Carbon dioxide is up to 0.04% (400 parts per million). Of that low figure, manmade CO2 is only 3% (IPCC 2007): humans produce 3% of 0.04%= 0.001% (10 parts per million!).
Even if we starve half the population or reduce the economic activity by half, we’d only be affecting 5 per million parts of CO2: isn’t it a worthless result at an unconscionable cost?
Methane is in trace amounts (1.7 parts per million) 7 and ruminants account for only 15-20% 8 (0.3 parts per million), or even 30% less, since plants (forests) are responsible for 10-30% of atmospheric methane, weren’t accounted for in those studies (62–236 Tg a−1)” 9:
What difference would it make if the anti-gas movement vanished all ruminants (not just livestock)?
There was no methane increase in the “melting” Arctic and zero increase in a decade10 in spite of a livestock surge of 33%.11 Why do meat-deniers focus on banning cattle and not rice, which accounts for more methane emission? Afraid of making people wake up about those suicidal policies?
Why does GreenPeace block swamp draining, the highest contributor to methane? Afraid of increasing crop production?
Methane “traps 84 times more heat per mass unit than carbon dioxide (CO2) and 105 times the effect when accounting for aerosol interactions.” 12 Even assuming it’s true, and considering it only lasts a decade compared to centuries of CO2, if we multiply 1.7 ppm by 84 more heat trapping, its 143 ppm compared to 400 ppm CO2 (1/3rd). Ruminants account for a CO2 heat equivalence of ca. 17 ppm compared to 10 ppm of human CO2: both figures are insignificant. Why is there an obsession with cattle gases?
Net zero emissions means decarbonisation. Decarbonization means depopulation. Life is emissions, targeting emissions is targeting life:
• We exhale carbon dioxide (so do animals).
• We eat products that produce emissions.
• We flatulate greenhouse gases. 1
• We excrement 20% of methane. 2
• We emit by burning fuel (even renewable ones) but also by producing and using renewable energy.
We are 20% carbon.3 Population is a carbon sink, but they’ll never promote repopulation policies. In their twisted minds, we are all presumed eco-terrorists just by living (i.e. carbon footprint). The decarb plan is to murder us by gradual economic strangling. The decarbon fanatics won’t stop until we cease to breath. For the eco-maniacs, we are carbon ticking bombs: the best man is a dead one. They want us dead… but they refuse to give an example and go first.
In 2013, Rick Heede found that 90 companies were responsible for two-thirds of all industrial carbon dioxide, more than most countries. Nearly all of those companies are owned by the globalist funds like BlackRock, Vanguard, etc.: “Do as I say, not as I do.” Of course, they’ll never stop using private jets or rockets.
Life is carbon: just as trees are carbon sinks, so are we (and all the biosphere, including cows), but that argument destroys the carbon lethal ideology. Life is a cycle and that includes carbon. Yet, they refuse to accept the whole picture: what we sink now, it’s going to be released sooner or later. Carbon is life. By destroying the carbon cycle they foster death.
One proof of their insanity is Carbon Capture tech. 1 They spend millions in techie solutions which has a much lower decarb-return-on-investment than planting trees (or even using the wood to replace carbon-energy-intensive competing materials such as ceramics). The landmark of ideology is that ideas are detached from rational economic analysis.
Another proof of ideology is the war on nitrous oxide, Despite being only 325 parts per billion (0.3 per million) and having a short life under sunrays, it’s the excuse for a war on agriculture through nitrate fertilizers.
Ecomaniacs are dangerous: 2022 UNESCO COMEST (World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology) discusses Ethics of Climate Engineering, including its importance for the sustainable development agenda. 1 They are promoting a global government in charge of a compensation fund for geoengineering damages for cooling the planet, through particles reducing sun exposure, causing some regions being flooded and others drying up. Australia whitened clouds to reduce reef temperatures. 2 Tests have already been started by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other globalists. Less sunshine will reduce dramatically agricultural output, causing famines and poverty.
