IPCC’s Dr. Pachauri must be having a conniption fit about now, since he’s been an advocate of meat free global warming salvation.
From the American Chemical Society:
Eating less meat and dairy products won’t have major impact on global warming
SAN FRANCISCO, March 22, 2010 — Cutting back on consumption of meat and dairy products will not have a major impact in combating global warming — despite repeated claims that link diets rich in animal products to production of greenhouse gases. That’s the conclusion of a report presented here today at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.
Air quality expert Frank Mitloehner, Ph.D., who made the presentation, said that giving cows and pigs a bum rap is not only scientifically inaccurate, but also distracts society from embracing effective solutions to global climate change. He noted that the notion is becoming deeply rooted in efforts to curb global warming, citing campaigns for “meatless Mondays” and a European campaign, called “Less Meat = Less Heat,” launched late last year.
Reducing consumption of meat and dairy
products might not have a major impact in
combating global warming despite claims
that link diets rich in animal products to
production of greenhouse gases.
Credit: Wikimedia
“We certainly can reduce our greenhouse-gas production, but not by consuming less meat and milk,” said Mitloehner, who is with the University of California-Davis. “Producing less meat and milk will only mean more hunger in poor countries.”
The focus of confronting climate change, he said, should be on smarter farming, not less farming. “The developed world should focus on increasing efficient meat production in developing countries where growing populations need more nutritious food. In developing countries, we should adopt more efficient, Western-style farming practices to make more food with less greenhouse gas production,” Mitloehner said.
Developed countries should reduce use of oil and coal for electricity, heating and vehicle fuels. Transportation creates an estimated 26 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., whereas raising cattle and pigs for food accounts for about 3 percent, he said.
Mitloehner says confusion over meat and milk’s role in climate change stems from a small section printed in the executive summary of a 2006 United Nations report, “Livestock’s Long Shadow.” It read: “The livestock sector is a major player, responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalents). This is a higher share than transport.”
Mitloehner says there is no doubt that livestock are major producers of methane, one of the greenhouse gases. But he faults the methodology of “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” contending that numbers for the livestock sector were calculated differently from transportation. In the report, the livestock emissions included gases produced by growing animal feed; animals’ digestive emissions; and processing meat and milk into foods. But the transportation analysis factored in only emissions from fossil fuels burned while driving and not all other transport lifecycle related factors.
“This lopsided analysis is a classical apples-and-oranges analogy that truly confused the issue,” he said.
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Sigh. This is just another idea from the PETA wing of AGW, isn’t it? Wouldn’t they be terribly shocked to find out what would happen to all those cows with their big soft eyes if ranchers were prevented from raising them for sale?
Cattle, goats and sheep all live on land that is quite frankly, not farm-able with the most advanced methods available. How does one run a commercial combine harvester on a rock strewn 45 degree slope? While one could terrace a hill like that, it still wouldn’t be commercially feasible for the kind of large scale crop farming that’s done today. The huge effort that goes into modern commercial farming is beyond the ken of the AGW people, the soil conservation techniques, large scale fertilizing efforts (from pigs, cows, horses and artificial sources) and most of what’s done is done with, yes, gas powered farming equipment, whereas animal husbandry, cattle in particular, is done primarily on horseback, even today. Horses can go wherever cattle can……
I run a 950 acre mixed farm in England, and have made it my personal crusade to point out to veggies (thus ruining countless dinner parties!) that wheat production involves far more cruelty to animals than livestock production. I invite them to come ploughing, and witness the carnage going on behing the tractor as the top six inches of soil are inverted. Rats rabbits, mice, worms – I even killed a seagull once as it dived in to get an exposed worm and got buried.
I then offer to show them my agrochemical store, where I keep supplies of molluscicide – metaldehyde to kill slugs by slow, agonising dehydration. And then there’s the bottle of stuff I keen in store to kill the poor innocent orange blossom midge when it appears this June – that midge will ruin the Hagberg quality element of a bread wheat crop in just a couple of still summer evenings.
