Alarming aspirations from latest climate report...

[DaveGrohl]

Should've put that on the no sh!t Sherlock research thread HCF.

Personally, I'm not bothered about being the saviour of the planet. Or the destroyer either frankly. I'd much rather the people with the money actually got on with the job of sorting it all out rather than dreaming up bulls**t schemes from which they inevitably make money, or are allowed to at least continue to make money.

 

[The Seeker]

Eco minded GP on the radio this morning, talking about getting her colleagues enthused about saving the planet.
She stated that the NHS is responsible for 5% of UK GHG emissions.
Does no-one understand that there is a huge amount of double accounting going on with all of this ?
If you asked every individual industry, every public sector service, every utility provider, etc etc, to calculate what % of UK GHG emissions they were responsible for, you would get to a figure closer to 1000% than 100%.
Which is why we are complete muppets to meekly accept - and promote - this 'cows are responsible for 5% of UK GHG emissions' nonsense.
If we shot every cow in the country, UK GHG emissions would not fall. That should be our stance. Anything else is just lies, damned lies and statistics.

like like like !if we get rid of every animal producing carbon - except for pets ... ofcourse lol would it make a fff blind bit of difference ? i got off the farm today and went to my nearest city we are swamped in cars left right and centre we are swamped in roads and plastic to a degree i simply cant believe but as usual its the farmers who are in the wrong... man what a time to be alive here's a statistic i pulley's bout of my arse but is about as useful as any other i have seen 99.99999 people think they are ok to do nothing as someone eld will do it WHAT A MESS WE ARE IN hers a laugh the local shops were full and i mean full of young men 17-20 over weight like way overweight and the irony is that they all go around in sports clothing especially football stripes

 

[delilah]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-greenhouses-gases-food-production-study

Investigative journalism at its best from The Grauniad; they have tracked down the USA's version of Joseph Poore.

“I’m a strict vegetarian and part of the motivation for this study was to find out my own carbon footprint, but it’s not our intention to force people to change their diets,” said Jain.

 

[DaveGrohl]

Same old bollox, different wrapper. No doubt using the usual 70-80% of soya is grown for animals "fact", etc, etc, etc.

 

[white_stuffed]

Finally, a brilliant paper which deconstructs the meat is bad message

 

[white_stuffed]

Finally, a brilliant paper which deconstructs the meat is bad message

@egbert have a read, it made me think of you (and Professor Webb did suggest you keep on googling!)

 

[delilah]

Finally, a brilliant paper which deconstructs the meat is bad message

Sadly I only got as far as the title. No interest in reading anything that is going to tell me that half the farmers in the UK are destroying the planet. Partly because it is a sure fire way to destroy the entire industry, partly because it's incorrect. .

 

[DaveGrohl]

Sadly I only got as far as the title. No interest in reading anything that is going to tell me that half the farmers in the UK are destroying the planet. Partly because it is a sure fire way to destroy the entire industry, partly because it's incorrect. .

I'm on page 10 and I think you may have missed the point. Report has already made clear that methane from livestock is being assessed wrongly. That's a decent start.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

I'm on page 10 and I think you may have missed the point. Report has already made clear that methane from livestock is being assessed wrongly. That's a decent start.

I'll read it properly later. It's too dense for a phone screen....

 

[delilah]

I'm on page 10 and I think you may have missed the point. Report has already made clear that methane from livestock is being assessed wrongly. That's a decent start.

'Are livestock always bad for the planet'. Either it is going to tell me that yes they sometimes are, or it's a badly worded title.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Finally, a brilliant paper which deconstructs the meat is bad message

Some useful nuggets:

"In the case of Poore and Nemecek’s (2018) analysis the assumptions are clear, both in the paper and in the 76 pages of supplementary materials. They only looked at ‘commercially viable’ and so mostly industrial livestock systems. They examined emissions from production to retail, but not sequestration or other environmental benefits. Their cases came mostly from Europe, North America, Australia, Brazil and China, and in order to generate a global picture they applied weighting factors both across and within counties."


