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I truly don't understand the methane issue. Historically worldwide the # of ungulates is probably well below historical averages. It looks like today we have

I truly don't understand the methane issue. Historically worldwide the # of ungulates is probably well below historical averages. It looks like today we have around 98 million head of cattle in the US. Historically we had bison in excess of conservatively 60 million. This doesn't even begin to count all the animals in Africa. Overall wide life is declining. https://www.statista.com/statistics/194297/total-number-of-cattle-and-calves-in-the-us--since-2001/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/194297/total-number-of-c... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison The point is the amount of large mammal farts, it appears to be burps, going on now is probably not that much higher than it always has been. We have merely swapped out one large untamed mammal for a more domesticated one. EDIT: I should point out I am not advocating for more cows. I don't think we should be clear cutting forests to raise more of them. Yet I don't think we should be running to get rid of all of them either. Historically beef was quite expensive and was usually reserved for rare occasions or the very wealthy. I can see a path forward where we keep the herd size constant and let prices rise. This would obviously drive people to look for cheaper substitutes.

mikepurvis 6y ago
> large mammal farts going on now is probably not that much higher than it always has been I believe a big part of it has to do with the feedlot diet— when they're eating a high-calorie diet of mostly corn/grain instead of their natural diet of grass, it puts their digestive system into overdrive. EDIT: I looked into it a bit more after posting this, and it looks like it's not clear-cut— for example, it takes a cow a lot longer to reach slaughter weight eating grass, so even if they're belching less during that time, it's a long enough time that it may be a wash, or even worse: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/climate/beef-cattle-methane.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/climate/beef-cattle-metha... EDIT 2: Here's a piece which makes the original case, acknowledging greater direct emissions but claiming a savings that makes up for it from soil sequestration due to grazing: http://newzealmeats.com/blog/grain-fed-vs-grass-fed-beef-greenhouse-gas-emissions/ http://newzealmeats.com/blog/grain-fed-vs-grass-fed-beef-gre...
- DamnYuppie 6y ago
  You are better at research than I am. I was wondering the same thing once I read your comment.
- twobitshifter 6y ago
  The corn consumed by cattle includes the corn stalks which are more or less the same as consuming grass. Corn is after all in the grass family. The actual kernels of corn increase the calories versus grass, but it’s not like cows are just eating corn off the cob all day long. They need to consume tons of roughage to help with their digestion. I think a good argument is that converting grain and grass to beef is inefficient - if you could have consumed the grain yourself, but the nice thing about cows is that they convert very low calorie foods into high calorie meat that we can consume. If we had to eat what cows do, we’d be chewing all day.
  - sjtindell 6y ago
    It is well documented that once cows are switched to the pure corn diets we now feed them, their health starts immediately declining and they start dying. Factory farms time it so that they grow up on grass and similar, then are switched to grain to fatten them, and are slaughtered before becoming too ill. There are many unhealthy modifications made to their diet and environment to force them to consume corn. This is detailed lots of places including the book The Omnivores Dilemma. The whole book is essentially about corn and what a horror show industrial agriculture/meat is.
    - ricardobeat 6y ago
      Most countries in the world are not all-in on intensive farming like the US though.
      - mvc 6y ago
        Not yet but that's the way the wind is blowing
    - 6y ago
tmpz22 6y ago
If we can reduce any source with little to no consequences we should do it. The point is we're over capacity because we've added petroleum and other sources, namely large container ships that aren't going to be constrained anytime soon.
AlexandrB 6y ago
This would only be relevant if all other things were equal. If we can cut methane emissions to below "historical averages" it will at least buy us some time to get CO2 emissions in check.
rictic 6y ago
Every greenhouse gas counts, whether it's part of the preexisting baseline or something recent we started emitting. The goal isn't a return to how things were, the goal is to keep the temperature from climbing too high too quickly.
- stickyricky 6y ago
  The point of keeping the climate stable is to _prevent_ biomass loss.
- jb_gericke 6y ago
  So let's aim to reduce the source that emits the least and get to transport and industry later?
