Reducing our carbon footprint BY dairy farming...

[Oldvatr]

Agreed. However by comparison with other sources of methane it is a very quick cycle.

BTW isn’t it more like a decade.

Actually water vapour is the biggest culprit by far. It is the one noone recognises as a GHG but it is the worst. We use and waste water like there is no tomorrow. But it is precious and we need to consider how our profligate use is anthropogeneic as well. What we should be doing with it is actually to creat a national grid like the electric asupplies, and then use excess electricity to pump water into hydrolelectric dams for storage purposes. We should not be wasting lithium on batteries to store excess wind power, we should use water.

BTW: most methane lasts 10 years max in the atmosphere. What we should be doing is cap landfill and sewage works to capture the methane and burn it for fuel. they do this successfully in Amsterdam, so why not here in UK? On a more sombre note, why not use crematorium flue output for local heating. I for one would happily donate when my time comes. My local authority has no incinerator for burning waste, so it is shipped abroad at vast environmental cost. We should be burning plastic and paper waste and captuing the CO2 etc properly. The technology is here today, but the investment is not.

I am disgusted that my waste bin each week is 85% filled with useless packaging that I would dearly love to recycle for the planert, but cannot, there are things that I can recycle only by transporting them to the landfill site, such as batteries, but it is impossible on a mobility scooter, and a car journey would totally negate the carbon footprint gain.

 

[Oldvatr]

Critical thought is a rare find these days @zand .. feng shui was once de rigeur. Fashionable ... but easily disposable and the sooner, the better.

Classic example from a Melbourne suburb 2 years back ... 4 women opened a vegetarian restaurant and charged MEN more for their custom. Went broke in two months. They blamed the males ....

Our local pastie emporium also went bust last week. They converted their production to be fully vegan friendly, so their cheeze and onion pasties used non animal products. They also changed all their main lines such as sausage rolls and cornish pasties over to Quorn based alternativs, but kept the change hidden. If you asked the staff which were vegan they would say all of it, including the cream eclairs and donuts. But it was not advertised or identified on the products. Needless to say they lost most of their business (me included) and went to the wall.

 

[Oldvatr]

[snip]
Recycled HOW FAST? Methane stays in the air several decades before it is absorbed, and during that time, it contributes more to global warming than an equal weight of carbon dioxide does.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane

What is not explained is that when methane absobs heat it starts to decompose naturally and gives up hydroxyl pairs (water vapour) which is why a midden smells more when its foggy and cold, but is not noticeable when it is a warm day. Its gone,

Shelf life of Methane is currenly 9,1 years on average according to WHO.

 

[Listlad]

Population - that dear people is the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. So we sre being guilt tripped into suppposedly caring for animals (by making them extinct) and Climate change (kill the evil cows) So what we should be discussing is whether the proposed vegan like diet will sustain the population, and is really sustainable long term. In parallel we are indeed needing to curb our lifestyles to conserve the planet and stop it attacking us. Limiting waste, reducing fossil fuel use, updating farming practices to make them sustainable, removing plastic wrapping from my wastebin..

Replacing cows with monculture wall to wall soybean crops is not the answer we should be forcing through and planting zillions of tress will not cut it either. converting household heating boilers it hydrogen is a nice slogan, but not really practical. Electric cars for everyone is not practical, but electric or poo powered public transport is actually feasible now,

I am glad that some here are beginning to see the bigger picture. We need to raise the discussion above the them and us battles and start supporting initiarives that work to solve these problems. This is not a war against veganism but it is an analysis of the proposed global diet and how it will affect us and is there no other way. I believe there is.

I believe that dairy will actually provide a good compromise for most of mankind. It allows a low carb higher fat diet that seems to be so effective for many metabolic disorders, and it also provides us with the essentiial amino acids and vitamins that a pure vegan diet lacks. It is also capable of upscaling to be sustainable. To my mind this is a good solution (apart from the obvious 'ethics') and reduces stress on the use of fish as the only animal source used in the Global diet for omega3 source. As we know fishing is strugggling to supply current demand. What we need to do is make the lives of dairy cattle better by stopping live exports, cruel practices, and proper facilities for them to give of their best. We need to look on cows and sheep as partners, not edible objects, Sorry if this upsets carnivores but I am an onmivore, so I can adapt.

Cows sheep and goats . I see a lot of sheep cheese and goat cheese being produced.

 

[Listlad]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane

What is not explained is that when methane absobs heat it starts to decompose naturally and gives up hydroxyl pairs (water vapour) which is why a midden smells more when its foggy and cold, but is not noticeable when it is a warm day. Its gone,

Shelf life of Methane is currenly 9,1 years on average according to WHO.

After a decade, methane is broken down into CO2, entering a carbon cycle which sees the gas absorbed by plants, converted into cellulose, and eaten by livestock.

 

[AloeSvea]

@lucylocket61, @ianf0ster and @Oldvatr - most people in the world are not tolerant of dairy products

"By adulthood, up to 70% of people no longer produce enough lactase to properly digest the lactose in milk, leading to symptoms when they consume dairy. This is particularly common for people of non-European descent." (healthline)

There are pockets of folks all over the world who have developed the tolerance of dairy over generations, but they are by far the minority, is my understanding.

