Climate pseudoscience debunked: Livestock methane fears are baseless

“No rational person would invest a single dollar to achieve such insignificant temperature reductions,” says the paper, which was authored by Deborah Alexander, Methane Science, Accord, Clevedon, New Zealand; James D. Ferguson, professor emeritus, University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine; Albrecht Glatzle, Rural Association of Paraguay; William Happer, professor emeritus, Department of Physics, Princeton University; and William A. van Wijngaarden, Department of Physics and Astronomy, York University, Canada. 

The digestion systems of ruminants convert certain carbohydrates, such as cellulose, into usable energy that other animals, including humans, cannot digest. The “controversy” over ruminant digestion emitting methane through burps overlooks the value of these animals’ transforming otherwise low-value vegetation into highly nutritious meats and milk, in addition to valuable hides and wools. Animal husbandry produces some of the most nutrient-dense foods — packed with protein, iron, zinc, and vitamin B12 — that many plant-based alternatives do not.

Millions of families in developing countries rely on small-scale livestock farming not just for sustenance, but for economic survival. A cow or a small herd of goats represents a family’s financial reserve, their source of daily milk, and their insurance against hard times. When international bodies demand global reductions in livestock, they are calling on the poorest people to surrender their path to upward mobility.

The anti-methane campaign is built on an exaggeration of methane’s small warming effect, turning what ordinarily would be the esoteric interest of atmospheric physics into apocalyptic headlines about climate doom.

As a greenhouse gas, methane is a distant third behind water vapor, whose atmospheric concentration can be as much as 50,000 parts per million, and carbon dioxide, at 420 ppm. Water, in the form of clouds, has by far the greatest influence on temperature, both cooling by reflecting sunlight back to space and warming by providing insulating cover at night.

Carbon dioxide, the most demonized of the greenhouse gases, has limited ability to warm further at its current concentration. Even doubling CO₂ would result in a warming of less than 1 degree Celsius. 

With an atmospheric concentration of less than 2 ppm, methane has little influence relative to CO₂. Both these gases warm through their interaction with the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum, much of which is saturated by current gas concentrations. This means that additional molecules of the gases have an ever-diminishing warming potential.

The exaggeration of warming potency is one misrepresentation of greenhouse gasbags. Another is the characterization of warming as a negative. Along with the plant fertilization of elevated CO₂ levels, natural, modest warming since the 19th-century closing of the Little Ice Age has had beneficial effects on ecosystems and crop production. Growing seasons are longer, the Earth is greener, and more food is available for an increasing population.

There is also a fundamental misunderstanding of basic biology. As experts have outlined in a detailed analysis of cows, methane, and the climate, livestock methane is part of a natural circulation of carbon through a food chain that includes manure fertilization of grasses and browse, and photosynthesis.

Nonetheless, political leaders embracing doomsday propaganda have abandoned basic logic. In Denmark, to meet strict emissions quotas, dairy farmers are mandated to feed cattle chemical additives designed to inhibit methane-producing bacteria. In places such as the Netherlands and Ireland, governments have seriously discussed shutting down thousands of farms to meet irrational climate targets. 

For global climate policy, agriculture is an ideological football rather than a means to feed people. Meat taxes, public procurement rules, and “sustainable diet” campaigns push the same message: Eat less meat and pay for more expensive food with no benefit in return.

The case for attacking livestock methane is nonexistent, and the cost is enormous. Policymakers must start paying attention to real science and common sense.

Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist, senior fellow at the CO₂ Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia, author of Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know and A Very Convenient Warming: How modest warming and more CO2 are benefiting humanity.