Essay by Eric Worrall
“… Unless humans rapidly change mass food production systems, including eating less beef and dairy, emissions from the sector could add nearly 1 degree to global temperatures by 2100 …”
The food we eat is ramping up global warming, study warns
By Mark Saunokonoko • Senior Journalist
8:51am Mar 7, 2023Unless humans rapidly change mass food production systems, including eating less beef and dairy, emissions from the sector could add nearly 1 degree to global temperatures by 2100, a study has warned.
If that modelling is accurate, the 1.5 degrees target in the Paris Agreement which called for countries to take concerted action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is in peril.
Global food consumption alone could boost warming by almost 1 degree by the end of this century, researchers from Columbia University in the US said.
…
Read more: https://www.9news.com.au/national/the-food-we-eat-could-add-nearly-1-c-to-global-warming-by-2100/acc958cd-a45c-4918-b0be-82465be2bb88
The abstract of the study;
Future warming from global food consumption
Catherine C. Ivanovich, Tianyi Sun, Doria R. Gordon & Ilissa B. Ocko
Nature Climate Change (2023)Cite this article
Abstract
Food consumption is a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and evaluating its future warming impact is crucial for guiding climate mitigation action. However, the lack of granularity in reporting food item emissions and the widespread use of oversimplified metrics such as CO2 equivalents have complicated interpretation. We resolve these challenges by developing a global food consumption GHG emissions inventory separated by individual gas species and employing a reduced-complexity climate model, evaluating the associated future warming contribution and potential benefits from certain mitigation measures. We find that global food consumption alone could add nearly 1 °C to warming by 2100. Seventy five percent of this warming is driven by foods that are high sources of methane (ruminant meat, dairy and rice). However, over 55% of anticipated warming can be avoided from simultaneous improvements to production practices, the universal adoption of a healthy diet and consumer- and retail-level food waste reductions.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01605-8
In my opinion, based on my personal experience, a mandatory switch to a vegetarian diet would kill a lot of people.
A while ago, I had a personal health crisis – I was putting on too much weight, and my blood pressure was climbing into the danger zone.
I had to lose weight or suffer the consequences. But how does a long term fat guy lose weight and keep the weight off?
My doctor said “meat is your friend”. Some of my friends said “I’m thin because I eat meat, and very little veg”.
I gave it a try – and it worked. I’ve lost heaps of weight, all my health metrics are back in the green again, or out of the red zone at least.
Meat works for me because I don’t feel hungry, which was the downfall of all the other diets I’ve tried over the years. I eat as much meat as I want, and still lose weight. The only rule I have to stick to is to avoid carb rich food, avoid potatoes, bread, corn and pasta (OK, maybe I break the rule once or twice per week – but not every day, like I used to).
So my response to anyone who demands that I surrender my lifeline to health and wellbeing, the one diet out of all the diets I tried which finally delivered results, a diet which is also helping some of my friends, to prevent one miserable degree of global warming by the end of the century, is you can take your climate concern and shove it… I think you know the rest of that phrase. And I suspect a lot of people in my situation would feel the same.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Implementation will be interesting. Easy enough to clear the stock yards but rounding up all the sacred cows of India and the vast African herds have to go, and don’t even think about catching all the kangaroos. Maybe hunter is one of those green jobs they talk about.
Give up beef or 1 degree of warming? I like ribeye and warm weather so pass on that.
This gives a new meaning to green pastures!
Vegan militants won’t be happy until they bring back the good old days of kwashiorkor and rickets in children who can’t get enough protein and calcium in their diets.
Activists in several large states, including California, and Massachusetts, have tripled the price of eggs by taking cheap eggs off the market. The pretext is the “cruelty” of caging chickens, and forcing remaining producers to let them run free instead.
No surprise — production is lagging, and prices have risen.
In fact, chickens in smaller cages experience less stress and thus lay more eggs. “Cage-free” chicken is a misnomer. Virtually all domesticated animals are confined in some way. So called cage-free chickens experience higher stress, and higher mortality rates because chickens harass and kill each other in the proverbial “pecking order.”
The “cruelty” of forcing people to pay $6/dozen instead of $2 is never mentioned. Wait until militants insist that large (AKA efficient) dairy operations are “cruel,” and must be banned. Then you can expect cheese, milk, yogurt, etc. to triple in price, and poor people to give up those high nutrient density foods until their kids are malnourished, or they have to resort to “scientifically-designed” food pellets, or pills. Those quasi-foods won’t be cheap, either. Mark my words.