  - rictic 6y ago
    Some problems you can fix in one place and be done with it. Harder problems you gotta work them every place you can make a difference. If livestock accounts for 14% of greenhouse gas, that seems like a viable angle of attack.
  - ChrisRR 6y ago
    Let's aim to do them all. Cows and cars are different businesses which can be managed independently and simultaneously
xnx 6y ago
Burps, not farts, are the primary source of methane: https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/33/which-is-a-bigger-methane-source-cow-belching-or-cow-flatulence/ https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/33/which-is-a-bigger-methane-so...
- dwd 6y ago
  There's already a solution in the works... https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/flatulent-cows-no-longer-on-the-nose-with-seaweed-solution-to-climate-problem-20210106-p56s2j.html https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/flatulent-...
  - wyre 6y ago
    For this to scale properly it would need to rely on creating a new market for seaweed farms with the purpose of sending to feedlots. I have a hard time imagining this actually happening.
    - dwd 6y ago
      Pricing it appropriately would be key, and a price on carbon emissions the obvious solution - and the market should respond.
jdavis703 6y ago
It’s not just cow farts. Raising and killing a whole cow is an inefficient way to extract calories from plants. Even chicken would be more efficient.
- DamnYuppie 6y ago
  My understanding is that cooked meat has much higher caloric value than vegetables. To be honest if it wasn't so good for us we wouldn't have evolved to consume it!
  - wyre 6y ago
    Cows need to eat thousands of pounds of plants before they are at a size to get slaughtered and prepared as food. Humans evolved to eat meat as a way to survive through winter. Early diets relied heavily on gathered foods.
    - smegger001 6y ago
      how much of that was human edible callories? free grazing cattle will eat plant humans won't/can't. there is alot of land thats used for grazing that is not suitable for planting crops for a variety of reasons.
      - dashundchen 6y ago
        The vast majority of cattle are not grazing - instead they are fed farmed grain and soy in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO if you want to search it) where the density of animals is far greater than grazing would ever support. Essentially most of that soy and corn in the American midwest and the clearcut Amazon are being raised to fatten cattle, not feed people - and it takes a lot of energy to do that.
      - astura 6y ago
        Except we aren't doing that, the demand for (cheap) beef far, far exceeds the supply of beef that could be made with just grazing land.
contravariant 6y ago
The best I can figure out there has been a massive increase in global methane levels in the last millenia or so. I suppose we could argue about the source but livestock is the most obvious candidate. Edit: Okay turns out fossil fuels are also responsible fro some non-negligible part of the methane emissions, and it's not just livestock but all agriculture and the resulting waste.
mleonhard 6y ago
Today we are not choosing between raising meat animals and restoring land to its pre-industrialization state. So the original GHG emission rate of ancient animals is not important to our decision. We are choosing between raising meat animals and raising crops. Therefore the GHG emissions rate of modern meat animals is important.
telchar 6y ago
Prior to the industrial revolution the CO2 in the atmosphere was significantly less than today, around or under 250 ppm, so a bit of methane wasn't a problem. Now even the same amount of methane when added to the 410 or so ppm CO2 we have today and it becomes a problem. Of we can reduce atmospheric methane it takes off a bit of the pressure on us to reduce CO2 levels.
pcrh 6y ago
You have a very good point! I has also been shown that under the right conditions grazing lands can actually sequester carbon [1]. So there is no a priori argument against meat from the point of view of climate effects, though there are obviously better and worse practices. [1] http://www.fao.org/3/i1880e/i1880e00.htm http://www.fao.org/3/i1880e/i1880e00.htm
- bjoli 6y ago
  The area needed for that kind of farming is prohibitively large if we want to sustain current levels of consumption, though. Those bison the parent poster talks about moved over a pretty darn huge area: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_bison_belt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_bison_belt
h0l0cube 6y ago
> I truly don't understand the methane issue. Historically worldwide the # of ungulates is probably well below historical averages. It's more that this wasn't so much a problem until we added the 80%+ other emissions on top (and the deforestation/water use/transportation/diversion of food crops/human population).
zests 6y ago
