3 ms·
> I don't think your conclusion that this loop doesn't accelerate the greenhouse effect is correct It's not like mammalian herbivores are a recent invention. I
by ftrobro 3y ago
> I don't think your conclusion that this loop doesn't accelerate the greenhouse effect is correct
It's not like mammalian herbivores are a recent invention. If a constant amount of mammalian herbivores in the world would cause a constant acceleration of greenhouse effect then the greenhouse effect would have increased exponentially for millions of years already. That has not been the case.
If you increase the number of mammalian herbivores in the world then the greenhouse effect will increase for about a decade because of increasing levels of methane. After a decade, the methane level (and therefore the greenhouse effect) will have found a new (higher) equilibrium and no longer increase.
- phtrivier 3y agoIt's not new, but the number has hardly stayed constant, since at some point humanity started mass herding. And, also, we kinda quadrupled the cheptel size in 50 years ? https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production#global-meat-production https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production#global-meat-produ... (To be fair, I was expecting more, and I was again astonished by the relative numbers of cattle vs poultry)
- whythre 3y agoWe have increased farming, but the American plains were there once home to vast herds of bison. Basically there’s been 30 million large ungulates there for a very long time.
- squeaky-clean 3y agoThere are roughly 1.5 billion cows in the world right now. https://cairncrestfarm.com/blog/how-many-cows-are-there-in-the-world/ https://cairncrestfarm.com/blog/how-many-cows-are-there-in-t...
- CameronNemo 3y agoYeah... And we hunted that population to... ? Humans and their livestock make up the vast majority of the mamallian biomass.
- acdha 3y agoThe natural carrying population of bison eating grass is going to be considerably smaller than cows being fed grains produced using artificial fertilizer and major irrigation projects, given antibiotics to grow larger, etc. Part of what makes American beef so carbon intensive is that massive supply chain moving around animals and feed. Another thing to consider is that American beef cattle are famously rich methane sources due to the artificial diet they’re fed and how early calves are started on corn. Not only are there fewer bison, they would be smaller and eating the food they evolved to eat so each of those animals would be smaller and less gassy.
- squeaky-clean 3y ago> It's not like mammalian herbivores are a recent invention. If a constant amount of mammalian herbivores in the world would cause a constant acceleration of greenhouse effect then the greenhouse effect would have increased exponentially for millions of years already. Factory style livestock farming is a recent invention. There's no way a similar amount of herbivores existed a million years ago in the wild compared to what we can currently cage and feed corn product to.
- ftrobro 3y agoYou're missing the point. An increase in the number of mammalian herbivores just means an increased point of equilibrium for methane. But there will still be an equilibrium. In contrast, using fossile sources of carbon (oil etc) will increase the greenhouse effect every year even if the usage is constant.
- thfuran 3y agoAnd you seem to be missing the point that increasing the equilibrium concentration of atmospheric methane is something we very much do not want to do. And that agriculture isn't actually a closed loop.