Since livestock production is the #1 cause of climate change, why don't the government address the main issue?

Livestock production is one of three main contributions the others are transport and energy. While I am fond of a beef pie, no one is seriously expecting the livestock industry to be shut down. Although question like this will usually see the usual knee jerk answers from deniers like riverrat15322 and bravozulu. "You would have to be incredibly ignorant to not realize that the methane from cows is completely from biological origin." not sure what this is meant to mean has someone suggested cows are not biological?. If the suggestion is that cows are natural, that is no longer the case, this stopped being the case when humans introduced cows to parts of the world were they were not native the U.S. Australia, New Zealand and South America. If fact 6 of the top ten cattle producing countries

http://www.cattlenetwork.com/Top-10---Countries-Wi...

While deniers can be relied on to try and make extreme claims like "Kill cows" (I wonder what liberator thinks happens to most cows anyway), they are not raised to make pictures for swiss chocolate boxes and live long lives. Bravozulu talks of "ignorant activists" & "agendas like hating people" While any reasonable person can easily see that cows can no longer be classed as a natural emission source, given that we have spread them around the world and breed them to be bigger/fatter on food sources that are far richer then they would usually find in nature in number that now exceed a billion.

It would be quite interesting if deniers could actually act more like the skeptics they seem to want to be called, if they could they might be interested that scientists are actually working on further breeding of animals (as humans have been doing for centuries) to produce animals that simply produce less methane

http://www.publish.csiro.au/?paper=EA05340

This would be far more constructive than ranting about leftists, alarmists etc.

You are of the generation that does not know about how the space program puts more damage to the climate then cattle. As a child taught during the cold war we were far more informed then what the kids are learning today.

The sites that are listed are put there so you wont look at the real cause. This is called slite of mind, Govt does one thing and says another.

Same with the wars after Vietnam they stopped showing just what are guys are looking like when getting killed, this is why we have an over weight country w/a paid military. Men need to serve as part of being a citizen of this country.Women should not be allowed into battle and this is the end.

The simplest answer is that the government can't collect enough money from that industry without upsetting a majority of the population.

The goal of those in the government pushing cap and trade (saving the environment) has nothing to do with saving the environment and everything to do with pushing their ideology. Their ideology is that the government is responsible for ensuring we are all equal. In order to fulfill this ideology they need power, and Money = Power.

We live in a country where personal sacrifice and hard work are rewarded and the fact is that some people make more sacrifices and work harder than others. In a free country it's hard to justify taking money from hard workers to give to someone else because you think that they have more than they need. Most people in a free society believe in this concept Hard work = More success = More money.

So it's no big surprise that all legislation being passed now imposes taxes on where they think they can collect the most money while pissing off the fewest number of people. The rich, insurance companies, oil and gas...

I had rather thought that use of the combustible engine was a little higher up the ladder of climate change problems than live stock production. Even so, there are a number of facilities that use the methane generated by either live stock or human waste as an alternative energy to petrol fuels and/or other wise generated electricity. Governement, at one level or another, has played a pivital role in the generation of these facilities. If you are counting the use of energy in the support functions of live stock generation such as the manufacture of live-stock food, transportation processes, and more - these activities are but a small subset of the general, over-all cause by the combustible engine or other energy sources. Governments around the world are arguing and tackling these issues under the term "smoke stack emissions" and "tail pipe emissions".

The number I repetedly hear is that methane gas is but 20% of the green house gas problem. Further, that while live-stock production is often cited as the primary cause of methane gas, seldom do we mention human methane gas.

Firstly still many governments are either ignorant of global warming problems or they do not want to address them.

Livestock is one of the major contributors to global warming as they deplete green cover as well as their excreta produces gases that are harmful for environment. Livestock had always been traditionally kept by tribal and village community all around the world as they are used for agricultural work and their excreta is used for making manure. Most of underdeveloped and developing nations economy is still based on agricultural output.

What is required is not banning or limiting the livestock population but using their excreta in a better way like producing bio gas based electricity and subsequently using the slurry for making better manure which will not only reduce the use of chemical inputs in farming sector but also help in utilising a material which normally goes to waste. Reduction in use of chemical inputs will also help a lot in controlling present rise in temperature and climatic changes and also related health problems.

