I saw this story a few weeks back, or more, but in all the excitement of other stories, it dropped down the list of articles. Then going through a slow news day, I started hiking through the files, and here we are with yet another bit of climate change absurdity. The issue here is that humans emit methane just like cows, and remember, cows are a new evil in the climate change cult, due to flatulence and burbs, supposedly. A paper in PLoS One, linked below, found that for the UK, the 67 million people in the United Kingdom increased the national methane and N2O emissions by as much as 0.05 – 0.1 percent, very small amounts. It is far from clear why this should be a problem, since the amounts are trivial, compared to say the methane emissions of the private jets of the elites, let alone their consumption in building doomsday bunkers, as Zuckerberg is doing in Hawaii.
As well, it is likely that all animals will emit methane. By the elimination of farming argument, by the UN and World Economic Forum, it seems that the only way to save the planet is to not save it, by eliminating all animal life on Earth! Oh, plants when decaying emit methane too, so best to make a clean sweep of all life! Bacteria as well. As that leads to the absurdity of "saving the planet" by not saving it, there must be something logically wrong with the core climate change alarmist idea that methane production from living organisms, is a problem. And, as methane it was not a problem in the past, so it is not now, as Jo Nova rightly argued below.
Chalk up yet another climate change absurdity!
https://joannenova.com.au/2023/12/now-scientists-say-your-breathing-might-affect-the-climate/
"Someone just realized that humans emit methane (like cows, camels, mammals, and ancient herds of bison).
The new study shows that humans are generating methane, just like the awful Planet Wrecking Cows. But the truth is that all mammals have probably always produced some methane, and that includes the massive herds of herbivores that used to roam the Earth, when the climate was "perfect".
The new paper in PLOS One assessed 104 people and found 31% were methane producers like the cows. They calculated the 67 million homo sapiens in the United Kingdom increase the national methane and N2O emissions by as much as… golly, 0.05 – 0.1%. (Despite this trivial and predictable outcome, somehow, they had no trouble getting grants or getting published for studying methane-angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin).
The main thing we learn from this paper is how easy it is to get money to study climate inanities compared to how hard it is to get grants to audit the IPCC or investigate the sun's role in climate change.
If belches of methane can cause a climate crisis, how, we marvel, did the planet not boil away when 30 million bison roamed the plains of North America? Why was the climate ideal (apparently) when the vast herds of Wildebeest roamed Africa, and Aurochs stretched across Europe?
Turns out nearly all mammals produce methane
In 2020 Clauss et al reviewed the research on and found that it's not just cows and camels that produce methane, but carnivorous reptiles, ostriches, kangaroos, sea cows and rodents, pretty much everything they looked at. Indeed, they conclude it's… prudent to assume that all mammals harbour some methanogens, and produce some CH4, until consistently proven otherwise."
Methane may provide an evolutionary advantage…
Clauss et al also point out there may be an evolutionary advantage to harboring methanogens (the bacteria that produce methane). If that is true, it would explain why methanogens are everywhere across the zoological world. Bizarrely, inside our intestines, methanogens effectively slow peristalsis, so food takes longer to travel through, and is possibly more efficiently absorbed. So methanogens may help animals absorb more carbohydrate calories and get fattened up. In humans, the presence of methanogens is associated with a higher BMI*. Likewise, efforts to feed cows seaweed or foods that reduce methanogens may come at a cost. And in the last seaweed feed trial, the cows gained weight slower than they usually would. We might reduce methane by an amount too small to measure, and reduce the speed of storms by the square root of nothing, but make meat more expensive and stunt the growth of disadvantaged children. But that's OK apparently."
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0295157