7 ms·

Can anyone provide a sense of scale and impact if these results were to hold and if the majority of the world beef production were to switch to it? My understa

Can anyone provide a sense of scale and impact if these results were to hold and if the majority of the world beef production were to switch to it? My understanding is that around half of the world's greenhouse gas comes from livestock. Would it mean that this could cut our emissions by half? Would it be therefore much more cost efficient to have the government invest is growing and distributing red algae than whatever we're currently spending money on? Do we have a sense of how much it would cost to produce that much seaweed?

abainbridge 9y ago
> My understanding is that around half of the world's greenhouse gas comes from livestock That's not right. The highest number I've been able to find for the whole of agriculture is 24% of world greenhouse gas emissions. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... About 25% of that is methane from livestock (http://old.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-agriculture-and-land-use_12b0# http://old.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/greenhouse-gas-emissi...) So livestock is about 6% of total greenhouse gas emissions.
- nothrabannosir 9y ago
  As far as I can see, those references do not mention whether they have corrected for the fact that methane is a ~20x more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Are they counting per volume or per potency? That is an incredibly important distinction. Which, to be honest, they should have made, one way or the other.
  - Chris_Jay 9y ago
    Potency is typically assumed in the industry, the volume of methane is trivial compared to volume of CO2.
  - rbkillea 9y ago
    They are in the units "greenhouse gas emissions" which corrects for the extra potency. The sad thing is that people often double-correct for such things.
- sdenton4 9y ago
  Random Gaurdian story puts methane : "Methane accounted for about 16% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2015, according to the IPCC." (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/29/methane-emissions-cattle-11-percent-higher-than-estimated https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/29/methane-...) Wikipedia puts (with some question about the citation) methan at 4-9% of total greenhouse effect contribution, and CO2 at 9-26%. (And then water vapor way above that, at 36-72%.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Greenhouse_gases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Greenhouse_gase...
  - samstave 9y ago
    How are we producing water vapor more than say clouds?
    - sdenton4 9y ago
      I think the table is attributing greenhouse to gases generally, not to man-made gases; as a result, water vapor wins. (OTOH, turning clouds into drinking water at scale would be a cool way to fight global warming and deal with drought at the same time. My understanding is that storm seeding has a pretty seedy history, though.)
- konschubert 9y ago
  One also has to consider that the methane decays over a matter of decades. Other than CO2, which stays in the atmosphere until it is taken out. So, even if methane takes a big share in current greenhouse emissions, its share in the accumulated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will be lower. The climate change it causes is temporary. (Disregarding runaway effects.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane
  - Retric 9y ago
    Methane contains carbon so it's not 100% temporary just mostly.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - skosch 9y ago
    Decades – we don't have decades to fix this. Also, it decays into CO2, so to claim that its effects are temporary is misleading. On top of that, as long as the carbon is in a CH4 bond, it traps at least 20× as much radiation. Please don't dismiss the significance of methane emissions.
    - samstave 9y ago
      We should he focusing on plastics rather than methane.
    - Jach 9y ago
      How many years do we have to fix this then? Alternatively, at what point will activists start saying we passed the point of no fix and give up their activism?
      - marssaxman 9y ago
        I got to that point 3-4 years ago, personally. Even if it were economically and technically possible to get our act together, it has become entirely clear that the political system is incapable of acting quickly enough.
WillReplyfFood 9y ago
Half of the worlds greenhouse gases? The agri-culture industry has to suffer as a scape-goat for the car and power industry. I m so sick of this pseudo religion/blame industry that has sprung up around agri-culture. No matter what they say, this carbon emissioned was in the cycle and once diggested by humans and returned to the fields, gets back into the cycle. Do not look at total emission-numbers but new-emission numbers. The only place where there are new-emissions, if you burn down rain-forrest to herd cattle or create synthetic fertilizer. If hitler where alive and the holocaust debatted, he would have some third "neutral" press agency post statistics today, that in the overall history of jewish death reasons, national-socialism is a absolute minor cause compared to cancer, car-accidents - and voila debate shift archieved. Again this should be fineable to a point, where its for big companys no longer interesting to have the public misled. PS: Overall good for the planet would be if cattle farming ceased entirely and beef would be replaced by synthetic proteien.
lozenge 9y ago
Your figure is from cowspiracy - it's worth looking up the film to discover its many other inaccuracies. https://newint.org/blog/2016/02/10/cowspiracy-stampeding-in-the-wrong-direction https://newint.org/blog/2016/02/10/cowspiracy-stampeding-in-...
- slfnflctd 9y ago
  Excellent article, thank you for linking it. I love and appreciate my vegan friends (have been one in the past, might be again in the future), but they need to be realistic about convincing others to change deeply-ingrained eating habits. Short of an apocalyptic event, you could spend 100% of your spare time and energy trying to get people to stop eating meat and you'd be lucky to get a dozen lasting conversions. It's simply not an effective use of resources to make that your main/only focus.
  - skosch 9y ago
    The economics of veggie proselytism actually look pretty good. Animal Charity Evaluators found that for every $11 spent in online ads, you could make one person go to a website, sign up with their email, and pledge to go vegetarian for a year. The average vegetarian [1] produces 1.5 metric tons less CO2eq per year, so this means that the online ads decrease carbon at a cost of $7.40 per ton. That's cheaper than buying typical carbon offset certificates ($10-$15 per ton). Maybe it's too optimistic to assume that everyone who makes a pledge on the website actually stays vegetarian for a year, or that they were average-level meat consumers before. Still, animal farming is bad enough that reducing it is probably cost-competitive with other current CO2 reduction approaches. [1] I'm not sure if their use of "vegetarian" means "completely vegan".
    - tnorthcutt 9y ago
      I don't understand your math. Wouldn't you need to look at the difference in CO2eq between an average non-vegetarian and vegetarian?
      - 9y ago
IncRnd 9y ago
Can anyone provide a sense of scale and impact if these results were to hold and if the majority of the world beef production were to switch to it? Yes. According to the numbers of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, this would be about a 6.4% reduction in total green house gas emissions. See below for the numbers > Total emissions from global livestock: 7.1 Gigatonnes of Co2-equiv per year, representing __14.5 percent of all anthropogenic GHG emissions__. This figure is in line FAO’s previous assessment, Livestock’s Long Shadow, published in 2006, although it is based on a much more detailed analysis and improved data sets. The two figures cannot be accurately compared, as reference periods and sources differ. > About __44 percent of livestock emissions are in the form of methane__ (CH4). The remaining part is almost equally shared between Nitrous Dioxide (N2O, 29 percent) and Carbon Dioxide (CO2, 27 percent). http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/ Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations .44 * 14.5 = 6.38%

