[Fleecewife]

They said this morning that CO2 emissions in France were really not as much of a problem (our electricity is Nuclear) as Methane released by farm animals and even worse (surprise this, as I have never heard of it) N20 released as a by-product of Nitrogen fertiliser on crops. Di-Nitrogen Oxide is 300 times worse as a greenhouse gas than Carbon Dioxide. So stopping eating meat might not do much?

Yes, Nitrous Oxide is the third of the agricultural bad boys, with carbon dioxide and methane.  Nitrous oxide is given off by artificial fertilisers, but also to a lesser extent by dung.  In the case of dung, it tends to be washed into the soil on grasslands and reused within that local ecosystem, whereas nitrous oxide is washed into river systems causing  a whole load of other problems.  Both give different amounts of nitrous oxide into the atmosphere as well.
There are several other gases which are damaging to the atmosphere, such as the fluro carbons.  The early awareness of damage to our world climate came with the release of fluro carbons, as used in fridges and other applications as a coolant, causing a giant hole in the ozone layer.  That caused a whole lot of derision from those who knew nothing but thought they knew it all, and set the scene for 'climate change deniers'.


Incidentally I am horrified to discover that although we all dutifully send our old fridges and freezers to be recycled, and the gases removed and reused, that is not in fact always happening.  There are pictures of huge piles of dumped fridges and freezers with no recycling and reclamation, because councils simply don't know how to deal with them.

[doganjo]

Further to Doganjo's comment. I think it's about balance ......a mosaic of habitats.
They don't always look 'pretty' like a wildflower meadow but probably just as valuable and they are scarce now.

They're certainly not scarce round here, and they look dreadful  Sorry if I offend but I'll keep my pretty meadow flowers 

[Fleecewife]

[member=13]Rosemary[/member] I love your cartoon on facebook:


"The gas comin' out of our cows
ain't near as dangerous
as the bullshit comin' out
of our politicians"


 

[Fleecewife]

This article appeared on the Beeb news today:
Climate change: Do I need to stop eating meat? - BBC News
It's the first thing I've read which mentions that different rearing methods lead to different carbon and GHG footprints.
There is also a good table comparing emissions from various meats and veggies, also chocolate.  Amazingly, the footprint of the highest impact chocolate is about the same as that for intensively reared lamb! (The categories are subdivided into low impact, average and high impact.)


One noticeable point is that pork and chicken come lower down the list than you might expect, but this is because they are fed imported grain, which isn't included in the equation     Is this not Global Climate Change we are trying to deal with?

[Womble]

Whit!?! 

The other thing we need to bear in mind with grain feeding is whether it's grain that a) we could otherwise eat or not, and b) if it's already been used for something else. I've been working at an Islay distillery recently, and the local farmers collect all the spent grain to feed to their cattle. That seems pretty sustainable to me, as what would you do with it otherwise?