From the UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN and the “sir, put down that steak or you’ll hurt the planet and I’ll be forced to arrest you” department comes this study that blames beef for ruining the climate. The new guilt will likely be accompanied by a slogan such as “Grief, it’s whats for dinner” and “Let them eat kale!“.
20 percent of Americans responsible for almost half of US food-related greenhouse gas emissions
ANN ARBOR–On any given day, 20 percent of Americans account for nearly half of U.S. diet-related greenhouse gas emissions, and high levels of beef consumption are largely responsible, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Michigan and Tulane University.
To estimate the impact of U.S. dietary choices on greenhouse gas emissions, the researchers built a database that assessed the environmental impacts involved in producing more than 300 types of foods. Then they linked the database to the findings of a nationally representative, one-day dietary recall survey involving more than 16,000 American adults.
They ranked the diets by their associated greenhouse gas emissions, from lowest to highest, then divided them into five equal groups, or quintiles. The researchers found that the 20 percent of U.S. diets with the highest carbon footprint accounted for 46 percent of total diet-related greenhouse emissions.
The highest-impact group was responsible for about eight times more emissions than the lowest quintile of diets. And beef consumption accounted for 72 percent of the emissions difference between the highest and lowest groups, according to the study.
“A big take home message for me is the fact that high-impact diets are such a large part of the overall contribution to food-related greenhouse gases,” said U-M researcher Martin Heller, first author of a paper scheduled for publication March 20 in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
The study estimated the greenhouse gas emissions associated with food production only. Emissions related to the processing, packaging, distribution, refrigeration and cooking of those foods were not part of the study but would likely increase total emissions by 30 percent or more, Heller said.
“Reducing the impact of our diets–by eating fewer calories and less animal-based foods–could achieve significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. It’s climate action that is accessible to everyone, because we all decide on a daily basis what we eat,” said Heller, a researcher at the U-M Center for Sustainable Systems in the School for Environment and Sustainability.
If Americans in the highest-impact group shifted their diets to align with the U.S. average–by consuming fewer overall calories and relying less on meat–the one-day greenhouse-gas emissions reduction would be equivalent to eliminating 661 million passenger-vehicle miles, according to the researchers.
That hypothetical diet shift, if implemented every day of the year and accompanied by equivalent shifts in domestic food production, would achieve nearly 10 percent of the emissions reductions needed for the United States to meet its targets under the Paris climate accord, the authors wrote. Though President Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the accord, many states and municipalities are still working to meet the emissions targets.
In the United States in 2010, food production was responsible for about 8 percent of the nation’s heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions. In general, animal-based foods are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions per pound than plant-based foods. The production of both beef cattle and dairy cows is tied to especially high emissions levels.
For starters, cows don’t efficiently convert plant-based feed into muscle or milk, so they must eat lots of feed. Growing that feed often involves the use of fertilizers and other substances manufactured through energy-intensive processes. And then there’s the fuel used by farm equipment.
In addition, cows burp lots of methane, and their manure also releases this potent greenhouse gas.
“Previous studies of diet-related greenhouse gas emissions have focused mainly on the average diet in a given country. This study is the first in the United States to look instead at self-reported dietary choices of a nationally representative sample of thousands of Americans,” said Diego Rose, principal investigator on the project and a professor of nutrition and food security at Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
By linking their database of environmental impacts to the individual, self-reported diets in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the U-M and Tulane researchers were able to estimate the distribution of diet-related impacts across the entire U.S. population on a given day.
They found that Americans in the highest-impact quintile consumed more than twice as many calories on a given day–2,984 versus 1,323–than those in the bottom 20 percent. But even when the findings were adjusted for caloric intake, the highest-impact quintile was still responsible for five times more emissions than the lowest-impact group.
Meat accounted for 70 percent of the food-associated greenhouse gas emissions in the highest-impact group but only 27 percent in the lowest-impact group.