Think about it. Cows release carbon based green house gasses. Where does that carbon originally come from? Plants absorbing carbon based green house gasses. I'm not saying that they cancel out, but there must be some consumption of carbon from the atmosphere in order for cows to produce carbon. If you're an environmentalist trying to convince people to support your cause, you aren't going to talk about the carbon that raising cows removes from the air. You're only going to mention the carbon that gets put back in the atmosphere. That way, the problem seems like a bigger deal. This is not a slight on environmentalists -- its just politics.
- matkoniecz 6y ago
  Note conversion of C02 into methane. If methane has bigger effect than the same amount of coal within C02 then your argument fails. > While CO2 persists in the atmosphere for centuries, or even millennia, methane warms the planet on steroids for a decade or two before decaying to CO2. > In those short decades, methane warms the planet by 86 times as much as CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-greenhouse-gas-is-methane/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-gree...
  - lurgburg 6y ago
    A somewhat surprising corollary: if you have methane and you can burn it, it's better to do that than vent it directly. (Of course, better still to leave it in the ground, if that's where your methane is coming from...)
    - nightski 6y ago
      Natural gas burns cleanly and is very effective at heating homes and water. While there are problems with leakage, it's a huge step up from burning coal & oil.
    - lovemenot 6y ago
      @nightski Yes, natural gas is about half as bad as burning oil and one third as bad as coal in terms of energy output per tonne of CO2 emitted. Although methane is usually the largest component, natural gas is typically a mixture of methane, propane and butane. So not quite the came as cow burps.
m3at 6y ago
Wild life mammals are simply negligible compared to our livestock: https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/
- fireattack 6y ago
  I'm surprised by the number of sheep. At least I thought the number for pig would be larger.
lr4444lr 6y ago
From what I read, the contribution of factory farming feed is substantial. Dunno what bison and African wildlife were eating but cows fed a diet that had even a small amount of kelp reduced the methane in their flatus substantially.
runarberg 6y ago
I’m gonna guess that wild grazers get predated on by a much more varied species than just carbon polluting humans and their domesticated wolfs. In the wild a bison might get eaten by a pack of wolfs or it might live long and die of old age and be eaten by a host of different scavenges, as well as insects and fungi. All supplying other niches in the ecosystem. I’m guessing that in the wild the methane that gets emitted by grazing herd animals is offset somewhere else in the ecosystem by the niches which these animals create by their behavior. It might be that allocating all of these grazing animals for just one species destroys most other parts of ecosystems which would otherwise have adjusted for the greenhouse gasses emitted by them. Or who knows, maybe we fluctuate between warm periods in our ice ages because enough grazing animals have farted enough to start a runaway global warming effects... though I doubt it.
yourabstraction 6y ago
I think a lot of what you're saying makes sense. People tend to lump all types of raising cows together, when it's really only the factory farming type or rainforest clearing kind that needs to be stopped. There's a tremendous amount of dry or hilly land that isn't suitable for other types of agriculture, so it really makes sense to raise cattle on these lands in low density. I drive by a lot of these places regularly, and seeing cows on them looks extremely natural and the animals seem very content. So we should outlaw factory farming and clearing rainforest for cattle, which will drastically cut the supply and allow prices to settle much higher so it's more of a luxury than an every day thing.
- hef19898 6y ago
  It's worth noting that rain forest is also cleared for palm and soy. I have yet to see a concise study comparing CO2 and general environmental impact of large soy plantations and meat farms. And I totally support getting rif of industrial style meat farms and production.
  - Vinnl 6y ago
    Of course, if most of that soy is going to feed cattle, then maybe it should be counted towards cattle's impact - especially when that soy could feed many more humans than the cattle that eats it does.
abalone 6y ago
This is so misinformed. Much cattle production is in South America yet you cite only US figures which is less than 10% of headcount.[1] Even the US bison figures you cite predate the massive rise in industrial CO2 emissions, greatly reducing our budget. And you claim “wild life” is declining without sources — commercial cattle still number > 1B worldwide. > One item worth noting is that the decline in U.S. inventory since 2008 – 3.1 million beef cows – has been met with an opposite expansion in Brazil of almost 4 million beef cows during the same period. [1] https://www.progressivecattle.com/topics/management/what-us-should-know-about-south-american-beef-production https://www.progressivecattle.com/topics/management/what-us-...
