this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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The half of emissions that are methane are the cow burps themselves, because their stomachs ferment grass and produce methane as a waste product.
Even if you want to quibble about the accounting of the other half, without cows grazing there would be way, way less methane produced.
you're just restating your case. I asked for a citation.
According to https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/2/2/127/htm conventional feedlot beef produces 501,593 kg of methane per 1 million kg of beef, mostly from both burps and composting manure. So that's about .5 kg of methane per kg of beef.
1 lb of methane is 84 kg CO2e; that is to say over 100 years 1 kg of methane warms the planet the same as releasing 84kg of CO2. So every kg of beef produces 42kg of CO2e, regardless of any quibbling about the CO2e of agricultural waste fed to cows.
By contrast, googling quickly the quoted CO2e emissions per kg of chicken is 18.2. Which is, of course, subject to the same quibbling.
i will be digging into the methodology in a little while, but I found this part of the summary might indicate it's not as bad as it is sometimes made out to be.