing is such a scam. Watch Penn and Tellers episode on it. They totally debunk it and they expose the money making scammer called Al gore. It's a scam, just like Global warming. They just use these tactics to scare us

So global warming is a Scam?


Wow, just when you think you've seen it all...

You didn't read. What prento said is that carbon credits are a scam.

Personally, I am skeptical of the way global warming has been made a political football, and I think there are problems with some of the science. That said, cleaning up should be done for its own sake--it's common sense to try to respect nature as much as possible and not leave a mess if you can help it--not caught up in politics.

 

[FordSVT]

That carbon thing is such a scam. Watch Penn and Tellers episode on it. They totally debunk it and they expose the money making scammer called Al gore. It's a scam, just like Global warming. They just use these tactics to scare us

So global warming is a Scam?


Wow, just when you think you've seen it all...

You didn't read. What prento said is that carbon credits are a scam.

No, you didn't read, he clearly said, "It's a scam, just like Global Warming".

Personally, I am skeptical of the way global warming has been made a political football, and I think there are problems with some of the science. That said, cleaning up should be done for its own sake--it's common sense to try to respect nature as much as possible and not leave a mess if you can help it--not caught up in politics.

I agree, but I think the idea that human beings contribute to accelerated global climate change and temperature rise is pretty much indisputable at this point.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Whoops...my bad, I did kinda skim past that one.

I'm not sure that we have a major impact on temperature changes, given that there is clear evidence of climate cycles throughout our history that have been going on without our help. I do think there is reason to be suspicious of some of the science surrounding climate, given that people figured out there was big bucks in it.

I figure the less crap we put out into the environment that we don't absolutely have to, the better. We have a lot of more verifiable stuff going wrong already, and it's a pretty safe assumption that what industry creates, by not being natural, is going to throw things out of whack somehow and should be minimized/balanced where possible. There's some stuff that we can't avoid, for survival reasons, but we should do the best we can. That should be a simple enough guideline without having to get into all this crazy stuff like carbon credits and so on.

(I keep getting this crazy idea in my head of transferring certain industries to the moon, in a few centuries...that is obviously not sustainable in modern day and I would never dare try it. But anyway, there's no life there, so less collateral damage. Leave Mars, though...we shouldn't trash that one in case we need a backup planet someday. )

 

[bryce]

Hummm...Camel carbon footprints.

I'm sure there's a "cameltoe" joke in there somewhere...

Anyway...(seriously)...I don't know enough details about this to make an informed decision about the practicality of this..but it wouldn't shock me to find out this is just some dumb bureaucratic/government/committee decision. Maybe somebody decided that they could convince some politicians that if they shot camels, they could claim it as a "carbon credit"...that why they didn't have to *actually* do anything to reduce their actual carbon footprint. They found a way to write off a hunting trip as complying with carbon reduction legislation or something.

As for global warming/climate change being a "scam"...sorry, but thats just willfully choosing to be in denial.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Nerys Ghemor

Personally, I am skeptical of the way global warming has been made a political football, and I think there are problems with some of the science.

Yeah there are problems with some of the science -- in that the science has been adjusted to fit political objectives.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Exactly. That's why I think a more common-sense approach would be better.

 

[Jadzia]

Climatalogical research isn't easy to verify because we can't take new measurements in the past; we can only take them in the present. We can't be sure if historical data is correct, or whether or not it has been tampered with by the organisation that's responsible for collecting it.

I made this into a maxim when I was younger...

"Your trust in a scientific claim is nothing more than a trust in the sincerity of those who did the research."

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

And that's a very good maxim.

Now, as far as figuring out past data, though, I'm sure there are ways to do it, but they're estimates and could be toyed with. For instance, we are at least aware that we had an Ice Age about 20000 years ago, and that the Mesozoic period, when the dinosaurs were around, was hotter on average than it is now, by about 10 degrees Celsius, and this occurred before human intervention.

On principle, the less we put into the environment that is of our making, the better--but I don't think that the politics involved in global warming is at all productive for making anything meaningful happen. All it has done has been to create distrust and infighting.