If do-gooders can triple the price of eggs, they’ll triple the price of meat, dairy, and anything else they get their sights on.
In a free market society people should have the freedom to eat pretty much whatever they like. If the cafeteria at the Columbia Journalism school can get the soon-to-be purveyors of fake news to eat poached worms and fried crickets, good for them. For the rest of us that chow down on T-bones and quiche, isn’t that what freedom is really all about?
Well said tom,
The same dumb regulations were introduced here in new Zealand with the same escalation in the egg prices .
I don’t call them do -gooders when they are really wreckers.
The anti farming retards will cause so much misery and hunger forcing the cost of food up and reducing the range of foods available .
I am quite certain that those that are pushing this anti farming nonsense ,trying to blame food production as a cause of global warming have a long game in mind which is communism when we will own nothing and according to them we will be happy .
They are just starting this vegan push in Australia and have learnt nothing from similar stupid ideas pushed by greenies elsewhere, hopefully the conservatives in NZ will regain power and get rid of Jacinta’s stupid climate mitigation pogroms for good. It’s time the sensible centre ground of public opinion was heard on climate and not the elitist imposed UN climatology with their alternate ‘power’ agenda.
Alpha-gal syndrome is a medical condition that causes severe allergic reactions after eating red meat. Alpha-gal is spread through tick bites. There is no treatment except.to stop eating red meat. Is this natural evolution at work or enviro-terrorism?
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alpha-gal-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20428608
Probably a side effect of banning effective pesticides…
There are two classes of people I don’t take advice or direction from, journalists and academics. These people are mind numbingly indoctrinated, they desperately need help. CO2 is not the control knob for earth’s climate nor is methane. Pay attention! We are not in a climate crisis. Pay attention! Climate computer models do not work. Pay attention! Earth is not going to reach a tipping point. Pay attention! There is no reason for these people to act so stupid, they get paid to not be stupid.
Well said Bob,
Climate change is being used by the UN and the WEF to try and change the world economic and political system .
Global warming is a tool that is being used to scare people so that they will let these autocrats take over the world and impose a communist system upon us .
They believe that the population in all countries will vote for this when people start believing that they are going to be saved from runaway warming .
Cows eat grass. I eat cows. I’m a vegetarian!
I am a vegan between meals.
I’ve made this comment before, but I do not understand where the extra CO2 comes from as part of of a meat diet that would cause a temperature increase.
We, and what we eat, are part of a carbon cycle. Cows eat grass, fart, add CO2/methane to the atmosphere, which later is taken up by grass as it grows. Basically, the cycle is completed. What carbon we have in our bodies and the bodies of cows, when we die, is taken up by mother Earth and will be used as part of another carbon cycle.
I just don’t see where the angst is coming from.
Well, it’s totally bogus. Imagine North America before Europeans came here – millions upon millions of bison roamed the western plains. And that long ago, most of Africa’s savannahs were chock full of medium and large ungulates (far more than there is now). So apparently these idiots assume those animals never belched or farted….not ever! No methane, no CO2…no emissions of any kind. Unlike domestic livestock, which are of course descended from wild cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. Yeah, right….
I thought that if we all switched to electric vehicles and limited our air travel to one flight annually that would be enough to arrest global warming. Now the alarmists want us to swear off meat, so what’s next: stop warming our homes and businesses in winter and cooling them in summer? How about convincing China and India to swear off fossil fuels? The reality is that none of this is going to happen except to generate a multitude of horselaughs.
When you peel my cold dead fingers off my cheeseburger, vegan boy.
Climate Science: the playground where children who want to be scientists when they grow up get to use computer simulators and pretend to be doing real experiments.
I know it’s a bit complicated here, but would you have a COVID vaccine shot if the drug company serving it up produced it based on a computer model of vaccines, without any empirical evidence that it was safe or it worked?
Yet we’re transitioning away from reliable energy based on the baloney (vegetarian baloney, which is made from bamboo, lotus blossoms and recycled newsprint) eliminating from these computer simulations.
Plants and animals evolved to depend on each other. Get rid of animals and the plants die. That’s where desertification comes from.
