why are cow farts bad, but natural gas is good?

Warmon dogma indeed holds that the CO2 produced by burning methane is bad.

So it's inaccurate to say they think Natural Gas is good,

...they just agree with everyone else that it's cleaner than burning coal.

Also while many are skeptical of Warmon claims of the climate's sensitivity to CO2, it's almost universally agreed that methane is MUCH more potent as a greenhouse gas.

In short the CO2 from burning methane is a LOT less damaging than UNBURNT methane.

Which those methane cow burps are 'very' bad since no one collects & burns them.

Finally Warmons draw a great distinction between FOSSIL bio-fuels & modern bio-fuels.

If a prehistoric plant made the fuel, then to the Warmon mind it's not 'bio' at all.

It's naturally 'sequestered' carbon that should not be released.

So the hydro carbon in cow burps comes from the grass they eat & the grass gets that carbon from the air. Hence if you could capture & burn cow burps, the process would be carbon neutral - since the CO2 released to the atmosphere was coming from CO2 recently absorbed from the atmosphere.

Hence the methane from oil wells is 'bad',

While the methane from cows is 'good' so long as you burn it.

And yes, Warmons are indeed pursuing the 'collect & burn or don't raise cows' policy.

And not one of them will ever thank our ancestors for wiping out all those methane belching bison.

Because natural gas was here first-and it has been proven that natural gas cannot kill all life. Even if there are some mysterious deaths, for now, natural gas is still good. If we all collapsed and died, then natural gas may be the culprit, but no one would be around to test that theory. Cow farts don't do much for the population-they are just good for the cows, unless you like the smell of cow farts.

Not sure where you get your info, but cow farts are not the cause of global warming any more than your burps. They don't contain enough methane to be noticed.

Burning methane releases CO2. BUT methane is a greenhouse gas @ 23 times stronger than CO2 so it is a trade off.

2 things!

1. learn to google

2. Try using your head in the future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

If a cow exhales methane, into the air goes a greenhouse gas much more potent than CO2, though in much smaller and much short-lasting amounts. Then it breaks down to CO2 later, which is a long-lasting greenhouse gas. I like a nice steak from time to time, but cow meat is not a cheap, efficient or environmentally-friendly source of protein

If you burn methane, you end up with CO2 just like with the cow, but without the interim phase of greenhouse methane, and you at least get some energy out of the methane. And too much red meat isn't a healthy diet anyway.

We burn natural gas. We don't burn cow farts.

Natural gas is not good. Burning methane (or any other hydrocarbon) produces CO2 and water vapour which are both greenhouse gasses. However the influence of a single methane molecule on global warming is much greater than either of these (global warming potential: http://unfccc.int/ghg_data/items/3825.php ).

methane does not get removed from the atmosphere in the way that CO2 does (at least not to the extent that CO2 does) so it cannot be considered carbon neutral. CO2 can because photosynthetic organisms extract it from the atmosphere. All the carbon in the methane that cows exhale (most of the gas comes from their mouth and not their farts) came from CO2 which was recently removed from the atmosphere by plants, but if it returns as methane it has a greater influence on climate than the original CO2 molecule did. Methane in natural gas is from thousands to millions of years old, and so this is adding carbon to the atmosphere. However methane used as fuel which is sourced from composting food scraps or livestock manure releases CO2 and there is no net gain in atmospheric carbon since it was recently removed from the atmosphere by plants. So some forms of methane are ok if they can be harvested and used as fuel, but natural gas extracted from the ground should just be left in the ground if alternatives are available.

<< The bad things about the cow fart is its methane content. >>

Cows, along with other animals such as sheep and goats, are classified as ruminants. These animals have a complex digestive system and part of the process involves microbes breaking down the grass and other vegetable matter that the animals have eaten. One of these processes is methanogenic, that is to say, it produces methane gas. About 90% of the gas a cow produces is burped, the remainder is farted.

<< Natural gas is almost all methane. >>

For all intents and purposes natural gas is methane. There may occasionally be some hydrogen sulphide in the gas, this is known as sour gas because of the unpleasant odour. Natural gas is colourless and odourless, for safety reasons an odourant is added and this is usually 2-methylpropane-2-thiol, it’s this that gives natural gas it’s sulphurous smell.

Cow farting is being blamed for "global warming".