abainbridge 9y ago

> My understanding is that around half of the world's greenhouse gas comes from livestock That's not right. The highest number I've been able to find for the whole of agriculture is 24% of world greenhouse gas emissions. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... About 25% of that is methane from livestock (http://old.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-agriculture-and-land-use_12b0# http://old.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/greenhouse-gas-emissi...) So livestock is about 6% of total greenhouse gas emissions.

nothrabannosir 9y ago
As far as I can see, those references do not mention whether they have corrected for the fact that methane is a ~20x more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Are they counting per volume or per potency? That is an incredibly important distinction. Which, to be honest, they should have made, one way or the other.
- Chris_Jay 9y ago
  Potency is typically assumed in the industry, the volume of methane is trivial compared to volume of CO2.
- rbkillea 9y ago
  They are in the units "greenhouse gas emissions" which corrects for the extra potency. The sad thing is that people often double-correct for such things.
sdenton4 9y ago
Random Gaurdian story puts methane : "Methane accounted for about 16% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2015, according to the IPCC." (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/29/methane-emissions-cattle-11-percent-higher-than-estimated https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/29/methane-...) Wikipedia puts (with some question about the citation) methan at 4-9% of total greenhouse effect contribution, and CO2 at 9-26%. (And then water vapor way above that, at 36-72%.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Greenhouse_gases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Greenhouse_gase...
- samstave 9y ago
  How are we producing water vapor more than say clouds?
  - sdenton4 9y ago
    I think the table is attributing greenhouse to gases generally, not to man-made gases; as a result, water vapor wins. (OTOH, turning clouds into drinking water at scale would be a cool way to fight global warming and deal with drought at the same time. My understanding is that storm seeding has a pretty seedy history, though.)
konschubert 9y ago
One also has to consider that the methane decays over a matter of decades. Other than CO2, which stays in the atmosphere until it is taken out. So, even if methane takes a big share in current greenhouse emissions, its share in the accumulated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will be lower. The climate change it causes is temporary. (Disregarding runaway effects.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane
- Retric 9y ago
  Methane contains carbon so it's not 100% temporary just mostly.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- skosch 9y ago
  Decades – we don't have decades to fix this. Also, it decays into CO2, so to claim that its effects are temporary is misleading. On top of that, as long as the carbon is in a CH4 bond, it traps at least 20× as much radiation. Please don't dismiss the significance of methane emissions.
  - samstave 9y ago
    We should he focusing on plastics rather than methane.
  - Jach 9y ago
    How many years do we have to fix this then? Alternatively, at what point will activists start saying we passed the point of no fix and give up their activism?
    - marssaxman 9y ago
      I got to that point 3-4 years ago, personally. Even if it were economically and technically possible to get our act together, it has become entirely clear that the political system is incapable of acting quickly enough.