If you want to save animal lives, i point out, eat more meat.
So I’m thrilled that they’ve abandoned the ‘meat is cruel line’ and have switched to ‘meat causes MMGW’ – not least becauuse it maken them look even sillier.
Dearie me, someone who actually worries about hunger in poorer countries rather that just socking the rich ones. What a novelty.
This is one paper by one researcher and the result is counter-intuitive. True, farm animals in both developed and developing countries may utilize plants and plant products that humans cannot utilize and thus make use of land that cannot otherwise be used. If so the animals add to food production without consuming food that humans can consume. For example, beef cattle can turn grass into meat, but humans cannot eat grass.
But what percentage of cattle food is grass or other source of food that humans cannot consume? Livestock owners usually feed animals grains. But animals do not use grain very efficiently. The pig is the most efficient, making a gain of one unit for every 4 units of feed. Other animals are less efficient.
Thee are the losses that result at the time the animal carcass is prepared for consumption. Losses are less now because the food processing industry has found so many ways to recycle slaughter-house waste back into the food chain.
We know that animals need energy to run their own lives and unless their feed cannot be utilized by humans, animal metabolism reduces the efficiency of livestock as food compared to with plants as food.
Frank Mitloehner may be right. But the result is so unusual that we should suspend judgement until his results can be confirmed.
His opinion regarding the welfare of people in the developing world do not seem to me to be worth much. I have worked as a development economist in Africa, Asia and Latin America for 40 years. In my experience, most people in most of the countries where I have worked get along very well mostly on plant protein, as I do.
The foremost reason for malnutrition in these countries is misgovernment, which leads to underutilization of resources and poor distribution. The next reason is overpopulation relative to land and resources.
Greater meat production in developing countries might very well increase malnutrition among the poor because the rich will eat most of the animal protein and the prices of plant food will rise.
Nor do these rich seem to be getting much benefit, because the chronic diseases of the developing world seem to follow whenever Western diets replace traditional diets.
I remain a climate skeptic and that includes being skeptical about the role of livestock in climate change. But I am not about to espouse the views of anyone who opposes my opponent.
Frank Mitloehner may be right, but it seems like nonsense to me.
Well, I believe going vegan would shrink the brains of the population – a necessary step in order to keep this AGW nonsense going.
In fact, I propose we conduct a study to see if being vegan correlates with believing in the religion of global warming – an experimental test would be far too cruel I think.
“Producing less meat and milk will only mean more hunger in poor countries.”
So what? Since when has the welfare of those in “poor countries” been of even passing concern to the warmmongers?
Wife and I have been strict vegetarians (almost vegans) for 26 years. It certainly means less packaging, so that’s a good thing – and I suppose I must mention that we’re both extraordinarily healthy! However, each to his or her own, we don’t preach it. I can understand the land use involved in meat production, which study after study has shown is more then is required for veggie food, might well mean that there’s an eco side there.
Back in the 1970’s I used to eat veggie burgers before there were veggie burgers, by buying some fairly cheap textured vegetable protein which could be sliced into patties, fried up, then garnished. It was low in fat compared to even the leanest hamburger, maybe even 0%. I ate quite a lot of it and it was really pretty good, although it didn’t look very good right out of the can. But now it seems to have disappeared in favor of the higher priced, more pre-fabricated, better looking stuff.
Likewise with a product called “Kellogg’s Concentrate” cereal. It contained about 30% protein, no added sugar or fat. Now it’s gone. But once I found an open box perhaps 20 years old still in one of my more remote, deep cupboards. It had remained stable. I ate it. I used to eat it as is, dry, and add it into “trail mix” with fruit and nuts. But no more!
The above two products were completely “vegetarian”, great nutritionally and cheap. So where’s something comparable now?
None of this will do any good, for there is no global warming to offset.
Just Dry vs Wet cycles.
