From the meatheads at the Carnegie Institution
Climate: Meat turns up the heat
Stanford, CA—Eating meat contributes to climate change, due to greenhouse gasses emitted by livestock. New research finds that livestock emissions are on the rise and that beef cattle are responsible for far more greenhouse gas emissions than other types of animals. It is published by Climactic Change.
Carbon dioxide is the most-prevalent gas when it comes to climate change. It is released by vehicles, industry, and forest removal and comprises the greatest portion of greenhouse gas totals. But methane and nitrous oxide are also greenhouse gasses and account for approximately 28 percent of global warming activity.
Methane and nitrous oxide are released, in part, by livestock. Animals release methane as a result of microorganisms that are involved in their digestive processes and nitrous oxide from decomposing manure. These two gasses are responsible for a quarter of these non-carbon dioxide gas emissions and 9 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions overall.
The research team, including Dario Caro, formerly of Carnegie and now at the University of Siena in Italy, and Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira, estimated the greenhouse gas emissions related to livestock in 237 countries over a nearly half a century and found that livestock emissions increased by 51 percent over this period.
They found a stark difference between livestock-related emissions in the developing world, which accounts for most of this increase, and that released by developed countries. This is expected to increase further going forward, as demand for meat, dairy products, and eggs is predicted by some scientists to double by 2050. By contrast, developed countries reached maximum livestock emissions in the 1970s and have been in decline since that time.
“The developing world is getting better at reducing greenhouse emissions caused by each animal, but this improvement is not keeping up with the increasing demand for meat,” said Caro. “As a result, greenhouse gas emissions from livestock keep going up and up in much of the developing world.”
Breaking it down by animal, beef and dairy cattle comprised 74 percent of livestock-related greenhouse gas emissions, 54 percent coming from beef cattle and 17 percent from dairy cattle. Part of this is due to the abundance of cows, but it is also because cattle emit greater quantities of methane and nitrous oxide than other animals. Sheep comprised 9 percent, buffalo 7 percent, pigs 5 percent, and goats 4 percent.
“That tasty hamburger is the real culprit,” Caldeira said. “It might be better for the environment if we all became vegetarians, but a lot of improvement could come from eating pork or chicken instead of beef.”
The Carnegie Institution for Science is a private, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with six research departments throughout the U.S. Since its founding in 1902, the Carnegie Institution has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research. Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and planetary science.
[ADDENDUM]: My thanks to Anthony for pointing out this study. This might be a good time to recommend to people my previous posts on the relationship of plants and animals in the planetary food systems:
Animal, Vegetable, or E.O. Wilson
Finally, one of the larger methane sources on the planet, ironically, is … rice paddies. Lots and lots of organic materials decaying underwater, someone needs to put an end to that terrible practice immediately …
w.
However, when you fart, the life you save could be your own:
No need to thank me for saving you, the pleasure is all mine.
This statistic concerns me more than the number of cow farts.
“Considering all factors in beef cattle production including direct consumption, irrigation of pastures and crops, and carcass processing, it takes 435 gallons of water to produce a pound of boneless beef, according to the CAST 1999 Animal Agriculture and Global Food Supply Report”
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.beef.org%2FuDocs%2FFactoid%2520Fighter%2520Revisions%252011-03-03.doc&ei=JITNU738I6np8AHlooD4Ag&usg=AFQjCNHgxyGg-7khGuJ6sOgBE29C6760Ow&bvm=bv.71198958,d.b2U&cad=rja
“Kate Forney says:
So what are we going to eat? Beans, broccoli & cabbage?”
If we all ate copious amounts of beans, wouldn’t that almost immediately cause NHL –quality global warming? What am I missing here?
“Joe Public says:
‘Blazing Saddles’ scene:”
One of the greatest cinematic masterpieces all time, and possibly the greatest Western ever made. I place it above Citizen Kane, but slightly below The Godfather (both I and II). Dr. Strangelove and Python/Holy Grail will always top the charts for those of us who have the ability to truly appreciate great cinema.
If it wasn’t for hoofed animals – both to use as labor and for meat – it is possible man would have never left the stone age. One example is Australia, where the tastiest animals appeared to be quickly eaten and gone extinct, and other animals not easily adapted to labor, not providing the native population with help. Natives subsequently stuck indefinitely in the stone age. Animals are awesome – both to help us out and to munch on. Australia eventually went from the stone age to a massive penal colony, and now is proud to be a semi-civilized society that has swimmers that are still far, far inferior to Murican swimmers.