This response is so thoroughly documented you have clearly had some practice. However leveling a false claim and responding to that does not equate with addressing the point of the research here which stands on face value. Animal consumption by humans is bad for the animals (obviously), bad for our climate, and bad for humans. Try again, "progressive" "science"...
Do you know of any unbiased experiment (follow the $$$) proving that the fearmongered CO2 doomsday prophetic guesstimation of ICPP really increases temperature as their "models" predict?
It's simple: you just need 2 hermetic capsules, one with say 400 PPM CO2 another with their dead-line 450? PPM and measure temperature differences along days, months, years... I bet you 1000 to 1 you won't get a minimum 1.5° difference.
Why is it nobody has done such a simple experiment? fear of truth?
Prove that animal consumption is bad for climate.
Prove it's bad for humans:
Study peer review literature about Near Death Experiences: why is it that animals don't have such experiences nor spontaneous come-backs? Lack of immortal soul? Then why worry about animals?
What if a deadly scorpion is about to sting you and the only way to avoid it is by squashing it: wouldn't you?
Great article and research! My only gripe is that ive been thoughly indoctrinated by betteridge law of headlines, so I truly expected it to be no at this point haha
Agreed. I think the article should be called: "Now Serving One Billion... Dead Monarch Butterflies," and we should attempt to represent the relative impact of carbon emissions in tons of collapsed Arctic ice shelves, dead bees, or tornados.... for example.
As usual with these types of articles, the "beef" contribution is misleading. Yes, CAFO/factory-farmed beef is a climate and ethical disaster. However (although studies are mixed) local grass-fed beef likely reduces the carbon footprint and is clearly beneficial for animal welfare.
But, as I showed in the article, meat substitutes appear to be much lower carbon than even the lowest-carbon beef. i.e. even the 'best beef' still has much higher emissions.
It's also not the case that local grass-fed beef automatically equals lower-carbon. Paradoxically, especially when we factor in the carbon opportunity costs of using land, grass-fed beef can often have higher emissions than grain-fed.
That's a common claim among feedlot operators and their supporters -- "grass-fed beef is actually worse than CAFOs." This strikes me as a convenient rationalization for their horrifically inhumane practices (not as bad as pork and poultry CAFOs but close). When it comes to animal welfare, there is no comparison: grass-fed is obviously superior. When it comes to carbon footprint, I'll concede that the research is mixed thus far. Compare the complex and carbon-intensive infrastructure to support corn growing and harvesting, including pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizer, as well as the GMO technology that is standard and the antibiotics necessary to treat the poor health of cattle who eat unnatural quantities of corn.... to a pasture of grass. Plus, there are hundreds/thousands of grass-fed cattle operations in the US, so it's much easier to buy locally, decreasing the carbon cost of transport. Yes, eating even grass-fed beef may be higher carbon than some meat alternatives, but when it comes to grass vs grain-fed, the choice is clear.
You seem to be be considering fertiliser use only for meat production when it's more critical in plant production. You also seem to be ignoring that pasture is a carbon sink where as any tilled ground is a C02 emitter.
The analysis is flawed from scratch by taking an insufficient timescale: whatever gas cows emit is exactly the same as any other animal plus the biomass they processed. If we account for years, the decaying biomass produces the same level of gases as the animals plus the biomass they eat and process: CO2, methane, etc. Why? because it's a cycle.
Also, if you worry about soul-less creatures, why not stop eating plants, considering some scientists assure that they are sentient, considering electrical and biochemical response... if you follow the ideology, then cutting lettuce wouldn't be much different than amputating your leg, right?
Thank you for compiling all of this research and explaining it so clearly! It certainly supports my decision to eat less meat.
I know this wasn’t in the scope of this post, but I wonder about the health implications of eating processed meat substitutes. I wish peas and nuts had a large marketing team behind them!
