Third of emissions cuts must come from behaviour changes

[AE-NMidlands]

do we really have to change drasticly ? once we have non polluting EVs,HPs,RE, in fact just get rid of fossil fuels is that not enough ? It feels like it should be.

I think this misses the embodied energy (i.e. mostly recent carbon emissions) in all the "stuff" we have, including cars. I'm keeping our 4th petrol ICE car - in 55 years - until it dies. Then none.
EVs still have tyres and, to a lesser extent, brakes - and lots of stuff brought half way round the world. RE (pv) worries me a bit as it all seems to come from China... HPs I don't recognise unless it means Heat Pumps, in which case, see cars!

yes i can see that but as industry becomes closer to zero co2 then so does the embedded energy. Even mining is becoming cleaner and then we will have green steel.

True, but I don't see much evidence of zero CO2 manufacturing yet, other than consuming RE and claiming some of their electricity is renewable because of offsetting - which is a bent money-making game ruining some good family farmland.
There are still a lot of industrial roofs with no panels.
A

[smegal]

Part of the problem is how we measure/estimate/otherwise determine emissions, isn't it?

This is an area that looks to be more complex every time I've tried to get my head around it.

There's a very good book "How bad are bananas?" by Mike Berners-Lee in which he analyses and estimates (very scientifically) the carbon footprint of a whole range of goods and activities.

There's some surprising figures in the book - for example despite our general feeling that "shipping things half way round the world" is bad, goods shipped by boat are actually quite low carbon. Air freight is another matter. Asparagus shipped by air has one of the highest carbon footprints of all foods. And if you cycle, and get your energy from eating beefburgers, your journey emits more carbon than if you had driven an SUV (this doesn't reflect badly on cycling, it shows how bad raising cattle for food is).

A very interesting and useful read!

I really find the statistics about cattle hard to believe. I understand that they are counting methane, but it just seems like an exaggeration, since the biomass to feed the cows cones from the carbon cycle. Methane also has a relatively short life, so there isn't a net increase (assuming global cattle numbers remains constant), until a gas pipeline starts soweing it's contents

[marshman]

I really find the statistics about cattle hard to believe. I understand that they are counting methane, but it just seems like an exaggeration, since the biomass to feed the cows cones from the carbon cycle. Methane also has a relatively short life, so there isn't a net increase (assuming global cattle numbers remains constant), until a gas pipeline starts soweing it's contents

I tend to agree, I have looked into this a few times over the years and yes agriculture is responsible for a good sized chunk of methane emissions, but from what I can see/find overall methane emissions from agriculture are falling - specific reliable data is hard to find but this is one I have found:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN ... start=1991 only goes to 2008 though

Over the same period total global methane emissions have risen by around 10%. my conclusion ? yes it would be great to reduce agricultural emissions but not sure that everyone going vegan would produce the massive drop that some say it would - life is never that simple. Worth noting that rice production produces around 10% of total methane whilst cattle produce around 6% (figures from a quick google so may not be accurate, DYOR [Do Your Own Research] )- so next time you have a take away, forget the rice

[Stinsy]

+1 for the climate impact of domesticated ruminants being exaggerated. Those that promote the hypothesis seem to have a "vegan" axe to grind and certainly much of what they claim is easy to discredit.

There is research showing that the sort of farming we do in the UK sequests carbon into the soil so is net-negative from a climate-change perspective. Certainly the ruminant population is much lower today than it was historically when 50million or more bison roamed the North American plains.

[openspaceman]

Worth noting that rice production produces around 10% of total methane

Makes sense as a lot of the decomposition during the growing season will be anaerobic, but I suppose you knew that from your moniker.

[Oldgreybeard]

+1 for the climate impact of domesticated ruminants being exaggerated. Those that promote the hypothesis seem to have a "vegan" axe to grind and certainly much of what they claim is easy to discredit.

There is research showing that the sort of farming we do in the UK sequests carbon into the soil so is net-negative from a climate-change perspective. Certainly the ruminant population is much lower today than it was historically when 50million or more bison roamed the North American plains.

