Annual beef consumption per capita varies from 120 pounds in Argentina and 92 pounds in the U.S. to only a pound in the small eastern European country of Moldova; the average is about 22 pounds per person per year....[More]
Burgers or Tofu?
Annual beef consumption per capita varies from 120 pounds in Argentina and 92 pounds in the U.S. to only a pound in the small eastern European country of Moldova; the average is about 22 pounds per person per year. The colors of the countries and the distortions of their usual shapes reflect the amount by which beef consumption per capita varies from the world average. World beef consumption per capita is growing, particularly in Asia, because of economic development: as people earn higher incomes, they purchase foods they find more desirable.
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U.N. FAO, 2003
Eating and Driving: An Atmospheric Comparison
The greenhouse gas emissions from producing various foods can be appreciated by comparing them with the emissions from a gasoline-powered passenger car that gets 27 miles per gallon....[More]
Eating and Driving: An Atmospheric Comparison
The greenhouse gas emissions from producing various foods can be appreciated by comparing them with the emissions from a gasoline-powered passenger car that gets 27 miles per gallon. The estimated emissions from food production incorporate the assumption that 1,000 kilograms of carbon per hectare per year (about 2,700 pounds of carbon dioxide per acre per year) would have been absorbed by forests or other vegetation if the land had not been cleared for annual food crops or fodder. Greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane, for instance—trap solar energy and warm the earth’s surface. Quantities of greenhouse gases are often expressed as the amount of CO2 that would have the same global-warming potential: their CO2 equivalent.
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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Transportation Energy Data Book, U.S. Department of Energy, 2008; Seattle Food System Enhancement Project: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Study; Subak and Fiala references in "More to Explore"
The High (Greenhouse Gas) Cost of Meat
Worldwide meat production (beef, chicken and pork) emits more atmospheric greenhouse gases than do all forms of global transportation or industrial processes....[More]
The High (Greenhouse Gas) Cost of Meat
Worldwide meat production (beef, chicken and pork) emits more atmospheric greenhouse gases than do all forms of global transportation or industrial processes. On the basis of data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research, the author estimates that current levels of meat production add nearly 6.5 billion tons of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases every year to the atmosphere: some 18 percent of the worldwide annual production of 36 billion tons. Only energy production generates more greenhouse gases than does raising livestock for food.
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U.N. FAO, 2006
A Growing Appetite
World beef production is increasing at a rate of about 1 percent a year, in part because of population growth but also because of greater per capita demand in many countries....[More]
A Growing Appetite
World beef production is increasing at a rate of about 1 percent a year, in part because of population growth but also because of greater per capita demand in many countries. Economic analysis shows that if all beef were produced under the economically efficient feedlot, or CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation), system—which generates fewer greenhouse emissions than many other common husbandry systems do—beef production by 2030 would still release 1.3 billion tons of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases. If current projections of beef consumption are correct, even under the feedlot production system the buildup of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases could amount to 26 billion tons in the next 21 years.
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U.N. FAO; U.S. Census Bureau
Prime Cuts: How Beef Production Leads to Greenhouse Gases
The largest fraction of the greenhouse effect from beef production comes from the loss of CO2-absorbing trees, grasses and other year-round plant cover on land where the feed crops are grown and harvested....[More]
Prime Cuts: How Beef Production Leads to Greenhouse Gases
The largest fraction of the greenhouse effect from beef production comes from the loss of CO2-absorbing trees, grasses and other year-round plant cover on land where the feed crops are grown and harvested. Second most important is the methane given off by animal waste and by the animals themselves as they digest their food. This analysis of the U.S. feedlot beef production system was done by ecological economist Susan Subak, then at the University of East Anglia in England.
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1. Bea Elliott
12:52 AM 1/21/09
I would think that the solution is that developed worlds reduce or eliminate their consumption of meat. And direct other countries to more sustainable plant based diets which will in turn feed that many more people. In fact, going this route we combat "starvation" that much more efficiently. There's little doubt that we can thrive on a meat-free diet. All essentials can be gotten from vegetation. And we would as a nation and a world be the healthier for it.
Simply reducing meat consumption as your article suggests is not going to be enough. Wholesale changes in what we choose to eat needs to be done, and sooner than later. Your article fails to mention how much more prevalent meat recalls are. Factor that in and it just keeps adding up. The first commenter mentions that people are starving in the world. Every time someone eats meat, they are contributing to starvation in the world. The cows and chickens and pigs and cheese and milk people eat and drink had to eat some kind of food (not grass anymore, but corn mostly) raised on land that could have been used to raise crops to feed the rest of the world, but no, burgers or milk are more important. America has its collective head in the sand regarding meat consumption and it's about time to take it out and see the truth. It has been a frustrating 18 years as a vegetarian. As when I started, only 3 - 5% of Americans are vegetarian. That needs to change.
The reality is that few people will change there basic eating habits. People are not going to stop eating meat and they are not going to stop eating vegetables. As for this study, it solves nothing since it really doesn't say much. For example, you never provide an undestanding of the true impact of the CO2 from the production of beef or other animals relative to the global emmission of CO2 from the oceans, other natural sources or even the total amounts emitted by society. You need to quantify your results such that they are meaningful.
As an alternative, researchers and graduate students should be working to better understand the weakeness of the global warming theory (e.g., the feedback forcing associated with CO2 and other greenhouse gases that poorly understood, but have a huge impact on the temperature trends or perhaps gain an understanding of the impact of water vapor on the regulation of climate temperature). Scientific American should be presenting arguments from both sides of the global warming warming debate. For those who do not beleive in the scienitic method then I challenge you to publish your work so that we can all read it and come to a conclusion.
It would be nice to think that we could just reduce our meat consumption or eat locally, but the only real answer is vegetarianism. Check out this article by Mike Tidwell from Audubon Magazine: http://www.audubonmagazine.org/features0901/viewpoint.html
He says, "Even poultry, while less harmful, also contributes. Ironically, data released in 2007 by Adrian Williams of Cranfield University in England show that when all factors are considered, organic, free-range chickens have a 20 percent greater impact on global warming than conventionally raised broiler birds. Thats because sustainable chickens take longer to raise, and eat more feed. Worse, organic eggs have a 14 percent higher impact on the climate than eggs from caged chickens, according to Williams. "
Nathan, I appreciate your article and plan on posting it in the lavatory where I work. I have a question for you. I work at an outdoor science camp in southern California; we are located about 45 minutes out of Redlands, and all of our food is sourced through Sysco. We work in the field with something like 9000 Orange county and Los Angeles county school children. We approach topics like global warming by asking kids during meals to take a closer look at the origins of their food. We work in the field with 6th graders to educate them on topics ranging from geology to global warming, with a strong emphasis on environmentalism. I feel as a company we are very hypocritical for presenting factoids about water contamination and the depletion of world resources, but then serving food that employs a system which perpetuates these problems. My question is one regarding balance. Obviously there is a need to educate people on the realities of their food system and global warming, but Nathan, did you walk to work today or did you drive? I work at a company that tries to educate children on the realities of global warming, but we purchase all of our food through a corporation, one of the worlds largest food distributors, that is undoubtedly a huge producer of green house gases in their food production methods. We are communicating using a system that is entirely dependent upon a steady supply of carbon fuels to keep it running. I have heard the apologist's statement that to educate people, we must act in such and such a way to inform and educate, but Nathan, I have simply become deaf to this argument. I feel painted into a corner, as I am sure you sometimes must. Any comments, revolutionary ideas, snide remarks or any thing that could generate some lulz would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for hearing my voice, Frustrated and dissatisfied
Oh for heavens sake - firstly make a differentiation between factory farmed meat and naturally grazed meat - then start looking at the whole carbon picture. Naturally grazed cattle circulate a lot of their carbon when properly 'managed' by regenerating pastures into dense actively growing swards which actively 'pump' carbon directly from the atmosphere into the soilin the soil (where a lot of carbon has disappeared from poor/non management). We absolutely need livestock to keep our landscapes alive and to pull carbon down where it needs to be. What needs questioning is factory farming in any form - that is where the problem lies, not with meat.
I live in Melbourne, Australia. Coal-fired power is generally regarded as Australia's most significant contributor (50%) to our shameful level of greenhouse gas emissions. However, the true impact of a more significant contributor is often overlooked. Each year, Australia's livestock produce about 3 million tonnes of methane. According to the IPCC, methane's greenhouse impact is 72 times stronger over a 20-year time horizon than carbon dioxide's. (The GWP of 21 or 23 relates to a 100-year time horizon, but methane generally breaks down within 15 years.) Those methane emissions equate to about 216 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, about 20 per cent more than from Australia's coal-fired power stations.
That's not to say that we should ignore CO2, but converting to a plant-based diet could have a massive impact.
Please see the following article from Australasian Science of Nov/Dec '07 by Prof Barry Brook of the University of Adelaide and Geoff Russell,:
http://www.control.com.au/bi2007/2810Brook.pdf
If the people of Great Britain could accept food rationing in order to help save their country in WWII, then surely we should be able to modify our diet in 2009 when confronted by the greatest problem facing mankind.
Please also see "Climate Code Red: The case for emergency action" by David Spratt and Philip Sutton:
www.climatecodered.com
The attached article by David Spratt and Damien Lawson in Rolling Stone is a great summary of some of the key issues:
These last two items don't go into a lot of detail about diet, but they make a great case for the need to treat climate change as an emergency. A key problem is "climate feedbacks". For example, permafrost (frozen land) in Russia, Canada, Alaska and elsewhere is currently thawing, releasing massive amounts of methane. More methane means more warming, more permafrost thawing, more methane release and so on. This leads to runaway climate change, which no longer depends on emissions generated by mankind.
The temperature at the poles is around 4 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels, compared to the global average of 0.8. Feedback loops already in the system will increase temperatures further. If people could be informed of the problem, then meaningful changes in diet may be achievable.
A change in diet is something that does not require billions of dollars in infrasture and years of development to introduce.
Correction: I had said "Coal-fired power is generally regarded as Australia's most significant contributor (50%) to our shameful level of greenhouse gas emissions".
The figure of 50% represents total stationary energy. Coal-fired energy represents 43% of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions, based on a 100-year GWP. (Source: Australia's National Greenhouse Accounts 2006)
A clear pattern of evidence has emerged from numerous peer-reviewed articles around the world that the livestock sector is a big emitter of greenhouse gases. We need to accept this fact, but vegetarianism is NOT the only path to reducing the food system's contribution to climate change.
Europeans don't deny themselves meats or cheese (curiously, cheese is always ignored when this issue is debated), they simply eat less. For personal health as well as environmental reasons, North Americans could do the same. We could waste less food too. (Perhaps as much of one-quarter of the food produced for human consumption isn't eaten.) Foods with high global warming potential (GWP) should be minimized - along with the number of air miles traveled, for example - but we're not going to stop eating. We need to eat a better balance. An online tool to compare the GWP of different foods, based on peer-reviewed science, can be found at www.eatlowcarbon.org.
I'd like to see a comparison with the levels of greenhouse gases emitted by the native bison herds that covered the land before mankind arrived. When talking about man-made global warming, it's only sensible to subtract the amount that was being emitted before we made an appearance. Even before the industrial age, we helped the environment by concientiously slaughtering all those herds that were wantonly raising global temperatures. I think we should get carbon credits for that. There were millions of them, I wonder how that compares with the current domestic herd. Of course, they didn't use pesticides, and many of the ways we emit gases in the process of raising domestic cattle don't apply to the natural situation, but I think it should be addressed.
11. Paul Mahony
in reply to Exigeus08:03 PM 1/29/09
Exigeus, there are 1.5 billion cattle on earth. The US has 104 million of them. We're breeding them to feed humans, but the process is inherently grossly inefficient. If the protein and energy-rich plant material went directly to humans instead of to livestock, we could feed an extra 800 million people, with a fraction of the greenhouse impact. Even where livestock consume grass, we're destroying forests to make way for them.
Stop eating meat. I don;'t know why the article pussyfoots around the only reasonable and complete solution to the problem. And, if we stop raising animals for food, not only will we reduce greenhouse gas emission significantly, but we will stop one of the largest sources of water pollution in the world, one of the biggest causes of deforestation and habitat degradation in the world, the biggest cause of predator killing in the world, the most inefficient use of grains that could feed people in the world, one of the biggest consumers of energy in the world- and so on.
if you give a damn about the environment, you should not be eating meat. It's that simple and that obvious, and anyone who cares about our world should be shouting it from the rafters.
While factory farming is an abomination, grass-fed livestock isn't the answer. More predators are killed to support the grass-fed industry, and the industry is the biggest obstacle to predator reintroduction. The industry also opposes letting native herbivores onto their ranges- witness, for example, the slaughter of bison and elk in Wyoming, and the sheep industry opposition to bighorn reintroduction in the Rockies.
In the U.S., grazing has done severe- often irreparable harm to many habitats. The arid West doesn't have the "verdant swales" that you praise. Livestock also foul water supplies that native wildlife need and carry diseases that imperil natives.
In all areas, native herbivores will complement the ecosystem much better than livestock ever can.
In addition, it costs just as much energy and makes just as much pollution to turn a grass-fed cow into steaks as to turn a grain-fed cow into them.
Crisw, rather than "stop eating meat," this article is indicating that we should not eat beef specifically. I knew the vegetarians would take this as a rallying point, but this article mainly about the beef industry. Switching to chicken is much more realistic. No matter how loudly you shout it from the rafters, people will keep eating meat. Switching from beef to other meats would be very beneficial, and lies within the realm of possibility.
Paul, thanks for the figure. There were between 30 and 60 million bison here before humans arrived, so it's increased by roughly a factor of two. So while I still agree that beef is bad for the environment, the increase over natural levels is the pertinent figure, which is lower than the numbers in the article.
There is a little bit of fuzzy thinking going on here. The NAO report cited says that meat-eating is worse for the environment than the transportaion industry, yet this article says the average American's beef diet is about as expensive in global warming terms as 1800 miles driving. Well, most Americans drive far more than that, totally excluding the rest of the transport in the US, so clearly eating meat is NOT a greater component of the "average" US citizen's CO2 output. Promoting the myth that becoming a vegetarian is the best thing that a person can do to avoid global warming is nonsense. It could only possibly be true for very poor people whose main contribution to global warming is in fact what they eat, but that is NOT true for most of us.
Now, I am not saying we don't need to eat less meat - we do - but I am not comfortable saying that poor people should give up meat while we continue to drive big cars, air condition our houses, fly around the world, and just generally do what we damn well please, then pat ourselves on the back for not eating meat (are you listening Paul Mccartney?)
