Cows vs Cars?

[moisekombolo]

I don't also understand this : When we say all the CO2 produced in the atmosphere stays there, aren't they used by plants? Planting a great number of trees won't reduce it?

[moisekombolo]

I have this question: How can the livestock be kept constant if there is increasing demand for animal protein for example in the global level?

[TomášVojvoda]

I understand the argument that cows do not release more Carbon than the plants used to feed them capture from the air. That makes sense.
What does not make sense is stressig the short lifespan of Methane, then saying "after 10 years it's converted to CO2 again" and just ignore the resulting CO2 completely from your argument...
Many people stressed the indirect problems with Cows and other massively kept livestock like clearing the land for them and their feed (burning forests), all the machinery and human power needed to take care of them instead of just harvesting plants to be eaten by humans. Meat and Milk products need to be refrigerated, another huge hit for the environment.
Many commenters mention how Methane is more potent than CO2, making the argument I wrote in the first sentence stand on very wobbly legs (because it is technically true, but it does not disprove that the very existence of a cow adds to the global warming at the end of the equation)

It's a big a complicated issue, like any involving science, global planet data spanning decades or centuries, predictions and models...

There is though this one argument that sounds just too easy to imagine and logical to be false:
If you grow plants and eat them, instead of growing plants to feed animals and eat those, it will be easier, faster process, less cumbersome for the environment.

[reallynow]

Haven't you omitted the fact that methane by itself is a more potent greenhouse gas? So while it is not converted to CO2 it is doing more damage and as CO2 it will be there for a very long time. Therefore it will accumulate over time. And furthermore to feed cows takes up land where trees could grow to capture carbon while grasslands and feedstock plants for cattle are not efficient carbon sinks? Isn't this argument extremely misleading. Not that this is an unexpected thing for a milk man to say. I kind of feel for you, but I want my descendents and those of everyone else to survive and thrive in stead of keeping a limited number of farmers afloat.

[geoffkirton]

We need to get these presentations out to every middle school class.

[Daniel-ycbk]

Here in Brazil the Amazon Rainforest is being destroyed to put cows and plantations in her place. So yes, the carbon released by the trees, mainly by fire, is a real problem to global warming.

Not to mention about others huge environment concerns.

[ken_barbe]

The problem with this viewpoint is that methane is a lot more potent as a green house gas in comparison with CO2 (about 28 times more). So if this methane stays in our atmosphere for up to 100 years**, it does a lot more damage to our climate in comparison with CO2. And we all know how damaging CO2 already is... The second problem with all this methane in the air is that plants and algae DO NOT convert it during photosynthesis. Taking into account the big meat and diary industry, this is a lot of methane that gets released and is much more damaging to our atmosphere.

[blackf]

Thank you. Cows produce no more carbon than letting the vegetation rot. And it's atmospheric CO2 which spends a lot of time in a solid form (carbon capture), a huge sink. It's entirely different from burning fossil fuels.

[tomxialee]

That’s assuming the cow population is constant. We already know the Amazon forest is being burned at an alarming rate for cattle farming. The Amazon forest holds vast amounts of carbon that is being burned for feed and livestock. Also he doesn’t mention how much more resources it takes to raise a large animal like a cow. How much water and feed does it take to raise a cow from birth to slaughter? ? There are families starving yet I bet the amount of food a cow needs in its lifetime could feed a few families several times over. We are experiencing record droughts year over year but the water will go to cows instead. Cars aren’t good either… but I think his argument that cows aren’t hurting the environment is missing a few points.

[oregano]

It's not too much cows people, it's too much cars. That simple.

[dr_cois]

"As long as you don't add livestock - you are not adding to the burden of GHG". And the current amount that you are emitting as methane, still has the same amount of warming effect through the effect of methane. Frank is wildly misleading here - while trying to make the point that you won't add GHG emissions if you don't add livestock to your herd you won't add "additional" carbon to the atmosphere - he admits that there is a burden of GHG emissions from livestock - therefore by decreasing herd size you will decrease GHG emissions. Just think critically and you will see through this kind of misleading information.

[AArturoDDice]

This video was brought to you by the meat industry. Thanks for watching!

[Dodo-tdpg]

"Methane is better than carbon dioxide because methane's lifespan is 10 years, while carbon dioxide's lifespan is 1000 years"
Yea but you just said "After 10 years, methane become carbon dioxide"

[ingilizanahtar]

You say we should reduce the number of cars instead of cows. is it correct?

[d.v.]

Dr. Mitloehner, I think that the message you want to convey is misleading.
As you said more than once, IF and ONLY IF the farmer mantains the same number of cows the quantity of GHG produced remains flat, but as population increases, the demand of meat will increase, and consequently the number of cows will necessarily increase.

Moreover, apart from the mere GHG emissions, you should consider also soil erosion, deforestation, and the huge amount of water animals consume, directly and indirectly, since they are fed with soya flour, forage or whatever.
The reduction of consumption of meat is necessary, no ifs, no buts, leaving aside the ethicality of making living beings suffer and die just for eat.

The issue of cars is of course relevant, but I feel that here in this context is used to enforce your thesis that the problem of intensive farming is not a problem. There are lots of things to do to preserve the planet, if we drove only electric vehicles we wouldn't solve anything, it's useless and damaging to point the finger specifically to something, since every aspect of modern life should be reconsidered in order to be as sustainable as possible.

[watterdani]

Isn’t the flaw in his ‘cyclical argument for cows’ his assumption that the methane is recaptured by plants at the same rate it is released by the cows? This isn’t addressed in his video.
He concludes his video saying transport CO2 accumulates, whereas cow methane (which becomes CO2 after 10 years according to him) doesn’t accumulate (why?) but stays stable (as long as you don’t add more cows). But he doesn’t explain why it hypothetically would stay stable rather than accumulate. All he says is that what is released by the cows was equal to what the consumed plants ORIGINALLY absorbed (over what period of time, and at what rate we don’t know). That may be true, but it does not follow (without proof) that what the cows release upon digesting a plant will be re-absorbed by new plants as quickly as the cows release it.
Of course, what this video also misses in the cow v car discussion is the massive deforestation for agriculture.

[rvanesch]

Thank you so much for this video! This is information we all need to hear and see. So we can start to recognize the propaganda in the media and ask ourselves why we are being lied to

[carlosboutheliermadre]

Methane does not disappear in 10 years. It decays to CO2 (and H2O). So saying that one stays for 10000 years and the other one disappears is plain scamming. Yes, in the case of livestock you may attempt to call it a closed cycle (except for deforestation for pasture, which is quite relevant worldwide) but while it is methane it contributes more to global warming than CO2 itself, so it would have been better to emit that CO2 directly. Anyway, to be a closed cycle plants need it to be CO2, not methane, right? So overall reducing methane emissions, even at the cost of converting to CO2 in the process, would reduce its global contribution to greenhouse effect. And if we have to choose between having higher CO2 or higher methane for the amount of the allegedly closed cycle of livestock, it is better to have CO2 not only because of less warming, but because of the increase in plant development it would mean. The only argument could be acidification of the oceans, but it is difficult to quantify. Anyway, reducing methane emmissions through food supplementation for livestock (like algae) does not mean that later its crap still produces methane because of the bacterian action and degradation of organic matter in it. I think they just measure direct emitions from the digestive process, but waste management and its emissions could also be relevant.

[donovanmedieval]

How are the facts and views presented here affected by the recent report on climate change presented by the U.N.?

[blades]

Not an actual climate

Frank received a Master of Science degree in animal science and agricultural engineering from the University of Leipzig, Germany, and a doctoral degree in animal science from Texas Tech University