As a Christian I prefer Acts 11 1-10
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Are_hoofed_animals_such_as_deer_and_cattle_native_to_Australia
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2563/is-there-more-flatulence-in-a-vegetarian-diet
They BS you that the flatulence of the Vegetarian diet is temporary until your body adjusts to it. Havent’ cows and sheep adjusted yet? I suppose if you attached an afterburner to cattle and sheep that wouldn’t satisfy the zealots. Also, it would conflict with a lot of the other ‘cultural’ aspects of these types. No cattle, no leather, so shoes would all have to be made of materials obtained from with oil and gas feedstocks. Wool sweaters and other clothing would be out and we would have to go with rayon, nylon and the like exclusively – better okay that fracking project down the road.
Also, we better let a few hundred million people die off because an important part of our nutrition comes from land that won’t effectively grow crops but can be foraged on by cows, goats, sheep….
Now for an engineering analysis. What about retiring that scrub land? Letting the rough land of much of the western part of the country go back to bush, shrubs, etc. will result in a logarithmic increase in wildlife who,… well,… fart a lot. Also, how much carbon is sequestered in the worlds flocks? Yes we kill and eat them but over time the flocks increase. Among vegans are to be found a high proportion of autocratic, gullible, collectivist, self-righteous, rigid, conformist, doctrinaire, ideologues. These folks would be promulgating laws in batches of a thousand until we are all ‘herdable’.
Re studies on life span, these are the most poorly designed studies there are and the reason is likely because of PC skewing. There are virtually no studies that have taken the trouble to compare vegan and sensible meat eaters who have an overall healthy lifestyle. Rather, they compare the vegan to the general population, which is just plain wrong. Vegans also are highly unlikely to smoke or to drink alcohol other than moderately. They are also most likely to maintain healthy weights and get adequate exercise.
http://www.honeycolony.com/article/do-vegetarians-live-longer/
“For example, Seventh Day Adventists are vegetarians, and their mortality rate is a tiny bit less (!!!) than ‘regular people,’ but Seventh Day Adventists also don’t smoke, don’t do alcohol, and don’t do drugs. They rarely die from drunk driving, for example. People who become vegetarians often have other habits that can account for the difference.”
“the German Cancer Research Center conducted a study exceeding 21 years showing that female non-meat eaters cut their mortality by 30 percent, and that male vegetarians cut their risk of early death by 50 percent. More than 1,900 vegetarians participated in the study. The GCRC study included a range of eaters: from vegans (no animal products), strict vegetarians (no flesh), and moderate vegetarians (occasional fish or meat). Results were similar among all three groups (!!!).”
These serious studies found marginal to no improvement, despite the likely better overall lifestyles of Vegetarian/Vegan. Other studies talked about the lack of carnosine (from meat) causing breakdown of muscle protein and leading to papery wrinkled skin in vegetarians with aging.
http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2006/jan2006_awsi_01.htm
One thing you can be sure of, like all agenda-driven studies there is more adherence to message than to good science. It was early studies that indicated vegetarians had shorter lifespans that led to a smothering output of contrary studies.
IF we stop eating meat WHAT will happen to the Animal population? An increase in animals would create an increase in Methane.Could you imagine the Animal Rights Movement allowing an animal reduction campaign to reduce Methane and “to save the planet” <:o)
Old news around here. You might find this piece from 2013 amusing:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/05/tastes-great-less-incinerating/
How to fight desertification and reverse climate change: [http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change]
More meat, not less.
Tom in Florida says: July 21, 2014 at 2:12 pm “… wouldn’t have survived as a hunter gatherer, including me because I am nearsighted. ”
Might not be true, maybe the hunting weapons were crafted by nearsighted people?
So without animal husbandry to fertilise pasture and fallow lands, how much more carbon dioxide and other pollution will be produced to manufacture and distribute the additional chemical fertilisers that will be needed to grow the grains and vegetables?
I love this flat statement, tossed out there with utter aplomb:
” …methane and nitrous oxide are also greenhouse gasses and account for approximately 28 percent of global warming activity.”
There you have it. Scientists said it, so just move along folks, nothing to see here.
I thought we were supposed to be using plants to make ethanol to prevent GAGW? Now we’re supposed to eat them?
PhilCP says:
July 21, 2014 at 12:45 pm
Guess I’ll switch to vegan and eat only beans from now on. Only way to avoid those nasty cow farts…
Wait a minute…
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Exactly. I observe my CH4 emissions rise exponentially when forced to go vegan even if for only a day. I prefer real food after the greens have been processed into goodly amounts of red protien.