The author really went over the edge to make the point. ½ pound of asparagus compared to a pound of beef? And most of the "cost" of the beef is because the land used to grow feed is not being used to grow forests. Is that included in the "cost" of the asparagus?
I didn't sit down and do the math until I saw Paula's post above, and I can't find quite enough figures in the article to make that calculation. But it says "concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) system, generates the equivalent of 14.8 pounds of CO2 pound for pound." That's supposedly "taking ... into account" all the factors invloved in the CO2 cost of raising meat. I did a Google search and found that the average American eats about 66 lb. of beef a year. That works out to 990 lb. of CO2 equilivent per person per year, which is roughly 250 lb. of carbon, the amount contained in about 45 gallons of gasoline, which would take a vehicle 1800 miles at 40 mpg. That wouldn't last my little Honda two months. Thanks Paula.
What the article actually says is "our diets and, specifically, the meat in them cause more greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and the like to spew into the atmosphere than either transportation or industry." So that includes either "our diets" or "the meat in them" (it's not clear which) rather than just the beef. It still doesn't seem to work out right though, since the other meats emit lower levels of greenhouse gases than beef, and the article is trying to make the point that beef is the main offender. I hope someone can give us the real figures, it's kind of important. Either beef is a major cause of global warming, or someone slipped a digit somewhere and it's relatively minor.
The article also states "producing half a pound of hamburger for someone's lunch a patty of meat the size of two decks of cards releases as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as driving a 3,000-pound car nearly 10 miles." Figuring on the average American diet of 66 lb. per year of beef, that works out to 1320 miles of driving in a 3000 lb. car (say 25 mpg). That's about 53 gallons of gasoline, consistant with the previous calculation. They may have derived one figure from the other in the article, but this does confirm my calculation. How do they figure beef is a major source of greenhouse emissions? I generate five times that much greenhouse gas driving my 2000 lb car 15 miles to work (30 mpg), and that's not counting personal driving, and it's certainly not accounting for gases generated in the manufacture and delivery of all the non-beef products I buy, both food and non-food, nor for the gases emitted generating the raw materiels that are used to manufacture them, nor for the gases emitted by them later when they decompose in landfills.
The author attributes 40% of the total greenhouse emission from raising beef to "forgone absorption of greenhouse gases." When in reality most of the CO2 is not sequestered it goes into growing plants which later decay and release the CO2 anyway. The author also attributed 32% to "emissions from cattle and their wastes." Wild animals would emit these same chemicals into the environment. In reality most of the emissions that the author attributed to beef production would occur in natural systems as well.
Seriously, food preference are a matter of habit and we prefer the foods that our culture prefers until circumstances cause us to form a new habit. Economic pressure is the only reliable way to get people to adjust to a new pattern --- the veggie fans have not had much luck with shame. It might take some kind of (gasp!) tax. Suppose, for instance, that food stamps carried a surcharge if used for beef.
If you knew what you were talking about, then you would know how much food is WASTED raising cattle. All the feed grown to feed the cows over their lifetime could go to starving people. The nutrition levels you get back that went into the production of cattle meat is about 10%. That means that the 90% of the energy that man put into raising these cows is lost. I suggest if you are worried about starving people I suggest you feed people with the food we feed to the cows!
24. thedr9wningman
in reply to j.quasimodo11:41 AM 2/4/09
That's actually a good idea. But monetising externalities is the #1 problem of capitalism. And the only way to do it is with regulation, which needs to be global in scope to be effective. All it takes is a country or two to buck the trend and they instantly have a competitive advantage (and massively over-grazed countryside). Politically, the time it would take to accomplish that is more time than we have given the rates of ice-shelf melting in Greenland alone.
25. thedr9wningman
in reply to pspinn11:50 AM 2/4/09
There really aren't two sides to the global warming debate. There are the facts, and then there are those ideologically opposed to the facts. UN Councils don't take this stuff lightly. They have a lot more to lose in the battle against poverty when global warming is real than the majority of industrialised nations. Yet, they tell us that we need to stop global warming. Put your ideology aside for a moment and google the term 'global warming'. You won't find much in the way of it not happening.
You can't dig up hydrocarbons, burn them, and throw them into the air and not expect there to be an imbalance in carbon levels. Just like if you throw up a gigaton of dust and soil, there will be an imbalance as well (that happened with Krakatoa during the dark ages) http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/html/e1-about.html.
http://www.climatehotmap.org/ http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/recentcc.html The websites are endless. Thinking you're right and everyone else is wrong won't solve any problems. Please, stop sitting on your hands.
I wonder how much methane humans produce when we eat vegetable protein :) It should make for an interesting experiment. Stick 10 volunteers in a closed room and feed them meatless chili for a few days. Watch the methane levels rise :)
But seriously, the first step towards a solution is to understand the problem. Sounds like some measurements are being taken and models put together. Then try to poke holes in the models and measurements. Then come up with some alternatives.
Ultimately we'll probably come back to the issue that there are too many people on the planet consuming too many resources. Forget for a moment that the distribution of wealth is uneven. The total population and consumption is probably too high to be sustainable. Population control will have to be part of any durable solution. No more octuplets implanted please. Free birth control in developing countries and poor areas everywhere. Give women everywhere an opportunity to get an education and choose to limit the number of kids they have. OK, eat a little less meat too.
We're doomed. Various churches will put a stop to any concerted efforts to reduce population growth.
Well stated, I've been looking for similar words myself. Lets also not forget that when cattle are allowed to roam freely in the woods they actually tramp down the underbrush that is the ladder fuel that makes California fires so damaging. Unfortunatly California is both outlawing free range cattle for the supposed damage they do while ranging and at the same time passing laws requiring free range cattle, not to mention the tax on the gas they produce.
I hear the comment, "No one will change their eating habits," quite often. This isn't true. I did, and many of my friends and family have also. It may not happen as quickly as some of us would like, but it does happen. As more information is made available about the benefits of going vegetarian, more people will try it and realize how wonderful it can be. I once said I'd rather die than live without meat, but cutting out meat has actually made me much healthier! It's one of the best moves I've ever made.
30. Sander P
in reply to jesseinsocal04:53 PM 2/4/09
I also think many (not all) people would be willing to change their diet. That's not to say they will become vegetarians but move the proportions of animal to vegetable protein towards the vegetable side. Starting a campaign to try to 'convert' meat eaters to a 100% vegetarian diet will fail. Trying to convince people it's OK to eat vegetarian a few times a week or to simply mix smaller amounts of meat with beans and other vegetable protein sources has a much higher chance of succeeding.
Of course as long as T-bone steaks are cheap an plentiful nothing much will happen in the US. Once a carbon/methane tax gets applied and prices go up dramatically you'll start to see changes. Very few people are influenced by the desire to 'do right'. Many more are influenced by their desire not to spend a fortune on a meal. Same happened with the high gas prices of just a few months ago. All of a sudden those gas guzzlers weren't so hot anymore. No amount of 'oh my the world is ending because of CO2' has the effect of an empty wallet.
The more I think about this (makes my head hurt) it's clear that environmental impact must somehow get factored into the price of goods we purchase.
An article in the February 2009 issue brought to mind a concern that I have regarding the topic of anthropogenic global warming. The article entitled "The Greenhouse Hamburger" It appears that an underlying notion of the article is that anthropogenic global warming is the major cause of greenhouse effects. Because of other writings on this topic I have become concerned that there seems to be one fundamental question that has not been resolved .. is or is not water vapor a major contributor to greenhouse effects? If it is not then why not? I have not yet seen a conclusive scientific presentation that water is not a major factor. On the other hand, if water vapor is, in fact, a major contributor then a whole lot of rhetoric loses credibility. One source among many which addresses my concern is the article at www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html entitled, "Global Warming: A Closer Look at the Numbers". That article indicates that if water vapor is included then man-made carbone dioxide is a nit contributor (0.117%) and truly is a trace gas. Hmm, I wonder if this is might be an inconvenient truth in some circles. Another source on the net is at www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html entitled "The Great Global Warming Hoax" which examines, among other things, the physics and chemistry of CO2 from the viewpoint of its energy absorbtion frequencies. That article maintains that CO2 absorbs energy at only three narrow bands of frequencies which correspond to 2.7, 4.3, and 15 micrometers respectively. The percentage absorbtion of all three of these frequency bands amounts to around 8% of all of the "heat" energy involved in the greenhouse effect. All of the rest of the "heat" passes right through CO2. So, is water vapor to be considered a major part of global warming and greenhouse effects or is it not? What is very encouraging to me is that there will (hopefully) be a once and for all answer published soon. The International Congress on Climate Change has an announcement in your February 2009 issue regarding their session in March of this year in Copenhagen. I am anxious to read their conlusions.
I felt an addition to my previous comment is in order address the issue of Methane and to illustrate how serious the issue of inclusion of water vapor iis to any discussions of anthropogenic global warming. The following data are from the article at :www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html entitled, "Global Warming: A Closer Look at the Numbers
Contribution to the "Greenhouse Effect" Based on concentrations (ppb) adjusted for heat retention characteristics Percent of Total --adjusted for water vapor Water vapor ----- 95.000% Carbon Dioxide (CO2) 3.618% Methane (CH4) 0.360% Nitrous oxide (N2O) 0.950% CFC's (and othermisc. gases) 0.072% Total 100.000%
As can be seen the author of the article maintains that Methane is 10 times less of a contributor to the greenhouse effect than Carbon Dioxide which is itself only 3.6 % when water vapor is included. The issue of whether or not to include water vapor is evidently a very key aspect that should not be ignored, but apparently is in some circles.
Glad to see that someone else picked up on the sentence in the introduction to the articvle that the "multiplier" for potatoes is 57! Until I hear otherwise, I'll delete the potaoes from the "meat and potatoes" combination.
34. agenthucky
in reply to thedr9wningman10:57 AM 2/5/09
I thought the same, its beef contributes 57 times the amount of potatoes. Aparently potatoes grow in very little space, and require little nutrients.
I think out of all of this bickering over numbers and better ways to deal with this issue, step back a little bit and take a look at the BIG picture. That big picture being the big size of americans. Someone posted tha the average american eats 66lbs of beef a year. I would like to know how many people were polled in that, and how many overweight people were polled.
Its obvious people, for every reason, Americans need to be eating less anyway. Think of McDonalds. How many people are over-indulging in the food, then take a look in their garbages. Half-wasted burgers from the dollar menu because its easy enought to buy 4. (McDonalds may be a bad example as I think they use meal worm [yum] I wonder what the CO2 output from the mealworms is). Since the average person EATS 66lbs of meat, how much do they waste? I think we need to look at the purchase of meat to tell how much it is impacting. What about dog food, what about cat food, these contain meat.
Come on, a little more conservation in our diet is going to be way better for us not only for CO2 emmissions, but in almost every aspect, no matter how you look at it.
"As an alternative, researchers and graduate students should be working to better understand the weakeness of the global warming theory"
That is what scientists and researchers have been trying to do for decades. Only recently, it started to scare people and there became a resistance.
One example, SCIAM just put out an article about the jumbo jet that got converted to a labratory to study more indepth our atmosphere from various altitudes. Look at the posts from the anti GW (aGW) people under the article, it is all resistance. Please don't bite your tounge, the research is trying to be done, but people keep rearranging the facts that these scientist have collected into resistance.
I completely agree that the question of man-made global warming is far from settled, even though groups calling themselves by grandiose names like "The Union of Concerned Scientists" make it sound like their conclusion is the only sensible one. Well I'm a concerned scientist too, and in my opinion there is still a lot of doubt that anthropogenic global warming is a serious problem. And when you try to bring up that point of view, you generally get drowned out by the yelling of insults rather than logical arguments. I won't go into it here, but I can make a good case for anthropogenic global warming being a myth, and a lot of other scientists agree. At the very least, we need to know what the actual numbers are, because there seems to be a lot of disagreement about what factors are important. The current prevailing opinion is largely the product of panic and incomplete research.
Also, this article has certainly not made the case that the raising of beef is emitting a serious amount of greenhouse gases. The numbers are so obviously contradictory that it destroys the point it's trying to make. This is a good example of the sort of information we need, unfortunately this article has failed miserably to provide it.
Whenever I read these hopelessly misguided arguments I have ask myself if the scientific community is interested in reality or furthering their own agenda. At what point in time did you forget that the Earth has an enormously complex system of checks and balances? Certainly there are harmful gases that need to be eliminated like excessive car exhaust, coal and other toxic manmade waste, but to suggest that animals, who have been used for human consumption for centuries and far predate the global warming issue and have been emitting these same gasses, are of an equal danger is beyond ridiculous. Furthermore, what about the deer, elk and other wildlife who also emit CO2s, should we begin a culling practice of these animals? Their numbers are quite prolific in some areas and only hunting has been able to keep them in check, but you advocate vegetarianism. So, what do you suggest about the wild game? There certainly isn't a large general market for their meat. Bottom line is perhaps nature has its own agenda that it just hasn't revealed yet. Or maybe no one's looking. All of these animals emitting CO2's can't be so harmful to the atmosphere as to destroy it. Otherwise why would they have evolved that way? The Earth has survived much worse than Cow's gas. I think its time to look elsewhere.
A large scale study in 2006 showed a surprising difference between the health of middle aged Americans and Brits. The most likely causal difference appeared to be diet. So to hell with the planet, eating less red meat could be good for you!
"U.K. residents in late middle age reported fewer cases of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, heart attack, stroke, chronic lung diseases, or cancer than those in the U.S."
"When it came to heart disease and diabetes rates, U.S. residents in late middle age with the most education and highest incomes equaled those in the lowest education and income levels of their British peers."
Banks, J. The Journal of the American Medical Association, May 3, 2006; vol 295: pp 2037-2045.
Beef has got to be one of the most inefficient food we could possibly produce. Most of the calories a cow consumes goes towards maintaining its life, not adding on more meat for us to eat. Methane rich cow farts aren't helping with the environment either. The solution is less, preferably NO BEEF. It makes more sense to use the land to grow food we can eat, not grow food they can eat so that we can eat them. The math just doesn't add up. The human body only needs VERY SMALL amounts of meat anyhow. If 5% of our caloric intake was from animal protein such as milk, eggs, or meat we would be fine. Having two eggs for breakfast would take care of that just fine.
Also, farm raised cattle is just stupid stuff. When you raise cattle packed into stalls, and feed them food that has been drowned in fertilizer you do two things: 1, you make concentrated plumes of methane from the cattle. 2, you deplete the soil and pollute the water of the fields you're growing the feed in. If we where to at least rely on free-grazing cattle who feed off of land that is simply left fallow, then there would be no pollution and the cow farts would be spread out enough to help at least somewhat.
