Cowspiracy is Propaganda?

[TheVeganDeist]

One of the statistics most central to the Cowspiracy's position is that livestock agriculture accounts for 51% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. If you go to their website (Facts and Sources) and look at the sources for this statistic they list a single non-peer-reviewed article, a commentary by the same authors, and then a newspaper piece talking about that same article. Essentially, they're using a single, non-peer-reviewed article as the basis for their position. And compared to hundreds of peer-reviewed articles, the 51% number this single article comes up with is completely crazy. For comparison, the IPCC (generally the most trusted source for greenhouse gas stats), says that all of agriculture and forestry accounts for only about 25% of total global GHG emissions.

(https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-repo ... proved.pdf)

Is it possible that the IPCC and everyone else is wrong, and the single article that Cowspiracy uses is right? Yes. Is it right to ignore 90% of all climate research and instead choose to present this one article as fact, without even mentioning all the other numbers other researchers have come up with? Absolutely not.

Now, all that being said, does animal agriculture play a major role in global warming? Yes.
Would it help if everyone became a vegan? Probably.
And should the effects of animal agriculture get more attention from the press and environmental groups? Probably.
But is it right to use overblown numbers to imply that becoming a vegan is the best way we can prevent global warming?
In my opinion, definitely not.

[brimstoneSalad]

Hi VeganDeist, welcome! Have you posted an intro?

You are correct that these numbers are dubious, particularly if they're unqualified.

I made a post on this here: https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... ?f=7&t=654
I showed my work in that thread.

For comparison, the IPCC (generally the most trusted source for greenhouse gas stats), says that all of agriculture and forestry accounts for only about 25% of total global GHG emissions.

Are we talking mass? Because you have to scale these values for varying potency too.
I went from methane alone in that thread, and found it was about 16%. There's an added footprint that could be comparable from the crop production needed to feed (i.e. waste of food) all of those animals.

It may be larger than 25% when you take all of that into account, but I doubt it's larger than 30%.

We could examine those other variables here, though.

Is it possible that the IPCC and everyone else is wrong, and the single article that Cowspiracy uses is right? Yes.

Again, it depends on what they're talking about. The trouble with cowspiracy is that they don't qualify any of those statements, or explain their methods.
Do you have the article they source from? Maybe it explains the methods used.

Is it right to ignore 90% of all climate research and instead choose to present this one article as fact, without even mentioning all the other numbers other researchers have come up with? Absolutely not.

It could be, if those numbers are irrelevant because they're measuring mass of emissions rather than net effect of emissions. Methane to CO2 is an apples to oranges comparison; or even worse, a watermelon to grape comparison. A ton of methane does not compare equivalently to a ton of CO2.
Any numbers citing mere mass are in themselves deceptive.

16% is a very conservative value.

Now here's where Cowspiracy could be right: IF you assume that all of those now freed up grains that were being fed to cows but are no longer wasted are converted into ethanol to replace gasoline, the savings in emissions from transportation may add up to over 50%.

This is something we could investigate. Might be fun to look into it here?


Anyway, I'd have to know what the claims are based on to say they're wrong. But if they're unqualified, they certainly appear wrong, and appearances are important.

I believe the mistake they made was to also count the CO2 from respiration of the cows, which is not fair to count because it was the same CO2 that was captured by the plants to begin with (respiration is carbon neutral).
But they may be accidentally right nonetheless if you take into account the most likely alternative use of all of that grain: Ethanol production to replace gasoline.

Would it help if everyone became a vegan? Probably.
And should the effects of animal agriculture get more attention from the press and environmental groups? Probably.

There's no probably about it; it would certainly help. In fact, it's one of the only things we can do. Note in my thread where I talked about how it's the largest source of optional emissions.

Being conservative, 16% alone is very significant, and it pretty much comes down to us turning off our lights, computers, heating, and air conditioning (as it's comparable to the total of all emissions associated with residential energy usage), or not eating meat anymore to have a similar effect.
That's why I say it's the largest source of optional emissions -- the other things we can do right now aren't very realistic (Yes, less realistic than the world eating less meat, hard to believe).

This needs more press because it's the single easiest thing we can do without bringing our economies to a grinding halt. It's basically our only realistic way forward.

But is it right to use overblown numbers to imply that becoming a vegan is the best way we can prevent global warming?
In my opinion, definitely not.

I agree that we should not be using poorly sourced, unexplained numbers. It just looks bad. We need to be more rigorous in our explanations, because it is the single best way to prevent global warming, and people need to understand why that is so they can't dismiss our arguments because they weren't properly supported.

[TheVeganDeist]

Are we talking mass? Because you have to scale these values for varying potency too.
I went from methane alone in that thread, and found it was about 16%. There's an added footprint that could be comparable from the crop production needed to feed (i.e. waste of food) all of those animals.

Good point. Perhaps soil degradation & erosion are worthy of inspection as well.

Do you have the article they source from? Maybe it explains the methods used.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294
http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Liv ... Change.pdf
http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 12909.html

It could be, if those numbers are irrelevant because they're measuring mass of emissions rather than net effect of emissions. Methane to CO2 is an apples to oranges comparison; or even worse, a watermelon to grape comparison. A ton of methane does not compare equivalently to a ton of CO2.

