Finally, the UN admits the Hoax of their Indictment of the Livestock Industry as the Greatest Contributor to Climate Change

Just when you think the scientific community is deaf, dumb, and blind to the fallacy of the UN's 2006 report, Livestock's Long Shadow, a voice makes its way through the liberal media and exposes the UN's unconscionable and deliberate attempt to indict the production of livestock the world over. 

Dr Frank Mitloehner, from the University of California at Davis (UCD), said meat and milk production generates less greenhouse gas than most environmentalists claim and that the emissions figures were calculated differently to the transport figures, resulting in an “apples-and-oranges analogy that truly confused the issue”. (UK Telegraph, 3/24/10)

On the surface, this appears to be new news -- but it is not.  Dr. Mitloehner stated his views on cows and climate change and the UN's flawed approach to livestock in a December 2009 UC Davis press release.

"UC Davis Associate Professor and Air Quality Specialist Frank Mitloehner says that McCartney and the chair of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ignored science last week when they launched a European campaign called "Less Meat = Less Heat." The launch came on the eve of a major international climate summit, which runs today through Dec. 18 in Copenhagen." (UC Davis, 12/7/09)

The newsy part of this UK Telegraph story is that one of the UN scientists finally admitted that their approach to slamming the production of livestock with every conceivable basket of greenhouse gas emissions might not have been exactly good science.

 ". . .one of the authors (of the FAO's Livestock's Long Shadow) of the report has admitted an American scientist has identified a flaw in its comparison with the impact of transport emissions."  And we are further told,  "Pierre Gerber, a policy officer with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, told the BBC he accepted Dr Mitloehner's criticism.  "I must say honestly that he has a point – we factored in everything for meat emissions, and we didn't do the same thing with transport," he said."But on the rest of the report, I don't think it was really challenged." (UK Telegrah, 2010)

Mr. Gerber does not think the "rest of the report was really challenged"?  Odd.  What Dr. Mitloehner has done is question the veracity of the entire report, and if Mr. Gerber concedes Mitloehner "has a point", then the entire premise and intended result of the report is called in to question -- it is challenged.

The United Nations' clear pro-vegetarian attitude has materially influenced their approach and their conclusions, as well as their own biased press releases, in regard to assessing and then slandering livestock production's contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

Unfortunately, Dr. Mitloehner seems to be of the opinion that a more intensive style of livestock production as recommended by the United Nations, is the best route for guiding developing countries toward more efficient and less damaging production of livestock.

"In developing countries, we should adopt more efficient, Western-style farming practices, to make more food with less greenhouse gas production," Mitloehner continued. In this he agrees with the conclusion of "Livestock’s Long Shadow," which calls for “replacing current suboptimal production with advanced production methods — at every step from feed production, through livestock production and processing, to distribution and marketing.” (UC Davis, 2009)

However, it is not clear from Dr. Mitloehner's quoted statements above that he is actually in favor of modifying the diet of livestock with primarily added grain.  Certainly improving grazing lands and building fences and rotating pastures as we do here in the USA would be a vast improvement of the "current suboptimal production" of livestock in developing countries.  And in terms of climate change, improving grasslands through animal rotation would result in greater carbon sequestration by those pastures.

Of course, the United Nations knows that -- they just don't wish to recommend this as a recommended mitigating policy as it does not fit with their long term goals of controlling the great land mass devoted to livestock the world over.  The UN wants the belching cow off that land.

UN admits flaw in report on meat and climate change

The UN has admitted a report linking livestock to global warming exaggerated the impact of eating meat on climate change.   By Alastair Jamieson  - UK Telegraph
Published: 7:16AM GMT 24 Mar 2010

A 2006 study, Livestock’s Long Shadow, claimed meat production was responsible for 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions – more than transport.  Its conclusions were heralded by campaigners urging consumers to eat less meat to save the planet.

However, one of the authors of the report has admitted an American scientist has identified a flaw in its comparison with the impact of transport emissions. Dr Frank Mitloehner, from the University of California at Davis (UCD), said meat and milk production generates less greenhouse gas than most environmentalists claim and that the emissions figures were calculated differently to the transport figures, resulting in an “apples-and-oranges analogy that truly confused the issue”. 

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Climate Change in Texas - Our Texas Cows Got the Message . . .

. . . and the East Texas cattle population has formed an alliance to suppress belching and farting in the interests of  protecting the Ozone -- apparently it worked.

The weather in Texas is notorious for being unpredictable within most any season, and in this upper sliver of southeast Texas, tucked right in the northern edge of Tyler County -- this winter has surely been one to remember.  I'd say the cows have done a pretty good job of holding back on those belches, maybe the constant hole digging in the soil by the bulls isn't 'soil degradation', but is actually a repository for herd belches. 

Yesterday evening the snow and sleet started about 5:30 PM, and it was pretty nasty outside.  But within an hour it was just pretty flakes of snow falling. By 11:00 PM the pastures and the treetrops were covered in a white blanket of snow, and the flakes were still thick and softly falling.  This morning the melt had already begun by the time I took a few pictures, but as we will be in the throes of man and cow caused Global Warming within a few short years, decades . . . who knows what the current time line theory is-- I certainly recorded what may be never ever seen again in these Pineywoods.

Last night's snow fall has been our third snow of the winter, and the same can be said for many other parts of Texas as well.  Yet Texas is the cow home of the largest population of cattle in the United States of America, over 13 million head of cattle.  The atmosphere above the blue skies of the State of Texas must be surely choking on methane emissions from the belches of cows and from their manure. 

Is there a Texas sized hole lurking in the ozone above our great State?  I haven't heard about one.  And the air I breathe in my rural part of Texas is clean and fresh.  The same can not be said about the City of Houston.  If there's ever a time when I remember the fast driving fun of my youth, it's when I'm trying to get the heck out of Houston so I can breathe again and leave my constant Houston Headache behind  -- and get back to my rural country air filled with the cow belches just as fast as I can.

We are told that cattle are a greater contributor to Global Warming than the Transportation sector.  A trip to Houston and back to home always shows what a Farce that notion is.  This third snowfall as well shows what a farce that notion is.  Texas farm and ranch land accounts for some 78% of the total land area in the State of Texas, or about 130 Million acres.  Eighty-three percent of that farm and ranch land is in the hands of small land owners having less than 499 acres, and a lot of cows roam that acreage.

Per the Texas Dept. of Agriculture (2007), "Texas is the number one cattle producing state in the country, with an inventory of 13.8 million cattle and calves -- more than twice as many as the next largest producer."  Shouldn't we Texans have hole in the ozone to worry about? Shouldn't we be in a sweat instead of a shiver?  Or have our cows found a way to circumvent the goals of the EPA, the United Nations, and their great and all powerful leader -- the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?

Visit my HubPage for an in-depth examination of the EPA and FAO efforts to exert governmental control over the cows in your pastures at a level you could never have imagined in a rational world.  (Image below is provided by your EPA to assist you in understanding just how to test the methane of your cows - looks like a bad, very bad joke.)