Thank you for all of these suggestions! I'm excited to read your WIRED piece and have bookmarked it for later! I'm so happy to have found your Substack :)
Have you had any discussion son this with Sarah Bridle (a MacKay protege) who wrote Food And Climate Change Without The Hot Air (published, like SEWTHA, by UIT)?
I've spoke with Sarah a bit in the past, yes! We spoke quite a bit about her (great) book and I think she used some of our work at Our World in Data for it.
This carbon footprint noise is simply that, noise. Our atmosphere contains approximately 400 parts per million of CO2, less than 0.1 %.
We should simply stop worrying about CO2, it is NOT a threat to the planet or to life. In fact, CO2 "feeds" the plants and the plants respond by giving us Oxygen.
I encourage all of you to review our atmosphere and the risk of CO2 before you criticize my view.....
Another alternative to consider. It's entirely possible to have a nutritional and taste rich vegetarian life style without meat substitutes. My wife and I did that for 50 years before meat substitutes became available. Point being, we don't need to limit our options to meat vs. meat substitutes.
That said, I do realize that the transition to a plant based diet is challenging at first, and meat substitutes can play a useful role in assisting that move. And, Beyond Burgers are indeed pretty awesome! :-)
Vegetarian sermons are tiresome and ineffective so all I'll say here is that if you're considering transitioning your diet to plant based, the best choice may be to just dive right in, leave the meat behind today, and get the transition over with as quickly as possible. Just do it, and get it done, and get on with enjoying what awaits you beyond the world of meat.
All the talk of climate change is best addressed by doing that which we personally have total control over, what we put in our mouths.
This is exactly the type of article that "feeds" (excuse the pun) into the globalist narrative. There is no climate catastrophe. But there is world wide hunger. Why all of the money spent on researching and developing fake food isn't used to feed those in need today should raise questions about the intents, morals and motives of those involved in such enterprises. Humans eat for the sustainability of their bodies not the reduction of a carbon footprint. What good is an awesome environment without humans to flourish in it.
Thank you very much for the article. I know that this is far from the focus of the question, but how is it possible that the carbon footprint of beef and pork are twice as much in the US as in Europe? Is the way of production so different?
Thanks for the work here. I still believe it will be easier in the near term to accelerate chicken substitution for beef culturally speaking. Selling imperfect sensory substitutes has limited population appeal in most countries. It’s an issue of which is more practical to subsidize as policy? Chicken consumption or fake meat consumption given the huge price premium and fails operating model of either fake meat or lab meat.
I really like your work with Our World in Data but for the life of me I can’t understand why you continue to equate biogenic and anthropogenic carbon emissions. The former are part of the carbon cycle and get reabsorbed, the latter do not, and therefore cause climate change. You are comparing apples with oranges and I don’t want to be uncharitable, but it really appears as if you’re masquerading ideology as legitimate science.
Cattle can in fact become an even more significant carbon sink with better practices.
Carbon dioxide is up to 0.04% (400 parts per million). Of that low figure, manmade CO2 is only 3% (IPCC 2007): humans produce 3% of 0.04%= 0.001% (10 parts per million!).
Even if we starve half the population or reduce the economic activity by half, we’d only be affecting 5 per million parts of CO2: isn’t it a worthless result at an unconscionable cost?
Methane is in trace amounts (1.7 parts per million) 7 and ruminants account for only 15-20% 8 (0.3 parts per million), or even 30% less, since plants (forests) are responsible for 10-30% of atmospheric methane, weren’t accounted for in those studies (62–236 Tg a−1)” 9:
What difference would it make if the anti-gas movement vanished all ruminants (not just livestock)?
There was no methane increase in the “melting” Arctic and zero increase in a decade10 in spite of a livestock surge of 33%.11 Why do meat-deniers focus on banning cattle and not rice, which accounts for more methane emission? Afraid of making people wake up about those suicidal policies?