- Talanes 6y ago
  >Even the US bison figures you cite predate the massive rise in industrial CO2 emissions, greatly reducing our budget "Cows are a major driver of climate change" and "Cows are the part of the CO2 budget that is most expendable" are related, but not quite equivalent arguments.
- DrBazza 6y ago
  Don't forget the human race also nicely made extinct a whole bunch of mega fauna around in the world. In South America, for example, toxodons, which were the most common ungulate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_American_animals_extinct_in_the_Holocene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_American_animals...
  - wizzard 6y ago
    I just clicked through that link and there are several hypotheses for what caused the extinction of these animals. You state it was humans alone as if this were fact.
ssijak 6y ago
Other problem is forest and jungle clearings to make land for cattle farming. Mostly in Brazil in Amazon but elsewere too.
shafyy 6y ago
Sorry, but there are around 1.5 BILLION cattle in the world, and 300 million are estimated to be slaughtered each year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle
madacol 6y ago
TL;DR: Including land use and crops production, livestock and fisheries account for ~15% of GHG emmissions. You might want to read this https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food#where-do-the-emissions-from-our-food-come-from https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food#whe... and maybe this too https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#food-production-is-responsible-for-one-quarter-of-the-world-s-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#food-producti... Highlights: > there are massive differences in the GHG emissions of different foods: producing a kilogram of beef emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gases (CO2-equivalents). While peas emits just 1 kilogram per kg. > For most foods – and particularly the largest emitters – most GHG emissions result from land use change (shown in green), and from processes at the farm stage (brown). Farm-stage emissions include processes such as the application of fertilizers – both organic (“manure management”) and synthetic; and enteric fermentation (the production of methane in the stomachs of cattle). Combined, land use and farm-stage emissions account for more than 80% of the footprint for most foods. > Food is responsible for approximately 26% of global GHG emissions. > Livestock & fisheries account for 31% of food emissions ... This 31% of emissions relates to on-farm ‘production’ emissions only: it does not include land use change or supply chain emissions from the production of crops for animal feed: these figures are included separately in the other categories. > 21% of food’s emissions comes from crop production for direct human consumption, and 6% comes from the production of animal feed. > Land use accounts for 24% of food emissions. Twice as many emissions result from land use for livestock (16%) as for crops for human consumption (8%). So including land use and crops production, livestock and fisheries account for ~15% of GHG emmissions
bjoli 6y ago
The ecosystem the bison were a part of sequestered carbon. They moved over a huge area and grazed just enough for the soil to store carbon. Intensive farming depletes the soil, actually releasing co2 into the air. I don't know why most people replying to you have failed to point this out. Game meat is generally CO2e neutral. You can of course still find cow meat that comes from farming that sequester enough co2 to mitigate or offset the emissions, but that kind of production would not sustain current consumption levels. In my home country, very few areas are suitable for intensive grazing from a sequesterin POW. Only about 10% of the current land used for grazing animals sequester any meaningful amount of CO2. oh, and I saw someone posted the xkcd comic as a reply to you. That one is pretty telling.
joshxyz 6y ago
Iirc dinosaur farts caused the ice age [citation needed].
PeteZa 6y ago
Apologies for linking to reddit but the full paper is available, not just the summary. https://reddit.com/r/zerocarb/comments/lz9wj8/incredible_new_science_paper_from_miki_bendor_ran/ https://reddit.com/r/zerocarb/comments/lz9wj8/incredible_new... This paper shows that humans are evolutionary carnivores. There are 25 points ranging from various fields in science. Our increased brain sizes and large fat stores in comparison to other primates are just some of the clues. We have different colon/intestine ratios because we spend less time fermenting plants and simply digest meats better. Our higher pH in our stomachs also points to it. Yes, we can eat plants. But it's not optimal. And we're worse at doing it than our evolutionary cousins.

