What contributes more to global warming, cow farts or cars?
Answer:
Cow farts are inconsequential - you're thinking of cow burps and cow dung. These account for approximately 7% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/print...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/image:green...
Worldwide, cars account for about 9.9% of greenhouse gas emissions, so they're close but cars account for more.
http://cait.wri.org/figures.php?page=wor...
but in the US, cars account for 21.6% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, so cars are more of an issue here.
http://cait.wri.org/figures.php?page=us-...
*edit* Trevor usually knows his stuff, but I think his numbers are off here. My link above and the IPCC report (page 4 linked below) say that methane accounts for 18% of greenhouse gas forcings
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/report/ar4w...
And my link above also states that agricultural biproducts account for 40% of methane emissions, but I don't know how much of that is due to cows. If Trevor's 18% figure is correct, then cows account for 3.24% of global warming. Even if all 40% were due to cows, they would be responsible for 7.2% of the human contribution to global warming, which is less than cars.
Global Warming activists who jet around the world to profess the Global Warming theory.
Neither harm the environment as much as Algore flying his private jet around the world telling us how evil we are.
Neither contribute to global warming.
Methane levels have stabilized, and been stable for several decades. More "cow farts" or any other "cow gases" are not increasing the Methane levels, therefore they are not contributing any additional warmth from the so-called greenhouse effect.
Cars may contribute CO2 to the atmosphere, but CO2 has such a minor effect on Global Temperature (less than 1 degrees C if you double it from pre-industrialized levels) that the little tiny bit (less than 20% of 1 degree C) is impossible to measure. Period.
Cars
Cars contribute 6.5 times as much to global warming as cow farts do.
Here's the math...
90% of the volume of gas burped and farted by cows is nitrogen, the remainder is primarily methane. Of all the methane produced as a result of human activity cow farts account for 18%.
Methane, as a greenhouse gas, accounts for just under 8% of the total contribution to global warming from greenhouse gas emissions (this figure takes account of the fact that methane is 23 times as effective at retaining heat as CO2).
In total cow burps and farts contribute approx 1.44% of total global warming, cows burp nine times as much gas as they fart so the component contributions are 0.144% from farting, 1.296% from burping.
Cars (not road transport as a whole, just cars) accounts for 9.9% of the CO2 emissions. Total CO2 emissions account for 77% of GHG emissions by volume, CO2 contributes 72% towards anthropogenic global warming, cars are therefore responsible for 9.257% of the contribution to global warming.
Cars. I know your serious--but the cow thing was never serious science, which some people don't realize.
The "cow farts' thing was a joke--a mock "presentation" some scientists gave at a conference a while back makking fun of all the stupid ideas the so-called "skeptics" keep dreaming up as ad hoc "theories."
Only the anti-global warming idiots were so ignorant, they didn't even realize it was jsut a joke at their expense! which makes it even funnier, when you think about it!. lol
The Cow Fart Thesis stinks so much even Global Warming Alarmists are backing off from it.
CARS!!! cow frts are more natural (exept for the hormones and chemicals in them) than cars.
cars
cars. deffinitly. there are thopusands and thousands of more cars on this earth than cows. and we use much much much much much MUCH more gas than cows fart.
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