Presently a large percentage of human population is non vegetarian and most livestock farms in developed countries are for supplying them with meat. Here we need to educate the people and make them understand that if they turn vegi or maybe eat less non veg food it will help the world a lot since to produce a Kg of meat almost 6 to 8 Kg of grain is used which can be used as food for a family of four for almost 2 / 3 days whereas 1 Kg meat is eaten by a family in a single day.

So, if non veg eating population goes down so will demand and we will have more food available for human consumption. With increase in demand as feed for livestock farms and human consumption more land is being used for agricultural use and most demand of land is being used by cutting down forests as is happening in Brazil for increasing soybean production.

Most cattles in developing and underdeveloped countries are non productive i.e. dont supply enough milk but are kept for traditional reasons like in India more cattles means a family is more prosperous and this thinking needs to be changed.

To the poster above. Yes soybeans are being grown at an alarming rate.

What you don't mention is that 90 percent of them are fed to livestock. Where it goes from 10 pounds of food to one pound of meat.

Interesting report, but it states that livestock production produces 9% of CO2 emissions, equivalent to 18% of CO2 emissions if you convert methane and nitrous oxide emissiosn to their Co2 equivalent (a bit misleading since CO2 remains an influence for 1000+ years, vs. decades for methane).

The reports I've seen put coal power generation at 40% of emissions, so according to your own source, the implied premise to your question that livestock production is our #1 problem does not appear to be correct.

There is also no proposal or analysis of alternate food options. Over 6.6 billion people still need to eat. Would machine-farmed agriculture be more or less CO2 intensive? Would that require more or less land use change? I don't see any of that in the report. Milk is suggested for protein in the conclusion, but that requires livestock!

"According to British environmentalist Norman Myers, 5% of deforestation is due to cattle ranching, 19% due to over-heavy logging, 22% due to the growing sector of palm oil plantations, and 54% due to slash-and-burn farming."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation#Causes_...

So farming is the worst cause of harmful land use change, yet it seems that you're advocating increasing that impact (increasing global warming).

Why don't you look into the global impact of products such as tofu and soy sauce on climate change?

http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html#ag

Recently, soybeans have become one of the most important contributors to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Thanks to a new variety of soybean developed by Brazilian scientists to flourish in rainforest climate, Brazil is on the verge of supplanting the United States as the world's leading exporter of soybeans. High soybean prices have also served as an impetus to expanding soybean cultivation.

Philip Fearnside, co-author of a report in Science [21-May-04] and member of Brazil's National Institute for Amazonian Research in Manaus, explains, "Soybean farms cause some forest clearing directly. But they have a much greater impact on deforestation by consuming cleared land, savanna, and transitional forests, thereby pushing ranchers and slash-and-burn farmers ever deeper into the forest frontier. Soybean farming also provides a key economic and political impetus for new highways and infrastructure projects, which accelerate deforestation by other actors."

It's because tofu pate doesn't sound as fancy as steak on a congressional lunch menu. (just kidding. : ) No, it's because no one likes changing old habits. The meat industry is huge, important,and far reaching. Plus, people have been eating meat since the beginning of human origins. Of course, you can take pride that you aren't dependent on the meat industry. (I assume the screen name "GoVegan2StopGlobalWarming" means you are a vegan.)

You would have to be incredibly ignorant to not realize that the methane from cows is completely from biological origin. It is the same as using biofuels except that methane is a better greenhouse gas. That is practically irrelevant since it doesn't accumulate. It has a very short half life.

Only an extremely ignorant activists with other agendas like hating people who eat meat would invent problems that don't exist in the real world. Cows have been around longer than people. Claiming methane from cows as something new and sinister is beyond belief. It does go to show how completely devoid of logic the climate fears spread by leftists can be.

Step 1: Search for an excuse to promote your idea.

Answer: global warming

Step 2: Make a fake connection to your idea.

cow farts

Step 3: Promote your idea as a solution for the unrelated concept.

Kill cows, stop cow farts, solve global warming

Step 4: Get the taxpayer to pay for your idea.