WillReplyfFood 9y ago

Half of the worlds greenhouse gases? The agri-culture industry has to suffer as a scape-goat for the car and power industry. I m so sick of this pseudo religion/blame industry that has sprung up around agri-culture. No matter what they say, this carbon emissioned was in the cycle and once diggested by humans and returned to the fields, gets back into the cycle. Do not look at total emission-numbers but new-emission numbers. The only place where there are new-emissions, if you burn down rain-forrest to herd cattle or create synthetic fertilizer. If hitler where alive and the holocaust debatted, he would have some third "neutral" press agency post statistics today, that in the overall history of jewish death reasons, national-socialism is a absolute minor cause compared to cancer, car-accidents - and voila debate shift archieved. Again this should be fineable to a point, where its for big companys no longer interesting to have the public misled. PS: Overall good for the planet would be if cattle farming ceased entirely and beef would be replaced by synthetic proteien.

lozenge 9y ago

Your figure is from cowspiracy - it's worth looking up the film to discover its many other inaccuracies. https://newint.org/blog/2016/02/10/cowspiracy-stampeding-in-the-wrong-direction https://newint.org/blog/2016/02/10/cowspiracy-stampeding-in-...

slfnflctd 9y ago
Excellent article, thank you for linking it. I love and appreciate my vegan friends (have been one in the past, might be again in the future), but they need to be realistic about convincing others to change deeply-ingrained eating habits. Short of an apocalyptic event, you could spend 100% of your spare time and energy trying to get people to stop eating meat and you'd be lucky to get a dozen lasting conversions. It's simply not an effective use of resources to make that your main/only focus.
- skosch 9y ago
  The economics of veggie proselytism actually look pretty good. Animal Charity Evaluators found that for every $11 spent in online ads, you could make one person go to a website, sign up with their email, and pledge to go vegetarian for a year. The average vegetarian [1] produces 1.5 metric tons less CO2eq per year, so this means that the online ads decrease carbon at a cost of $7.40 per ton. That's cheaper than buying typical carbon offset certificates ($10-$15 per ton). Maybe it's too optimistic to assume that everyone who makes a pledge on the website actually stays vegetarian for a year, or that they were average-level meat consumers before. Still, animal farming is bad enough that reducing it is probably cost-competitive with other current CO2 reduction approaches. [1] I'm not sure if their use of "vegetarian" means "completely vegan".
  - tnorthcutt 9y ago
    I don't understand your math. Wouldn't you need to look at the difference in CO2eq between an average non-vegetarian and vegetarian?
    - 9y ago

IncRnd 9y ago

Can anyone provide a sense of scale and impact if these results were to hold and if the majority of the world beef production were to switch to it? Yes. According to the numbers of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, this would be about a 6.4% reduction in total green house gas emissions. See below for the numbers > Total emissions from global livestock: 7.1 Gigatonnes of Co2-equiv per year, representing __14.5 percent of all anthropogenic GHG emissions__. This figure is in line FAO’s previous assessment, Livestock’s Long Shadow, published in 2006, although it is based on a much more detailed analysis and improved data sets. The two figures cannot be accurately compared, as reference periods and sources differ. > About __44 percent of livestock emissions are in the form of methane__ (CH4). The remaining part is almost equally shared between Nitrous Dioxide (N2O, 29 percent) and Carbon Dioxide (CO2, 27 percent). http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/ Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations .44 * 14.5 = 6.38%