As far as I'm concerned though, only chicken, goat, and fish can be efficiently farmed in a permanent way. Free-range egg-laying chickens can easily turn inedible garden pests into food in the form of eggs. Goats can turn inedible weeds into ingestable milk. Fish can live in a pond that supplies water to the garden, the water is from rain and recycled gray-water. The fish turn inedible moss/algae/larva/weeds and turn it into meat rather efficiently. At the end of their productive lives, these animals can also be eaten for their meat. All of which happens in an entirely sustainable manner. Granted... it only works if you're raising these animals for your own food purposes... but so long as you've got the land, it's possible.
The main point is, we don't need as much meat as we're eating. Studies have shown that diets rich in animal proteins can be detrimental to our health. While I'm not saying we should all go raw vegan, I think we need to rethink the classic American diet and rediscover just how good raw fruits and veggies are. Help our health, help our planet, sounds good to me.
This isn't what the article is saying. It is saying nothing about wildlife harming our atmosphere. The key here is population, over-population to be exact. Yes, there is plenty of wildlife contributing a little bit, but that is only natural. What isn't natural is the amount of cows we are raising for beef. Like anything else, when the population grows beyond its natural progression (ie being grown for food and feed) then there begins to be problems. This is most noticeable in humans, where our population has brought on many of the problems we see today.
This article does have a tone that seems to want to sway people towards vegetarianism, but that is not the bottom line, the bottom line is conservation, balance your diet. It says NOTHING about hunting the wild contributing to the CO2 levels, in fact, if you looked into it, the animals giving off the CO2 isn't the biggest contribution, it is the energy used in the production of the beef. When hinting in the wild, or animals living in the wild it is a different scenario, don't make it out to be every animal now needs to be controlled.
I just don't see how people stray from the topic. OVERPRODUCTION of beef, not the wild animal.
When producing meat from ruminants, there is one thing that must be remembered. That is that the Green House Gases that they produce, from the vegetation that they eat and the bacteria and protozoans that live in their rumens, is all a part of the normal load of these gases circulating in the earth's atmosphere. Arguably meat production uses a lot less fossil Carbon (Coal/Oil/Natural gas) than does the production of a plant crop. It may also be worth remembering that although humans can get enough protein from eating pulses (the lysine -an essential amino acid - level is critical); the proportion of protein in meat is greater and readily available with the correct level of lysine. Other factors in the consideration of the optimal source of protein are: that to feed the world population on pulse protein, would require a great deal more land in hot climates; in the interests of Biodiversity on this planet, our vegetation needs to be grazed and dung applied to both grass and cereal crops - an operation that itself saves the energy expensive use of artificial fertilizers; and before our human population became so huge - ca 6.8bn - there would seem to have been much larger herds of ruminants on the planet than there are currently e.g. herds of bison v feedlot/range cattle. We desperately need to agree balanced solutions and not blame ruminants for our polluted atmosphere.
If I were not laughing so hard at this ludicrous, incorrect information I might be able to remind you that quite some time ago Scientific American published real, non propaganda science and was an admirable publication.
The more we know about all aspects of our lives, the more it is clear that anything and everything somehow contributes to "greenhouse" gases. People who ride bicycles to work exert more energy than they otherwise would - with more greenhouse gases as a byproduct. Getting energy to the consumer from geothermal or wind power would require a huge infrastructure outbuild - resulting in enormous greenhouse gas production. And these things wear out, require vigilant maintenance, and they create a footprint that precludes something else from being where they are located. We need to come to terms with the knowledge that greenhouse gas production is inescapable. Attempts to limit production will always have a negative impact on the economy as any activity - no matter how well designed - has a greenhouse gas footprint.
For those who think that grazing cattle on land somehow steals valuable farmland - think again. When cattle graze on land - which is often the case - the land is usually in an ecosystem that would not readily support food crops that are cultivated. Before you complain again that the raising of cattle is wasteful, please check to see what you are talking about first.
In "The Greenhouse Hamburger", the author, Nathan Fiala, may be a doctorial candidate in economics, however his article shows his ignorance about scientific processes.
As all scientists know, or should know, there are two laws of Thermodynamics: The 1st law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that heat can only flow from higher to lower temperature regions.
Let's examine a basic tenant of global warming advocates; that being their carbon dioxide greenhouse theory. Their theory states that because of additional CO2 in the atmosphere, greenhouse gases form a "blanket" around the earth. Their claim is, because of this "blanket", the earth receives additional energy, thus causing "global warming". This is an absolute impossibility! It is like saying 2 + 2 = 5.
The 1st law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created, but the global warming advocates want us to believe that energy can be created out of thin air and this is what is causing global warming. In addition, the 2nd law of thermodynamics states that heat can only flow from a higher temp region to a lower temperature region. Consider an oven (the sun) heated to 350 degrees. We all know that if you place a potato (the earth) in this 350 degree oven, it can not achieve a temperature greater than 350 degrees impossible. Even if you were to wrap the potato with aluminum foil or wrap it in a blanket of insulation (the so-called greenhouse effect), it will never get hotter than 350 degrees. However, they want us to believe that somehow, the potato can exceed 350 degrees in this example.
So, this so-called greenhouse effect is a totally wrong premise. It ranks right up there with the premise that the earth is flat. Before Columbus, almost everyone thought the earth was flat. Also, at one time, the premise was that the earth was the center of the universe. Those who opposed this view were subject to be burned at the stake for blasphemous and heretic behavior. By it's very title, Scientific American should pay more attention to the physical laws that govern our universe and at least question the absurd scientific fallacies made by a doctorial candidate in economics.
Re "The Greenhouse Hamburger", the author, Nathan Fiala, may be a doctorial candidate in economics, however his article shows his non-knowledge about scientific processes.
As all scientists know, or should know, there are two laws of Thermodynamics: The 1st law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that heat can only flow from higher to lower temperature regions.
Let's examine a basic tenant of global warming advocates; that being their carbon dioxide greenhouse theory. Their theory states that because of additional CO2 in the atmosphere, greenhouse gases form a "blanket" around the earth. Their claim is, because of this "blanket", the earth receives additional energy, thus causing "global warming". This is an absolute impossibility! It is like saying 2 + 2 = 5.
The 1st law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created, but the global warming advocates want us to believe that energy can be created out of thin air and this is what is causing global warming. In addition, the 2nd law of thermodynamics states that heat can only flow from a higher temp region to a lower temperature region. Consider an oven (the sun) heated to 350 degrees. We all know that if you place a potato (the earth) in this 350 degree oven, it can not achieve a temperature greater than 350 degrees – impossible. Even if you were to wrap the potato with aluminum foil or wrap it in a blanket of insulation (the so-called greenhouse effect), it will never get hotter than 350 degrees. However, they want us to believe that somehow, the potato can exceed 350 degrees in this example.
So, this so-called greenhouse effect is a totally wrong premise. It ranks right up there with the premise that the earth is flat. Before Columbus, almost everyone thought the earth was flat. Also, at one time, the premise was that the earth was the center of the universe. Those who opposed this view were subject to be burned at the stake for blasphemous and heretic behavior. By it's very title, Scientific American should pay more attention to the physical laws that govern our universe and at least question the absurd scientific fallacies made by a doctorial candidate in economics.
A good lesson in considering what the writer's bias is!
He assumes that all the vegetative material the cow eats won't mature and be eaten by anything else or decompose and release its carbon but continue to grow and fix carbon.
He neglects to consider that all a cow eats which includes a lot of urea (in feedlots) grass, straw, and other cellulose-based matter does not constitute human food since we don't have rumen stomachs.
That the farmland producing the feedgrains used in finishing the beef won't instead use the same inputs -fuel, fertilizer, ect- to produce other crops or may continue to grow corn only to make biofuel at a rather unfavorable conversion rate sustained only by subsidies.
And that if the farm products that could be used to feed the human population are used in that way then no CO2 equivalent will result from that process. I think I see a lot of methane involved in human activity!
In the final analysis I'd admit that meat in the diet has a certain cost overall but it also utilizes a lot cellulose that otherwise would only be used by termites, yeast, bacteria or burned, all of which comes back into the cycle. The biased academia that jumps on the meat-eater sometimes acts like they don't produce methane and theirs' doesn't stink either!
Les, you should take your own advice and don't speak on subjects you don't know much about. You do seem to be thinking about it, but you seem to be at the high school level. There's nothing wrong with that, but realize that you don't have the complete picture. For one thing, the idea is that light from the sun gets through the greenhouse blanket layer because it's visible light, and not effected by greenhouse gases. But when it hits the Earth, most of it is converted into infrared, which cannot penetrate greenhouse gases. That's why the Earth is (or may be) heating up. Heat from the sun finds it easier to get to the Earth than to get away again, due to the change in frequency and the growing greenhouse layer that blocks infrared from leaving. Maybe.
But you're right about the author of this article, he has it more wrong than you do, and he ended up in Scientific American. I don't understand why the authors or editors haven't responded to the problems we've pointed out (for that matter, they could have done the math themselves). Does SciAm care about accuracy anymore? It doesn't look like it. This whole article should be recanted, it's rubbish clear through.
Exigeus, thanks for your thoughtful comments on my response to “The Greenhouse Hamburger”. However, I stand by my premise that CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, is not what is causing global warming.
First, C02 is about as effective in blocking infrared rays as a chain link fence is in preventing mice passing through. Second, as a rocket scientist, I am very familiar with the dynamics of heat transfer and I know you can not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics. This is a fundamental law of nature and basically states that heat can only flow from a higher temperature region to a lower temperature region. Simply put, you cannot heat a seventy degree room by bringing in ice water. You must heat it with something that is warmer than seventy degrees.
Unless you can show me a “greenhouse layer” in our atmosphere around the earth that is warmer than the earth’s surface, I will rest my case. Since there is no such warmer layer, there is no way that infrared rays can cause global warming. I encourage you to check this out yourself and see just what a fraud and scam the global warming mantra due to greenhouse gas is.
68. mr. c's student
in reply to pspinn12:57 PM 2/10/09
That is true, but the article states at the end that what should be done is not to stop eating meat, but to manage the waste and try to make the production of the meat more clean and environment-friendly.
81. mr. c's student
in reply to Exigeus01:12 PM 2/10/09
I do not believe that switching to chicken is better, it will simply lead to the same conclusion. The article points out that chicken is also a small contributor, but that is because beef is a more popular industry. If we simpl switch to chicken, then that industry will eventually end up the same way as the beef industry.
82. mr. c's student
in reply to Exigeus01:15 PM 2/10/09
I do not believe that switching to chicken would be more realistic. The article states that chicken is also a small contributor, (note: SMALL!) but that is only because the chicken industry is not as big as the beef industry. I think that if we all decide to switch to chicken (which won't happen) then it would eventually lead to the same conclusion as the beef industry.
Article is a bit short sighted. A beef carcass produces much more economic benefit than just meat. By products are used for everything from lipstick to pharmacuticles. And what about the millions of American bison which populated the North American continent 200 years ago. Since they were bovidae, they must have produced a fair amount of green house gases. As I understand it, modern meat and milk animals were domesticated to consume materials which were unpalatables and indigestables that humans couldn't use. The animals also produced fibres which were used for garments, etc. It's not the animals which are the problem, its modern food production. It is also mass numbers of human beings and politics. Our government implored the Chilean coca growers to change crops..., asparagas, grapes, etc. and now, we are almost morally bound to purchase those crops to help those peoples maintian a new way of making a living. We grow asparagas here where I live and I grow it in my garden. I only eat it fresh in the spring.
The artivle does not mention the water required to produce beef and for much of the world water is a major problem, even in the US. The CSIRO in Australia estimates that a kilo of beef consumes a minimum of 50,000 litres compared to Soy beann, 200 litres. Even if you don't worry about CO2 or methane, worry about this!
Excellent article! Whe isn't this part of our National dialog about global warming? Wouldn't it be wonderful if our new President were to announce that he and his family are cutting down on the amount of meat they eat each week in order to reduce their carbon footprint? We should be as concerned about the amount of meat we eat as we are about the mileage our cars and trucks can achieve!
Excellent article! Why isn't this issue a major part of our National dialogue about global warming? Wouldn't it be wonderful if our new President announced that he and his family were cutting down on the amount of meat they eat in order to reduce their carbon footprint? It should be as important to cut down on the amount of meat we eat as it is to be concerned about the mileage our cars and trucks achieve!
Kelly I guess giving you a blank canvas, and a way to write was too much to resist. As for the article this was an assignment for a Biology class at a High School. Scientific American is an amazing magazine and is actually the basis for a year long course at the school in which the primary text is the monthly magazine. This topic shows how interrelated our world is.
Les, you are not a rocket scientist. There is no way on Earth that you are any kind of professional scientist. I don't mind discussing issues with anyone, but don't try to kid me, kid. You're not stupid, but you're showing far too many gaps in knowledge.
As to your argument, the body that is "warmer than the Earth's surface" and can warm the Earth is called the Sun.
Exigeus, why do you doubt that I am a rocket scientist? I have a few years under my belt, 74 to be precise and am now retired. I worked for many years in the aerospace industry and designed solid rocket motors. Some of my designs were used to place communication satellites in synchronous orbits. My rocket motor designs were called “apogee kick motors”. They imparted the required impulse (energy) to move the satellite from an elliptical orbit into a circular orbit at 22,500 miles above the earth’s surface. You strike me as a fairly intelligent individual, however you have obviously “bought” into the Greenhouse effect. You probably believe that it is trapped infrared radiation that causes greenhouses on earth to become hot. In reality, greenhouses merely suppress convective heat loss, preventing the heated air from dissipating. You are correct in saying it is the sun that warms the earth. The incoming solar radiation from the sun is about 342 watts per square meter. The global warming alarmists would have you believe that somehow IR that bounces off the earth is re-radiated from the so called “greenhouse blanket” back to the earth, thus adding even more energy and causing global warming. This is poppycock, pure and simple. It violates the first law of Thermodynamics which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. In effect the global warming alarmists are creating energy out of “thin air”; an impossibility! I ask you again to educate yourself in the physical laws that govern our universe, open your mind and do not impugn my education and work experience. Also, check into the sun spot cycles of the sun and you will soon see that it is the sun (as you stated) that determines the earth’s temperature. You might just find that at the present time the sun is going through a cycle of no sun spots. Whenever this has happened in the past, the earth has cooled off. Hopefully, you are aware that is precisely what is happening at the present time.
