Group items tagged

Human activities currently add about nine gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere yearly. Photosynthetic organisms on land and in the ocean absorb about five of those gigatons through the natural uptake of CO2, leaving to humans the task of dealing with the rest. But no matter how much carbon there is, capturing it and preventing it from reentering the atmosphere is an immense engineering challenge; even today's best technology is orders of magnitude less effective than photosynthesis at trapping atmospheric carbon.

Managing manure to reduce emissions can be economically viable for larger enterprises or cooperative facilities that use the captured methane to generate heat and electricity. For small operators, the offset value alone is unlikely to warrant the large capital cost of infrastructure. This activity contributes to carbon farming. Agriculture is responsible for 14% of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions and is the dominant source of methane and nitrous oxide, accounting for 56% and 73%, respectively, of Australia's emissions.