I found this two-minute clip on Grist which shows how much cows fart in 2 hours. Spoiler: A lot!
A paper was published in Nature Climate Change in October 2015 which finds the temperature increase for parts of the Middle East is projected to exceed the level which humans can tolerate by the end of this century. It looks at the maximum wet-bulb temperature for the period 2071-2100. The wet-bulb temperature is a temperature with 100% humidity. Humans can tolerate higher temperatures when it’s dry. The maximum tolerable wet-bulb temperature for humans is 35°C and this is for a fit human, not someone young, old, or vulnerable. The highest wet-bulb temperatures on Earth currently are around 30-31°C.
According to the paper, wet-bulb temperatures will exceed the 35°C threshold of human adaptability in various locations in the Middle East including Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha, Dhahran, and Bandar Abbas. What will those people do? Put the air-conditioning on and live permanently indoors? Why isn’t this front-page news?
Maybe we’ll all bomb and shoot each other to oblivion before this happens.
Fascinating post. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Glad you liked it 🙂
Last night we went to see Cowspiracy, a film that makes a similar point. There are several reasons why animal agriculture is the number one cause of climate change: the methane emissions for sure, as you point out here, and also the clearning of rain forest to turn forest into grazing land. I really do not understand why this is not being discussed at the climate talks in Paris.
It’s almost a taboo topic – what we eat – and people don’t want to discuss it. It’s the elephant in the room.
Scary. Humans are really a pest species. What a shame we’re condemning other living things to oblivion with our activities. 😦
We’re a terrible pest partly because there are so many of us.