I don’t know! You colonials are so lucky. Back here in the Peoples (not) Democratic (not) Republic of the EU, we actually pay with hard-pressed taxpayers money for half-wits (a euphemism) with PhDs to carry out studies like this to conclude the complete opposite. I suspect all they actually did was look up an old 1940s ration book & then make it up from there as they went along. Incidentally, those with said PhDs writing that (UK) crap were likely funded in their first degrees by taxpayers money, not from loans, etc! They have also most likely (95% probability) never actually had to fend for themselves outside academia!!!!!!!
BTW, & OT, did you chaps (& chapesses) know that here in the PDREU we pay millions of taxpayers money to Greenpeace & WWF (among many others) to lobby……………………er the PDREU on climate change issues? Great innit! Can’t think of a better way to dissappear up one’s own………? Do your governments do likewise?
Unless you catch a cow eating a lump of coal it, by definition, has to be carbon-neutral. Transporting the cow to your table, of course, is another thing, but then, that applies to every friggin’ thing you don’t grow in your backyard.
I don’t know why people have trouble grasping this concept.
David Thomas Bronzich (00:12:16) :
“(…) The huge effort that goes into modern commercial farming is beyond the ken of the AGW people, the soil conservation techniques, large scale fertilizing efforts (from pigs, cows, horses and artificial sources) and most of what’s done is done with, yes, gas powered farming equipment, whereas animal husbandry, cattle in particular, is done primarily on horseback, even today. Horses can go wherever cattle can……”
Artificial sources??! The very mention of that will give any veggie a blue apoplexy. Don’t forget that most of these people are not interested in the products of commercial farming either. They only want biologically produced foods without chemical input. And it never occurs to them that if we were all to to turn veggie overnight, we’d then be in competition with all these cuddly animals and have to kill them off and pretty quick too. Then what would we do with all the carcasses? Burn them? Dissolve them in acid? And where would animal “rights” come in here?
Del (23:43:47) : My father was a butcher. and took me through this sort of thing when I was about thirteen and getting squeamish about seeing animals slaughtered. Adolescent fads some never get over, especially if they live in a suburban environment. Having said that, if someone decides to only eat vegetarian, it’s a personal choice to be respected and most veggies I know don’t foist it on others – although it can pour cold water on a convivial meal.
– Animal husbandry done on horseback! I wish it still was, although I’d like to see a horse get where a sheep or goat can (he’d have to learn to climb trees in the latter case); that’s why you have sheepdogs or train the flock to follow you. But like the rest of us I’m sure, I’d like to have been a cowboy. Yippee-yi-yo.
How many unproductive cattle does India have? What to do with them?
Why don’t we just use some of the money saved from NOT going in for Cap-and-Trade to buy MEAT for export to nutritionally stressed parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America (that’ll show em!)?
“Every action has an equal, and opposite, reaction.”
The issue tends to be that people who propose these idiocies as ‘solutions’ only look at it in isolation. If we simply eliminated cows I’m sure we’d eliminate a bit of greenhouse gasses. But just doing so has huge effects on the environment and economy which would pretty much offset any gains and put us right back where we started.
@ur momisugly David Q. (22:27:08) :
‘If we all ate more beans, wouldn’t that produce a whole bunch of methane?’
Eating beans is sinful. How do I know?
Because Pythagoras told me so…
Worry not. Food is all chemical molecules and atoms. Your body guides you as to what to eat and when. The rest is mainly verbal propaganda, like eating liver is yucky.
Try preaching global warming to a cow, even a school aged one.
Did anyone notice??
When “Global warming” was substituted with “climate change”?? And what “impact” of “climate change” are they reffering to?? The AGW languish becomes more and more bizarre!!
No warming
No floods
No storms or hurricanes
No increase in sealevels
No melting at the poles
What are they talkning about?????