There's no could be about it, presenting a single non-peer-reviewed paper as fact (regardless of the relevance of other studies), shouldn't be done until the claims have been properly substantiated.

Now here's where Cowspiracy could be right: IF you assume that all of those now freed up grains that were being fed to cows but are no longer wasted are converted into ethanol to replace gasoline, the savings in emissions from transportation may add up to over 50%.

This is something we could investigate. Might be fun to look into it here?

I'm interested.

[brimstoneSalad]

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294
http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Liv ... Change.pdf
http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 12909.html

I was right. Second page of the PDF (first page where the article starts) marked as page 11. Bottom right, in the summary table:

FAO estimate 7,516 11.8
Uncounted in current GHG inventories:
1. Overlooked respiration by livestock 8,769 13.7[%]
2. Overlooked land use ≥2,672 ≥4.2
3. Undercounted methane 5,047 7.9
4. Other four categories (see text) ≥5,560 ≥8.7
Subtotal ≥22,048 ≥34.5
Misallocated in current GHG inventories:
5. Three categories (see text) ≥3,000 ≥4.7
Total GHGs attributable to
livestock products ≥32,564 ≥51.0

At least #1 is wrong. And unfortunately moronic.

Breathing. The FAO excludes livestock respiration from
its estimate, per the following argument:

Respiration by livestock is not a net source of CO2….
Emissions from livestock respiration are part of a rapidly
cycling biological system, where the plant matter
consumed was itself created through the conversion of
atmospheric CO2 into organic compounds. Since the
emitted and absorbed quantities are considered to be
equivalent, livestock respiration is not considered to be
a net source under the Kyoto Protocol. Indeed, since
part of the carbon consumed is stored in the live tissue
of the growing animal, a growing global herd could
even be considered a carbon sink. The standing stock
livestock biomass increased significantly over the last
decades…. This continuing growth…could be considered
as a carbon sequestration process(roughly estimated
at 1 or 2 million tons carbon per year).

But this is a flawed way to look at the matter. Examining
the sequestration claim first: Sequestration properly refers to
extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere and its burial in a vault
or a stable compound from which it cannot escape over a
long period of time. Even if one considers the standing mass
of livestock as a carbon sink, by the FAO’s own estimate the
amount of carbon stored in livestock is trivial compared to the
amount stored in forest cleared to create space for growing feed
and grazing livestock.

This is true, which is why there's no point in counting it -- and the FAO did not count it, as far as I can tell.
But the FAO did apparently count up the land cleared to graze livestock.

(The FAO's counts look to just be CO2 -- is that right? 11.8% is too low to be accounting for methane. Where can I find more on FAO's methodology that they're criticizing?)

More to the point, livestock (like automobiles) are a
human invention and convenience, not part of pre-human
times, and a molecule of CO2 exhaled by livestock is no
more natural than one from an auto tailpipe. Moreover,
while over time an equilibrium of CO2 may exist between the
amount respired by animals and the amount photosynthesized
by plants, that equilibrium has never been static. Today,
tens of billions more livestock are exhaling CO2 than in preindustrial
days,

And there's the stupid, right there.

The plants cows eat HAVE TO absorb CO2 in order to grow. Cows are not magical beings that violate the conservation of matter and energy by creating new carbon atoms in their bodies from nothing.
They release back into the air what they eat, based on what has been grown to feed them.

while Earth’s photosynthetic capacity (its
capacity to keep carbon out of the atmosphere by absorbing
it in plant mass) has declined sharply as forest has been
cleared.

This, however, is actually a good point. Forests which have been cleared to create pasture were CO2 sequestering machines. Leaf matter would fall, and mostly aerobically decay into humic acid through the action of fungi and aerobic microbes, and be buried to build up soil.

The loss of natural sequestration from these sources IS relevant to animal agriculture because of the sheer amount of land it's taking.
Manure and some agriculture to grow feed does sequester a little CO2, but probably nowhere near what we would expect from a forest.

The difference in (or loss of) sequestration due to animal agriculture could be put on animal agriculture.
The difference might even be greater than cow respiration. But they didn't do that, or try to do that. They just claimed respiration.

The numbers we'd need to calculate that:

1. Sequestration per acre or hectare of forest on average
2. How many cows can be grazed on an acre or hectare of such land converted into pasture
3. Carbon sequestration through manure from that number of cows in pasture (assuming cows are consuming all of the lost biomass in well grazed lands, which is probably a fair assumption in an efficient operation).

Comparing #1 and #3, we could find how much better forests are at sequestering carbon than cows.

However, I'm not very interested in doing that because I don't think we would or should allow that land to return to a natural forested state, because we could use the grains or grasses being grown on those lands (freed up from not being wasted on cows) to produce ethanol instead to end dependency on oil and eliminate net CO2 emissions from transportation, along with methane emissions from the majority of drilling. I would expect this to have a much larger effect.

There's no could be about it, presenting a single non-peer-reviewed paper as fact (regardless of the relevance of other studies), shouldn't be done until the claims have been properly substantiated.

But the article it links to is attempting to substantiate its claims (badly, but still). I don't think peer review is a defense to avoid having to substantiate something upfront, where a lack of means you have to.

If the methodology were sound, I would have no problems with it. Of course, it isn't, and that's why it isn't acceptable and probably couldn't be accepted in any real publication either.