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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Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (00:09:50) :
“Going veggie is just daft. You have to eat tremendous volume of food just to meat daily requirements. And if you’re physically very active it gets worse.”
Simply not true. Vegetarian is fine. Have you ever seen a weak gorillia? I was a strict vegetarian throughout my senior year, I did well in wrestling and gymnastics.
Eating habits are an individual choice, and like religion, should not be politicised.
roger samson (04:31:10)
But… BUT… deforestation causes global cooling ; )
That the IPCC folks can say that with a straight face is really quite amazing.
You do bring up a good point, some amount of meat consumed in the US comes from South America… of course, some U.S. produce (fruit) comes from Central and South America as well. I’d tend to think that both South/Central American meat and produce would have similar types of impacts (land use changes, transportation costs)
The real news will be if it is discovered that any AGW movement claim holds up under scrutiny.
Ugh – now they are forecasting a foot of snow today and more on the weekend. Make that two steaks.
Congratulations – right up there with BBC in influence.
roger samson (04:36:55) :
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.
Oh, didn’t catch earlier that you’re a troll. lol – if anything this article is pro-meat, which according to the troll theory would be going against ACS’ evil overlord – Big Fertilizer
I would say something about AGW being a has bean, but I will restrain myself, err, what the heck, AGW is a has bean.
City folks are in trouble.
We are running lets say 4,000 deaths per year from e-coli.
( it is prseumed the contamination was at the farm. It is most often in the distribution handling steps.)
We run over 4,000 deaths per year from fatal asthma attacks.
There are much lower rates of asthma, allergies and diabetes in consumers of RAW milk. Raw milk is illegal in many ways. Go figgure. Climate science is not the only science that has been hijacked by a doo good agenda.
“Isn’t it curious that at this juncture in our culture’s evolution, we collectively believe Twinkies, Lucky Charms and Coca-Cola are safe foods, but compost-grown organic tomatoes and raw milk are not?”
–from the forward, by Joel Salatin
I am not a health food junkie. It is ironic that being raised in a farm community, I never ever saw a case of exzema untill I attended college.
The fact is, humans are not healthy unless they eat meat. You can only get vitamin B12 from meat. Vitamin supplements are a waste of money because the body sends most of it right out of the body through in the urine. So the only way you can get your need nutrients is through food. You can most of your nutrients through vegetables, except vitamin B12. The key is to have a balanced diet.
(Joke) I guess if these vegans “greenies” would eat more meat and get all their needed vitamins, they could think rationally and see how stupid the AGW theory really is and how stupid a meat-less diet really is too. (End joke)
Less red meat = less heart attacks = more people driving cars = more CO2 … lol
There is a theory that human ancestors did not start to increase brain size until they became meat eaters. Maybe if we all turned vegetarian our descendants would gradually get smaller and smaller brains until they reverted to apes. Maybe it’s already happening?
If you want to understand the anti-meat movement, just think about where the majority of meat is produced and consumed – NH. What would success of the anti-meat movement accomplish – crippling of the agricultural industries in the NH. That in turn would hit the sector of the economies which produce agricultural implements – manufacturing. Feeding large numbers of people on a vegan only diet which is low in energy density would be problematic without high intensity farming – a lot of fertilizers. The drive to “organic” farming would require extremely large sections of land be tilled to make up the shortfall.
All in all, most of the populous would have to go back to the farms and agrarian way of life – not bad if you’re trying to control a populous. Ask ol’ Joseph Stalin, he was good at it. The Ukraine has not too fond memories about that.
What’s that I hear from those idiots about the good old days?
The greenhouse gases are CO2, Methane, N20 and CFCs.
Pastureland is an efficient sink of CO2, especially compared to cultivated land which is net source of CO2.
Lettuce and vegetables are transported from the farm just like meat products are.
Methane levels are not really increasing in the atmosphere (latest from Barrow Alaska has Methane levels on the way down again). Cattle are contributing zero to the zero increase in Methane.
There is very little nitrogen fertilizer (the primary source of N20) used on Pastureland and, hence, raising animals does not contribute N20 to the atmosphere.
Cows do not produce CFCs. (At least, they are not since CFCs were removed from refrigerants but then frozen vegetables and frozen vegetarian foods should count in the same manner).
So how exactly are animals contributing GHGs to the atmosphere. It is unscientific to conclude they are since the numbers probably point the other way.
No comment on whether there is a AGW impact, but the enviro impact of meat production in the US is pretty obvious and can only be ignored by the gullible.
We use roughly 1 calorie of energy to produce 1 calorie of grains in the US and we use on average about 10* calories of grains to produce 1 calorie of cow meat. Plus similar numbers for water, herbicides, use related erosion and soil degradation, etc.
How can eating the cow have the same enviro impact as the eating the grain when 10* times as many resources are involved in the production?
*This is a widely debated number, but nobody claims a value of less than 1 for meat production in the US. Maybe in Australia or New Zealand, where grazing is used instead of feedlots.
Exactly how does producing less meat and dairy products cause greater starvation in poor countries? That is not just baseless it is wrong.
While it’s almost certainly true that producing less meat and dairy won’t put a dent in global warming it’s not because the change would reduce greenhouse gas production (it certainly would) but because anthropogenic greenhouse gases aren’t a significant contributor to global warming.
It is uninformed knee-jerk reactions such as those that dominate the comments in this thread that give AGW skeptics a bad name.
