4 ms·
How would this differ from an equivalent buffalo?
by mod 10y ago
How would this differ from an equivalent buffalo?
- xiaoma 10y agoFrom an ecological perspective, replacing cattle with buffalo wouldn't be much of a win. There are too many meat-eating people on the planet to make either animal the primary source.
- mod 10y agoIs there a problem with having a 'revolving' population of 60M? That is, we are eating out of the population, and it is replacing itself (with our help)? Assume we could feed all the meat-eaters on a revolving 60M cattle--would we then have solved the problem? Or are we supposed to maintain a smaller-than-original population?
- xiaoma 10y ago60M is possibly double the population there ever was, and that was a time when far, far more land was devoted to them. The only way to have that many now would be an extremely concentrated population (with its methane output) plus all the other outputs of humanity. There is no single answer about what we're "supposed to" do, but it is clear that cattle are driving the increase of methane production and that methane is a far, far more potent greenhouse gas than C02. A plant-based replacement wins hands-down in any ecological analysis.
- firethief 10y agoThere are an order of magnitude more cattle than there have been equivalent buffalos?
- ChuckMcM 10y agoHmm, I was going to say "No way!" but looking around it seems like 60M buffalo back in the day [1] and at times 100M cows [2], certainly not "order of magnitude" but more cows that buffalo. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#Range_and_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#Range_and_popul... [2] http://www.cattlenetwork.com/advice-and-tips/cowcalf-producer/cattle-inventory-ranking-all-50-states http://www.cattlenetwork.com/advice-and-tips/cowcalf-produce...
- kctess5 10y agoWorldwide there are around 1 billion cows [1] [1] http://beef2live.com/story-world-cattle-inventory-ranking-countries-0-106905 http://beef2live.com/story-world-cattle-inventory-ranking-co...
- vacri 10y ago100M is an order of magnitude more than 60M, by definition. "order of magnitude" doesn't mean "ten times as much", it means "you have to use another column to describe it"... and so 1x10^8 is an order of magnitude more than 6x10^7...
- colechristensen 10y agoYou're just wrong. Here are three sources that say an order of magnitude means ten times as much: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/order-of-magnitude http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/order-of-magnitude http://www.thefreedictionary.com/order+of+magnitude http://www.thefreedictionary.com/order+of+magnitude
- vacri 10y agoEach of those links say that it can be used both ways. I was wrong that it wasn't used the OP's way, but not wrong in my own definition of it.
- dragonwriter 10y agoan order of magnitude conventionally means an approximate power of 10; the implicit accuracy of the approximation is such that n orders of magnitude means a multiple between 10^(n-0.5) and 10^(n+0.5).