"Carbon in the soil is safer from fire than carbon in leaves and branches, so grasslands and parklands have a better capacity to store carbon in the long term than closed forests (Holdo et al. 2009; Dass et al. 2018). If large herbivores are present in the ecosystem, they contribute both to suppressing fire and to incorporating additional carbon into the soil (Johnson et al. 2018). Elevated CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will also increase carbon fixation by grasslands in soil, but not fixation by forests (Terrer et al. 2021)."


"Livestock and the carbon cycle

Key assumptions made in LCA studies are that soil carbon balance is in long-term equilibrium (Rowntree et al. 2020), and that livestock add additional emissions to an otherwise balanced carbon cycle. As a result, most assessments do not include carbon sequestration in their analyses. However, when studies of extensive livestock systems adopt an ecosystem approach and include sequestration from grazing, the carbon balance has been found to be neutral in those cases where degraded soils are restored through livestock grazing practices."


"Conversion of rangelands to cropping can be especially damaging. For example, a study by Han et al. (2008) found that there was a 22% reduction in soil carbon stocks when pastoral grazing land was converted to cropland in Inner Mongolia. Other grazing systems aim to mimic natural herbivore grazing, with high levels of focused disturbance in rotation and (disputed) claims of climate benefits (Savory 2017)."


"Analysing experiments on plant/root growth and sequestration due to increases in CO2, Terrer et al. (2021) conclude that the high carbon stocks in grasslands have great potential to accumulate more soil carbon as CO2 levels increase, with plant biomass growth being inversely related to the accumulation of soil carbon. This is contrary to many assumptions that the optimal climate mitigation response is the expansion of afforestation rather than the encouragement of sequestration in grasslands (Bastos and Fleischer 2021)."


"Clearly, reducing deforestation due to the expansion of livestock rearing in areas such as the Amazon is essential (Cohn et al. 2014) but, in other areas where grasslands are long-established, such approaches are much more questionable, especially given livestock’s contribution to creating and maintaining biodiversity."


"Plant-based foods also have their own varied costs and limitations. Highly processed, plant-based meat replacements such as mycoprotein, tofu and tempeh are increasingly present in modern plant-based diets, and their environmental impact is likely to be higher than unprocessed plant foods due to the high-energy demands of processing and transport (Hallström et al. 2015). For example, a study by Smetana et al. (2015) found that producing 1 kg of mycoprotein had a similar environmental impact to producing 1 kg of chicken, with 45% of this coming from processing. The study also found the GWP of mycoprotein to be 5.55 kg–6.15 kg CO2-eq per kg product, compared to 2 kg–4 kg CO2-eq per kilogramme of meat for chicken and 4 kg–6 kg CO2- eq of meat for pork (Smetana et al. 2015). While there is much hype about the potentials of cultured meats, linked to considerable vested commercial interests,35 the possibility of their replacing animal-source foods is remote, particularly in poorer countries."


"To date, the actual environmental impact of processed meat substitutes has not been widely investigated, and few LCA studies have included them in their hypothetical scenarios (Hallström et al. 2015; Godfray 2019; Chriki and Hocquette 2020). Moreover, it is likely that people foregoing meat will increase their dairy consumption, which has its own implications for sustainability (Nordhagen et al. 2020). A focus on specific nutrients, rather than generic ‘protein’, offers a different picture, as livestock produce high-density protein sources with an appropriate balance of nutrients for human consumption (Lee et al. 2021; Moughan 2021). Achieving this from a purely plant-based diet is more challenging."


"Food systems

Recasting the debate towards climate-friendly, sustainable food systems also turns the focus away from emissions from livestock in isolation, and onto the dangers of ‘cheap food’ (or protein) in the food system. Currently, this is driving massive increases in consumption and production of animal foods, with incentives geared towards producing more food at lower and lower costs, driving a particular type of ‘efficiency’. Particular types of production (of both crops and livestock) are captured by the commercial interests of the drive to produce ‘cheap things’,42 resulting in massive, devastating environmental damage.

