EPA Source chart
"A single cow can produce between 250 and 500 liters, or about 66 to 132 gallons, of methane a day (the average U.S. vehicle gas tank can hold about 16 gallons of gas)."
"The new study of methane emissions in the U.S. was based on nearly 13,000 measurements taken from airplane flights and tall towers. Scientists in California collected data from 2008 and found that in that year,
the U.S. dumped nearly 49 million tons of methane into the air. That’s much more than the 32 million tons estimated by the EPA."
EPA gets their data from other sources (IPCC as one)and compiles it in their particular way. They do not include the many other sources they could because they either have not been studied enough, or it's very difficult to get, for one reason or another, reliable numbers. I think whatever the exact proportions are for the various prominent green house gases, simple charts are not enough to get the whole picture as the one single item above concerning methane output and how far off th EPA was illustrates.
Does the EPA report take into full account the deforestation factor in calculating output of greenhouse CO2 from animals?
" By most accounts, deforestation in tropical rainforests adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than the sum total of cars and trucks on the world’s roads. According to the World Carfree Network (WCN), cars and trucks account for about 14 percent of global carbon emissions, while most analysts attribute upwards of 15 percent to deforestation."
What??????
" By most accounts, deforestation in tropical rainforests adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than the sum total of cars and trucks on the world’s roads. According to the World Carfree Network (WCN), cars and trucks account for about 14 percent of global carbon emissions, while most analysts attribute upwards of 15 percent to deforestation."
YIKES!!!! 15%!!!!!! Is that in the EPA pie chart? No, in fact it's hard to discern hardly anything about the actual damage to the environment for the need to support billions of animals for slaughter. It's as if they are trying to hide the facts.......
We not only have deforestation in the tropical rainforests but it's forests everywhere:
“Unless we change the present system that rewards forest destruction,
forest clearing will put another 200 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere in coming decades…,” says EDF.(Environmental Defense Fund)
And..... 30% of the worlds land is used for pasture, and 33% of the arable land is used for growing feed for the animals, neither of which can absorb as much carbon as a forest of trees could, not even close,
PLUS the trees that were there before they were cut down have all released their carbon over time to the environment.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/deforestation-and-global-warming/
Water vapor is another part of the equation. It is the primary greenhouse gas and surely the amount of water vapor emitted from billions of animals has had an effect that adds up to be very a significant amount. Is that one figured into the EPA pie chart???
Here's what else is not separated out in the pie chart. In each of the other slices such as energy production, transport, buildings, industry, and water, a large significant amount of greenhouse gases produced by these sectors is from the production of animal product. You can't just look at the agricultural sector and say it's the methane within there that is all you count. You have to have huge amounts of farms and machinery. That's going to use huge amounts of energy to heat buildings, build the buildings, design produce and deliver the machinery to the farms, then energy to run the machinery, buildings and everything else that goes along with that. All this is under other different sectors other than the agricultural sector of the pie chart. Then of course all those employees and their cars going to work at all the farms, warehouses, slaughter houses, trucking and rail companies, grocery stores etc. Then the trucks, the infrastructure to make those trucks, the trains themselves, the refrigeration systems, .... da dee da dee da.... on and on it goes. The EPA chart does not reflect these things. It is not intended to isolate a particular source in that kind of reach and detail as things actually are. Like a web that continually expands out and reigns in more and more carbon and other greenhouse gas sources, there's a huge amount of things to consider when understanding the true totals of environmental damage we do from using a gargantuan amount of animal products.
What about human flatulence methane from eating all that meat?
So you take the amount of methane direct form the animals, add that to the amount of CO2 from deforestation which is EQUAL(+ a tad) to the entire transport section, then add from each of the other "pie" sections a certain percentage for the likes of buildings, materials, equipment, water..., add to those the loss of carbon sequestering from lack of trees on 30% of our lands made for pasturing that otherwise would be helping to scrub the atmosphere clean and same to a lessor degree(?) for croplands 33% of our lands to feed the animals---..............what do any of you think the grand totals are going to be?? See how deceptive reading a pie chart is??? And why Rick doesn't get it?? Why most don't get it?? Eating and using animals as we do is the single most devastating activity that results in greenhouse gas AND it destroys millions and millions of acres for habitat for native, wild, natural species...
Yet we don't even want to go there do we........
And anything I wrote here only touches upon these facts.
Paul
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