Thread by @AukeHoekstra

I'M SORRY: YOU CAN TRY TO DENY IT BUT BEEF REALLY IS BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT (THREAD)

I don't begrudge anyone their meat but when meat proponents start misrepresenting the facts, it gets on my nerves. So here's a short rebuttal thread to animal and GHG prof Frank Mitloehner.

@GHGGuru recently published a white-paper (cekern.ucanr.edu/files/256942.p…) that has already been largely rebutted by another team of scientists jhsph.edu/research/cente….

But undaunted, @GHGGuru has inspired numerous erroneous articles since. E.g. medium.com/@caroline.stoc…

'Unbiased' publications like "Daily Herd Management' are even hailing him as 'The Scientist who Debunked Livestock's Long Shadow' (a reference to a UN report detailing the disastrous consequences of cattle on the environment). dairyherd.com/article/scient…

When a scientist claims: "all my colleagues got it wrong!", we automatically root for the underdog, especially if we love his message. And sometimes the 'lone hero' is right.

But outliers are outliers for a reason. And often the reason is they are wrong.

First let me summarize the rebuttal:

He states cars are worse (true) but uses US numbers that are wrong in his global context.

He neglects CO2 emissions from producing animal food (yes really) and a long list of other problematic impacts.
jhsph.edu/research/cente…

So you can basically ignore his numbers as extremely incomplete but there are a few pieces of storyline he also gets wrong that I want to add on top of the rebuttal to @GHGGuru.

He claims cows are climate neutral because methane is converted into CO2 and then absorbed by plants. He states: "That’s not to say livestock has no impact on climate, but we are not adding additional warming." That's a fallacy.

First of all: yes methane (CH4) is eventuall converted to CO2. But most scientific publications already take that into account and STILL think it's 20-80x as powerful a greenhouse gas (GHG) as CO2.
pubs.rsc.org/en/content/art…

So gram for gram, methane from cows is 20-80x worse than CO2 from cars.

More importantly: just like every car adds extra CO2, every cow adds more methane. His hand waving to make that simple fact go away (if the number of cows somehow magically stays constant) is inconsistent.

Another conscious or unconscious sleight of hand is conflating 'efficient' factory farms in the US (where cows get fed by crops from elsewhere) and cows grazing on marginal farmland on the other.

He is dismissive of signals Amazon or Indonesian forest is being cut down to produce crops for cows because: '“Two thirds of the world’s agricultural land is marginal, which means it cannot be used to grow crops because the soil is not sufficient or there’s not enough water.”

“Those who say stop animal agriculture because it’s better for the environment and humankind are effectively saying let’s get rid of two thirds of all agricultural land. It’s baloney.”

In fact, only 3% of US beef is free grazing until slaughter and most of the growing is done on factory farms in feedlots, eating crops from non-marginal grassland (and eating 70% of US antibiotics as a growth hormone and to make them less sick).
thoughtco.com/feedlot-organi…

If the US would shift to grass-fed beef (the term for grazing until slaughter) it would need 30% more cows (because it's less 'efficient') and current pastureland could only support 27% of the current beef supply that way.
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108…

Now of course most US pastureland is actually pretty rich in most other contexts and fine for agriculture. link.springer.com/article/10.100…
So saying it can only be used for grazing cattle is stretching the truth (again).

All in all, if we got all our meat from cattle that was actually grazing on marginal farmland we could only eat a small fraction of the beef we consume now, let alone cater for the increasing meat appetite in the rest of the world (the US consumes about 3x average).

So what to make of @GHGGuru? I think he's in over his head. I think he probably makes superb measurements of methane emissions from cows on factory farms but has a weak understanding of the larger system.

And meat is still a problem.

Sorry.

With all that said I would like to end on a positive note.

Firstly, as @GlobalEcoGuy never tires of pointing out: we can still eat meat but if we do it a bit less and a bit more sustainable that can make a big difference.

https://twitter.com/GlobalEcoGuy/status/944339733538156544

Secondly, meat replacement products are quickly becoming more appetizing and that means we can skip the 'inefficient' plants to cows to slaughter step of the factory farm.

https://twitter.com/MLiebreich/status/1133748611123073026

Thirdly, we can produce factory grown meat. I talked this through with prof Mark Post in person last year and he claims that there is 0% chance that artificial meat will be more expensive in the long run. Article on hime here:
sciencefocus.com/future-technol…

In a way it's only logical: breeding, confining and feeding an entire cow, just so you can kill it and harvest some of its muscle tissue is inherently more expensive than growing the tissue in a vat. And then you can also do away with all the antibiotics and animal suffering.

So that's the future I am aiming for: no more planet destroying, inefficient, cruel and unhealthy exploitation of animals on factory farms but limitless efficient, tasty and healthy food for everyone.

P.s. And yes I know that animal proteins are great. But many plant proteins are just as great and meat replacement products have lots of them.

And fats? The healthiest fat you can eat is 'fish oil' but you can also go straight to source (without the heavy metals): algae oil.

P.s.s. I actually agree with @GHGGuru that cars emit more GHG. But that problem is solvable in the same way: by replacing outdated tech. (the combustion engine) with newer tech. (electric motors).
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

P.s.s.s. (final tweet for now) Yes I know: it would be best to combine electric vehicles with biking and car sharing to make our cities more livable and to limit the amount of natural destruction needed to produce cars. But electric is still better than gasoline or diesel.