Why does GreenPeace block swamp draining, the highest contributor to methane? Afraid of increasing crop production?
Methane “traps 84 times more heat per mass unit than carbon dioxide (CO2) and 105 times the effect when accounting for aerosol interactions.” 12 Even assuming it’s true, and considering it only lasts a decade compared to centuries of CO2, if we multiply 1.7 ppm by 84 more heat trapping, its 143 ppm compared to 400 ppm CO2 (1/3rd). Ruminants account for a CO2 heat equivalence of ca. 17 ppm compared to 10 ppm of human CO2: both figures are insignificant. Why is there an obsession with cattle gases?
Net zero emissions means decarbonisation. Decarbonization means depopulation. Life is emissions, targeting emissions is targeting life:
• We exhale carbon dioxide (so do animals).
• We eat products that produce emissions.
• We flatulate greenhouse gases. 1
• We excrement 20% of methane. 2
• We emit by burning fuel (even renewable ones) but also by producing and using renewable energy.
We are 20% carbon.3 Population is a carbon sink, but they’ll never promote repopulation policies. In their twisted minds, we are all presumed eco-terrorists just by living (i.e. carbon footprint). The decarb plan is to murder us by gradual economic strangling. The decarbon fanatics won’t stop until we cease to breath. For the eco-maniacs, we are carbon ticking bombs: the best man is a dead one. They want us dead… but they refuse to give an example and go first.
In 2013, Rick Heede found that 90 companies were responsible for two-thirds of all industrial carbon dioxide, more than most countries. Nearly all of those companies are owned by the globalist funds like BlackRock, Vanguard, etc.: “Do as I say, not as I do.” Of course, they’ll never stop using private jets or rockets.
Life is carbon: just as trees are carbon sinks, so are we (and all the biosphere, including cows), but that argument destroys the carbon lethal ideology. Life is a cycle and that includes carbon. Yet, they refuse to accept the whole picture: what we sink now, it’s going to be released sooner or later. Carbon is life. By destroying the carbon cycle they foster death.
One proof of their insanity is Carbon Capture tech. 1 They spend millions in techie solutions which has a much lower decarb-return-on-investment than planting trees (or even using the wood to replace carbon-energy-intensive competing materials such as ceramics). The landmark of ideology is that ideas are detached from rational economic analysis.
Another proof of ideology is the war on nitrous oxide, Despite being only 325 parts per billion (0.3 per million) and having a short life under sunrays, it’s the excuse for a war on agriculture through nitrate fertilizers.
Ecomaniacs are dangerous: 2022 UNESCO COMEST (World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology) discusses Ethics of Climate Engineering, including its importance for the sustainable development agenda. 1 They are promoting a global government in charge of a compensation fund for geoengineering damages for cooling the planet, through particles reducing sun exposure, causing some regions being flooded and others drying up. Australia whitened clouds to reduce reef temperatures. 2 Tests have already been started by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other globalists. Less sunshine will reduce dramatically agricultural output, causing famines and poverty.
Conclusion:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/the-plan-revealed
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/best-scientific-sources-to-debunk
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/carbon-reparations
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/climate-deaths
This response is so thoroughly documented you have clearly had some practice. However leveling a false claim and responding to that does not equate with addressing the point of the research here which stands on face value. Animal consumption by humans is bad for the animals (obviously), bad for our climate, and bad for humans. Try again, "progressive" "science"...
Do you know of any unbiased experiment (follow the $$$) proving that the fearmongered CO2 doomsday prophetic guesstimation of ICPP really increases temperature as their "models" predict?
It's simple: you just need 2 hermetic capsules, one with say 400 PPM CO2 another with their dead-line 450? PPM and measure temperature differences along days, months, years... I bet you 1000 to 1 you won't get a minimum 1.5° difference.
Why is it nobody has done such a simple experiment? fear of truth?
