I have changed what I eat because of the now overwhelming evidence of global environmental damage caused by meat and dairy production. It produces more climate-warming emissions than all cars, trains, ships and planes combined. If the world’s diet doesn’t change, we simply can’t beat climate change.
Sigh.
This is an invention of those who would change our diets anyway. Look back to the basic emissions pathways underlying everything. Standard technological advance and economic growth – the A1T scenario – leave climate change as a trivial problem to be ignored. We really don’t need radical anything – and we’ve already done more than enough to bump technology over to this pathway anyway.
It is past time that the Guardian’s crew started compensating the rest of us for the Oxygen they’re stealing.
“…very occasionally, when travelling, I’ll eat chicken, when it’s that or go hungry. I wonder what you think about that. That I’m a patronising hypocrite? That I’m deeply confused? Maybe you couldn’t care less.”
Got it in one, Damian.
“A calculation by Oxford University researchers of how high a meat tax would need to be to mostly cover the health costs incurred by eating it..”
So useful when one can dismiss a product as bollocks simply on the label. Not up to University of Essex standards yet. But getting there.
The issue is never the issue; the revolution is always the issue.
What’s it like to be a Guardian columnist and lead a fat-free life? What would we laugh at if the Guardian ceased publication?
Should have been “fact-free” life… Bloody spellchecker
How deluded do you have to be to be hired as the Guardian’s “environment editor”?
And how, exactly, does he edit the environment?
Genuine question – I don’t understand this argument (and yes, I realise those proposing it have no scientific understanding of the world, but it must have come from somewhere).
I know that farmed animals emit copious quantities of methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, although short-lived in the atmosphere, where it oxidises back to CO2 and water vapour. But all the carbon they emit derives ultimately from eating plants, that have captured carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. So the net effect should be zero (or, at the most, second order), shouldn’t it?
Just to clarify – so you can’t compare the emissions of farmed animals with those from digging up fossil fuels, however deleterious (or not) you consider that to be.
Chris Miller:I think the argument is that
– CO2 turns to methane and back to CO2, yes
– But becase it;s a continuous process there is always an inventory of methane in the atmosphere.Some is created, some destroyed, but there is always a bunch there
– Methane is much more effective than CO2 at raising temperature.
– If production of new methane were reduced,and destruction were to continue as before, the overall amount present would decrease.
So that part, at least, does make sense.
CM
It doesn’t answer your question, but I guess I might ask “what would have happened (re CO / CO2 etc) if the cows hadn’t eaten and belched”?
Ie,what would happen to the cows’ homes and land?
Bacteria inside cows digest the grass. If there were no cows, similar bacteria in the soil would digest the grass. Methane result is the same. And beware of the ‘methane is a far worse greenhouse gas’. There’s a lot more CO2, by a couple of orders of magnitude. And a real helluva lot more water vapour, which is the thing that really sets the climate, water in all its states. The cowfart thing is mere vegan opportunism.
The Collectivist weapon of global warming merging with the Collectivist weapon of dietary Armageddon. Squeeze “Hate Speech” and Russian bots controlling our elections and he’ll have the full set.
Anyway, when is Damian going to start stabbing cows to death, to save the world?
Clearly put rhoda!
+1
And there is nothing we can do about water vapour 🙂
Water vapour is part of the feedback process that keeps the climate on an even keel. It’s probably quite handy that we have so much ocean.
Chris Miller: it’s the same argument as the ‘consuming water’ one
Fine by me.
Faced with a choice of a) keeping my cars and going vegan or b) giving up my cars and being allowed to eat meat, I choose the former a).
When they come for my cars as well, I will quote this nonsense back at them.
Mark, medieval peasant life is what they fervently wish for us, and probably a re-run of the Black Death too. The loss of your car (and mine) is only a small step on the way.
Mark, how about ‘neither, and telling them to go f**k themselves’..?
I like reading bollocks articles like this one. I just hope enough suckers believe this drivel so that the price of meat can ease a bit.
Carrington is giving a declaration of orthodoxy. An important sacrament for Lefties.
“An important sacrament for Lefties.” Good point. Alas, they want to nail us to the cross. I think we’d be wiser to nail them.
So there’s no point worrying about fossil fuel use- apparently it’s insignificant.
@dearieme
The baseball bat is also a much neglected debating device.
BiS
as far as Carrington is concerned it’s a much underused device as well.
What irks is that it’s not enough for these gits to lead by example at their own expense – they want to force their views down everybody’s throats and rifle our wallets to fund it – hence we have to engage in the tiresome process of pushing back all the time – which is where the baseball bats should be deployed.
@CJ Nerd
1 Methane ~10 more “warming than 1 CO2
CH4 -> CO2 + 2H2O
Is 2 H20 as “warming” as 9 CO2 ?
rhoda +1 it’s all puritan bullsh1t.
Gatwick
Lord Ashcroft steps up, ~12 hours later two arrested
https://twitter.com/LordAshcroft/status/1076183338795368453
Coincidence?
Also, the amount of methane as a result of eating animals is largely fixed into the system. It’s not going to grow if we stay as we are. It won’t make it any hotter if we stay at this equilibrium point.
The amount of CO2 is being increased because new carbon is entering the system via fossil fuels. I don’t believe that is going to be a problem either, but at least I might be wrong on that one.
In the case of Methane, no change would mean no change to temperature.
@ Mark Wadsworth
As long as you allow me to eat meat and do without the car, you are perfectly entitled to that choice.
The vegans who declare their care for animals as part of their campaign for the genocide of all farm animals disgust me.
@ Chris Miller
The argument is based on taking a cherry-picked set of datums out of the context of the data in which they are embedded and extrapolating – rather comparable to taking age-related mortality rates for those with a positive diagnosis for cancer and using them to construct a life table for calculating the cost of state pensions.
Cattle in feed-lots outside Chicago consume a lot of grain (which is cheap in the USA), so they pretend that there would be more bread to eat if Scots stop grazing cattle in the Highlands where they cannot grow crops. Cows fart methane after eating grass but they ignore the methane released when uneaten grass ferments (sometimes causing damp haystacks to catch fire)
talking about Guardian folk and baseball bats – it’s a target rich environment
Then we shouldn’t be funding agriculture through the CAP, then? Has the Graun gone Brexiteer…?
I eat meat purely in an effort to keep their numbers down and so save the planet.
If we eat meat, we will die.
If we don’t eat meat, we will die.
What the hell, we may as well eat meat.
H/T Taras Bulba
This Taras Bulba guy is beginning to win me over.
And eating meat (and a few other not insignificant things) means we all, on average, live much longer despite the long list of terrible things they have been trying to scare us with for the last 40 years!
‘I have changed what I eat because of the now overwhelming evidence of global environmental damage caused by meat and dairy production.’
There is no such evidence. Just his assertion. A No True Scotsman fallacy.