It’s caused by disruption of the evolved patterns of migratory herd animals grazing, fertilizing the soil, and moving on. To undo desertification we have to manage livestock in a way that replicates the grazing patterns of natural herds.
It’s easy to do, and really only requires a market for the meat that this combined animal and land husbandry produces. Anyone who actually loves animals should “dig right in” to this solution.
Bug eaters like Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab hate humans (repeating endlessly that they want to get rid of 95% of us), and they hate animals.
If they liked animals they would pay extra for them to live well (grazing “free range” like natural herd animals). Instead they advocate vegetarianism, which means the animals never live at all.
They are bug people, with bug brains, seeking to remove the competing mammalian higher life forms so that they can rule bug planet. At least, that’s what Occam’s razor says, haha.
That explains Microsoft products, then.
I am flabbergasted that the meat and dairy industries in the US have not risen to fight this existential threat. After our “betters” giving the world an epidemic of type II diabetes the logo writes itself….
“beef. real food for whole people”
FAILED PREDICTIONS:
IPCC FAR (1990) ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
Based on current model results, we predict:
• under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A)
emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of
global mean temperature during the next century of
about 0 3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of
0 2°C to 0 5°C per decade), this is greater than that
seen over the past 10,000 years This will result in a
likely increase in global mean temperature of about
1°C above the present value by 2025 and VC before
the end of the next century The rise will not be
steady because of the influence of other factors
(in Dec 2020, we are ~0.4C above 1990)
——————-
Nice list of failed predictions with proof:
2022 Same Shit, Different Year: 55 Years Of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions
https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/2022-same-shit-different-year-55-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions
http://www.debunkingclimate.com/failedpredictions.html
First they wanted just our hydrocarbon fuels. Now they want the best part of our food.
But what they really want is for about 7.5 billion of us to stop breathing.
Hang on. According to https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature :
And
https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement
So it’s already too late. The climate crazies have lost, and the world has not burned up. Somebody should tell them.
How can such self evident lies be published? CH4 is irrelevant, the earth produces little energy at its absorption frequency, Wiens law, and what there is is saturated by water vapour.
Plus CH4 breaks down quickly
At the same time cows sequester CO2 in the soil with their manure, and generate food that does not need ploughing, pesticides, fertilisers, and all the associated oil and steel and manufacturing associated with that.
Cows have been farmed for 10,000 years! It is THAT sustainable, and THAT un-dependent on technology, you can literally produce beef and dairy with stone age tools!
This is not a “study” or legitimate research. ALL of the authors work for the Environmental Defense Fund.
It is just “sciency” sounding opinion written by activists to promote the death wish odd CAGW dystopians. Another example of “pal” review.
Global food consumption alone could boost warming by almost 1 degree by the end of this century
Everyone has to stop eating to save the planet!
I did an informal of 5 young women age 19-21 who stated they would still have children regardless of having to eat insects or not. Most said they would like 2-4 kids. My survey sample is not representative… all Church members. Most said they would grow they own beans (much methane there) meat and eggs, ( rabbits in the basement if they had to) LOL
A propaganda attack on food is lame, Getting and having a life is so much better than all the crap in the news. Even the rad leaners are tiring of non-stop red herring BS.
The Propagandists will have to find more funding and up their game if they think they can sustain a 1.3 fertility rate in the US. People have jobs and the economy is smoking hot. Wall-Street wants recession t drive down the interest rate to zero….ain’t happening.
People had jobs and babies in the 70-80’s during high inflection. A hot labor market means babies… meat or no meat.
1.3 acre, 1 Steer=440 lbs of beef, 40 chickens,600 eggs and 700 quarts of goat milk. This can be land that crops cannot be grown on. There is plenty of marginal, hillside land….. and you can put pigs in the woods. The problem today is, no one wants to do the work and the knowledge and skill has been lost…and the will. People are dependent on the global food market. There is no reason folks can’t do it themselves with some trial and error or to partner with people who have the knowledge. The more the American food market goes side ways, the more coopetition for the supermarket, the lower prices and better quality there will be.
And if 10-20% of the meat is grown locally on land by families, the more lame articles like this one post will become.
I am waiting to see more cattle and goats on the hillsides in PA…. when I start to see them more and more and I will know the lame propagandist have already lost the game.