I did miss one point, "the FAO data I noted earlier imply that the world average emissions from producing a pound of beef are several times the CAFO amount." Several isn't really specific, but let's say it's five times more, it still doesn't account for as much global warming per person as my fuel efficient Honda on my drive to work. So how many is "several?" And why do the following paragraphs fail to support that assertion?
But ignoring the CAFO paragraph, estimates in the invervening paeragraphs seem to contradict the report's conslusions. It's not clear where the numbers in those paragraphs are from, I assumed they were taken from the FAO report, which is why I was criticizing this article. On closer inspection that may not be the case. What they say is "It turns out that producing half a pound of hamburger for someone's lunch a patty of meat the size of two decks of cards releases as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as driving a 3,000-pound car nearly 10 miles." It can't just "turn out that..." the figures must come from somewhere. I assumed the FAO report, since no other source was mentioned, but that doesn't seem to jibe with the conclusions of the report. Where is that information from, and why is it off by a factor of several from the FAO conclusions? Or is it actually from the FAO report, and the report is a mess? This article should have reconciled the information before publication, right now it's very confused.
this article does not propose a realistic solution- the fact of the matter is that very few people will become vegetarians, no matter how large their concern for the environment is. the most probable reason for this is that this article doesn't make good enough arguments on what is really important to solve global warming- Exigeus nice work on your calculations- I tried to do the math too, and it wouldn never make sense to say that "eating meat" is the largest contributor. This article also lacks factors like: Natural gas, electricity, and air plane flights, it also does very little to explain the relationship between those who drive cars that are not fuel efficient compared to those who don't eat meat. For example in many countries beef isn't eaten, but I'm sure they drive cars, small stuff like that has an effect on the bigger picture of finding solutions to the Global warming crisis. If the numbers for these were actually there the article would make a lot more sense, but since they aren't and all it says is that "meat production contributes to 14-22 percent of the 36 billion tons of CO2 equivalent GHG emissions" it leaves you wondering what produces the remaining 78-86 percent. I agree that this article should be better supported and instead of giving random facts actually give you the reality of how people contribute to global warming.
As I stated in earlier posts in this thread, I don't believe global warming is a serious problem. I never buy into things, I figure them out for myself.
Well Les, I can't figure you out. You seem to have a certain amount of specialized knowledge, and yet you badly misunderstand the basic laws of physics. You know what they are, but you're not trained in them.
"The global warming alarmists would have you believe that somehow IR that bounces off the earth is re-radiated from the so called greenhouse blanket back to the earth"
Somehow? That's pretty well proven, whether you believe in global warming or not. And it doesn't violate any law of physics, especially the first one. How do you figure that? It's basically acting as a reflector, nothing more.
"thus adding even more energy "
Not more energy, the energy from the Sun. It's not being created, it's coming to the Earth from the Sun in the form of visible light.
"You probably believe that it is trapped infrared radiation that causes greenhouses on earth to become hot."
And you don't?? You're not selling perpetual motion machines by any chance?
The reason I'm still responding is that you're not a joker trying to mess with people's minds, you seem to take what you say seriously. I don't know if you're 74, but I know for certain you're not a trained scientist. Maybe an engineer, more likely a lab assistant, or someone without a science degree who did contract work for NASA. I advise you to keep reading, the truth is out there.
My question is, do you who believe this Human Caused Global Warming Myth all eat only vegatibles? Are you all vegitarians and do you take anti flatulants to make sure YOU aren't contributing to Global Warming? Do you know your Prius adds more to Global Warming than a conventional SUV. Are you just stupid or do you always walk around with your nose up the south end of a northbound enviro-whacko?
Exigeus, your response shows just how out of touch you are with the basic laws of Thermodynamics. You have bought in completely to the complete garbage spewed out by the “junk” scientists. The so called “greenhouse blanket” does not exist!!!!! There is no such “layer”. It started from a misconception about glass nearly 200 years ago and has stayed that way. I say again that the reason greenhouses get hot has nothing to do with trapped Infrared (IR); it is because the greenhouse covering suppresses convective heat-loss, preventing the heated air dissipating. You could even use window panes of polished salt crystals, which don’t absorb IR at all and the greenhouse would still get just as hot as compared to window glass. Polished salt crystals are used as windows in laboratory IR spectroscopy because this material does not absorb IR. Please re-read my other responses to you, check what I have said with any “real” scientist of your choice, not a “junk” scientist. Open your eyes and stop believing the garbage of the global warming activists.
Animal agriculture contributes more global warming effect than all transportation. It is cruel. Consumption of animals is detrimental to human health and a main cause of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, kidney failure and the diseases of excess animal protein and animal fats. In the USA, we are killing over a million farm animals PER HOUR as though they were not just as sentient and as capable of suffering as our pet dog or cat. We need to end the slaughterhouses NOW. Global warming is more advanced that the Nobel prize winners calculated - that came over the BBC news February 14, 2009. Not only are we raising ten billion farm animals for slaughter in this country in any given year, but we are also responsible for importing millions of tons of dead carcasses out of rain forests, continually razed for this meat market in Central and South America. We are taking out the most diverse and climate protecting remnants of the planet for the subsidized cheap horrific hamburger. Grain burgers taste just as good and are healthier and less cruel. 55% of USA grain goes to feed cattle, and the fields of corn and animal feed again take out more habitat for wildlife - fragmenting and destroying forest habitat for creatures who we overpopulating unconscious humans are wiping off the face of the earth FOREVER. Natural predators are destroyed for trophy and fun and have no chance in hunting and trapping. This is our legacy. Mark Twain who wrote "On the Damned Human Race" said that HABIT is really the worst evil, because, given new information, people just keep on their blinders no matter what the cost, and keep on rationalizing their stupid choices and abuses. We are destroying a third to half of the non-human species on what used to be a rather pleasant diverse earth. We cannot live on this earth alone - and our killing of farm animals to stick down our gullet is a stupidity that is killing off natural predators, and the diversity of life that protects and sustains human life. We cannot live without birds and bees and wild creatures - without the forests and prairies and wetlands we have destroyed for our gluttonous fast food meat consumption. Our wild and tame brethren are sacred life - Schweitzer said "I am life in the midst of life that seeks to live". If we just follow the most sensible concept of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us - and realize that everything but us is OTHER - then we will have the beautiful world we were given. But we must transform quickly - it is URGENT AND WE ARE PAST OUT OF TIME
I was saddened to see the misleading article, the greenhouse hamburger published in Scientific American. American cattle are grown almost exclusively on land that was in grass prior to the arrival of the Europeans. Only ruminants eat grass, so the vast herds of buffalo, and other native ruminants were replaced by domesticated livestock. Most of the corn is grown in the Corn Belt on land that was formerly fire maintained prairie. This corn production absorbs more CO2 per acre than the native grasses.
According to USDA statistics, there were 21 million milk cows in the U.S. in 1924; the number today is about 9 million. This reduction is due to much greater milk production per cow made possible by corn absorbing much more greenhouse gas than the native grassland it replaced. Also, according to USDA, there were 139 million head of cattle in the U.S. in 1974; over the last 10 year the number has been around 100 million. Again because of corn production, these animals go to market at a younger age reducing methane production while increasing meat production.
It should be pointed out that while methane is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2, its half life is only around 8 years while carbon is over 100 years. It would seem likely that the ruminant animal methane equilibrium has been reached or may even be declining in the U.S. Beef and other animal meats still result in large greenhouse gas emissions compared to vegetable proteins; however, the greenhouse gas culprit is the release of CO2 by the increasingly rapid use of fossil fuels. Lets not take our eye off the ball.
102. deweytheswede
in reply to Bea Elliott02:04 PM 3/2/09
As a fifth generation farmer/rancher I find this article disturbing. Disturbing because it focuses primarily on beef production and the gases that cows "give off." What it doesn't discuss is if you decrease beef consumption, you increase the prices at the store. If you decrease the amount of cows a rancher like our family has, you will bankrupt the rancher ultimately driving them out of their livelihood and forcing them to make money a different way to survive. This article also does not discuss the other uses that beef is for: cheese, milk, milk products, dairy products, rawhide, and leather as well. What would you have the rancher do; attach meters to the front and back end of their cows to monitor the amount of methane give off? Ridiculous! The answer does NOT lie in encouraging less consumption of beef.
104. deweytheswede
in reply to agenthucky02:12 PM 3/2/09
If you knew what YOU were talking about, "agenthucky," you would know that there is a BIG difference between commercially owned packing plants that have thousands of cows and smaller, family owned ranches that have fewer than 500 head. In our family, we have about 99 head of cows that are raised for not only Angus beef but also to sell the cows and calves at auctions to have money for the monthly bills. We do NOT waste our cows feed, or else we would be losing money that we can't afford! So before you start your soapbox rant, know what you are talking about!
106. deweytheswede
in reply to margenfred02:21 PM 3/2/09
Margenfred---if our President Obama announce he and his family were cutting down on the amount of meat they eat, I would have to ask "what kind of meat?" If they replied with "beef," then I would not vote for him again the next go around! Give me a break "margenfred" you are just as clueless as the next person who would move out to the country, next to a rancher, and complain about the manure smell.
109. deweytheswede
in reply to Nathaniel02:38 PM 3/2/09
"Nathaniel"-- give me a break! You may want to drink goat milk, but for my family-that is not an option. Why do you say that "farm raised cattle is just stupid stuff?" Our family has been raising cattle for five--yes five-- generations on land that is rotated to grow alfalfa and corn to feed the cattle. The only reason that chickens don't put off as much gas is because they are smaller animals and don't have four stomachs like a cow has. As far as the veggies and fruits that we all should re-discover--what are you going to use for fertilizer--artificial chemicals or cow manure? I would rather use the cow manure--which we recycle and even give away to people --for free-- if they want to come and load it up! This article does not mention that the humans before us had coexisted with animals such as bison, mammoths, and other large animals that put off methane also. This surely contributed to the greenhouse problem we have now. But, alas, your way of thinking as well as the author's don't take into account many factors that contribute to the greenhouse problem--from not only this past century but centuries before us. So if you don't mind, I think I will eat my big, juicy, corn-fed, grass-fed, Black Angus steak now. (Which by the way tastes way better than store-bought--eww!)
Just about all the calls to convert to a completely meatless diet to reduce greenhouse gas emissions concentrate only on the emissions, and ignore the fact that natural areas (including grasslands) sequester carbon, in addition to providing habitat for wildlife. Naturally sequestered carbon is released when grassland is converted to other uses, whether for farming or buildings. It is also released when forests are cut down (or burned) to convert to agriculture or other uses. Cows and sheep are, by nature, grass eaters. When they are kept in stalls or feedlots and forced to higher productivity with grain, there is no economic incentive to preserve open spaces (such as grassland). Some studies indicate that more CO_2 equivalent will be released than the cattle or sheep that grazed on it emit.
Another point that should not be ignored is that the production of soybeans for tofu involves the use of chemical fertilizer and pesticides, with emission of N_2O which is an even more potent greenhouse gas than methane.
The CAFO system is not economically efficient if one takes into account the external costs. Foul oders and contaminated water caused by CAFOs reduce property values in surrounding communities. The overuse of antibiotics leads to drug-resistant illnesses that are difficult to treat. Leakage of manure from storage lagoons contaminates soil and groundwater. Cleanup costs should be included, but aren't. And one might add that it is insane not to ferment all that waste to biogas, instead of doubling the climate impact by using natural gas. Add the fact of cruelty to animals, and that beef and milk from grass-fed cattle have a much healthier ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats.
One can probably do more for the climate, and the environment in a wider sense, by reducing meat consumption to one or two servings per week and making sure that the meat comes from free grazing animals in the region (or white-tailed deer), and not from feedlots than going completely vegetarian.
112. krame1414
in reply to mmorgan08:13 PM 4/21/09
This is a great article. it provides FACTS!! It is great to actually see some people realizing that there is a problem & things CAN & need to be done to turn it around.
Hi Nathan. My name is Tessa Salazar, a health and science journalist from the Philippines. First of all, congratulations for a comprehensive special report "How Meat Contributes to Global Warming. Is it possible to reprint the charts? I would need them for our publication. How do i go about it?
I have a question. Since much of the worlds meat is raised on arid land that would not be suitable for large scale agriculture (if any at all) and are not fed harvested corn but rather live off of the natural vegetation, does this impact global warming to the samedegree? Was this impact considered? Thanks Chase
hmm this is a very factfull article, i do agree with this and believe that there should be somthing done to stop or prevent the production of green house gasses in the meat production industry. altho you write this article and i would bet my bottom dollar that you are not even doing anything to make a difference, you of all people realise the facts of the harm of meat prodution but yet you will still be sitting in you rdining room eating your roast dinner with a clear contience because you didnt produce or kill the animal. shame on you if this may so be.
There are many flaws in the "greenhouse hamburger" theory. Whathever the quantity of carbon rejected by the cattle industry, all that carbon had to be trapped before in the vegetal feed of these animals. It is a natural and vital cycle that has to be distinguished from one-way release of fossil carbon. So the comparison between beef eating and car driving is irrelevant. Misconception will not help to solution the global warming problem. We, humans, emit at each expiration CO2 that can be expressed as equivalent to the CO2 emission from a car. Don't expect me to hold my breath in order to participate to such alleviation of global warming. I hold my breath only to think how to explain where stands the illusion of the "greenhouse hamburger". Here, the kind of equivalence used represents a restrictive aspect of reality as an economic one. But it misses the meaning of the processus in cause which is science purpose. Yes, 20 apples = 20 oranges if we restrict the meaning of equality in some way. But don't expect to make an equal amount of cider with oranges in the name of equality in Kg, basket or $. Planet Earth has a natural blanket of greenhouse gases; the point is to prevent a buildup of this blanket. To dissipate the "greenhouse hamburger" illusion, we have to distinguish the recyclable and non-recyclable sources of greenhouse gases, as well as for apples and oranges. Cutting emissions from any source will reduce the blanket. Preserving natural life cycle, including human one, is the goal of that desired stabilisation. So, it is obvious that non-recyclable emission is the right target to restrict. Real greenhouse toll from tractor usage in agriculture and transport of food to the consumer is about the same for any food production; progress in non fossil energy consumption is far much promising than change in diet. Excess of meat consumption is more a health problem than an environmental one. Another flaw is to calculate a deficience in carbon reuptake by grass land in proportion of a rain forest. Vast western plains have been practically treeless before beginning of the present global warming alert. The biomass of a 100 years old tree is impressive. But we must keep in mind that the cumulative biomass of 100 years of harvest is not so low in comparison. Finaly, meat surpassing transport as greenhouse culprit is a very very surprising allegation. As seen above, meat production and agriculture footprint should be substantially reduced as source of detrimental greenhouse gases buildup. Then, many graphics should be corrected. I hope all these nuances help to clear the suspected illusion of a "greenhouse hamburger" finally smaller than a grain of salt. In 44 years as a reader of Scientific American, I never read a so thin theory. But so is science : at any level, it has to be checked and rechecked. Here, a revision has to be published as errata or else.
