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ELI5 - Cows Don't Pollute (hackertalks.com)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/carnivore@discuss.online
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Explained like I'm 5 - Cows don't pollute

A. Cows don't create carbon, they perform neither nuclear fission or nuclear fusion. They can't create elements.

B. Everything that comes out of a cow, must have gone into the cow.

C. Grass grows using carbon from the environment.

D. Cows eat grass, because they are a ruminant.

E. All the gas that comes out of a cow went into the cow as grass.

F. Therefore all the carbon that come out of a cow first has to be captured by grass to go into the cow.

G. Cows are part of a natural biocycle, they do not create pollution.

H. If cows don't eat the grass something will - animals, fire, microbes, and the biocycle will continue.

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[–] 1 point 1 week ago* (3 children)

I'm afraid there's only two of us left, so you'll have to.

In any case, if you have a particular gripe with Poore and Nemecek, there's no shortage of papers coming to similar conclusions, like this one, this other one, and a myriad more. Same can't be said of the opposite.

As things stand, arguing that beef is eco-friendly is as scientifically fringe as saying the Earth is flat. Certain attempts (nutritional, organizational, technological etc.) are made to reduce the ecological footprint of cows, but it remains huge nonetheless. You can't make cows less cows.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    one of them relies directly on poore-nemecek, and the other commits the same blunder as them: combining disparately methodized LCA studies

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  • [–] 1 point 6 days ago* (1 child)

    Only in one part, while sourcing the rest on other works, of which there's plenty, the other is a review article, and of course methods will have to differ somewhat.

    I specifically go through review articles to show the studies are actually more than plentiful. You can look them up more thoroughly before dismissing. They all speak of the same picture, and it's about as clear as "the water is wet".

    I provided you with a vast pool of studies to confirm what should be obvious to anyone who had at least school-grade biology. I would be much pleased if you could gather scientifically-backed points to the opposite. Show me research that demonstrates cows are actually not ecological disaster and are at least on par with pigs and chicken, or better yet, plant foods on ecological footprint, since that's the basis of your original claim.

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