One of the major snags with all forms of climate activism is that they do often get misused by groups that have their own agenda, be that moral, quasi-religious, or whatever. There is a worrying trend that I believe is starting to influence and restrict free choice, in that several groups that believe that their diet needs to be different from that of others are hijacking the climate change bandwagon in order to try and convert others to their cause. Some friends were concerned recently that there seemed to be a strong vegan pressure group influencing local primary school education, for example, and that seems to me to be worrying if some of what is being taught is based on a false premise.

I don't have any issues at all with people choosing to eat a restricted or specific type of diet because of their own beliefs, but I do have issues when those people start to try and convert others, with a sort of quasi-religious zeal, to their own belief system and I have really do get angry when I see false information used by those groups in order to try and reinforce their argument.

We don't eat meat that often mostly just by personal choice and nothing at all to do with any sort of belief in a particular form of diet. I would guess we are influenced by a vegetarian (for religious reasons) family member, but she has never made any attempt to change our views on diet, she's very much in the free choice camp.

One thing I have noticed is that we produce a fair bit more methane (and other undesirable gases) when our diet is mostly vegetarian for a while. How those extra emissions stack up against those of cattle I have no idea, but I suspect that the process of digesting vegetable matter, in any type of animal, is likely to result in the production of gases. The question is really whether cattle produce more or less gas per unit of food energy than people. I've absolutely no idea how the two compare, I doubt there is even any really reliable data as to how much gas gets produced by different species. Most of the data that gets quoted seems to have been derived by estimates, as cattle, for example, emit more gas by belching than they do by farting.

I remember reading some studies using drones with methane detectors to try and estimate methane production by dairy farms, but the whole process seemed to be pretty fraught with the potential for large errors. I also remember reading, some years ago, of an experiment using an artificial ruminant digestive system, to try and measure gas production from both ends. Again there seems to be a fairly large potential for experimental error, not least because cattle are most probably like humans, in that they have a pretty wide range of gas production from one individual to another (probably down to wide variations in gut biome).

[Stinsy]

+1 for the climate impact of domesticated ruminants being exaggerated. Those that promote the hypothesis seem to have a "vegan" axe to grind and certainly much of what they claim is easy to discredit.

There is research showing that the sort of farming we do in the UK sequests carbon into the soil so is net-negative from a climate-change perspective. Certainly the ruminant population is much lower today than it was historically when 50million or more bison roamed the North American plains.

One of the major snags with all forms of climate activism is that they do often get misused by groups that have their own agenda, be that moral, quasi-religious, or whatever. There is a worrying trend that I believe is starting to influence and restrict free choice, in that several groups that believe that their diet needs to be different from that of others are hijacking the climate change bandwagon in order to try and convert others to their cause. Some friends were concerned recently that there seemed to be a strong vegan pressure group influencing local primary school education, for example, and that seems to me to be worrying if some of what is being taught is based on a false premise.

I don't have any issues at all with people choosing to eat a restricted or specific type of diet because of their own beliefs, but I do have issues when those people start to try and convert others, with a sort of quasi-religious zeal, to their own belief system and I have really do get angry when I see false information used by those groups in order to try and reinforce their argument.

We don't eat meat that often mostly just by personal choice and nothing at all to do with any sort of belief in a particular form of diet. I would guess we are influenced by a vegetarian (for religious reasons) family member, but she has never made any attempt to change our views on diet, she's very much in the free choice camp.

One thing I have noticed is that we produce a fair bit more methane (and other undesirable gases) when our diet is mostly vegetarian for a while. How those extra emissions stack up against those of cattle I have no idea, but I suspect that the process of digesting vegetable matter, in any type of animal, is likely to result in the production of gases. The question is really whether cattle produce more or less gas per unit of food energy than people. I've absolutely no idea how the two compare, I doubt there is even any really reliable data as to how much gas gets produced by different species. Most of the data that gets quoted seems to have been derived by estimates, as cattle, for example, emit more gas by belching than they do by farting.