Cattle eat grass; cattle produces CO2; grass absorbs CO2. Sounds sustainable to me. Isn't it part of the natural cycle of life? The point is that coal-burning industry unlocks CO2 that was stored hundreds of millions of years ago, and has been out of circulation. It is fraudulent to try to conflate the two sources of CO2.
As a modern beef producer as well as a scientifically educated individual (Bachelor of Science), I think that Scientific American has missed some key conclusions about the 2006 UN study. At the end of the study they conclude that in order to decrease the carbon footprint of the beef industry, modern intensive practices should be developed. By making beef into a big business, producers are able to hire outside sources such as environmental engineers so that they are become even more innovative.
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120 Comments
Add CommentI would think that the solution is that developed worlds reduce or eliminate their consumption of meat. And direct other countries to more sustainable plant based diets which will in turn feed that many more people. In fact, going this route we combat "starvation" that much more efficiently. There's little doubt that we can thrive on a meat-free diet. All essentials can be gotten from vegetation. And we would as a nation and a world be the healthier for it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSimply reducing meat consumption as your article suggests is not going to be enough. Wholesale changes in what we choose to eat needs to be done, and sooner than later. Your article fails to mention how much more prevalent meat recalls are. Factor that in and it just keeps adding up. The first commenter mentions that people are starving in the world. Every time someone eats meat, they are contributing to starvation in the world. The cows and chickens and pigs and cheese and milk people eat and drink had to eat some kind of food (not grass anymore, but corn mostly) raised on land that could have been used to raise crops to feed the rest of the world, but no, burgers or milk are more important. America has its collective head in the sand regarding meat consumption and it's about time to take it out and see the truth. It has been a frustrating 18 years as a vegetarian. As when I started, only 3 - 5% of Americans are vegetarian. That needs to change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe reality is that few people will change there basic eating habits. People are not going to stop eating meat and they are not going to stop eating vegetables. As for this study, it solves nothing since it really doesn't say much. For example, you never provide an undestanding of the true impact of the CO2 from the production of beef or other animals relative to the global emmission of CO2 from the oceans, other natural sources or even the total amounts emitted by society. You need to quantify your results such that they are meaningful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs an alternative, researchers and graduate students should be working to better understand the weakeness of the global warming theory (e.g., the feedback forcing associated with CO2 and other greenhouse gases that poorly understood, but have a huge impact on the temperature trends or perhaps gain an understanding of the impact of water vapor on the regulation of climate temperature). Scientific American should be presenting arguments from both sides of the global warming warming debate. For those who do not beleive in the scienitic method then I challenge you to publish your work so that we can all read it and come to a conclusion.
It would be nice to think that we could just reduce our meat consumption or eat locally, but the only real answer is vegetarianism. Check out this article by Mike Tidwell from Audubon Magazine: http://www.audubonmagazine.org/features0901/viewpoint.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHe says, "Even poultry, while less harmful, also contributes. Ironically, data released in 2007 by Adrian Williams of Cranfield University in England show that when all factors are considered, organic, free-range chickens have a 20 percent greater impact on global warming than conventionally raised broiler birds. Thats because sustainable chickens take longer to raise, and eat more feed. Worse, organic eggs have a 14 percent higher impact on the climate than eggs from caged chickens, according to Williams. "
Nathan, I appreciate your article and plan on posting it in the lavatory where I work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have a question for you.
I work at an outdoor science camp in southern California; we are located about 45 minutes out of Redlands, and all of our food is sourced through Sysco.
We work in the field with something like 9000 Orange county and Los Angeles county school children. We approach topics like global warming by asking kids during meals to take a closer look at the origins of their food.
We work in the field with 6th graders to educate them on topics ranging from geology to global warming, with a strong emphasis on environmentalism.
I feel as a company we are very hypocritical for presenting factoids about water contamination and the depletion of world resources, but then serving food that employs a system which perpetuates these problems.
My question is one regarding balance. Obviously there is a need to educate people on the realities of their food system and global warming, but Nathan, did you walk to work today or did you drive?
I work at a company that tries to educate children on the realities of global warming, but we purchase all of our food through a corporation, one of the worlds largest food distributors, that is undoubtedly a huge producer of green house gases in their food production methods.
We are communicating using a system that is entirely dependent upon a steady supply of carbon fuels to keep it running.
I have heard the apologist's statement that to educate people, we must act in such and such a way to inform and educate, but Nathan, I have simply become deaf to this argument.
I feel painted into a corner, as I am sure you sometimes must.
Any comments, revolutionary ideas, snide remarks or any thing that could generate some lulz would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for hearing my voice,
Frustrated and dissatisfied
Oh for heavens sake - firstly make a differentiation between factory farmed meat and naturally grazed meat - then start looking at the whole carbon picture. Naturally grazed cattle circulate a lot of their carbon when properly 'managed' by regenerating pastures into dense actively growing swards which actively 'pump' carbon directly from the atmosphere into the soilin the soil (where a lot of carbon has disappeared from poor/non management). We absolutely need livestock to keep our landscapes alive and to pull carbon down where it needs to be. What needs questioning is factory farming in any form - that is where the problem lies, not with meat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI live in Melbourne, Australia. Coal-fired power is generally regarded as Australia's most significant contributor (50%) to our shameful level of greenhouse gas emissions. However, the true impact of a more significant contributor is often overlooked. Each year, Australia's livestock produce about 3 million tonnes of methane. According to the IPCC, methane's greenhouse impact is 72 times stronger over a 20-year time horizon than carbon dioxide's. (The GWP of 21 or 23 relates to a 100-year time horizon, but methane generally breaks down within 15 years.) Those methane emissions equate to about 216 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, about 20 per cent more than from Australia's coal-fired power stations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's not to say that we should ignore CO2, but converting to a plant-based diet could have a massive impact.
Please see the following article from Australasian Science of Nov/Dec '07 by Prof Barry Brook of the University of Adelaide and Geoff Russell,:
http://www.control.com.au/bi2007/2810Brook.pdf
If the people of Great Britain could accept food rationing in order to help save their country in WWII, then surely we should be able to modify our diet in 2009 when confronted by the greatest problem facing mankind.
Please also see "Climate Code Red: The case for emergency action" by David Spratt and Philip Sutton:
www.climatecodered.com
The attached article by David Spratt and Damien Lawson in Rolling Stone is a great summary of some of the key issues:
http://www.climatecodered.net/images/wong_in_siberia.pdf
These last two items don't go into a lot of detail about diet, but they make a great case for the need to treat climate change as an emergency. A key problem is "climate feedbacks". For example, permafrost (frozen land) in Russia, Canada, Alaska and elsewhere is currently thawing, releasing massive amounts of methane. More methane means more warming, more permafrost thawing, more methane release and so on. This leads to runaway climate change, which no longer depends on emissions generated by mankind.
The temperature at the poles is around 4 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels, compared to the global average of 0.8. Feedback loops already in the system will increase temperatures further. If people could be informed of the problem, then meaningful changes in diet may be achievable.
A change in diet is something that does not require billions of dollars in infrasture and years of development to introduce.
Correction: I had said "Coal-fired power is generally regarded as Australia's most significant contributor (50%) to our shameful level of greenhouse gas emissions".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe figure of 50% represents total stationary energy. Coal-fired energy represents 43% of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions, based on a 100-year GWP. (Source: Australia's National Greenhouse Accounts 2006)
A clear pattern of evidence has emerged from numerous peer-reviewed articles around the world that the livestock sector is a big emitter of greenhouse gases. We need to accept this fact, but vegetarianism is NOT the only path to reducing the food system's contribution to climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEuropeans don't deny themselves meats or cheese (curiously, cheese is always ignored when this issue is debated), they simply eat less. For personal health as well as environmental reasons, North Americans could do the same. We could waste less food too. (Perhaps as much of one-quarter of the food produced for human consumption isn't eaten.) Foods with high global warming potential (GWP) should be minimized - along with the number of air miles traveled, for example - but we're not going to stop eating. We need to eat a better balance. An online tool to compare the GWP of different foods, based on peer-reviewed science, can be found at www.eatlowcarbon.org.
I'd like to see a comparison with the levels of greenhouse gases emitted by the native bison herds that covered the land before mankind arrived. When talking about man-made global warming, it's only sensible to subtract the amount that was being emitted before we made an appearance. Even before the industrial age, we helped the environment by concientiously slaughtering all those herds that were wantonly raising global temperatures. I think we should get carbon credits for that. There were millions of them, I wonder how that compares with the current domestic herd. Of course, they didn't use pesticides, and many of the ways we emit gases in the process of raising domestic cattle don't apply to the natural situation, but I think it should be addressed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExigeus, there are 1.5 billion cattle on earth. The US has 104 million of them. We're breeding them to feed humans, but the process is inherently grossly inefficient. If the protein and energy-rich plant material went directly to humans instead of to livestock, we could feed an extra 800 million people, with a fraction of the greenhouse impact. Even where livestock consume grass, we're destroying forests to make way for them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease see:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cow-emissions-more-damaging-to-planet-than-cosub2sub-from-cars-427843.html
http://www.hsgpurchasing.com/Product%20Information/Beef%20Facts.htm
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.html
"What can be done? "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStop eating meat. I don;'t know why the article pussyfoots around the only reasonable and complete solution to the problem. And, if we stop raising animals for food, not only will we reduce greenhouse gas emission significantly, but we will stop one of the largest sources of water pollution in the world, one of the biggest causes of deforestation and habitat degradation in the world, the biggest cause of predator killing in the world, the most inefficient use of grains that could feed people in the world, one of the biggest consumers of energy in the world- and so on.
if you give a damn about the environment, you should not be eating meat. It's that simple and that obvious, and anyone who cares about our world should be shouting it from the rafters.
While factory farming is an abomination, grass-fed livestock isn't the answer. More predators are killed to support the grass-fed industry, and the industry is the biggest obstacle to predator reintroduction. The industry also opposes letting native herbivores onto their ranges- witness, for example, the slaughter of bison and elk in Wyoming, and the sheep industry opposition to bighorn reintroduction in the Rockies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the U.S., grazing has done severe- often irreparable harm to many habitats. The arid West doesn't have the "verdant swales" that you praise. Livestock also foul water supplies that native wildlife need and carry diseases that imperil natives.
In all areas, native herbivores will complement the ecosystem much better than livestock ever can.
In addition, it costs just as much energy and makes just as much pollution to turn a grass-fed cow into steaks as to turn a grain-fed cow into them.
Crisw, rather than "stop eating meat," this article is indicating that we should not eat beef specifically. I knew the vegetarians would take this as a rallying point, but this article mainly about the beef industry. Switching to chicken is much more realistic. No matter how loudly you shout it from the rafters, people will keep eating meat. Switching from beef to other meats would be very beneficial, and lies within the realm of possibility.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPaul, thanks for the figure. There were between 30 and 60 million bison here before humans arrived, so it's increased by roughly a factor of two. So while I still agree that beef is bad for the environment, the increase over natural levels is the pertinent figure, which is lower than the numbers in the article.
There is a little bit of fuzzy thinking going on here. The NAO report cited says that meat-eating is worse for the environment than the transportaion industry, yet this article says the average American's beef diet is about as expensive in global warming terms as 1800 miles driving. Well, most Americans drive far more than that, totally excluding the rest of the transport in the US, so clearly eating meat is NOT a greater component of the "average" US citizen's CO2 output. Promoting the myth that becoming a vegetarian is the best thing that a person can do to avoid global warming is nonsense. It could only possibly be true for very poor people whose main contribution to global warming is in fact what they eat, but that is NOT true for most of us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow, I am not saying we don't need to eat less meat - we do - but I am not comfortable saying that poor people should give up meat while we continue to drive big cars, air condition our houses, fly around the world, and just generally do what we damn well please, then pat ourselves on the back for not eating meat (are you listening Paul Mccartney?)
The author really went over the edge to make the point. ½ pound of asparagus compared to a pound of beef? And most of the "cost" of the beef is because the land used to grow feed is not being used to grow forests. Is that included in the "cost" of the asparagus?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI didn't sit down and do the math until I saw Paula's post above, and I can't find quite enough figures in the article to make that calculation. But it says "concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) system, generates the equivalent of 14.8 pounds of CO2 pound for pound." That's supposedly "taking ... into account" all the factors invloved in the CO2 cost of raising meat. I did a Google search and found that the average American eats about 66 lb. of beef a year. That works out to 990 lb. of CO2 equilivent per person per year, which is roughly 250 lb. of carbon, the amount contained in about 45 gallons of gasoline, which would take a vehicle 1800 miles at 40 mpg. That wouldn't last my little Honda two months. Thanks Paula.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat the article actually says is "our diets and, specifically, the meat in them cause more greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and the like to spew into the atmosphere than either transportation or industry." So that includes either "our diets" or "the meat in them" (it's not clear which) rather than just the beef. It still doesn't seem to work out right though, since the other meats emit lower levels of greenhouse gases than beef, and the article is trying to make the point that beef is the main offender. I hope someone can give us the real figures, it's kind of important. Either beef is a major cause of global warming, or someone slipped a digit somewhere and it's relatively minor.
The article also states "producing half a pound of hamburger for someone's lunch a patty of meat the size of two decks of cards releases as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as driving a 3,000-pound car nearly 10 miles." Figuring on the average American diet of 66 lb. per year of beef, that works out to 1320 miles of driving in a 3000 lb. car (say 25 mpg). That's about 53 gallons of gasoline, consistant with the previous calculation. They may have derived one figure from the other in the article, but this does confirm my calculation. How do they figure beef is a major source of greenhouse emissions? I generate five times that much greenhouse gas driving my 2000 lb car 15 miles to work (30 mpg), and that's not counting personal driving, and it's certainly not accounting for gases generated in the manufacture and delivery of all the non-beef products I buy, both food and non-food, nor for the gases emitted generating the raw materiels that are used to manufacture them, nor for the gases emitted by them later when they decompose in landfills.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe author attributes 40% of the total greenhouse emission from raising beef to "forgone absorption of greenhouse gases." When in reality most of the CO2 is not sequestered it goes into growing plants which later decay and release the CO2 anyway. The author also attributed 32% to "emissions from cattle and their wastes." Wild animals would emit these same chemicals into the environment. In reality most of the emissions that the author attributed to beef production would occur in natural systems as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWONDERFULL ARTICLE. THANK YOU MADE US THINKING AT OUR "NORMAL" LIFE STYLE.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClara, Romania
How about a cap-and-trade on flatulence?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSeriously, food preference are a matter of habit and we prefer the foods that our culture prefers until circumstances cause us to form a new habit. Economic pressure is the only reliable way to get people to adjust to a new pattern --- the veggie fans have not had much luck with shame. It might take some kind of (gasp!) tax. Suppose, for instance, that food stamps carried a surcharge if used for beef.
