this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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A Texas Dairy Ranks Among the State’s Biggest Methane Emitters. But Don’t Ask the EPA or the State About It (insideclimatenews.org)
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[–] ChocoboRocket@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Taking normal things and then mass producing them isn't a part of the normal carbon cycle, especially when areas are deforested or changed to make it more accommodating to mass production.

I'd love to read anything to the contrary - it's not that I believe cow farts is a horseman of a climate apocalypse.

But I find the idea of deforesting, mass animal production, the food used to feed cows being controlled (potentially causes more gas) far more unnatural than some extra cows in a field.

It's easy to say something is "natural" when referring to an animal existing, but the existence of these cows barely dips a toe in the natural world.

So if there is any legitimate proof that the beef/dairy industry don't contribute anything beyond the natural carbon cycle I'd love to educate myself!

I don't disagree that the main cause of CO2 emissions is clearly oil and gas, and that should absolutely be the focus. But to insinuate everything else is absolutely fine to ignore and Oil and Gas is the only source that can be mitigated seems disingenuous - especially since oil and gas aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

[–] RemembertheApollo@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To add on - the feed we give cattle exacerbates methane production in their gut.

Cattle fed high-grain, low-forage diets produce 42% more methane than those fed-low grain, high-forage diets (Boadi et al.,2004). Methane (CH4) is composed of carbon and hydrogen. The formulation of diet influences the carbon: nitrogen ratio of manure, which impacts the amount of methane released. Diets high in grain have higher levels of readily fermentable carbohydrates, which create methane to be released into the atmosphere. Grain type can also change the amount of methane emissions. During the finishing phase, cows fed a corn-based diet released less methane than cows fed a barley-based diet (Beauchemin and McGinn, 2005).

So there is nothing “natural” about the excess methane produced by cattle because if they were naturally foraging the amount produced is lower.

[–] jackfrost@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, cows are adapted to eat grass, but that doesn't fatten them up. So we give them corn and whatnot instead. It's a generally unhealthy diet for them. As in, they are literally more prone to disease because a grain diet impacts their immune system.

When you offer a cow grass in one hand and grain in the other, they will always go for the grass.