I find it significant that everybody, even those commenting here, focuses on meat, when the main culprit, if there is guilt to be found in cattle CO2, is milk. Look at the numbers (I’m French and speak about French numbers : please check for your country). A “modern” cow produces about 10 – 12 tons of milk per year (if of a breed selected for milk production. Breeds selected for meat production are a small % of the total herd here in France). If the farmer keeps a cow for 5 productive years, it will have produced about 50 tons of milk. 8 years equal 80 tons of milk. Very few if any milk producing cows are kept longer. When slaughtered, that cow will give about 3/4 ton of red meat (I didn’t check for precise statistics, but I’d be surprised if you fall very far). Of course, that cow will have produced about one calf per year, some slaughtered as calves, some allowed to grow until young beef, and it might be honest to add their meat in the ratio against milk. You might even scrap in the corners and add a tiny pro rata of bull meat. You still come to realize red meat is only a very small by-product of milk production. And if the cattle is “naturally” fed, ie grazing grass in pastures (hay in stable in winter) as opposed to processed soya, corn, molasses etc, recent research in Europe as well as in North America, reveals cattle/pasture is a carbon well : ecolo/organic farmers can raise cattle without remorse. Some have begun.
Focusing on red meat means, imo, that neither those who criticise us meat-eaters nor us (we ?)address reality. Militant veggies are just highjacking the AGW bandwaggon and trying to steer it towards their intimate land of lunacy (I’m not criticising vegetarianism, I acknowledge it can be a healthy and reasonable diet, but those lunatics who want to impose it on me by flawed morals and political constraint).
Sarcastically, i say if you haven’t witnessed pure hatred straight in your face, try and tell a mom/dad nowhence they’ll have to deprive their treasures of milk products 😉
Duh …
When I write that a slaughtered cow gives about 3/4 of a ton of red meat, I mean 3/4 of a thousand pounds … about 750 lbs …
Good grief, how can you print this crap when you have so many other good stories on this site that are newsworthy. Expansion of agriculture is largely through cattle grazing in land formerly in tropical forests in South America. No meat diet linkage there I guess? Land use change is considered part of the alternative theory of what may be contributing to AGW. Loss of tropical forests creates loss of low level clouds.
You are not going to solve the worlds protein problems by eating much more meat but you may denude it.
I guess I am not surprised the american chemical industry that sells the world its fertilizers and pesticides would promulgate the idea that meat culture agriculture is bad for the planet. I am just surprised that wattsupwiththat would print their propoganda.
“Producing less meat and milk will only mean more hunger in poor countries.” said Mitloehner..
But THAT is the whole idea of The Climate Change Crusade: decimate the “human” population, open new land for Wildlife and Wilderness, and save oil and coal for the future (for more deserving people like themselves).
Ref – savethesharks (22:32:41) :
“Plus a good NY Strip tastes really good.”
____________________________
It won’t be long before NYC pols force it off the menu. It’s just not “green” enough for them.
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (00:09:50) :
Any intelligent veggie knows you get protein from legumes, not spinach.
Your opinion about going veggie being daft goes against some of the biggest health studies ever made. Try a search for “The China Study” and read up. To sum it up, consumption of animal products MAY be the cause of virtually every western lifestyle induced illness.
That is a quite revolutionary thought. For example my father, who has a DHSc (a doctorate in health science) and is a physiotherapist, changed his diet totally after reading a book about the study.
And: No, I’m not a veggie.
One thing about greenie weenies is they mix truth with false claims. I can have my steer harvest grain and grass and bring carbs converted to protein to my dinner table. On the ethanol thread I posted how animals converted corn glucose sugars to protein amino acids. The worst place on the planet is India with sacred cows, monkees and rats. If we added pet dogs and cats in America, we have a lot of wasted food of course that we put into the fields and use for plant food. The organic veggies you luv, luv the cow manoo from the dairy. The plants just thrive on animal waste.
On the Tyson meats web site, they share info on the efficiencies of animals in converting grain to protein. Chickens use less grain for a pound of meat than do hogs. Hogs do better than beef cattle.
Some one did mention the massive tonnage of CH4 methane from rice paddies.
It is racist to knock methane production. You know they won’t be politically correct and halt all sources of methane.
Most of this ruling of the biosphere is based in urban legend. Dirty city dwelling lifestyles that claim they have superior knowledge on how to run the planet and feed the world.
City folks and slackers are just jealous of rich farmers.