If you knew what you were talking about, then you would know how much food is WASTED raising cattle. All the feed grown to feed the cows over their lifetime could go to starving people. The nutrition levels you get back that went into the production of cattle meat is about 10%. That means that the 90% of the energy that man put into raising these cows is lost. I suggest if you are worried about starving people I suggest you feed people with the food we feed to the cows!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPotatoes contribute more CO2 than beef?!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's actually a good idea. But monetising externalities is the #1 problem of capitalism. And the only way to do it is with regulation, which needs to be global in scope to be effective. All it takes is a country or two to buck the trend and they instantly have a competitive advantage (and massively over-grazed countryside). Politically, the time it would take to accomplish that is more time than we have given the rates of ice-shelf melting in Greenland alone.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere really aren't two sides to the global warming debate. There are the facts, and then there are those ideologically opposed to the facts. UN Councils don't take this stuff lightly. They have a lot more to lose in the battle against poverty when global warming is real than the majority of industrialised nations. Yet, they tell us that we need to stop global warming. Put your ideology aside for a moment and google the term 'global warming'. You won't find much in the way of it not happening.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can't dig up hydrocarbons, burn them, and throw them into the air and not expect there to be an imbalance in carbon levels. Just like if you throw up a gigaton of dust and soil, there will be an imbalance as well (that happened with Krakatoa during the dark ages) http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/html/e1-about.html.
http://www.climatehotmap.org/
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/recentcc.html
The websites are endless. Thinking you're right and everyone else is wrong won't solve any problems. Please, stop sitting on your hands.
I love these articles, something to please eco-romantics, PETA, vegans, alarmists, it's got it all....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut that's OK, the editors of Sciam gave up on that science stuff long ago after they found that sci-porn sells better than science.
I wonder how much methane humans produce when we eat vegetable protein :) It should make for an interesting experiment. Stick 10 volunteers in a closed room and feed them meatless chili for a few days. Watch the methane levels rise :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut seriously, the first step towards a solution is to understand the problem. Sounds like some measurements are being taken and models put together. Then try to poke holes in the models and measurements. Then come up with some alternatives.
Ultimately we'll probably come back to the issue that there are too many people on the planet consuming too many resources. Forget for a moment that the distribution of wealth is uneven. The total population and consumption is probably too high to be sustainable. Population control will have to be part of any durable solution. No more octuplets implanted please. Free birth control in developing countries and poor areas everywhere. Give women everywhere an opportunity to get an education and choose to limit the number of kids they have. OK, eat a little less meat too.
We're doomed. Various churches will put a stop to any concerted efforts to reduce population growth.
Well stated, I've been looking for similar words myself. Lets also not forget that when cattle are allowed to roam freely in the woods they actually tramp down the underbrush that is the ladder fuel that makes California fires so damaging. Unfortunatly California is both outlawing free range cattle for the supposed damage they do while ranging and at the same time passing laws requiring free range cattle, not to mention the tax on the gas they produce.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI hear the comment, "No one will change their eating habits," quite often. This isn't true. I did, and many of my friends and family have also. It may not happen as quickly as some of us would like, but it does happen. As more information is made available about the benefits of going vegetarian, more people will try it and realize how wonderful it can be. I once said I'd rather die than live without meat, but cutting out meat has actually made me much healthier! It's one of the best moves I've ever made.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also think many (not all) people would be willing to change their diet. That's not to say they will become vegetarians but move the proportions of animal to vegetable protein towards the vegetable side. Starting a campaign to try to 'convert' meat eaters to a 100% vegetarian diet will fail. Trying to convince people it's OK to eat vegetarian a few times a week or to simply mix smaller amounts of meat with beans and other vegetable protein sources has a much higher chance of succeeding.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course as long as T-bone steaks are cheap an plentiful nothing much will happen in the US. Once a carbon/methane tax gets applied and prices go up dramatically you'll start to see changes. Very few people are influenced by the desire to 'do right'. Many more are influenced by their desire not to spend a fortune on a meal. Same happened with the high gas prices of just a few months ago. All of a sudden those gas guzzlers weren't so hot anymore. No amount of 'oh my the world is ending because of CO2' has the effect of an empty wallet.
The more I think about this (makes my head hurt) it's clear that environmental impact must somehow get factored into the price of goods we purchase.
An article in the February 2009 issue brought to mind a concern that I have regarding the topic of anthropogenic global warming. The article entitled "The Greenhouse Hamburger" It appears that an underlying notion of the article is that anthropogenic global warming is the major cause of greenhouse effects. Because of other writings on this topic I have become concerned that there seems to be one fundamental question that has not been resolved .. is or is not water vapor a major contributor to greenhouse effects? If it is not then why not? I have not yet seen a conclusive scientific presentation that water is not a major factor. On the other hand, if water vapor is, in fact, a major contributor then a whole lot of rhetoric loses credibility. One source among many which addresses my concern is the article at www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html entitled, "Global Warming: A Closer Look at the Numbers". That article indicates that if water vapor is included then man-made carbone dioxide is a nit contributor (0.117%) and truly is a trace gas. Hmm, I wonder if this is might be an inconvenient truth in some circles. Another source on the net is at www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html entitled "The Great Global Warming Hoax" which examines, among other things, the physics and chemistry of CO2 from the viewpoint of its energy absorbtion frequencies. That article maintains that CO2 absorbs energy at only three narrow bands of frequencies which correspond to 2.7, 4.3, and 15 micrometers respectively. The percentage absorbtion of all three of these frequency bands amounts to around 8% of all of the "heat" energy involved in the greenhouse effect. All of the rest of the "heat" passes right through CO2. So, is water vapor to be considered a major part of global warming and greenhouse effects or is it not? What is very encouraging to me is that there will (hopefully) be a once and for all answer published soon. The International Congress on Climate Change has an announcement in your February 2009 issue regarding their session in March of this year in Copenhagen. I am anxious to read their conlusions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDennis H. Vanek
I felt an addition to my previous comment is in order address the issue of Methane and to illustrate how serious the issue of inclusion of water vapor iis to any discussions of anthropogenic global warming. The following data are from the article at :www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html entitled, "Global Warming: A Closer Look at the Numbers
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisContribution to the "Greenhouse Effect"
Based on concentrations (ppb) adjusted for heat retention characteristics Percent of Total --adjusted for water vapor
Water vapor ----- 95.000%
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) 3.618%
Methane (CH4) 0.360%
Nitrous oxide (N2O) 0.950%
CFC's (and othermisc. gases) 0.072%
Total 100.000%
As can be seen the author of the article maintains that Methane is 10 times less of a contributor to the greenhouse effect than Carbon Dioxide which is itself only 3.6 % when water vapor is included. The issue of whether or not to include water vapor is evidently a very key aspect that should not be ignored, but apparently is in some circles.
Glad to see that someone else picked up on the sentence in the introduction to the articvle that the "multiplier" for potatoes is 57! Until I hear otherwise, I'll delete the potaoes from the "meat and potatoes" combination.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI thought the same, its beef contributes 57 times the amount of potatoes. Aparently potatoes grow in very little space, and require little nutrients.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think out of all of this bickering over numbers and better ways to deal with this issue, step back a little bit and take a look at the BIG picture. That big picture being the big size of americans. Someone posted tha the average american eats 66lbs of beef a year. I would like to know how many people were polled in that, and how many overweight people were polled.
Its obvious people, for every reason, Americans need to be eating less anyway. Think of McDonalds. How many people are over-indulging in the food, then take a look in their garbages. Half-wasted burgers from the dollar menu because its easy enought to buy 4. (McDonalds may be a bad example as I think they use meal worm [yum] I wonder what the CO2 output from the mealworms is). Since the average person EATS 66lbs of meat, how much do they waste? I think we need to look at the purchase of meat to tell how much it is impacting. What about dog food, what about cat food, these contain meat.
Come on, a little more conservation in our diet is going to be way better for us not only for CO2 emmissions, but in almost every aspect, no matter how you look at it.
"As an alternative, researchers and graduate students should be working to better understand the weakeness of the global warming theory"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is what scientists and researchers have been trying to do for decades. Only recently, it started to scare people and there became a resistance.
One example, SCIAM just put out an article about the jumbo jet that got converted to a labratory to study more indepth our atmosphere from various altitudes. Look at the posts from the anti GW (aGW) people under the article, it is all resistance. Please don't bite your tounge, the research is trying to be done, but people keep rearranging the facts that these scientist have collected into resistance.
Sit back and let the scientists do their job.
I completely agree that the question of man-made global warming is far from settled, even though groups calling themselves by grandiose names like "The Union of Concerned Scientists" make it sound like their conclusion is the only sensible one. Well I'm a concerned scientist too, and in my opinion there is still a lot of doubt that anthropogenic global warming is a serious problem. And when you try to bring up that point of view, you generally get drowned out by the yelling of insults rather than logical arguments. I won't go into it here, but I can make a good case for anthropogenic global warming being a myth, and a lot of other scientists agree. At the very least, we need to know what the actual numbers are, because there seems to be a lot of disagreement about what factors are important. The current prevailing opinion is largely the product of panic and incomplete research.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, this article has certainly not made the case that the raising of beef is emitting a serious amount of greenhouse gases. The numbers are so obviously contradictory that it destroys the point it's trying to make. This is a good example of the sort of information we need, unfortunately this article has failed miserably to provide it.
Whenever I read these hopelessly misguided arguments I have ask myself if the scientific community is interested in reality or furthering their own agenda. At what point in time did you forget that the Earth has an enormously complex system of checks and balances? Certainly there are harmful gases that need to be eliminated like excessive car exhaust, coal and other toxic manmade waste, but to suggest that animals, who have been used for human consumption for centuries and far predate the global warming issue and have been emitting these same gasses, are of an equal danger is beyond ridiculous. Furthermore, what about the deer, elk and other wildlife who also emit CO2s, should we begin a culling practice of these animals? Their numbers are quite prolific in some areas and only hunting has been able to keep them in check, but you advocate vegetarianism. So, what do you suggest about the wild game? There certainly isn't a large general market for their meat. Bottom line is perhaps nature has its own agenda that it just hasn't revealed yet. Or maybe no one's looking. All of these animals emitting CO2's can't be so harmful to the atmosphere as to destroy it. Otherwise why would they have evolved that way? The Earth has survived much worse than Cow's gas. I think its time to look elsewhere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA large scale study in 2006 showed a surprising difference between the health of middle aged Americans and Brits. The most likely causal difference appeared to be diet. So to hell with the planet, eating less red meat could be good for you!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"U.K. residents in late middle age reported fewer cases of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, heart attack, stroke, chronic lung diseases, or cancer than those in the U.S."
"When it came to heart disease and diabetes rates, U.S. residents in late middle age with the most education and highest incomes equaled those in the lowest education and income levels of their British peers."
Banks, J. The Journal of the American Medical Association, May 3, 2006; vol 295: pp 2037-2045.
Beef has got to be one of the most inefficient food we could possibly produce. Most of the calories a cow consumes goes towards maintaining its life, not adding on more meat for us to eat. Methane rich cow farts aren't helping with the environment either. The solution is less, preferably NO BEEF. It makes more sense to use the land to grow food we can eat, not grow food they can eat so that we can eat them. The math just doesn't add up. The human body only needs VERY SMALL amounts of meat anyhow. If 5% of our caloric intake was from animal protein such as milk, eggs, or meat we would be fine. Having two eggs for breakfast would take care of that just fine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, farm raised cattle is just stupid stuff. When you raise cattle packed into stalls, and feed them food that has been drowned in fertilizer you do two things: 1, you make concentrated plumes of methane from the cattle. 2, you deplete the soil and pollute the water of the fields you're growing the feed in. If we where to at least rely on free-grazing cattle who feed off of land that is simply left fallow, then there would be no pollution and the cow farts would be spread out enough to help at least somewhat.
As far as I'm concerned though, only chicken, goat, and fish can be efficiently farmed in a permanent way. Free-range egg-laying chickens can easily turn inedible garden pests into food in the form of eggs. Goats can turn inedible weeds into ingestable milk. Fish can live in a pond that supplies water to the garden, the water is from rain and recycled gray-water. The fish turn inedible moss/algae/larva/weeds and turn it into meat rather efficiently. At the end of their productive lives, these animals can also be eaten for their meat. All of which happens in an entirely sustainable manner. Granted... it only works if you're raising these animals for your own food purposes... but so long as you've got the land, it's possible.
The main point is, we don't need as much meat as we're eating. Studies have shown that diets rich in animal proteins can be detrimental to our health. While I'm not saying we should all go raw vegan, I think we need to rethink the classic American diet and rediscover just how good raw fruits and veggies are. Help our health, help our planet, sounds good to me.
This isn't what the article is saying. It is saying nothing about wildlife harming our atmosphere. The key here is population, over-population to be exact. Yes, there is plenty of wildlife contributing a little bit, but that is only natural. What isn't natural is the amount of cows we are raising for beef. Like anything else, when the population grows beyond its natural progression (ie being grown for food and feed) then there begins to be problems. This is most noticeable in humans, where our population has brought on many of the problems we see today.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article does have a tone that seems to want to sway people towards vegetarianism, but that is not the bottom line, the bottom line is conservation, balance your diet. It says NOTHING about hunting the wild contributing to the CO2 levels, in fact, if you looked into it, the animals giving off the CO2 isn't the biggest contribution, it is the energy used in the production of the beef. When hinting in the wild, or animals living in the wild it is a different scenario, don't make it out to be every animal now needs to be controlled.
I just don't see how people stray from the topic. OVERPRODUCTION of beef, not the wild animal.
