How to respond when your precious theory is debunked. The case of farting cows.

"Who're you blaming for climate change, matey?"

We should stop eating meat because of climate change. All the cow farts, pig trumps and sheep letting one rip are contributing to greenhouse gas emissions thereby leading to the end of civilisation as we know it closely followed by the earth ceasing to be a viable ecosystem for anything more sophisticated than cheese mould. It is of course nonsense - it's lettuce that should bother us:

Lettuce is “over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon”, according to researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University who analysed the impact per calorie of different foods in terms of energy cost, water use and emissions.

Published in the Environment Systems and Decisions journal, the study goes against the grain of recent calls for humans to quit eating meat to curb climate change.

Collapse of the vegetarian's strongest argument (global warming is because we eat meat). Except for the noble soul who has the job of defending the cow fart argument because the funding of his institution depends on it:

The initial findings of the study were "surprising", according to senior research fellow Anthony Froggatt at Chatham House, an independent think-tank which is currently running a project looking at the link between meat consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Froggatt told the Independent it is "true lettuce can be incredibly water intensive and energy intensive to produce", but such comparative exercises vary hugely depending on how the foods are raised or grown.

"We usually look at proteins rather than calories, and as a general rule it is still the case that reducing meat consumption in favour of plant-based proteins can reduce emissions," he said.

Watch that spin there Froggatt old chap! Especially since his argument that these naughty scientists haven't taken everything into account is quickly debunked too:

But surprisingly, even if people cut out meat and reduced their calories to USDA-recommended levels, their environmental impact would increase across energy use (38 per cent), water (10 per cent) and emissions (6 per cent).

Dang and double dang! Poor Froggatt is left with just the weakest of weak arguments - akin to sticking out his bottom lip, stamping his foot and insisting he is right:

"We do know there is global overconsumption of meat, particularly in countries such as the US," he said. "Looking forward that is set to increase significantly, which will have a significant impact on global warming."

We can expect more along these lines - a narrow focus on what the actual animal does (fart mostly) rather than a proper appraisal of the entire production process. It is, sadly, how science goes these days - look at vaping, at sugar taxes, at overweight girls or indeed almost any public health or climate change research and you'll find assumptions, ad hominem, lousy methods and the reliance on simply repeating a given mantra regardless of the actual evidence.  But then pointing at critics shouting heretic has always been an effective tactic in the short run.


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Cows aren't destroying the planet. Ignorant folk like George Monbiot are.

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George Monbiot is having a go at cows. Well, not just cows but sheep, pigs, chickens and goats as well. And probably alpaca, yaks and dromedaries too.

Raising these animals already uses three-quarters of the world’s agricultural land. A third of our cereal crops are used to feed livestock: this may rise to roughly half by 2050. More people will starve as a result, because the poor rely mainly on grain for their subsistence, and diverting it to livestock raises the price.

As usual with Monbiot, the article is replete with links to assorted stuff mostly from the more scaremongering end of the climate change community. And the premise seems superficially appealing - it does require a whole load of grass to fatten a cow and, if we're growing grass we can't be growing grain crops suitable for humans to eat. The problem with this argument is that the facts about agriculture's land use don't fit Monbiot's scare story:

Ausubel, Wernick, & Waggoner (2013) argue that ‘peak farm’ is already a reality, saying ‘while the ratio of arable land per unit of crop production shows improved efficiency of land use, the number of hectares of cropland has scarcely changed since 1990. Absent the 3.4 percent of arable land devoted to energy crops (Trostle 2008), absolute declines would have begun during the last decade.’

In simpler terms, improved agricultural efficiency is allowing us to feed the world's population while using less land. The main reason for this, of course, is that there is a lot less inefficient subsistence farming (the sort of farming that organisations like Oxfam spend a lot of time trying to preserve) and a lot more commercial and industrial agriculture. Moreover, in terms of resource use, this sort of intensive farming is far more environmentally friendly:

Agricultural economists at UC Davis, for instance, analyzed farm-level surveys from 1996-2000 and concluded that there are “significant” scale economies in modern agriculture and that small farms are “high cost” operations. Absent the efficiencies of large farms, the use of polluting inputs would rise, as would food production costs, which would lead to more expensive food.

Farming - not everywhere but in too many places - is treated as if it were some sort of cultural activity rather than the means by which we feed the world's population. Monbiot talks about waste management issues associated with farming but doesn't recognise that these exist because, unlike other industries, farming has not had to capture the cost of this waste. It is not an inevitable consequence of of the business. Moreover, as those chaps at UC Davis showed, less intensive production is more polluting.

Finally can we put this greenhouse gas malarkey to bed. The cow's only source of carbon is the grass she chews. And the grass only has one source of carbon - the atmosphere. A good chunk of that carbon ends up in those fine marbled steaks we eat. So saying that a lot of the 'greenhouse gas' emissions come from cows farting might be true, but only if we believe that somehow those cows are magically creating more carbon than they consume.

As usual Monbiot is telling half-truths and peddling misinformation.

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Sheep stunt and RSPCA idiocy

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It may be a daft stunt to wheel a sheep into a supermarket but that is nothing compared to the stupidity of this official comment:

"We have tracked down the sheep's owner but we can't return it to its flock for six days because of restrictions on the movement of livestock."

Now I don't like the RSPCA but this kind of comment reveals the utter lunacy of our livestock regulations. Presumably the sheep is camped out in ASDA if it can't be moved?

Idiots