11/2/2021

My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,

            Sorry to miss our letter yesterday. I had to devote every waking minute to catching up on generating some feedback to my students. When you teach to-be-teachers, you have to be on top of your game. We have to walk our talk & make sure we are setting the best possible example for our students. That means I have to return papers in a timely fashion & those papers need to have lots of feedback. I had to spend every spare minute closely examining their work. Being married to a writing teacher, I’m sure you will understand.

            I hope you feel good about your visit to Glasgow. I understand that you signed us up for the Methane Pledge. That’s great. We’ve got some folks here at UCD who focus on that. A couple of guys look at the methane produced by burping cows. Ermias Kebreab has figured out how to add seaweed to the feed of dairy cows which mitigates their methane production. Another guy, Frank Mitloehner, argues that we need to measure methane differently. He points out that it degrades much faster than CO2 & argues that should be taken into account in our calculations. He also points out that ag has gotten so much more efficient that it is not the eco criminal it used to be. He likes to point out that “today’s herd produces 60 percent more milk than their ancestors did. Put another way, the carbon footprint of a glass of milk is two-thirds smaller today than it was 70 years ago.” Finally, we have a team that knows how to identify methane leaks & tracked the terrible one at Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Storage Facility in 2015. They fly a special airplane that’s got instruments to measure the wind & the methane to generate models of what’s going on. I invite you to Zoom with these guys in Davis & get the low down on methane.

            Aljazeera reports that Burmese students are desperate to continue their schooling but can’t do so for a variety of reasons. I hope we can fix that situation soon.

            BYBS,

            RCA