> They're [the cows] direct contributors to global warming
It's a popular misconception that cows contribute greatly to the global warming. The general story is that recently a lot of people in emerging countries (and specifically China) have increased their beef consumption and you need more cows for that, and hence more methane emissions from their burps. And since methane is many times more potent than CO2 ... you know the rest.
What people don't take the time to check is if the story is true. The global inventory of cows was constant at very close to 1 billion for the last 45 years [1]. The half-life of methane in the atmosphere is about 7 years [2], so all the burps released by cows today simply replace burps that decayed from cows of decades past. Overall, cows don't contribute to an increase or decrease in the level of methane in the atmosphere.
It's a popular misconception that cows contribute greatly to the global warming. The general story is that recently a lot of people in emerging countries (and specifically China) have increased their beef consumption and you need more cows for that, and hence more methane emissions from their burps. And since methane is many times more potent than CO2 ... you know the rest.
What people don't take the time to check is if the story is true. The global inventory of cows was constant at very close to 1 billion for the last 45 years [1]. The half-life of methane in the atmosphere is about 7 years [2], so all the burps released by cows today simply replace burps that decayed from cows of decades past. Overall, cows don't contribute to an increase or decrease in the level of methane in the atmosphere.
[1] http://beef2live.com/story-world-cattle-inventory-1960-2014-...
[2] https://phys.org/tags/methane/