There are a great many things that contribute to global warming and cow farts are just one of them. The methane produced by cows contributes about 3% to the manmade component of global warming. In addition there are other related greenhouse gas sources to be taken into consideration such as the nitrous oxide in cow dung, the mechanisation of farming, transportation, the use of fertilisers etc in their food production. All told the rearing of cows is responsible for 4.0% of our contribution to global warming.

<< Is it because when you burn the methane, the residue is not harmful to the air? >>

Methane is made up of one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms. When it’s burned there is a reaction with the oxygen in the air. Two oxygen atoms attach themselves to each carbon atom to produce carbon dioxide gas, and two of the hydrogen atoms attach to one oxygen atom to form water.

Other fuels such as gasoline, paraffin, oil and coal have similar molecular structures – they’re also made of carbon and hydrogen atoms. Collectively such compounds are known as hydrocarbons.

The carbon dioxide that’s produced when a hydrocarbon is burned is also a greenhouse gas but it’s not as powerful as methane. If you were to take the same volume of each gas then the methane would cause 25 times as much warming as the carbon dioxide would.

Natural gas taken from the ground is not truly carbon-neutral (it is a fossil fuel), but you get more energy with less CO2 emissions than coal or oil. And at least some of it will leak anyways, so capturing it and burning it for fuel is better than letting it go into the air. So, if we replaced all our coal-burning power plants and gas-burning cars with natural gas fueled power plants and vehicles, we'd greatly improve our greenhouse gas emissions, though it wouldn't be enough to actually stop AGW if we used fossil-sourced natural gas.

Methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas per mass than CO2 is, by a few orders of magnitude if I recall correctly. So, more methane in the air--from cow farts, from rice paddies, from swamps, or from natural gas pipeline leaks--leads to more global warming. But, once it's burned--wherever it originally came from--it's CO2 and water.

natural gas was stored for millions of years whereas cows are returning the carbon they ate.

the emissions from fossil fuels burning is a lot more than from animals. 18% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to livestock

Cow farts are not really the issue its more a case of cow burps, which are.

They produce large volumes of methane a short lived but very powerful greenhouse gas which converts to Co2 as it breaks down.

Now deniers tend to try and make a joke of this "cow farts ha ha" not sure how the joke or humor changes the qualities or effects of methane as yet another boost to our emissions.

I have even seen some deniers here trying to claim this is natural, interesting,

did cows spread themselves to the four corner of the world, displacing the native wildlife, no

(including Australia, America, Brazil, New Zealand, Argentina)

do cows clear forests and build farms for themselves, no

do cows commit ritual suicide, and then we find them and say we should not waste that meat, no

do cows feed themselves grain to maximize bulk, not really

have cows spent hundreds of years working on their own breeding to produce animals that give the best meat or milk production, no.

(although Douglas Adams, did postulate on a cow that would suggest which parts of itself were the best eating, but that was poetic license)

On this type of question, another favorite retort of deniers is "what about the Buffalo", as usual this is a fine example of how they just run with a story without bothering to check facts, there are now many more cows in the U.S. than there were Buffalo, even at their peak and that is just the U.S. there were no Buffalo in the other countries mentioned above.

The number of Buffalo is thought to have been some where between 30-60 million at their peak.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/buffalo.htm

Current cow numbers in the U.S. are near 100 million i.e. near 2-3 times more

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/07/...

Deniers run with the story (they have so many) that this is a plot to get us to stop eating meat, although judging by the weight stats for many western countries it would our health considerable good to cut back a little.

It is more a case of a little moderation for all of us, and a few smarts as well, several countries are working on ways to get animals (including cows) to simply produce less methane, using the same breeding we have in the past used to get larger more productive animals, as in both cows and sheep there is natural variation in the volumes of methane produced, simply breeding up, the animals with the lower outputs is a pretty simple solution, not requiring any global conspiracy to achieve.

Given the rate of turnover of cows for consumption, a new breed that produced less methane could be the main source of meat in just a few years, even on a global scale.

mast3rchi3f: You are repeating a long debunked denier myth, trying to blame volcanoes, the figures for volcanic emissions of Co2 are running at just 1% those of human emissions.

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/archive/2007/0...

also covered by this http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11638-climat...

These are the current figures for global Co2 rise, going back to the late 1950s

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/c...

Do you see a spike for the volcano you refer to, how about Pinatubo (91) probably the largest eruption of the last century, barely a blip.

P.S. by the way "dust" (or particulates) cause cooling, not warming, I thought even deniers knew that.