When producing meat from ruminants, there is one thing that must be remembered. That is that the Green House Gases that they produce, from the vegetation that they eat and the bacteria and protozoans that live in their rumens, is all a part of the normal load of these gases circulating in the earth's atmosphere. Arguably meat production uses a lot less fossil Carbon (Coal/Oil/Natural gas) than does the production of a plant crop. It may also be worth remembering that although humans can get enough protein from eating pulses (the lysine -an essential amino acid - level is critical); the proportion of protein in meat is greater and readily available with the correct level of lysine. Other factors in the consideration of the optimal source of protein are: that to feed the world population on pulse protein, would require a great deal more land in hot climates; in the interests of Biodiversity on this planet, our vegetation needs to be grazed and dung applied to both grass and cereal crops - an operation that itself saves the energy expensive use of artificial fertilizers; and before our human population became so huge - ca 6.8bn - there would seem to have been much larger herds of ruminants on the planet than there are currently e.g. herds of bison v feedlot/range cattle. We desperately need to agree balanced solutions and not blame ruminants for our polluted atmosphere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUh, sorry. Vegetarianism is NOT an option.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf I were not laughing so hard at this ludicrous, incorrect information I might be able to remind you that quite some time ago Scientific American published real, non propaganda science and was an admirable publication.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe more we know about all aspects of our lives, the more it is clear that anything and everything somehow contributes to "greenhouse" gases. People who ride bicycles to work exert more energy than they otherwise would - with more greenhouse gases as a byproduct. Getting energy to the consumer from geothermal or wind power would require a huge infrastructure outbuild - resulting in enormous greenhouse gas production. And these things wear out, require vigilant maintenance, and they create a footprint that precludes something else from being where they are located. We need to come to terms with the knowledge that greenhouse gas production is inescapable. Attempts to limit production will always have a negative impact on the economy as any activity - no matter how well designed - has a greenhouse gas footprint.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor those who think that grazing cattle on land somehow steals valuable farmland - think again. When cattle graze on land - which is often the case - the land is usually in an ecosystem that would not readily support food crops that are cultivated. Before you complain again that the raising of cattle is wasteful, please check to see what you are talking about first.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSubject: The Greenhouse Hamburger
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn "The Greenhouse Hamburger", the author, Nathan Fiala, may be a doctorial candidate in economics, however his article shows his ignorance about scientific processes.
As all scientists know, or should know, there are two laws of Thermodynamics: The 1st law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that heat can only flow from higher to lower temperature regions.
Let's examine a basic tenant of global warming advocates; that being their carbon dioxide greenhouse theory. Their theory states that because of additional CO2 in the atmosphere, greenhouse gases form a "blanket" around the earth. Their claim is, because of this "blanket", the earth receives additional energy, thus causing "global warming". This is an absolute impossibility! It is like saying 2 + 2 = 5.
The 1st law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created, but the global warming advocates want us to believe that energy can be created out of thin air and this is what is causing global warming. In addition, the 2nd law of thermodynamics states that heat can only flow from a higher temp region to a lower temperature region. Consider an oven (the sun) heated to 350 degrees. We all know that if you place a potato (the earth) in this 350 degree oven, it can not achieve a temperature greater than 350 degrees impossible. Even if you were to wrap the potato with aluminum foil or wrap it in a blanket of insulation (the so-called greenhouse effect), it will never get hotter than 350 degrees. However, they want us to believe that somehow, the potato can exceed 350 degrees in this example.
So, this so-called greenhouse effect is a totally wrong premise. It ranks right up there with the premise that the earth is flat. Before Columbus, almost everyone thought the earth was flat. Also, at one time, the premise was that the earth was the center of the universe. Those who opposed this view were subject to be burned at the stake for blasphemous and heretic behavior. By it's very title, Scientific American should pay more attention to the physical laws that govern our universe and at least question the absurd scientific fallacies made by a doctorial candidate in economics.
Les Polette
Auburn, California
Re "The Greenhouse Hamburger", the author, Nathan Fiala, may be a doctorial candidate in economics, however his article shows his non-knowledge about scientific processes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs all scientists know, or should know, there are two laws of Thermodynamics: The 1st law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that heat can only flow from higher to lower temperature regions.
Let's examine a basic tenant of global warming advocates; that being their carbon dioxide greenhouse theory. Their theory states that because of additional CO2 in the atmosphere, greenhouse gases form a "blanket" around the earth. Their claim is, because of this "blanket", the earth receives additional energy, thus causing "global warming". This is an absolute impossibility! It is like saying 2 + 2 = 5.
The 1st law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created, but the global warming advocates want us to believe that energy can be created out of thin air and this is what is causing global warming. In addition, the 2nd law of thermodynamics states that heat can only flow from a higher temp region to a lower temperature region. Consider an oven (the sun) heated to 350 degrees. We all know that if you place a potato (the earth) in this 350 degree oven, it can not achieve a temperature greater than 350 degrees – impossible. Even if you were to wrap the potato with aluminum foil or wrap it in a blanket of insulation (the so-called greenhouse effect), it will never get hotter than 350 degrees. However, they want us to believe that somehow, the potato can exceed 350 degrees in this example.
So, this so-called greenhouse effect is a totally wrong premise. It ranks right up there with the premise that the earth is flat. Before Columbus, almost everyone thought the earth was flat. Also, at one time, the premise was that the earth was the center of the universe. Those who opposed this view were subject to be burned at the stake for blasphemous and heretic behavior. By it's very title, Scientific American should pay more attention to the physical laws that govern our universe and at least question the absurd scientific fallacies made by a doctorial candidate in economics.
Les Polette
Auburn, California
A good lesson in considering what the writer's bias is!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHe assumes that all the vegetative material the cow eats won't mature and be eaten by anything else or decompose and release its carbon but continue to grow and fix carbon.
He neglects to consider that all a cow eats which includes a lot of urea (in feedlots) grass, straw, and other cellulose-based matter does not constitute human food since we don't have rumen stomachs.
That the farmland producing the feedgrains used in finishing the beef won't instead use the same inputs -fuel, fertilizer, ect- to produce other crops or may continue to grow corn only to make biofuel at a rather unfavorable conversion rate sustained only by subsidies.
And that if the farm products that could be used to feed the human population are used in that way then no CO2 equivalent will result from that process. I think I see a lot of methane involved in human activity!
In the final analysis I'd admit that meat in the diet has a certain cost overall but it also utilizes a lot cellulose that otherwise would only be used by termites, yeast, bacteria or burned, all of which comes back into the cycle. The biased academia that jumps on the meat-eater sometimes acts like they don't produce methane and theirs' doesn't stink either!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLes, you should take your own advice and don't speak on subjects you don't know much about. You do seem to be thinking about it, but you seem to be at the high school level. There's nothing wrong with that, but realize that you don't have the complete picture. For one thing, the idea is that light from the sun gets through the greenhouse blanket layer because it's visible light, and not effected by greenhouse gases. But when it hits the Earth, most of it is converted into infrared, which cannot penetrate greenhouse gases. That's why the Earth is (or may be) heating up. Heat from the sun finds it easier to get to the Earth than to get away again, due to the change in frequency and the growing greenhouse layer that blocks infrared from leaving. Maybe.
But you're right about the author of this article, he has it more wrong than you do, and he ended up in Scientific American. I don't understand why the authors or editors haven't responded to the problems we've pointed out (for that matter, they could have done the math themselves). Does SciAm care about accuracy anymore? It doesn't look like it. This whole article should be recanted, it's rubbish clear through.
Exigeus, thanks for your thoughtful comments on my response to “The Greenhouse Hamburger”. However, I stand by my premise that CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, is not what is causing global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst, C02 is about as effective in blocking infrared rays as a chain link fence is in preventing mice passing through. Second, as a rocket scientist, I am very familiar with the dynamics of heat transfer and I know you can not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics. This is a fundamental law of nature and basically states that heat can only flow from a higher temperature region to a lower temperature region. Simply put, you cannot heat a seventy degree room by bringing in ice water. You must heat it with something that is warmer than seventy degrees.
Unless you can show me a “greenhouse layer” in our atmosphere around the earth that is warmer than the earth’s surface, I will rest my case. Since there is no such warmer layer, there is no way that infrared rays can cause global warming. I encourage you to check this out yourself and see just what a fraud and scam the global warming mantra due to greenhouse gas is.
Les
Hello
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisinteresting article
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswow
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis is so true
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMeat is a HUGE contributer to global warming
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMr. Crockwell is a great teacher
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswell
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisgreat input from everyone else
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm very worried about this issue myself
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswhy won't my commments show up?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think we should all strive to prevent global warming
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisstarting with eating more earth friendly
wonderfully written!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe picture incorporates my favorite colors
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyes
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI enjoy the authors use of words!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiseveryone commenting is so smart!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiszooxanthellae
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is true, but the article states at the end that what should be done is not to stop eating meat, but to manage the waste and try to make the production of the meat more clean and environment-friendly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswell, I never
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with you, mr. crockwell's student...great insight.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI however believe that we should change the way we think about meat!
Bob brandon
Great insight, Mr. Crockwell's student. You have a deep mind
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI enjoyed reading this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe colors in the picture are my favorite part
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI love reading!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI enjoy hearing the opinions of others
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnearly sixteen comments
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswell written article
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI enjoy meat but I now see its evils
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI love scientific AMERICAN
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyes
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do not believe that switching to chicken is better, it will simply lead to the same conclusion. The article points out that chicken is also a small contributor, but that is because beef is a more popular industry. If we simpl switch to chicken, then that industry will eventually end up the same way as the beef industry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do not believe that switching to chicken would be more realistic. The article states that chicken is also a small contributor, (note: SMALL!) but that is only because the chicken industry is not as big as the beef industry. I think that if we all decide to switch to chicken (which won't happen) then it would eventually lead to the same conclusion as the beef industry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisArticle is a bit short sighted. A beef carcass produces much more economic benefit than just meat. By products are used for everything from lipstick to pharmacuticles. And what about the millions of American bison which populated the North American continent 200 years ago. Since they were bovidae, they must have produced a fair amount of green house gases. As I understand it, modern meat and milk animals were domesticated to consume materials which were unpalatables and indigestables that humans couldn't use. The animals also produced fibres which were used for garments, etc. It's not the animals which are the problem, its modern food production. It is also mass numbers of human beings and politics. Our government implored the Chilean coca growers to change crops..., asparagas, grapes, etc. and now, we are almost morally bound to purchase those crops to help those peoples maintian a new way of making a living. We grow asparagas here where I live and I grow it in my garden. I only eat it fresh in the spring.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe artivle does not mention the water required to produce beef and for much of the world water is a major problem, even in the US. The CSIRO in Australia estimates that a kilo of beef consumes a minimum of 50,000 litres compared to Soy beann, 200 litres. Even if you don't worry about CO2 or methane, worry about this!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExcellent article!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhe isn't this part of our National dialog about global warming?
Wouldn't it be wonderful if our new President were to announce that he and his family are cutting down on the amount of meat they eat each week in order to reduce their carbon footprint?
We should be as concerned about the amount of meat we eat as we are about the mileage our cars and trucks can achieve!
Excellent article!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy isn't this issue a major part of our National dialogue about global warming?
Wouldn't it be wonderful if our new President announced that he and his family were cutting down on the amount of meat they eat in order to reduce their carbon footprint?
It should be as important to cut down on the amount of meat we eat as it is to be concerned about the mileage our cars and trucks achieve!
Kelly I guess it was just too much to give you an empty canvas and some paint brushes .... :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKelly I guess giving you a blank canvas, and a way to write was too much to resist. As for the article this was an assignment for a Biology class at a High School. Scientific American is an amazing magazine and is actually the basis for a year long course at the school in which the primary text is the monthly magazine. This topic shows how interrelated our world is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLes, you are not a rocket scientist. There is no way on Earth that you are any kind of professional scientist. I don't mind discussing issues with anyone, but don't try to kid me, kid. You're not stupid, but you're showing far too many gaps in knowledge.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs to your argument, the body that is "warmer than the Earth's surface" and can warm the Earth is called the Sun.
Exigeus, why do you doubt that I am a rocket scientist? I have a few years under my belt, 74 to be precise and am now retired. I worked for many years in the aerospace industry and designed solid rocket motors. Some of my designs were used to place communication satellites in synchronous orbits. My rocket motor designs were called “apogee kick motors”. They imparted the required impulse (energy) to move the satellite from an elliptical orbit into a circular orbit at 22,500 miles above the earth’s surface.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou strike me as a fairly intelligent individual, however you have obviously “bought” into the Greenhouse effect. You probably believe that it is trapped infrared radiation that causes greenhouses on earth to become hot. In reality, greenhouses merely suppress convective heat loss, preventing the heated air from dissipating.
You are correct in saying it is the sun that warms the earth. The incoming solar radiation from the sun is about 342 watts per square meter. The global warming alarmists would have you believe that somehow IR that bounces off the earth is re-radiated from the so called “greenhouse blanket” back to the earth, thus adding even more energy and causing global warming. This is poppycock, pure and simple. It violates the first law of Thermodynamics which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. In effect the global warming alarmists are creating energy out of “thin air”; an impossibility!
I ask you again to educate yourself in the physical laws that govern our universe, open your mind and do not impugn my education and work experience. Also, check into the sun spot cycles of the sun and you will soon see that it is the sun (as you stated) that determines the earth’s temperature. You might just find that at the present time the sun is going through a cycle of no sun spots. Whenever this has happened in the past, the earth has cooled off. Hopefully, you are aware that is precisely what is happening at the present time.
Les
I did miss one point, "the FAO data I noted earlier imply that the world average emissions from producing a pound of beef are several times the CAFO amount." Several isn't really specific, but let's say it's five times more, it still doesn't account for as much global warming per person as my fuel efficient Honda on my drive to work. So how many is "several?" And why do the following paragraphs fail to support that assertion?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut ignoring the CAFO paragraph, estimates in the invervening paeragraphs seem to contradict the report's conslusions. It's not clear where the numbers in those paragraphs are from, I assumed they were taken from the FAO report, which is why I was criticizing this article. On closer inspection that may not be the case. What they say is "It turns out that producing half a pound of hamburger for someone's lunch a patty of meat the size of two decks of cards releases as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as driving a 3,000-pound car nearly 10 miles." It can't just "turn out that..." the figures must come from somewhere. I assumed the FAO report, since no other source was mentioned, but that doesn't seem to jibe with the conclusions of the report. Where is that information from, and why is it off by a factor of several from the FAO conclusions? Or is it actually from the FAO report, and the report is a mess? This article should have reconciled the information before publication, right now it's very confused.
Exigeus, get ahold of yourself. Greenhouse emissions are a moot point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRead again my last transmission to you.