What, then, is causing the climate and biodiversity crisis? It is not livestock production or meat/milk consumption per se, but the wider capitalist food system. It is this that needs to change – not through technical fixes, but through radical transformation of power relations and patterns of control. Here, low-impact, extensive livestock systems, including pastoralism, can show a way to the future. Summarising this report, we conclude with six recommendations, placing extensive livestock keepers, including pastoralists, at the centre of climate mitigation efforts."

 

[primmiemoo]

Have I missed the beautifully photographed picture of a dog and stick GB farmer with sheep and/or cattle on PP?
Whilst not downplaying the important points made within the paper, I can't help but feel that the common culture of pastoral farming has been depicted without consideration for that from this part of the world. A picture paints a thousand words, etc, ...

(I do understand that not all livestock farmers in the world share income brackets, national political stability, availability of health care, and so on, but ...)

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Have I missed the beautifully photographed picture of a dog and stick GB farmer with sheep and/or cattle on PP?
Whilst not downplaying the important points made within the paper, I can't help but feel that the common culture of pastoral farming has been depicted without consideration for that from this part of the world. A picture paints a thousand words, etc, ...

(I do understand that not all livestock farmers in the world share income brackets, national political stability, availability of health care, and so on, but ...)

Absolutely. It makes lots of crucial points though and some of them can readily be extended to more extensive UK livestock systems (LCA limitations, failure to account for sequestration or biodiversity delivery or impact on social cohesion or practicality of growing human edible crops on the land instead etc.....).

It's a good start imho.

 

[white_stuffed]

Have I missed the beautifully photographed picture of a dog and stick GB farmer with sheep and/or cattle on PP?
Whilst not downplaying the important points made within the paper, I can't help but feel that the common culture of pastoral farming has been depicted without consideration for that from this part of the world. A picture paints a thousand words, etc, ...

(I do understand that not all livestock farmers in the world share income brackets, national political stability, availability of health care, and so on, but ...)

e how about this one

 

[delilah]

"In the case of Poore and Nemecek’s (2018) analysis the assumptions are clear, both in the paper and in the 76 pages of supplementary materials. They only looked at ‘commercially viable’ and so mostly industrial livestock systems

So our cattle being finished in a shed are destroying the planet then ? Worse than that, they are making money ?

If there is anything in this report that doesn't 'divide and rule' cattle farmers, would be good to see it.

 

[delilah]

It is not livestock production or meat/milk consumption per se, but the wider capitalist food system. It is this that needs to change – not through technical fixes, but through radical transformation of power relations and patterns of control.

Yes.

With the next sentence being:

Here, low-impact, extensive livestock systems, including pastoralism, can show a way to the future. Summarising this report, we conclude with six recommendations, placing extensive livestock keepers, including pastoralists, at the centre of climate mitigation efforts."

No.

How, and why, does it make the leap from one to the other ?

 

[DaveGrohl]

Yes.

With the next sentence being:



No.

How, and why, does it make the leap from one to the other ?

In this particular regard you do have a point.

 

[delilah]

In this particular regard you do have a point.

It sits right at the heart of all of this. Everyone likes to have a pop at the NFU for not doing their job of promoting the industry, yet how can they when so many within the industry persist in talking about 'good' and 'bad' systems ?

 

[primmiemoo]

Yes.

With the next sentence being:



No.

How, and why, does it make the leap from one to the other ?

Our traditional system of low impact, short duration finishing of grass fed cattle is just a continuum of the pastoral. Unfortunately, it's being undermined by increasingly intensive indoor/corralled throughout systems with associated higher fossil fuel use ~~ which is spilling over into sheep systems, from reading around TFF

 

[delilah]

Our traditional system of low impact, short duration finishing of grass fed cattle is just a continuum of the pastoral. Unfortunately, it's being undermined by increasingly intensive indoor/corralled throughout systems with associated higher fossil fuel use ~~ which is spilling over into sheep systems, from reading around TFF

So if I go on a road trip and take photos of 10 farmers systems, someone could line them up and say which of the 10 are a pass and which are a fail ?