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Pariah wrote:

Tallgeese wrote:

resedit wrote:

This demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of things like the carbon cycle.

Driving a car adds carbon to the system because it takes carbon out of the ground to burn.
The carbon etc. added by cows, dogs, whatever they are complaining about comes from their food, which is grown and thus took the carbon it has out of the air.

Deforestation for livestock production is not negligible.

Yes, but deforestation is incidental to meat production and lots of land is deforested for non-meat related crops.
Deforestation to raise cattle is more a symptom of poor farmers using very inefficient farming because they can't afford to do it any other way.

But that being said my wife and I have decreased our beef consumption considerably. Used to be it we ate beef most now it's once a week if that and now we only buy locally raised, "open range" beef from the little butcher shop we have right here in town.
The beef I buy only travels about 20 miles to get on my plate. I even know where the farm is. I like that, a lot.

Ah, there's nothing like the sight of a burning cull to remind you of merrie olde england.

sturner wrote:

I just reach out and butcher a cow that is wandering the open range.

Cattle rustlin's a hangin' crime in these parts.

Sounds like a good health plan.

Chickenhawk wrote:

Oh, they also fish.

Not without dynamite they don't.

Chickenhawk wrote:

What's wrong with a little dynamite between friends?

Anonymous Delivers! wrote:

Chickenhawk wrote:

Oh, they also fish.

Not without dynamite they don't.

Hand grenades are easier to work with.

I suspect the number for this argument is derived by the same faulty voodoo that the Sierra Club use to use to give some shocking number of species that go extinct every day.

It's not a real world number.

iSeamas wrote:

For these studies to be accepted, do we have to assume that all land currently being used for ranching would be suitable for other agriculture?

While I realize this is certainly the exception, I know the people of Tibet have a very meat -heavy diet largely due to a very short growing season and land not suitable for growing much other than grasses.

Yes, that is the exception. Look at Amazon rain forest loss due to South American beef production, or compare how much grain-fed cattle the US raises compared to grass-fed. And compare American populations and land usage to Tibet. Then go and look at African sheep and goat raising - animals which graze down to the roots and will, if improperly managed, strip land and increase desertification.

Of course, this goes beyond "carbon footprint" to other ecological and human-needs problems, but that's another reason why we should ignore these architects. They aren't ecologists, climatologists, or any other kind of geoscientist. They're architects.