Prove that animal consumption is bad for climate.
Prove it's bad for humans:
Study peer review literature about Near Death Experiences: why is it that animals don't have such experiences nor spontaneous come-backs? Lack of immortal soul? Then why worry about animals?
What if a deadly scorpion is about to sting you and the only way to avoid it is by squashing it: wouldn't you?
Leave ideology. Find the science:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/the-plan-revealed
Also, this, presented by Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA tech (rwmalonemd.substack.com):
https://youtu.be/SOIs42o5AI8?t=30585
Based on 2000 papers: https://bit.ly/research2000
Great article and research! My only gripe is that ive been thoughly indoctrinated by betteridge law of headlines, so I truly expected it to be no at this point haha
Agreed. I think the article should be called: "Now Serving One Billion... Dead Monarch Butterflies," and we should attempt to represent the relative impact of carbon emissions in tons of collapsed Arctic ice shelves, dead bees, or tornados.... for example.
Also doesn't mean killing things..... All for the environment, but I'm sick of people acting like it's the only reason to stop eating meat
As usual with these types of articles, the "beef" contribution is misleading. Yes, CAFO/factory-farmed beef is a climate and ethical disaster. However (although studies are mixed) local grass-fed beef likely reduces the carbon footprint and is clearly beneficial for animal welfare.
It's definitely true that there is a large range in the footprints of beef depending on location and production system. I covered this here: https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
But, as I showed in the article, meat substitutes appear to be much lower carbon than even the lowest-carbon beef. i.e. even the 'best beef' still has much higher emissions.
It's also not the case that local grass-fed beef automatically equals lower-carbon. Paradoxically, especially when we factor in the carbon opportunity costs of using land, grass-fed beef can often have higher emissions than grain-fed.
That's a common claim among feedlot operators and their supporters -- "grass-fed beef is actually worse than CAFOs." This strikes me as a convenient rationalization for their horrifically inhumane practices (not as bad as pork and poultry CAFOs but close). When it comes to animal welfare, there is no comparison: grass-fed is obviously superior. When it comes to carbon footprint, I'll concede that the research is mixed thus far. Compare the complex and carbon-intensive infrastructure to support corn growing and harvesting, including pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizer, as well as the GMO technology that is standard and the antibiotics necessary to treat the poor health of cattle who eat unnatural quantities of corn.... to a pasture of grass. Plus, there are hundreds/thousands of grass-fed cattle operations in the US, so it's much easier to buy locally, decreasing the carbon cost of transport. Yes, eating even grass-fed beef may be higher carbon than some meat alternatives, but when it comes to grass vs grain-fed, the choice is clear.
You seem to be be considering fertiliser use only for meat production when it's more critical in plant production. You also seem to be ignoring that pasture is a carbon sink where as any tilled ground is a C02 emitter.
The analysis is flawed from scratch by taking an insufficient timescale: whatever gas cows emit is exactly the same as any other animal plus the biomass they processed. If we account for years, the decaying biomass produces the same level of gases as the animals plus the biomass they eat and process: CO2, methane, etc. Why? because it's a cycle.
Also, if you worry about soul-less creatures, why not stop eating plants, considering some scientists assure that they are sentient, considering electrical and biochemical response... if you follow the ideology, then cutting lettuce wouldn't be much different than amputating your leg, right?
This is so incredibly well timed. Thank you for putting it all together in one place
Would be very interested to see stats for "Juicy Marbles", an interesting plant based product that has made headlines recently.
Thanks! I will have a look to see if these products have appropriate environmental analyses :)
Thanks for this!
What GWP did you use for methane here? 20 year? 100 year? Just curious, and couldn't access the original articles to see the methodologies.
Thanks Anna.
The underlying papers and reports that these comparisons are based on use GWP100 (over a 100-year timescale).
Thank you for compiling all of this research and explaining it so clearly! It certainly supports my decision to eat less meat.
