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Beef isn't bad for the climate any more than the cattle that were present before humankind showed up to invent livestock. Cattle eats plants that largely obtai
by ravenstine 4y ago
Beef isn't bad for the climate any more than the cattle that were present before humankind showed up to invent livestock. Cattle eats plants that largely obtain their carbon from the atmosphere. They emit CO2 and methane, the latter of which degrades after ~12 years forming CO2, meaning cattle has and always been a part of the atmospheric carbon cycle. The only aspect of livestock that can be bad for the climate is the fossil fuels used in the transportation of live animals and slaughtered animal meat.
Yeah, no shit is using fossil fuels, which unleashes carbon from earth's crust, is worse for the environment than beef.
Of course that's not really something the author of this article from The Register is even considering. Even the paper seems to treat all CO2 emissions as identically damaging to the climate, which is counterscientific.
- neuralRiot 4y ago> Beef isn't bad for the climate any more than the cattle that were present before humankind showed up to invent livestock. That is without taking in account that there are 1 billion cows around the world today, eating 10x the necessary soy/ corn, drinking water, pissing and shitting a soup of antibiotics and harmful bacteria. All this with what purpose?
- barbazoo 4y ago> cattle has and always been a part of the atmospheric carbon cycle Could that be ignoring the the sheer number of cattle used in industrial beef production? https://www.statista.com/statistics/263979/global-cattle-population-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/263979/global-cattle-pop...
- cassianoleal 4y agoAssuming GP is correct, why would the number of cattle make much of a difference? If the carbon emitted by them was previously removed from the same atmosphere that's receiving them, isn't this a well balanced system where no new carbon reaches the atmosphere?
- glutamate 4y agoPlants don't absorb methane emissions.
- barbazoo 4y agoTrue, no new carbon is added to the atmosphere. Methane as a GHG is worse for the environment though afaik.
- cassianoleal 4y agoI see. So is the problem with the volume of cattle that there's a lot more methane built-up before it's able to break down? Are there good numbers on that? I believe so far everything I've read adds up everything and muddies the water a bit.
- glutamate 4y agothere's a lot more cattle now that it is raised industrially on deforested land. For example, the UK was entirely covered in largely impenetrable forest before the roman invasion, and only when the vikings showed up with the iron axe was land cleared for farming.