NHANES is a program of studies designed to assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the United States. The survey, which combines interviews and physical examinations, is a major program of the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
###
The study: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aab0ac/meta
Greenhouse gas emissions and energy use associated with production of individual self-selected US diets
Abstract
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This is only the beginning of the push to make people feel guilty about eating beef, chicken, turkey, etcetera. Of course there will be an environmentally and humanly responsible alternative. Namely industrial scale cultured-in-a-giant-vat faux “meat”products. Cheapest possible petrochemicals, soy, corn, wheat and sugar in and beeph schtake out. I can already taste the quality. It will be laced with the finest preservatives to keep it “fresh” in the tube at ambient temperature for extended periods. Move over soy burger…beeph schtake is here!!!
Eeuurrghhh!
Already been done. They call it Soylent Green.
Somebody ought to explain to them the carbon cycle.
Plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere which returns to the atmosphere either by rotting (eaten by bacteria) eaten by animals or eaten by us.
The end result is the same.
“The transformation of waste is perhaps the oldest preoccupation of man” – Patti Smith. We were so stoned back in the day to break our girly lip-lock in order to appreciate the profoundness of her lyric as she DH’d her guitarist on stage.
Is there no end to this ever rising elevator of peak stupidity? If WUWT readers in the USA feel fed-up, please remember we have half-wits being given coverage on the BBC in the UK who advocate scraping up roadkill and frying it as the only acceptable form of meat eating and actually trying it live on air.
Momentarily it made the thought of eating recycled cardboard seem attractive by comparison, but only momentarily.
There is still wildlife in the UK?
On royal property like it always has been.
https://www.ebay.it/itm/BEEFEATER-LONDON-PREMIUM-DRY-GIN-Da-LT-1-LITRO-Distillato-Inglese-40-CL-100-/252267669482
Haha true and probably at Griffs house bless his little green soul.
reminded me of an article on theRegister site about a decade ago. Someone having fun with eBay. Item for sale was “Festive trouser pump”; article on theRegister was titled “Festive trouser pump wafts into eBay”
Each day emissions equivalent to 661 million passenger miles of gas powered cars. Well,
we’ll be driving electrics soon, and those miles can be driven from the power output of three typical light water nuclear reactors. Next problem?
Ha! I miss grilling during the winter so this weekend when the temps got up in the mid 40’s I uncovered the grill for the first time this year and with a Jack & coke in hand got to grilling. The USDA PRIME Sirloins came out perfect and with the baked potato and salad of baby spinach and Radicchio with sliced black and green olives, artichoke hearts, avocado, and cherry tomatoes was the best meal we’ve had in a while.
You’ll take my grilled steaks from my cold dead hands.
[The mods request an immediate relief effort, easily faxed to the available list. .mod]
Beautiful! +1
Put the grill in the motorhome and headed south. Do not miss winter.
Here is the difference between a grilling over a camp fire or a grill on the left coast and in Louisiana. I grill the veggie burgers and dogs first as not to ‘contaminate’ them with meat. In Louisiana, we put veggies on the meat and in soup.
Are there no honest statisticians? 30 seconds is all that is needed to see that the stats used in this study are designed to produce numbers, mostly percentages, that will make shocking headlines.
Readers: Have at them — list the sneaky bits here below:
I’ve always felt that anyone who wants to be president enough to put up with a couple years of campaigning, isn’t qualified to be president.
Maybe a lottery would be a better way to go.
MarkW ==> No, not a lottery…any of us could be forced to serve 4 years in the White House looney bin!
NHANES misused once again. Based on past history NHANES based studies have about a 65% fail rate- saturated fats are bad FAIL, carbohydrates are good FAIL, butter is bad FAIL, sugar is bad-Half a fail, and more. Plus, people miss-report or don’t remember what they ate Food diaries are the absolute worst way to determine what people are eating. All the corrections and adjustments to the data won’t make it any more accurate.
And anyway, there is much better data available from the USDA on farm production, shipments, imports and exports, and food waste for better data on what was ‘et.