There is a very valid claim that grazing animals produce human-edible food from inedible plants. The problem with that claim is that only a small percentage of the meat and dairy products are produced from free-range animals. Most meat and dairy production relies on feeding those animals with human-edible foods. Compare the price tags on meat and dairy produced by certified free-range animals. It’s quite a bit higher for the free-range products. That’s because of a basic market price rule called supply and demand. The demand for free-range products exceeds the supply at parity pricing so price rises in response in a free market. In Obama’s ideal world there would be rationing of the free range product so everyone gets a small but equal share, but I digress. Why is the supply so slim? Simple. There just isn’t enough cost-effective “free-range” land available to feed enough animals to meet the overall demand for meat and dairy.
So what we end up with is arable land producing high food-value grains that are used as livestock feed. The nutritional value of the grains far exceeds the nutritional value of the resulting meat and dairy products. Ergo, reducing meat and dairy consumption means there would be more food for starving people in poor countries. We don’t try to help feed the starving by sending them burlap bags full of beef jerky. We send burlap bags of grains which store very well and, calorie for calorie, are much more efficiently produced.
Disclosure: I’m not a vegetarian. My BBQ grill drippeth with animal fats and my fridge overfloweth with dairy. I’m just a well informed omnivore who doesn’t go into denial when confronted with inconvenient truths.
Polar bears no longer endangered
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2010/2010-03-18-02.html
A proposal from the United States would have banned the international commercial trade in polar bear parts and products. A majority of governments, led by Canada, rejected the proposal because they were not convinced about the conservation benefits of banning trade in a species already included in CITES Appendix II, which permits trade only under a strict permit system.
Andy Scrase (22:45:35) :
Yes, Google “brussel sprouts” and “global warming.” More “wipe your a$$ with a single-sheet” bullcrap.
Charlie (00:31:38) :
Maddox covered this issue a while back 😉
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=grill
The Alarmists make stuff up. They don’t bother with demonstrable facts like the GHG emissions of wild marshland those Iowa corn acres replaced or the massive plume of moisture that comes off unconverted wooded land due to the taproots pumping deep soil water into the atmosphere. We can look at satellite images of the Amazon and see no soybean acres or soybean elevators or soybean crush plants because food/meat/ethanol doesn’t compete compete for soybeans, rather the current installed capital runs more efficiently and uses existing slack in the system. Ethanol is the best example as stupid people and liars think they can exploit unthinking alarm in order to make a point. If ethanol takes so much of the corn supply where is the starvation? Where are the 100s of millions of new acres coming from? Where are the millions of additional combines, silos, ag-trucking machinery required for this phantom economic expansion? They don’t exist!
They make the argument against beef as a global warmer via methane production. Here’s the paper trying to justify taxes on beef to mitigate global warming:
http://fixtheclimate.com/uploads/tx_templavoila/PP_Methane_Johansson_Hedenus_v.2.0.pdf
And here is the “scientific paper” trying to make the case that methane from anthropogenic sources should be given more “weight” than methane from natural sources.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/4/4/044007/fulltext?ejredirect=migration
To all of which I respond with the devastating rebuttal:
Salad is what food EATS.
What happens if you eat a vegetarian?
Are you saving the planet?
crosspatch (22:58:46) :
“Going veggie sounds great if you live in an area like California or Florida where things grow year-round”.
With Florida and the right mix between passenger seats and cargo containers
(think KLM fleet you can have fresh vegetables and fruits all year round.
In the Netherlands, in summer the oranges, tomatoes come from Spain.
In winter they have apples and kiwi’s from New Zealand, oranges from South Africa
and all kinds of exotic fruits from Asia.
Greenhouses produce fresh vegetables all year round.
Diversification and trade and fast distribution have created an all year market for fresh foods.
Greenhouse production at a big scale like the Netherlands still has to take of in the USA.
Under normal circumstances there is no economic basis for greenhouses.
Unless you have a winter like this and and Florida loses 90% of it’s tomato crop!
http://www.allbusiness.com/agriculture-forestry/agriculture-crop-production/14055046-1.html
But seriously, do you know how difficult it is to stay polite with these Green lunatics.
In Europe we now have the CO2 information on the label of food products.
Mango’s from Asia, apples and kiwi’s from New Zealand, fresh oranges from South Africa, all available in Dutch Supermarkets during the winter are now lited with their carbon foot print.
The green lunatics are undermining our entire distribution system, our agriculture, our meat industry everything.
And while we are winning the war on their propaganda, we see the Government rules and regulations popping up everywhere.
No protests, nothing.
We don’t know how vulnerable our society is. For every calorie of food we are spending 4 calories of oil.
With the current plans to reduce carbon footprints we are destroying our businesses, our jobs, our distribution systems, our markets and the continuity in our food supplies.
We live in a carbon world and we have build a fossil fuel based society.
Any threat to this society should be considered as treason and a crime against humanity.
Without our fossil fuels our modern civilization is dead.
We should prepare for prosecution of those that threaten the very basis of our existence.
At this moment in time we are winning the battles about the content of the Green Propaganda, but we are losing the war.
It’s time for to change our mind set and look at the Green Movement and those behind it as a serious threat and do something about it.
This is not funny anymore.
The China Study
Beyond vegetarianism
http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-8e.shtml
The China study is extensive and sloppy. Parts of it defeat it’s conclusion. Be very sceptical of science that is coupled with ideology. The experiments create hypothesis but really give at best cloudy conclusions.
Fear of dying is a good motive to jump on a bandwagon that makes promises of living longer.
Great news. I’m celebrating tonight with a prime rib dinner.
Does this mean Vegans are not morally superior?
No calls from Pachauri yet on this being voodoo science?
One way to reduce greenhouse gases emitted by the nether ends of cows would be to allow them to keep one calf in an open field, which causes them to chew the cud a little less. But the resulting rise in the price of meat would make the price of battery-farmed produce more attractive; it’s never as simple as the ideologues complain…