Just for giggles
http://www.peta.org/?s=Global+warming#/
Dave says:
July 21, 2014 at 2:05 pm Yuck! You do what you want, but I’m heading out for a nice thick Delmonico just dripping with blood!
Fortunately, or unfortunately, I don’t know anyone named Delmonico.
Gunga Din says:
July 21, 2014 at 3:05 pm
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…and then they came for the dogs and cats
From Tom in Florida on July 21, 2014 at 2:12 pm:
You’ve never heard of trapping?
Plus the nearsighted are good at removing ticks and other parasites, removing splinters and thorns and stingers and porcupine quills, cleaning out and treating wounds, plus basics like garment construction and the thorough preparation of hides for preservation. Etc.
Seeing things at a distance might be useful, but the reality of survival is predominantly a lot closer.
The key environmental issue concerning countries taking up the US diet is habitat, not CO2 emission. Roughly twice as much land and resources are required for the typical US diet as compared to Vegans.
http://dels.nationalacademies.org/resources/static-assets/banr/AnimalProductionMaterials/LessMeat.pdf
“The United States, for instance, has just 4.5% of the world’s population but accounts for about 15% of global meat consumption. Americans consume about 330 grams of meat a day on average—the equivalent of three quarter-pound hamburgers. In contrast, the U.S.Department of Agriculture recommends that most people consume just 142 to 184 grams of meat and beans daily. In the developing world, daily meat consumption averages just 80 grams.”
The reason to switch from a US diet to a Vegan diet is not climate change but rather concern about one’s health and the health of those who we love. The US ‘health care’ system is disease control and disease management not health care. As most are aware the US has the highest health care costs in the world.
There is a direct correlation of the amount of meat and dairy consumed and the incidence of cancer, diabetes, atherosclerosis, and so on. For example those eating a traditional Japanese diet have 48 times less incidence of prostate cancer, almost no atherosclerosis, and six times less breast cancer. Interesting the specialists have discovered why that is true (have worked out most of the mechanisms). As there is no profit in telling people they are getting sick due to diet, the research is continuing on ingenious methods to treat diseases that are caused by diet.
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/uprooting-the-leading-causes-of-death/
http://nutritionfacts.org/2014/07/08/a-low-methionine-diet-may-help-starve-cancer-cells/
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-tumors-use-meat-to-grow-xeno-autoantibodies/
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-answer-to-the-pritikin-puzzle/
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/cancer-proofing-mutation/
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-inflammatory-meat-molecule-neu5gc/
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/nonhuman-molecules-lining-our-arteries/
Really? Where does that water go? Isn’t the vast majority returned to the water cycle? This seems only a problem in areas where there is a drought, or where the water is pulled out of aquifers faster than the aquifers replenish.
“North of 43 and south of 44 says:
July 21, 2014 at 2:28 pm
…
Taken a step further, this is an argument that wiping out species reduces global warming.”
They’ve got a point there. Atmospheric CO2 balances are determined by the amount of photosynthesis from plants and CO2 produced by both plants and animals. I suppose by wiping out ALL non photosynthesiziing life, the CO2 balance in the atmosphere would be slightly lower.
If you’ve ever stood in an enclosed space with a vegetarian you’d realise that cattle farts are the far lesser of two evils!
Don’t forget this fine piece of 2012 scholarship from Ken on the cause and effect relationship between Co2 and temps. http://www.sustainabilitysc.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2013/02/scientificamerican0912-78-The-great-climate-experiment.pdf Ooops.
The very troubling book Living in a Socialist USA that came out this year and celebrates this vision pointed out that meat would necessarily become a rarity for most in its plans. It also laid out in its Thanksgiving 2077 story that few of the supporters would probably have gone along with the changes if they had appreciated that it was really about much lower levels of prosperity for most people.
Given what Carnegie is pushing in education and has been for decades, it is hard not to see this as another push towards the pernicious Marxist Humanist vision of an economy centered on needs and state direction.
3 questions
– didn’t the C in the methane come from the C in the grass which came from C in the air? (and yes I know CO2 Methane lignin … but isn’t it just a cycle?
-and if there is no cow, doesnt the tip of the grass brown, and fall off and there in between the blades rot and bacteria turn it into methane anyway?
– and, thirdly, cows produce a large percentage of atmospheric anions, right? which seed clouds, and cool the earth
Co2 has nearly doubled in my lifetime and the temperature has barely moved. Summers were much hotter when I was a teenager. I guess this gas rates pretty low on the scale as a greenhouse gas.
Per T says:
July 21, 2014 at 1:33 pm
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Fascinating- thanks!