Personally, cooked beans are the biggest culprit, along with all the fossil fuel used in vegetable production.
One of my nephews once claimed to have found the perfect recipe for gas: fish, beans, and milk.
You need to add jerusalem artichoke into that.
Why has no one stood up against the myth that CH4 is a significant greenhouse gas… The warmists cant agree on its relative potency… 13, to 28 times Co2… It points out that CO2 is pathetic as a warming gas. H2O completely obscures the absorption spectrum of CH4… Methane will never be significant unless the seas dry up
My understanding is that a great portion of US beef consumption is in the form of manufacturing beef. This ends up in burgers, sausages e.t.c.
It is also my understanding that most or this manufacturing beef is imported from countries like Brazil, Australia, Argentina and New Zealand. Most of the cattle in these countries destined for manufacturing beef export are free range i.e. grassland raised.
Therefore, there is little associated cultivation by machinery (compared to cereal production) during this system of beef production and a great portion of this grassland is not even fertilized.
The data from which one can do calculations is all recorded on the internet should anyone want to do some research. I have better things to do right now.
Whatever, I very much doubt that this study was based around actual facts relating to farming systems and the marketplace.
Regards
M
Someone locally here in Victoria, Australia, raises beautiful grass-fed cattle specifically for the USA market. They are very well cared-for and have a great life and the landowner is scrupulous in observing the rules to obtain the premium prices for them.
From New Zealand .We export beef ,lamb and venison to the world .99% is grass fed and you should see the steep green hills were the majority of the stock are born bred and fattened . Some of our hills are so steep that you cannot even ride a horse and the muster is done with dogs (the New Zealand huntaway ); There is no other use for this land except forestry or bee keeping .
I have written before that the methane that farm animals release cannot add to green house gas levels as all the fodder that the animals eat has absorbed CO2 to grow .Methane breaks down in the upper atmosphere into CO2 AND WATER VAPOUR AND IS THEN ABSORBED BY PLANTS and the cycle continues ‘
These intellectuals should try grass salad and leaf stew ,hay pudding and clover sausages .If grass is not consumed by herbivores it eventually rots with no economic benefit to anyone
.I would say these researchers are anti meat ,anti milk and anti farmers .
The fact is, Gwan, those ‘researchers’ are anti-humans.
Some of our hills are so steep that you cannot even ride a horse
=====
perfect snipe country. they are born with legs longer on one side than the other for walking on hill sides. annual snipe hunts remain ever popular.
‘one-day dietary recall survey involving more than 16,000 American adults.’
Unverified.
Not scientific data.
The researchers were having fun, not science.
One of many key phrases: “one-day”. Which day? Thanksgiving? Easter? Christmas? Shrove Tuesday? Ash Wednesday? Fourth of July? Consumption on a single day is not necessarily representative of consumption throughout the year.
Research design fail.
P.S. Wasn’t there a similar flaw in some “landmark” nutritional study? The oh-so-healthy people with the “best diet” turned out to have been surveyed during Lent, and actually ate completely differently the rest of the year?
Ferdberple
Aye man we set out to breed a hill cow with their right legs six inches shorter than their left legs .It worked well and they grazed across the steepest slopes but when they came to a vertical fence they turned and rolled to the bottom .
Once a week I make a 12 quart pot of “soup” (that’s maybe more like a thick stew).
I use:
2 lbs of BEEF
2 lbs of KALE
2 lbs of mushrooms
4 cups of pinto bean
4 cups of brown rice
2 large onions
2 bulbs of garlic
3 red bell peppers
1 5.5lb bag of mixed frozen vegetables from Costco (best value on the planet)
1/3 lb of bacon
1 stick of butter
1/3 cup of olive oil
4 cans of tomato sauce
4 cans of diced tomatoes
various seasonings
It is inexpensive, extremely nutritious, quick to make, quick to heat up, easy to clean up, and absolutely delicious.
I have two massive bowls a day, and count the seconds until my next bowl.
