Does rice milk or milk from grain-fed cows emit less methane?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Nothing about rice milk in that, but the addition of seaweed to feed reducing methane output is surprising. Good article!

Also, rice milk appears to be one of the worst offenders regarding methane emissions (although it’s still better than dairy milk):

https://ideas.ted.com/which-plant-based-...he-planet/



Boru

I don't think it's a high-quality article. It seems to assume that "organic" means "no pesticide", which is dead wrong.

You think it's not a high-quality article in spite of it agreeing with you? Okaaaaay...

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Some articles are only useful for the references they cite.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Some articles are only useful for the references they cite.

And some merit serious consideration when the authors have excellent credentials.

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Didn't imply otherwise.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Didn't imply otherwise.

And I didn't mean to imply that you had - sorry if it came off that way. What I meant was that it's not a very good idea for Flat to simply dismiss what is clearly a popular article simply because his didn't like the way they used the word 'organic'. That article was authored by two PhDs who work on this sort of thing for a living.

But that's him - if something disagrees with his preconceived notions, it's not to be trusted.

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Concur with that. During my master's chase I followed endless trails of bread crumbs.

[The Grand Nudger]

Speaking of breadcrumbs...

When this narrative was being crafted, ghg emissions from livestock production were calculated to be 18% across the entire supply chain. Inputs, manufacturing, land use, processing, transportation, and refrigeration at stores. GHG from transportation, meanwhile, was calculated solely by the direct emissions from tailpipes, at 28% of overall ghg emissions. This...ignoring the inputs, processing, manufacturing, refrigeration on trucks, and land use values. A consistent and credible accounting of both would put the ghg for livestock significantly lower, and the ghg from transportation significantly higher. More fundamentally, while methane traps far more heat than carbon, it's extremely short lived in comparison. 10 years to 1000 years. Every year nearly 600 tons of methane are produced globally, less than a third of that from agriculture, and all of it broken down by hydroxyl oxidation to be absorbed by plants and soils via the sink effect. There's room for more without additional warming - an eroded field, clearcut forest, extinct ruminant and destroyed wetland shaped hole, to be precise. The regulatory and advisory committees intended to address global warming have been fully captured by the fossil fuel industry - which is and will continue to do a hell of alot more damage than cow burps. I guess it's good for marketing vegan and vegetarian products, though, so at least some good comes from this breathtaking display of institutional malfeasance.

Livestock production, for it's part, continues along in good faith and with land stewardship a central value. Roughly two thirds of the agricultural land on earth is marginal, which is to say suited only for grazing. Our herds are smaller and more productive today than they have ever been, the us beef herd is two thirds it's size compared to a half century ago. The average weight in 1975 at two years was 570lbs, todays average weight is 820 at a year and a half. Methane emissions from livestock are decreasing even as production increases. To top it all off, beef consumption in the us has declined over the same period (the rise of chicken and pork..and recently, fish).

The short version of a long story, is that if you're a vegan or vegetarian because you think that livestock production is barbaric - then stick to that and lead with it. It will still be wrong, but it's an arguable matter of opinion, at least. Taking the fossil fuel industry's corporate propaganda as an environmental argument against ruminants is balls to the wall insane....and if we really believed it we'd be exterminating all the cattle and sheep and deer and antelope and bison and wetlands - to save the earth™.

[FlatAssembler]

I don't think it's a high-quality article. It seems to assume that "organic" means "no pesticide", which is dead wrong.

You think it's not a high-quality article in spite of it agreeing with you? Okaaaaay...

Boru

It's not "agreeing with me". I simply don't know whether rice milk or cow's milk, the way they are usually made today, emits more methane. And you don't know that either. This discussion is very far from an academic discussion. No references to peer-reviewed journals, no attempt to calculate the p-values... Mostly just walls of blind assertions (looking at you, @The Grand Nudger).

[arewethereyet]

Tell us the answer you want and one of us will put the rest of us out of our misery.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'd tell you to do your own research, Flat - it's not as if this stuff is actually hidden deep within the bowels of academia...except that I'm pretty sure the results of you doing your own research will be predictably horrific. Under currently prevalent conditions, rice milk is a bigger methane emitter than dairy - because rice produces more methane than the entire cattle industry - dairy being a fraction of it's footprint. There are better ways to grow rice, ofc, just as there are better ways to operate a dairy. From a methane standpoint, obvs.

Beyond that, I'm amazed that a climate conscious person, like yourself, is so disinterested in the capture of climate regulatory and advisory agencies by fossil fuel interests? If ghg emmissions are a problem, that's certainly a compounding factor, no?