mikepurvis 6y ago

> large mammal farts going on now is probably not that much higher than it always has been I believe a big part of it has to do with the feedlot diet— when they're eating a high-calorie diet of mostly corn/grain instead of their natural diet of grass, it puts their digestive system into overdrive. EDIT: I looked into it a bit more after posting this, and it looks like it's not clear-cut— for example, it takes a cow a lot longer to reach slaughter weight eating grass, so even if they're belching less during that time, it's a long enough time that it may be a wash, or even worse: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/climate/beef-cattle-methane.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/climate/beef-cattle-metha... EDIT 2: Here's a piece which makes the original case, acknowledging greater direct emissions but claiming a savings that makes up for it from soil sequestration due to grazing: http://newzealmeats.com/blog/grain-fed-vs-grass-fed-beef-greenhouse-gas-emissions/ http://newzealmeats.com/blog/grain-fed-vs-grass-fed-beef-gre...

DamnYuppie 6y ago
You are better at research than I am. I was wondering the same thing once I read your comment.
twobitshifter 6y ago
The corn consumed by cattle includes the corn stalks which are more or less the same as consuming grass. Corn is after all in the grass family. The actual kernels of corn increase the calories versus grass, but it’s not like cows are just eating corn off the cob all day long. They need to consume tons of roughage to help with their digestion. I think a good argument is that converting grain and grass to beef is inefficient - if you could have consumed the grain yourself, but the nice thing about cows is that they convert very low calorie foods into high calorie meat that we can consume. If we had to eat what cows do, we’d be chewing all day.
- sjtindell 6y ago
  It is well documented that once cows are switched to the pure corn diets we now feed them, their health starts immediately declining and they start dying. Factory farms time it so that they grow up on grass and similar, then are switched to grain to fatten them, and are slaughtered before becoming too ill. There are many unhealthy modifications made to their diet and environment to force them to consume corn. This is detailed lots of places including the book The Omnivores Dilemma. The whole book is essentially about corn and what a horror show industrial agriculture/meat is.
  - ricardobeat 6y ago
    Most countries in the world are not all-in on intensive farming like the US though.
    - mvc 6y ago
      Not yet but that's the way the wind is blowing
  - 6y ago

tmpz22 6y ago

If we can reduce any source with little to no consequences we should do it. The point is we're over capacity because we've added petroleum and other sources, namely large container ships that aren't going to be constrained anytime soon.

AlexandrB 6y ago

This would only be relevant if all other things were equal. If we can cut methane emissions to below "historical averages" it will at least buy us some time to get CO2 emissions in check.

rictic 6y ago

Every greenhouse gas counts, whether it's part of the preexisting baseline or something recent we started emitting. The goal isn't a return to how things were, the goal is to keep the temperature from climbing too high too quickly.

stickyricky 6y ago
The point of keeping the climate stable is to _prevent_ biomass loss.
jb_gericke 6y ago
So let's aim to reduce the source that emits the least and get to transport and industry later?
- rictic 6y ago
  Some problems you can fix in one place and be done with it. Harder problems you gotta work them every place you can make a difference. If livestock accounts for 14% of greenhouse gas, that seems like a viable angle of attack.
- ChrisRR 6y ago
  Let's aim to do them all. Cows and cars are different businesses which can be managed independently and simultaneously

xnx 6y ago

Burps, not farts, are the primary source of methane: https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/33/which-is-a-bigger-methane-source-cow-belching-or-cow-flatulence/ https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/33/which-is-a-bigger-methane-so...