I just got in from a 3 hour mountain bike ride, and am going to sit down to a bowl in 3, 2, 1 …
I just got in from seeing my tax accountant. So I had a Singapore Sling.
Nice recipe. Makes me want to go buy a half side of beef…
you need a lot more bacon if you are going to kill the taste of the kale.
Kale is why God invented vinegar.
Okay, I’m answerting Max Photon’s challenge with my 16-bean soup recipe:
Soak 1 pound (16 ox) of 16-bean mix in water in a covered stock pot or dutch oven overnight (8PM to 8AM)
Check early to see if any beans are still floating. If so, scoop them out and toss them.
Drain the water and return all beans to the pot.
Add the following:
28 ounces of beef stock
28 ounces of chicken stock
one large chopped onion
1 pound of baby carrots
one entire bunch of celery, washed and chopped, including leaves
2 cups (16 oz) chopped smoked ham (plus a ham bone if you have one)
Garlic salt, onion powder, Mrs. Dash/Garlic-Herb, thyme, oregano, chopped parsley, a small amount of chili powder, and (if you can find it) smokey mesquite-flavor seasoning
Stir thoroughly, cover, and simmer on LOW. Check every half hour while you fix cornbread, crudites, and cheddar biscuits. Put a big bowl of real tortilla chips on the table.
Sit down with a good book and enjoy your meal. And for afters, whatever your heart enjoys the most.
Try a 21-bean mix and you could call it a “21 bean salute”!
Okay then:
Pour 1.5 oz gin into a highball glass.
Add 1 oz grenadine.
Add 1 oz sweet & sour mix.
Add 3 oz club soda.
Do not stir/mix.
Add ice cubes as desired (I add 5).
Add 1.5 oz. Heering Cherry Liqueur. Note how it disperses
without mixing.
Let chill for a few minutes, then enjoy while you cook your beans.
When cattle is grass fed, they eat something that you need to be a ruminant, with a multi chambered stomach, to be able to digest the grass, or you starve to death. The cattle eat something inedible to humans, then we eat the cattle. If the grassland is not grazed upon, the grass grows too long and dies. Sounds like a win/win/win to me, well maybe not for the cattle.
It is. Look what happend to the american buffalo because we prefered cattle over buffalo, they nearly went extinct.
You are absolutely right Davis
All in all, stories like this just make me really rather (very) sad. For several reasons.
Initially, how did these people come to exist in such a vanishingly small world – a world filled with so much negativity.
It’s the complete opposite of what I always understood universities to be about.
Mostly, having been a ‘cow farmer’ since forever, I feel sad for the cows. Seeing the small herd there is just along the lane from here (Notts is NOT livestock country) – they have an air about them. an air of ‘right’ ‘correct’ ‘good’ and ‘self confidence’
They know what they’re doing there, they know all bout weather, climate, dirt, water, what’s good to eat and generally how to look after themselves. That includes their management of the soil & plants.
then we come along and tell them what for.
we tell/force them what grass to eat – they burp when otherwise wouldn’t. We laugh.
We force them to eat (lightly) processed starch – they put on fat and get diabetes.
How dumb is it possible for humans to be/
But then it gets completely off-the-scale worse because when we come to eat them, we actually throw the very best bits away. The fat mostly of course.
And yet, the cows don’t seem to mind. that’s what gives them that ‘air’ They are on a different plane of intelligence to us. So calm, so forgiving yet so strong.
The University tells us about ‘Paris Agreement’
Yeah right. You try to take butter out of a Frenchman’s diet and you really will have a war on your hands.
Next, the prickly mention of Malthus – starvation.
There are, even on ebay, gadgets that will measure your own personal level of ‘starvation’. Should you be curious. About £40 on ebay UK will get you a little finger pricking device to measure your LDL cholesterol.
How?
The ultimate say on what is or is not good to eat is your own liver – especially when it is tasked with mobilising fat. It does that by attaching protein molecules to the fat to make the fat water soluble.