I remember reading some studies using drones with methane detectors to try and estimate methane production by dairy farms, but the whole process seemed to be pretty fraught with the potential for large errors. I also remember reading, some years ago, of an experiment using an artificial ruminant digestive system, to try and measure gas production from both ends. Again there seems to be a fairly large potential for experimental error, not least because cattle are most probably like humans, in that they have a pretty wide range of gas production from one individual to another (probably down to wide variations in gut biome).

Exactly. People are free to chose their own diet and understand the strengths/weaknesses thereof. I don't claim mine or my children's diets are "perfect". Far from it, both from a nutrition and environmental perspective.

However there are very influential "vegan" pressure groups driving the narrative based on pure pseudoscience. Pressuring schools to provide a vegetarian/vegan diet to children is an astonishing overstep and one with no genuine environmental or nutritional basis. I have friends who are vegetarian (almost vegan), they cook meat, fish, and eggs for their young children because they want their children to be healthy. We've discussed how they struggle with how to cook and handle these foods they're unfamiliar with. But at the end of the day they know their dietary choices come with compromises and want their children to be as healthy as possible until they're old enough to understand those compromises and make their own decisions.

I remember reading about a woman who fed her children a vegan diet. Then one day she caught her child eating butter in the supermarket "like an animal". She was still shocked about it when she got home and had a moment of realisation that her children were physically and mentally behind their peers and that the child had been craving animal fats so strongly that something primitive had kicked in. IIRC she switched to a more conventional diet and their health improved.

My problem isn't with how people chose to live their lives. It is how "climate" seems to have been highjacked by those with ulterior motives and who lie about the health implications of their cult-like quasi-religious beliefs.

[GarethC]

There's a fair amount of quality analysis suggesting meat and dairy intake reduction are important. The IPCC is of course all about climate change, which isn't to say that it's advice should be taken without question, but it's analysis is pretty compelling.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02409-7

I'm not aware of similarly robust analysis to the contrary. I remember asking for it on a Navitron thread, and being sent links to a farming lobby organisation... Genuinely interested to read counterarguments if people can point me in that direction.

[Stinsy]

There's a fair amount of quality analysis suggesting meat and dairy intake reduction are important. The IPCC is of course all about climate change, which isn't to say that it's advice should be taken without question, but it's analysis is pretty compelling.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02409-7

I'm not aware of similarly robust analysis to the contrary. I remember asking for it on a elsewhere thread, and being sent links to a farming lobby organisation... Genuinely interested to read counterarguments if people can point me in that direction.

This is where we struggle. I can point you towards lots of studies that cast doubt on animal agriculture contributing to climate change. However are they any more credible than the opposing studies?

[Oldgreybeard]

The key things are to look at both the core evidence (i.e the actual measured data giving greenhouse gas emissions from all farm animals, as well as humans eating a meat-free diet) with the actual wording of articles like that one in Nature.

As an example, look at the way the key recommendation has been phrased:

“We don’t want to tell people what to eat,” says Hans-Otto Pörtner, an ecologist who co-chairs the IPCC’s working group on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. “But it would indeed be beneficial, for both climate and human health, if people in many rich countries consumed less meat, and if politics would create appropriate incentives to that effect.”

First of all, the author is a physiologist and marine biologist and not someone working in the field of digestive gas production from land animals and humans. Secondly, note that the emphasis is specifically on, quote "people in many rich countries", and that is a very significant qualifying statement. Food waste, particularly meat and fish products, is massive in many rich countries, and contributes significantly to the problem. Then there is the high level of processing, together with transport costs, that mostly applies to food produced in many rich countries.

I agree with his conclusion, but for the logical reasons that less meat processing, less meat transport and far less meat waste would magnifying any reduction in eating meat in rich countries. This applies less to poorer countries, where meat and fish tends to be processed far less, doesn't get transported such long distances and isn't wasted to the degree it is in some rich countries.

The argument is really one of rich countries doing more harm than poorer countries, and that applies across the board, with the possible exception of mass deforestation.