dwd 6y ago
There's already a solution in the works... https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/flatulent-cows-no-longer-on-the-nose-with-seaweed-solution-to-climate-problem-20210106-p56s2j.html https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/flatulent-...
- wyre 6y ago
  For this to scale properly it would need to rely on creating a new market for seaweed farms with the purpose of sending to feedlots. I have a hard time imagining this actually happening.
  - dwd 6y ago
    Pricing it appropriately would be key, and a price on carbon emissions the obvious solution - and the market should respond.

jdavis703 6y ago

It’s not just cow farts. Raising and killing a whole cow is an inefficient way to extract calories from plants. Even chicken would be more efficient.

DamnYuppie 6y ago
My understanding is that cooked meat has much higher caloric value than vegetables. To be honest if it wasn't so good for us we wouldn't have evolved to consume it!
- wyre 6y ago
  Cows need to eat thousands of pounds of plants before they are at a size to get slaughtered and prepared as food. Humans evolved to eat meat as a way to survive through winter. Early diets relied heavily on gathered foods.
  - smegger001 6y ago
    how much of that was human edible callories? free grazing cattle will eat plant humans won't/can't. there is alot of land thats used for grazing that is not suitable for planting crops for a variety of reasons.
    - dashundchen 6y ago
      The vast majority of cattle are not grazing - instead they are fed farmed grain and soy in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO if you want to search it) where the density of animals is far greater than grazing would ever support. Essentially most of that soy and corn in the American midwest and the clearcut Amazon are being raised to fatten cattle, not feed people - and it takes a lot of energy to do that.
    - astura 6y ago
      Except we aren't doing that, the demand for (cheap) beef far, far exceeds the supply of beef that could be made with just grazing land.

contravariant 6y ago

The best I can figure out there has been a massive increase in global methane levels in the last millenia or so. I suppose we could argue about the source but livestock is the most obvious candidate. Edit: Okay turns out fossil fuels are also responsible fro some non-negligible part of the methane emissions, and it's not just livestock but all agriculture and the resulting waste.

mleonhard 6y ago

Today we are not choosing between raising meat animals and restoring land to its pre-industrialization state. So the original GHG emission rate of ancient animals is not important to our decision. We are choosing between raising meat animals and raising crops. Therefore the GHG emissions rate of modern meat animals is important.

telchar 6y ago

Prior to the industrial revolution the CO2 in the atmosphere was significantly less than today, around or under 250 ppm, so a bit of methane wasn't a problem. Now even the same amount of methane when added to the 410 or so ppm CO2 we have today and it becomes a problem. Of we can reduce atmospheric methane it takes off a bit of the pressure on us to reduce CO2 levels.

pcrh 6y ago

You have a very good point! I has also been shown that under the right conditions grazing lands can actually sequester carbon [1]. So there is no a priori argument against meat from the point of view of climate effects, though there are obviously better and worse practices. [1] http://www.fao.org/3/i1880e/i1880e00.htm http://www.fao.org/3/i1880e/i1880e00.htm

bjoli 6y ago
The area needed for that kind of farming is prohibitively large if we want to sustain current levels of consumption, though. Those bison the parent poster talks about moved over a pretty darn huge area: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_bison_belt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_bison_belt

h0l0cube 6y ago

> I truly don't understand the methane issue. Historically worldwide the # of ungulates is probably well below historical averages. It's more that this wasn't so much a problem until we added the 80%+ other emissions on top (and the deforestation/water use/transportation/diversion of food crops/human population).

zests 6y ago

Think about it. Cows release carbon based green house gasses. Where does that carbon originally come from? Plants absorbing carbon based green house gasses. I'm not saying that they cancel out, but there must be some consumption of carbon from the atmosphere in order for cows to produce carbon. If you're an environmentalist trying to convince people to support your cause, you aren't going to talk about the carbon that raising cows removes from the air. You're only going to mention the carbon that gets put back in the atmosphere. That way, the problem seems like a bigger deal. This is not a slight on environmentalists -- its just politics.