Your liver determines what is and what is not protein when it does this.
If it has insufficient of the correct protein, it will struggle along and make LDL (low protein) cholesterol instead of the preferred HDL (high) protein cholesterol.
Thus, the little device from ebay (Amazon or wherever), by recording the presence and amount of LDL, effectively tells you how starved you are of the correct sort of protein. Typivcally of course, animal derived protein.
It does not matter what the doctors, scientists, universities, health carers say, you own liver is the final arbiter.
Plant protein just does not cut it. And you know that – its what makes flatulence so smelly, anaerobically decomposing protein.
So. Are you windy. Does the room empty when you drop one?
Is there much LDL circulating inside you right now?
Even very small amounts say that you are, in effect, in a starvation situation.
Remember
https://youtu.be/AsbqoytInTY
Never forget
And the ‘Green Police’ Gestapo.
https://youtu.be/OlB_xNOAn1c
Wow what an interesting theory you have about LDL and HDL. Being a Ketogenic Diet fan it fits in with my thoughts. Do you have some reference material that explains the good vs bad proteins?
TIA MR166
For an interesting and amusing take on grass fed beef …
Grass Fed Beef — It’s Probably Not What You Think It Is
http://themeatguy.blogspot.com/2013/03/grass-fed-beef-its-probably-not-what.html
We’re still waiting to see any proof that CO2 causes harmful climate effects. Until then, speculations like this one are idle chatter.
YES – this. The whole “study” is much ado about nothing, because there is not a scrap of empirical evidence that CO2 or methane has any measurable effect on temperature in the Earth’s atmosphere. Closed containers of a fixed size, not subject to atmospheric processes and not open to the vacuum of space need not apply.
So let me get this straight. If we grow more plant food for humans so we can stop eating animals, we won’t need to use all those fertilizers and farm equipment that it takes to produce animal food. Right… Out here in the west, many cattle graze on the vegetation that grows naturally on public lands. No fertilizers or farm equipment needed. If those cows were not there, the public lands would not stop growing grasses or other plants. And the uneaten plants would die and decay or burn up in wild fires and produce the same greenhouse gasses that cows release when digesting them. So I don’t see how we gain much by not eating beef. Those calories would have to be replaced with something. And that something is usually more labor intensive and requires the same or more fertilizer and farm equipment than feed grown for animals. I would rather let animals eat the plants for me and turn them into something more palatable for me to eat. This study is not accounting for everything. They deliberately leave out things that could change their predetermined conclusion.
What I find really funny is that the gaseous emissions of domestic cattle (and pigs, sheep, etc) apparently count as sources of methane but yet for some odd reason, the emissions of all of the billions of wild hoofed animals in the African plains are conveniently forgotten. And these environutters also seem to forget that America’s plains (both north and south) were once every bit as biologically rich (if not more so) in large herds of plant eaters as is east Africa today. So what about megafauna methane emissions? IMO today’s cattle herds would have a hard time holding a candle (emission-wise) to the endless herds of herbivores that once roamed much of North America.
A few years ago I read an article (I think it was in the Veterinary Record) explaining how the reduction in Arctic ice allows the numbers of Reindeer to increase as more grass is exposed and that the resulting increase in methane emissions further speeds up the ice retreat allowing a further increase in the numbers of Reindeer……..
Do Polar bears eat Reindeer?
Susan
I’m allergic to kale.
And bullpuckey.
I have about 8 pounds of beef in the freezer, waiting for use. I use a lot of chicken in cooking, but I’m really up for a few beef pasties. Found a recipe that will work nicely. Beef, turnips (for flavor), onions, shredded carrots, all wrapped up in a pastry crust – what’s not to like?
And butter? I will never give up butter. Butter is better. Margarine will do nothing but destroy your liver and clog your arteries. Nor will I give up aged cheddar cheese from Transylvania, parmagiano Reggiano, or double creme brie on a good crusty bread with a nice glass of wine. Those crabby coots hiding in closets, mumbling ‘meat bad, sawdust good’ to themselves can go pound sand right up their spinal columns.