 

[Oldvatr]

@lucylocket61, @ianf0ster and @Oldvatr - most people in the world are not tolerant of dairy products

"By adulthood, up to 70% of people no longer produce enough lactase to properly digest the lactose in milk, leading to symptoms when they consume dairy. This is particularly common for people of non-European descent." (healthline)

There are pockets of folks all over the world who have developed the tolerance of dairy over generations, but they are by far the minority, is my understanding.

By the same token approx 60% of population is intolerant of soy. See also gluten intolerance. etc. So we will not please everybody. But to remove any of these food sources by enforcing change is wrong in my view, At the moment we are facing losing all animal products from the food chain, or at the best having a token beef pattie once a month and half a fish fillet on occasions. This too is not a viable solution either. And it is more idiology driven than practical.

 

[lucylocket61]

What is driving these proposed changes to levels of meat eating ( that is continually being raised as a reason for concern on the forum ) is the impending Malthusian outcome. The Malthusian outcome is based upon the world population outstripping available food supplies including meat. He recommended a read of a recent copy of New Scientist to gain an understanding:

View attachment 38089

I have just ordered a copy and a copy of the following weeks issue too.

So this isn’t about a carbon footprint for cattle. It isn’t about climate change. It is about world population growth and food supplies.

His message to me was:


“This weeks New Scientist carries an article about the number of people that can be sustained long term by current agricultural practices, I've read a bit of it, the headline number is about 3.4 billion less than half the current population but they think that changes in practice could support about 10.8 billion by 2050, it makes grim reading as it suggests that we could see the Malthusian catastrophe within the next 30 years.”

This is the New Scientist article:

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...can-feed-only-3-4-billion-people-sustainably/

Everything in the press and reports etc talks about climate, not population. Population is dropping and expected to plateau soon.

 

[lucylocket61]

When agricultural switches to mainly plant production, won't we need more available land to grow both the extra plant foods (as we will need to eat more to get enough nutrition) and the fertilizer crops?

Given the rate building house is going, with more still needed, plus the related infrastructure, where is all this land coming from?

Much of the land used for sheep is unsuitable for even housing.

And then there is the difference in grass height needed for various ruminants to be able to eat it.

 

[lucylocket61]

@lucylocket61, @ianf0ster and @Oldvatr - most people in the world are not tolerant of dairy products

"By adulthood, up to 70% of people no longer produce enough lactase to properly digest the lactose in milk, leading to symptoms when they consume dairy. This is particularly common for people of non-European descent." (healthline)

There are pockets of folks all over the world who have developed the tolerance of dairy over generations, but they are by far the minority, is my understanding.

Yes, but that often means just milk. When I dug deeper into the research it also said that most population have some sort of cheese or yoghurt or fermented milk products in their regular diet, which changes the lactose into a digestible source.

This includes cows, sheep, buffalo and goats cheese etc. Foods which have been around most of the world for millennia.

 

[bulkbiker]

Population is dropping

I really don't think it is..

 

[lucylocket61]

I really don't think it is..

The rate of increase is dropping.

 

[bulkbiker]

The rate of increase is dropping.

That may be correct..x

 

[Oldvatr]

Today is the first time the UK Citizens Assembly for Climate Change takes place in Brmingham. It will reconvene again over the next 4 weekends. Apparently 100 delegates have been invited to the meetings with the Government Climate Change Comittee to formulate a forward plan to implementation of measures to reduce GHG to zero by 2050. No idea who is going to it, but it is clear from the spox on TV just now that scientists and experienced experts will not be present. Hopefully there will be some reports coming out of these meetings. Then we will see what they intend for the agriculture sectors. Seems that Extinction Rebellion did not get an invite so expect fireworks to erupt soon. The cows will learn their fate in due course, but there is COP 26 in Glasgow later this year to make it formal. That seems to be the timescale.

Edit to update: just seen the Extinction Rebellion reply, and that is that they no longer accept the 2050 date, and indeed are now rejecting the 2030 date, but are going to raise merry disruption to make it happen by 2025 at the latest.

 

[bulkbiker]

measures to reduce GHG to zero by 2050

Won't that mean we'll all be dead?
CO2 being essential for plants to grow etc etc...

 

[Listlad]

Everything in the press and reports etc talks about climate, not population. Population is dropping and expected to plateau soon.

Well, like I said, we cannot debate methane and global warming without including geologically derived hydrocarbons in the debate. The debate is hamstrung otherwise.

Some predict a tailing off of the population increase but it is still increasing as we speak, is it not?

 

[Listlad]

The rate of increase is dropping.

Yes, the rate of increase is dropping.

 

[Member496333]

It's probably a bitter twist of irony that we desperately need the brakes put on population growth, and yet it is all but assured by the preposterous dietary path we are currently walking. Lord only knows how many of us there would be walking the Earth if we combined modern treatment of acute illnesses, with a switch to slashing chronic disease by eating food instead of human kibble in shiny boxes. One trillion?

That meteor is long overdue

 

[Listlad]

@lucylocket61

World population growth according to United Nations:


“Growing at a slower pace, world population is expected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050 and could peak at nearly 11 billion around 2100”

https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2019.html

UK Population growth (Office of National Statistics)

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...ticles/overviewoftheukpopulation/november2018

So it will undoubtedly put pressure on world food supplies.

 

[Deleted member 308541]

The problem could well be solved in the next month or so if the "corona virus" goes viral (pun intended).

If it gets going in China (it's got a foot hold), India inc Pakistan, Bangladesh, Africa mainly the north east side into a good old pandemic like the 1918 influenza one, this will reduce the population so that it balances things out...