matkoniecz 6y ago
Note conversion of C02 into methane. If methane has bigger effect than the same amount of coal within C02 then your argument fails. > While CO2 persists in the atmosphere for centuries, or even millennia, methane warms the planet on steroids for a decade or two before decaying to CO2. > In those short decades, methane warms the planet by 86 times as much as CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-greenhouse-gas-is-methane/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-gree...
- lurgburg 6y ago
  A somewhat surprising corollary: if you have methane and you can burn it, it's better to do that than vent it directly. (Of course, better still to leave it in the ground, if that's where your methane is coming from...)
  - nightski 6y ago
    Natural gas burns cleanly and is very effective at heating homes and water. While there are problems with leakage, it's a huge step up from burning coal & oil.
  - lovemenot 6y ago
    @nightski Yes, natural gas is about half as bad as burning oil and one third as bad as coal in terms of energy output per tonne of CO2 emitted. Although methane is usually the largest component, natural gas is typically a mixture of methane, propane and butane. So not quite the came as cow burps.

m3at 6y ago

Wild life mammals are simply negligible compared to our livestock: https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/

fireattack 6y ago
I'm surprised by the number of sheep. At least I thought the number for pig would be larger.

lr4444lr 6y ago

From what I read, the contribution of factory farming feed is substantial. Dunno what bison and African wildlife were eating but cows fed a diet that had even a small amount of kelp reduced the methane in their flatus substantially.

runarberg 6y ago

I’m gonna guess that wild grazers get predated on by a much more varied species than just carbon polluting humans and their domesticated wolfs. In the wild a bison might get eaten by a pack of wolfs or it might live long and die of old age and be eaten by a host of different scavenges, as well as insects and fungi. All supplying other niches in the ecosystem. I’m guessing that in the wild the methane that gets emitted by grazing herd animals is offset somewhere else in the ecosystem by the niches which these animals create by their behavior. It might be that allocating all of these grazing animals for just one species destroys most other parts of ecosystems which would otherwise have adjusted for the greenhouse gasses emitted by them. Or who knows, maybe we fluctuate between warm periods in our ice ages because enough grazing animals have farted enough to start a runaway global warming effects... though I doubt it.

yourabstraction 6y ago

I think a lot of what you're saying makes sense. People tend to lump all types of raising cows together, when it's really only the factory farming type or rainforest clearing kind that needs to be stopped. There's a tremendous amount of dry or hilly land that isn't suitable for other types of agriculture, so it really makes sense to raise cattle on these lands in low density. I drive by a lot of these places regularly, and seeing cows on them looks extremely natural and the animals seem very content. So we should outlaw factory farming and clearing rainforest for cattle, which will drastically cut the supply and allow prices to settle much higher so it's more of a luxury than an every day thing.

hef19898 6y ago
It's worth noting that rain forest is also cleared for palm and soy. I have yet to see a concise study comparing CO2 and general environmental impact of large soy plantations and meat farms. And I totally support getting rif of industrial style meat farms and production.
- Vinnl 6y ago
  Of course, if most of that soy is going to feed cattle, then maybe it should be counted towards cattle's impact - especially when that soy could feed many more humans than the cattle that eats it does.

abalone 6y ago

This is so misinformed. Much cattle production is in South America yet you cite only US figures which is less than 10% of headcount.[1] Even the US bison figures you cite predate the massive rise in industrial CO2 emissions, greatly reducing our budget. And you claim “wild life” is declining without sources — commercial cattle still number > 1B worldwide. > One item worth noting is that the decline in U.S. inventory since 2008 – 3.1 million beef cows – has been met with an opposite expansion in Brazil of almost 4 million beef cows during the same period. [1] https://www.progressivecattle.com/topics/management/what-us-should-know-about-south-american-beef-production https://www.progressivecattle.com/topics/management/what-us-...