I expect to outlive all of them.
Please let me know where they end up being buried when they shuffle off this troublesome mortal coil. I will have a nice glass of Tuscan red, some bodacious double creme brie on a crusty peasant loaf, and radishes and giggle at them.
Next time you have company over, try Fondue Bourgeignon (sp?). Fill a deep frypan with clarified butter (milk fat that’s been separated from the milk solids — has a higher smoking point that regular melted butter, and just as much flavor) and heat it to sizzling. Slice fresh beefsteak into cubes or strips, and get out everybody’s favorite condiments and beef accompaniments. Arrange it all on the table, leaving a trivet in the center to (carefully!) set the pan of hot butter fat.
Everybody can now take a long fork or skewer (preferably with a cool handle), spear a piece of beef, and cook it in the frypan to the degree of doneness they each prefer. Move the cooked piece to your plate, spear another and start it cooking while you enjoy the first.
For a large gathering, keep a second pan of clarified butter hot on the stovetop, and switch it out with the one on the table when that one starts to cool.
Now you have me starving to death!!!!
AGW theory is that carbon in fossil fuels were sequestered from the surface-atmosphere carbon cycle for millions of years and that therefore they do not belong in the current account of the carbon cycle. It is thus proposed that the sudden injection of large quantities of this external underground carbon, into the carbon cycle may act as an artificial and unnatural perturbation of the carbon cycle and climate system. This is the fundamental issue in AGW & the rationale for the concern expressed by Callendar, Keating, & Revelle and codified and quantified by Manabe, Charney, & Hansen into the modern version of AGW theory.
In this context, the conversion of carbon in vegetation into carbon in methane gas and its rapid oxidation by atmospheric oxygen into CO2 are events in the current account of the carbon cycle. These events do not constitute an injection of external underground carbon into the carbon cycle but rather conversion of carbon already in the carbon cycle from one form to another.
It appears that anti-carbon zealotry and activism have gotten ahead of themselves. The zealots have forgotten their own settled science in their intense desire to save the planet from humans. The emotional needs of anti carbon activists have apparently become part of climate science.
In any case the data do not show that atmos methane, net of its known oxidation rate, is responsive to bovine methane emissions. It is possible that the movement against beef in the name of climate change may have its emotional origins in vegetarianism.
https://ssrn.com/abstract=2674147
In my experience, eating beans instead of beef merely shifts those methane emissions from one species to another.
I grill, smoke, roast, simmer, and fry fish, chicken, pork, turkey, beef, venison, shellfish, and mutton year round. Elk also, when I’m lucky! Smoke grilled fresh black mouth salmon last Sunday and grilled chicken tonight. I’ll keep them on my personal menu, knowing that any nebulously related CO2 emissions are much needed for plant food as soon as spring arrives again, … and virtue signalling vegans be damned!
Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO) in the US have zero discharge permits for nutrients (aka fertilizer). What that is called for college students is recycling. Composted manure is a very good fertilizer.
The CAFOs that I have visited carefully controlled feeding for a balanced diet. The result is affordable high quality meat.
One other interesting thing is a warehouse for hay being shipped to Japan. I have frequented Japanese steak house in China when on expense account. Now I am wondering if it was not the same as Washington State feedlot beef. Is it the location of the crop or cow?
Also enjoyed a steak at an Outback in Singapore.
70% of the earth’s surface is classified as “Rangeland”. It is not suitable for the growing of intensive vegetable or grain crops. Not only can the livestock that graze this land not be replaced with plant foods, but the natural wildlife will fill the niche and do exactly what cattle and sheep do.
Nearly 90% of the fodder eaten by cattle and sheep is not human-quality food. It doesn’t matter how “inefficient” you think they are, not feeding cattle does not make their food available for humans….. it just wastes what could have been turned into edible protein.