I know this wasn’t in the scope of this post, but I wonder about the health implications of eating processed meat substitutes. I wish peas and nuts had a large marketing team behind them!
Thanks Jillian. It's a good question! Maybe I should cover it in a later post.
If you're interested, I did some comparisons of meat substitutes to meat and dairy (linked them below):
https://twitter.com/_HannahRitchie/status/1588912550313590784?s=20&t=pzHi7_HCmV4J49Xh3ZLW5g
https://twitter.com/_HannahRitchie/status/1588866902944002048?s=20&t=pzHi7_HCmV4J49Xh3ZLW5g
You might also be interested in a recent article I wrote in WIRED on processed food: https://www.wired.com/story/processed-food-health-meat-substitute-environment/
Thank you for all of these suggestions! I'm excited to read your WIRED piece and have bookmarked it for later! I'm so happy to have found your Substack :)
Have you had any discussion son this with Sarah Bridle (a MacKay protege) who wrote Food And Climate Change Without The Hot Air (published, like SEWTHA, by UIT)?
I've spoke with Sarah a bit in the past, yes! We spoke quite a bit about her (great) book and I think she used some of our work at Our World in Data for it.
It's a very good book. Highly recommend!
This carbon footprint noise is simply that, noise. Our atmosphere contains approximately 400 parts per million of CO2, less than 0.1 %.
We should simply stop worrying about CO2, it is NOT a threat to the planet or to life. In fact, CO2 "feeds" the plants and the plants respond by giving us Oxygen.
I encourage all of you to review our atmosphere and the risk of CO2 before you criticize my view.....
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/best-scientific-sources-to-debunk
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/killing-me-softly-with-green-songs
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/carbon-reparations
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/climate-deaths
No thanks
Another alternative to consider. It's entirely possible to have a nutritional and taste rich vegetarian life style without meat substitutes. My wife and I did that for 50 years before meat substitutes became available. Point being, we don't need to limit our options to meat vs. meat substitutes.
That said, I do realize that the transition to a plant based diet is challenging at first, and meat substitutes can play a useful role in assisting that move. And, Beyond Burgers are indeed pretty awesome! :-)
Vegetarian sermons are tiresome and ineffective so all I'll say here is that if you're considering transitioning your diet to plant based, the best choice may be to just dive right in, leave the meat behind today, and get the transition over with as quickly as possible. Just do it, and get it done, and get on with enjoying what awaits you beyond the world of meat.
All the talk of climate change is best addressed by doing that which we personally have total control over, what we put in our mouths.
This is exactly the type of article that "feeds" (excuse the pun) into the globalist narrative. There is no climate catastrophe. But there is world wide hunger. Why all of the money spent on researching and developing fake food isn't used to feed those in need today should raise questions about the intents, morals and motives of those involved in such enterprises. Humans eat for the sustainability of their bodies not the reduction of a carbon footprint. What good is an awesome environment without humans to flourish in it.
Thank you very much for the article. I know that this is far from the focus of the question, but how is it possible that the carbon footprint of beef and pork are twice as much in the US as in Europe? Is the way of production so different?
Thanks for the work here. I still believe it will be easier in the near term to accelerate chicken substitution for beef culturally speaking. Selling imperfect sensory substitutes has limited population appeal in most countries. It’s an issue of which is more practical to subsidize as policy? Chicken consumption or fake meat consumption given the huge price premium and fails operating model of either fake meat or lab meat.
I really like your work with Our World in Data but for the life of me I can’t understand why you continue to equate biogenic and anthropogenic carbon emissions. The former are part of the carbon cycle and get reabsorbed, the latter do not, and therefore cause climate change. You are comparing apples with oranges and I don’t want to be uncharitable, but it really appears as if you’re masquerading ideology as legitimate science.
Cattle can in fact become an even more significant carbon sink with better practices.
https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/biogenic-carbon-cycle-and-cattle