1 agricultural source of greenhouse gases worldwide. But because governments have limited will and resources to address the problem, he said it is more important to achieve net zero carbon emissions before cutting methane. Meanwhile transportation figures, which are regularly reported as 28% of all GHG emissions, only factor in direct emissions from exhaust fumes, ignoring processes associated with manufacturing machinery, or moving people and produce. and what i can do to … However, experts studying the effects of greenhouse gas emissions say it is more important to focus on carbon dioxide emissions rather than methane. Two-thirds of those gases are directly emitted by ruminants: animals like cows, buffalo and sheep that use bacteria in their stomachs to ferment food. Not only is this claim untrue, but eliminating cows, which notoriously produce the greenhouse gas methane, isn’t necessary to address climate change, according to University of Oxford researchers. Organizations including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change publish the GWP in their reports. In the first few decades after it’s emitted, methane causes more warming per kilogram than carbon dioxide does. “This discussion is the cornerstone of debunking all of this hype around why we should eat less animal-based protein,” he says. Cows have become the bad boys of climate change — but their place in the global warming debate is unfair, says air quality expert Frank Mitloehner. The Global Warming Potential (GWP) is a metric used to compare how much different greenhouse gases will warm the atmosphere across a given period into the future. “If we prioritize the methane, first we will have a large quick benefit” as methane levels in the atmosphere rapidly fall, Lynch said. Dairy cattle are increasingly suffering from debilitating heat stress due to global warming. At the first 2020 Presidential debate, President Donald Trump said that Green New Deal supporters “want to take out the cows” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Farmers are the experts, they need to answer them.”, A version of this article first appeared in Farm Business, Oceans Get Zero-Emission Ship in Step Toward Cleaner Cargo, Let’s Talk About People of Color’s Trauma in the Environmental Sector, 5 Reasons Why it Makes Cents to Shop Secondhand, Why Most Planets Will Either Be Lush or Dead, Threading the Needle: How to Save Nature and Humanity without Sacrificing Either Part II, Wildfires Wreak Havoc on California’s $58 Billion Wine Industry. To put that into context, each year 558m tons of methane is produced globally, with 188m tons coming from agriculture. This process produces … His suggestion has huge implications, because the way greenhouse gases are reported and compared in policies today doesn’t make it clear how differently these gases behave. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause … Cows are causing global warming! Medill Reports. But perhaps more significant, however, is the lack of understanding about the methane famously emitted in cows’ burps, and how it acts in the environment. However, experts studying the effects of greenhouse gas emissions say it is more important to focus on carbon dioxide emissions rather than methane. “More and more people are asking questions about their food, and farmers can no longer say they don’t want to talk to the media or the public. These long-lasting emissions will warm the planet, causing more extreme weather conditions, droughts, floods and rising sea levels. Agriculture in general, and livestock production, in particular, contributes to global warming through emissions of methane and nitrous oxide. “Two thirds of the world’s agricultural land is marginal, which means it cannot be used to grow crops because the soil is not sufficient or there’s not enough water,” he says. By Grace Rodgers and Carlyn Kranking Almost that entire quantity — 548m tons — is broken down through oxidation and absorbed by plants and soils as part of the sink effect. Air quality expert Frank Mitloehner, professor of animal science at UC Davis in California, says the real problem the livestock sector faces is convincing consumers and policy makers that animals aren’t the bad guys of the global warming challenge. “For those who say cows contribute the most GHG emissions, that’s simply not true,” Prof Mitloehner says. Reporting all gases as though they were on the same playing field, experts say, does not account for key differences between them, especially between methane and carbon dioxide. But in almost every case, the world's 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. “It would be good if you maybe ate less beef, had less milk — but we don’t need to completely get rid of all the cows,” said John Lynch, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. “That’s not to say livestock has no impact on climate, but we are not adding additional warming,” Prof Mitloehner says. But cow burps are worse for the climate. So, if the GWP measurement is misleading, what does this mean for potential policies based on that statistic? It’s an argument that’s gained a significant amount of traction, with more and more people adopting vegan diets in response to repeated reports — including from the United Nations — that livestock are a major contributor to the world’s environmental problems. But ultimately, the most important thing to do is to get to net zero carbon dioxide, because that’s the gas with the longest-lasting and biggest impact on global warming. In order to graze, cows need grasslands. It takes much less time to reverse the impact of methane emissions than it does to undo the effects of carbon dioxide, so it’s possible to delay addressing methane, he said. While methane is 28-times more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide, methane’s lifespan is just a decade, while CO2 — known as a long-life pollutant — remains in the atmosphere for 1000 years. “The people who are selling plant-based alternatives are using hype, particularly around methane, and they need to stop.”. Grace Rodgers and Carlyn Kranking are Health, Environment and Science reporters at Medill. Fighting Global Warming Requires Changes In How Cows Are Fed Stopping climate change won't just mean a halt to burning coal and gasoline. However, Lynch’s research shows that, for some purposes, the GWP metric may be misleading. That means that provided no new animals are added to the system, then the same amount of carbon dioxide produced by livestock is actually used by plants during photosynthesis. Methane, however, breaks down after about 12 years, while carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere, warming the planet for millennia. (source – United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization) From burping cows to grazing sheep, when it comes to global warming the finger of blame is invariably pointed at the livestock industry these days. “There’s a lot of harm in delaying things that address carbon emissions,” said physicist Raymond Pierrehumbert, a professor and statutory chair in the physics department at the University of Oxford. Lynch studies ways to anticipate the impacts of greenhouse gases and suggests that the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is more important to address than methane. In fact, with cattle numbers decreasing thanks to increased production efficiencies and improved genetics — the US beef herd has shrunk by about a third since 1975, while dairy cattle numbers have fallen from 25m to 9m in 70 years — methane production from livestock is actually decreasing.

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