Talanes 6y ago
>Even the US bison figures you cite predate the massive rise in industrial CO2 emissions, greatly reducing our budget "Cows are a major driver of climate change" and "Cows are the part of the CO2 budget that is most expendable" are related, but not quite equivalent arguments.
DrBazza 6y ago
Don't forget the human race also nicely made extinct a whole bunch of mega fauna around in the world. In South America, for example, toxodons, which were the most common ungulate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_American_animals_extinct_in_the_Holocene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_American_animals...
- wizzard 6y ago
  I just clicked through that link and there are several hypotheses for what caused the extinction of these animals. You state it was humans alone as if this were fact.

ssijak 6y ago

Other problem is forest and jungle clearings to make land for cattle farming. Mostly in Brazil in Amazon but elsewere too.

shafyy 6y ago

Sorry, but there are around 1.5 BILLION cattle in the world, and 300 million are estimated to be slaughtered each year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle

madacol 6y ago

TL;DR: Including land use and crops production, livestock and fisheries account for ~15% of GHG emmissions. You might want to read this https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food#where-do-the-emissions-from-our-food-come-from https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food#whe... and maybe this too https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#food-production-is-responsible-for-one-quarter-of-the-world-s-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#food-producti... Highlights: > there are massive differences in the GHG emissions of different foods: producing a kilogram of beef emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gases (CO2-equivalents). While peas emits just 1 kilogram per kg. > For most foods – and particularly the largest emitters – most GHG emissions result from land use change (shown in green), and from processes at the farm stage (brown). Farm-stage emissions include processes such as the application of fertilizers – both organic (“manure management”) and synthetic; and enteric fermentation (the production of methane in the stomachs of cattle). Combined, land use and farm-stage emissions account for more than 80% of the footprint for most foods. > Food is responsible for approximately 26% of global GHG emissions. > Livestock & fisheries account for 31% of food emissions ... This 31% of emissions relates to on-farm ‘production’ emissions only: it does not include land use change or supply chain emissions from the production of crops for animal feed: these figures are included separately in the other categories. > 21% of food’s emissions comes from crop production for direct human consumption, and 6% comes from the production of animal feed. > Land use accounts for 24% of food emissions. Twice as many emissions result from land use for livestock (16%) as for crops for human consumption (8%). So including land use and crops production, livestock and fisheries account for ~15% of GHG emmissions

bjoli 6y ago

The ecosystem the bison were a part of sequestered carbon. They moved over a huge area and grazed just enough for the soil to store carbon. Intensive farming depletes the soil, actually releasing co2 into the air. I don't know why most people replying to you have failed to point this out. Game meat is generally CO2e neutral. You can of course still find cow meat that comes from farming that sequester enough co2 to mitigate or offset the emissions, but that kind of production would not sustain current consumption levels. In my home country, very few areas are suitable for intensive grazing from a sequesterin POW. Only about 10% of the current land used for grazing animals sequester any meaningful amount of CO2. oh, and I saw someone posted the xkcd comic as a reply to you. That one is pretty telling.

joshxyz 6y ago

Iirc dinosaur farts caused the ice age [citation needed].

PeteZa 6y ago

Apologies for linking to reddit but the full paper is available, not just the summary. https://reddit.com/r/zerocarb/comments/lz9wj8/incredible_new_science_paper_from_miki_bendor_ran/ https://reddit.com/r/zerocarb/comments/lz9wj8/incredible_new... This paper shows that humans are evolutionary carnivores. There are 25 points ranging from various fields in science. Our increased brain sizes and large fat stores in comparison to other primates are just some of the clues. We have different colon/intestine ratios because we spend less time fermenting plants and simply digest meats better. Our higher pH in our stomachs also points to it. Yes, we can eat plants. But it's not optimal. And we're worse at doing it than our evolutionary cousins.