Les
this article does not propose a realistic solution- the fact of the matter is that very few people will become vegetarians, no matter how large their concern for the environment is. the most probable reason for this is that this article doesn't make good enough arguments on what is really important to solve global warming- Exigeus nice work on your calculations- I tried to do the math too, and it wouldn never make sense to say that "eating meat" is the largest contributor. This article also lacks factors like: Natural gas, electricity, and air plane flights, it also does very little to explain the relationship between those who drive cars that are not fuel efficient compared to those who don't eat meat. For example in many countries beef isn't eaten, but I'm sure they drive cars, small stuff like that has an effect on the bigger picture of finding solutions to the Global warming crisis. If the numbers for these were actually there the article would make a lot more sense, but since they aren't and all it says is that "meat production contributes to 14-22 percent of the 36 billion tons of CO2 equivalent GHG emissions" it leaves you wondering what produces the remaining 78-86 percent. I agree that this article should be better supported and instead of giving random facts actually give you the reality of how people contribute to global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiscool.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisno one is actually going to stop eating meat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs I stated in earlier posts in this thread, I don't believe global warming is a serious problem. I never buy into things, I figure them out for myself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell Les, I can't figure you out. You seem to have a certain amount of specialized knowledge, and yet you badly misunderstand the basic laws of physics. You know what they are, but you're not trained in them.
"The global warming alarmists would have you believe that somehow IR that bounces off the earth is re-radiated from the so called greenhouse blanket back to the earth"
Somehow? That's pretty well proven, whether you believe in global warming or not. And it doesn't violate any law of physics, especially the first one. How do you figure that? It's basically acting as a reflector, nothing more.
"thus adding even more energy "
Not more energy, the energy from the Sun. It's not being created, it's coming to the Earth from the Sun in the form of visible light.
"You probably believe that it is trapped infrared radiation that causes greenhouses on earth to become hot."
And you don't?? You're not selling perpetual motion machines by any chance?
The reason I'm still responding is that you're not a joker trying to mess with people's minds, you seem to take what you say seriously. I don't know if you're 74, but I know for certain you're not a trained scientist. Maybe an engineer, more likely a lab assistant, or someone without a science degree who did contract work for NASA. I advise you to keep reading, the truth is out there.
My question is, do you who believe this Human Caused Global Warming Myth all eat only vegatibles? Are you all vegitarians and do you take anti flatulants to make sure YOU aren't contributing to Global Warming? Do you know your Prius adds more to Global Warming than a conventional SUV. Are you just stupid or do you always walk around with your nose up the south end of a northbound enviro-whacko?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExigeus, your response shows just how out of touch you are with the basic laws of Thermodynamics. You have bought in completely to the complete garbage spewed out by the “junk” scientists. The so called “greenhouse blanket” does not exist!!!!! There is no such “layer”. It started from a misconception about glass nearly 200 years ago and has stayed that way. I say again that the reason greenhouses get hot has nothing to do with trapped Infrared (IR); it is because the greenhouse covering suppresses convective heat-loss, preventing the heated air dissipating. You could even use window panes of polished salt crystals, which don’t absorb IR at all and the greenhouse would still get just as hot as compared to window glass. Polished salt crystals are used as windows in laboratory IR spectroscopy because this material does not absorb IR.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease re-read my other responses to you, check what I have said with any “real” scientist of your choice, not a “junk” scientist. Open your eyes and stop believing the garbage of the global warming activists.
Les
Animal agriculture contributes more global warming effect than all transportation. It is cruel. Consumption of animals is detrimental to human health and a main cause of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, kidney failure and the diseases of excess animal protein and animal fats. In the USA, we are killing over a million farm animals PER HOUR as though they were not just as sentient and as capable of suffering as our pet dog or cat. We need to end the slaughterhouses NOW. Global warming is more advanced that the Nobel prize winners calculated - that came over the BBC news February 14, 2009. Not only are we raising ten billion farm animals for slaughter in this country in any given year, but we are also responsible for importing millions of tons of dead carcasses out of rain forests, continually razed for this meat market in Central and South America. We are taking out the most diverse and climate protecting remnants of the planet for the subsidized cheap horrific hamburger. Grain burgers taste just as good and are healthier and less cruel. 55% of USA grain goes to feed cattle, and the fields of corn and animal feed again take out more habitat for wildlife - fragmenting and destroying forest habitat for creatures who we overpopulating unconscious humans are wiping off the face of the earth FOREVER. Natural predators are destroyed for trophy and fun and have no chance in hunting and trapping. This is our legacy. Mark Twain who wrote "On the Damned Human Race" said that HABIT is really the worst evil, because, given new information, people just keep on their blinders no matter what the cost, and keep on rationalizing their stupid choices and abuses. We are destroying a third to half of the non-human species on what used to be a rather pleasant diverse earth. We cannot live on this earth alone - and our killing of farm animals to stick down our gullet is a stupidity that is killing off natural predators, and the diversity of life that protects and sustains human life. We cannot live without birds and bees and wild creatures - without the forests and prairies and wetlands we have destroyed for our gluttonous fast food meat consumption. Our wild and tame brethren are sacred life - Schweitzer said "I am life in the midst of life that seeks to live". If we just follow the most sensible concept of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us - and realize that everything but us is OTHER - then we will have the beautiful world we were given. But we must transform quickly - it is URGENT AND WE ARE PAST OUT OF TIME
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVEGAN BY DESIGN, see my message at, flatrockspeedway.com click search 1 time type in indycar01, ..yall come on out n see us sometime. k..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was saddened to see the misleading article, the greenhouse hamburger published in Scientific American. American cattle are grown almost exclusively on land that was in grass prior to the arrival of the Europeans. Only ruminants eat grass, so the vast herds of buffalo, and other native ruminants were replaced by domesticated livestock. Most of the corn is grown in the Corn Belt on land that was formerly fire maintained prairie. This corn production absorbs more CO2 per acre than the native grasses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAccording to USDA statistics, there were 21 million milk cows in the U.S. in 1924; the number today is about 9 million. This reduction is due to much greater milk production per cow made possible by corn absorbing much more greenhouse gas than the native grassland it replaced. Also, according to USDA, there were 139 million head of cattle in the U.S. in 1974; over the last 10 year the number has been around 100 million. Again because of corn production, these animals go to market at a younger age reducing methane production while increasing meat production.
It should be pointed out that while methane is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2, its half life is only around 8 years while carbon is over 100 years. It would seem likely that the ruminant animal methane equilibrium has been reached or may even be declining in the U.S. Beef and other animal meats still result in large greenhouse gas emissions compared to vegetable proteins; however, the greenhouse gas culprit is the release of CO2 by the increasingly rapid use of fossil fuels. Lets not take our eye off the ball.
As a fifth generation farmer/rancher I find this article disturbing. Disturbing because it focuses primarily on beef production and the gases that cows "give off." What it doesn't discuss is if you decrease beef consumption, you increase the prices at the store. If you decrease the amount of cows a rancher like our family has, you will bankrupt the rancher ultimately driving them out of their livelihood and forcing them to make money a different way to survive. This article also does not discuss the other uses that beef is for: cheese, milk, milk products, dairy products, rawhide, and leather as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat would you have the rancher do; attach meters to the front and back end of their cows to monitor the amount of methane give off? Ridiculous! The answer does NOT lie in encouraging less consumption of beef.
You couldn't have said it any better "Ditchy!!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you knew what YOU were talking about, "agenthucky," you would know that there is a BIG difference between commercially owned packing plants that have thousands of cows and smaller, family owned ranches that have fewer than 500 head. In our family, we have about 99 head of cows that are raised for not only Angus beef but also to sell the cows and calves at auctions to have money for the monthly bills. We do NOT waste our cows feed, or else we would be losing money that we can't afford!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo before you start your soapbox rant, know what you are talking about!
I totally agree with you "mmorgan!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMargenfred---if our President Obama announce he and his family were cutting down on the amount of meat they eat, I would have to ask "what kind of meat?" If they replied with "beef," then I would not vote for him again the next go around! Give me a break "margenfred" you are just as clueless as the next person who would move out to the country, next to a rancher, and complain about the manure smell.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou said it best "AnnaBWE!" This problem has been going on for a lot longer than this article even implies!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGet a life "Bob_Brandon!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Nathaniel"-- give me a break! You may want to drink goat milk, but for my family-that is not an option.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy do you say that "farm raised cattle is just stupid stuff?" Our family has been raising cattle for five--yes five-- generations on land that is rotated to grow alfalfa and corn to feed the cattle. The only reason that chickens don't put off as much gas is because they are smaller animals and don't have four stomachs like a cow has. As far as the veggies and fruits that we all should re-discover--what are you going to use for fertilizer--artificial chemicals or cow manure? I would rather use the cow manure--which we recycle and even give away to people --for free-- if they want to come and load it up!
This article does not mention that the humans before us had coexisted with animals such as bison, mammoths, and other large animals that put off methane also. This surely contributed to the greenhouse problem we have now.
But, alas, your way of thinking as well as the author's don't take into account many factors that contribute to the greenhouse problem--from not only this past century but centuries before us.
So if you don't mind, I think I will eat my big, juicy, corn-fed, grass-fed, Black Angus steak now. (Which by the way tastes way better than store-bought--eww!)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust about all the calls to convert to a completely meatless diet to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions concentrate only on the emissions, and
ignore the fact that natural areas (including grasslands)
sequester carbon, in addition to providing habitat for wildlife.
Naturally sequestered carbon is released when grassland is converted
to other uses, whether for farming or buildings. It is also released
when forests are cut down (or burned) to convert to agriculture or other
uses. Cows and sheep are, by nature, grass eaters. When they are kept
in stalls or feedlots and forced to higher productivity with grain,
there is no economic incentive to preserve open spaces (such as
grassland). Some studies indicate that more CO_2 equivalent will be
released than the cattle or sheep that grazed on it emit.
Another point that should not be ignored is that the production
of soybeans for tofu involves the use of chemical fertilizer and
pesticides, with emission of N_2O which is an even more potent greenhouse
gas than methane.
The CAFO system is not economically efficient if one takes into account
the external costs. Foul oders and contaminated water caused by CAFOs
reduce property values in surrounding communities. The overuse of
antibiotics leads to drug-resistant illnesses that are difficult to
treat. Leakage of manure from storage lagoons contaminates soil and
groundwater. Cleanup costs should be included, but aren't. And one
might add that it is insane not to ferment all that waste to biogas,
instead of doubling the climate impact by using natural gas.
Add the fact of cruelty to animals, and that beef and milk from grass-fed
cattle have a much healthier ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats.
One can probably do more for the climate, and the environment in a wider
sense, by reducing meat consumption to one or two servings per week and
making sure that the meat comes from free grazing animals in the region
(or white-tailed deer), and not from feedlots than going completely
vegetarian.
Edith Borie
How do I print it without the "ad" in the upper right obliterating some of the text?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn fact how do I print it without ANY DAMNED AD at all.
This is a great article. it provides FACTS!! It is great to actually see some people realizing that there is a problem & things CAN & need to be done to turn it around.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a great article. strengthens being vegetarian & shows the direction we need to move.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi Nathan.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy name is Tessa Salazar, a health and science journalist from the Philippines. First of all, congratulations for a comprehensive special report "How Meat Contributes to Global Warming. Is it possible to reprint the charts? I would need them for our publication. How do i go about it?
I have a question. Since much of the worlds meat is raised on arid land that would not be suitable for large scale agriculture (if any at all) and are not fed harvested corn but rather live off of the natural vegetation, does this impact global warming to the samedegree? Was this impact considered?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks
Chase
hmm this is a very factfull article, i do agree with this and believe that there should be somthing done to stop or prevent the production of green house gasses in the meat production industry. altho you write this article and i would bet my bottom dollar that you are not even doing anything to make a difference, you of all people realise the facts of the harm of meat prodution but yet you will still be sitting in you rdining room eating your roast dinner with a clear contience because you didnt produce or kill the animal. shame on you if this may so be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are many flaws in the "greenhouse hamburger" theory. Whathever the quantity of carbon rejected by the cattle industry, all that carbon had to be trapped before in the vegetal feed of these animals. It is a natural and vital cycle that has to be distinguished from one-way release of fossil carbon. So the comparison between beef eating and car driving is irrelevant. Misconception will not help to solution the global warming problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe, humans, emit at each expiration CO2 that can be expressed as equivalent to the CO2 emission from a car. Don't expect me to hold my breath in order to participate to such alleviation of global warming. I hold my breath only to think how to explain where stands the illusion of the "greenhouse hamburger". Here, the kind of equivalence used represents a restrictive aspect of reality as an economic one. But it misses the meaning of the processus in cause which is science purpose. Yes, 20 apples = 20 oranges if we restrict the meaning of equality in some way. But don't expect to make an equal amount of cider with oranges in the name of equality in Kg, basket or $. Planet Earth has a natural blanket of greenhouse gases; the point is to prevent a buildup of this blanket. To dissipate the "greenhouse hamburger" illusion, we have to distinguish the recyclable and non-recyclable sources of greenhouse gases, as well as for apples and oranges. Cutting emissions from any source will reduce the blanket. Preserving natural life cycle, including human one, is the goal of that desired stabilisation. So, it is obvious that non-recyclable emission is the right target to restrict.
Real greenhouse toll from tractor usage in agriculture and transport of food to the consumer is about the same for any food production; progress in non fossil energy consumption is far much promising than change in diet. Excess of meat consumption is more a health problem than an environmental one.
Another flaw is to calculate a deficience in carbon reuptake by grass land in proportion of a rain forest. Vast western plains have been practically treeless before beginning of the present global warming alert. The biomass of a 100 years old tree is impressive. But we must keep in mind that the cumulative biomass of 100 years of harvest is not so low in comparison.
Finaly, meat surpassing transport as greenhouse culprit is a very very surprising allegation. As seen above, meat production and agriculture footprint should be substantially reduced as source of detrimental greenhouse gases buildup. Then, many graphics should be corrected.
I hope all these nuances help to clear the suspected illusion of a "greenhouse hamburger" finally smaller than a grain of salt.
In 44 years as a reader of Scientific American, I never read a so thin theory. But so is science : at any level, it has to be checked and rechecked. Here, a revision has to be published as errata or else.
what a bunch of hogwash. never thought scientific american would stoop to this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCattle eat grass; cattle produces CO2; grass absorbs CO2. Sounds sustainable to me. Isn't it part of the natural cycle of life?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe point is that coal-burning industry unlocks CO2 that was stored hundreds of millions of years ago, and has been out of circulation.
It is fraudulent to try to conflate the two sources of CO2.
As a modern beef producer as well as a scientifically educated individual (Bachelor of Science), I think that Scientific American has missed some key conclusions about the 2006 UN study. At the end of the study they conclude that in order to decrease the carbon footprint of the beef industry, modern intensive practices should be developed. By making beef into a big business, producers are able to hire outside sources such as environmental engineers so that they are become even more innovative.
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