moo-derer

The news comes fast and furious these days.  Two items from the week before this one really caught my attention and happen to be related.  The first was Bill Gates’ announcement that “climate change” wasn’t going to kill us and some funds targeted for its mitigation might be spent on more pressing problems (1).  Of course, he’s caught some flack

My wife figures ol’ Bill saw the money for climate change drying up with this new administration and is in search of his next money-making save-the-world venture.

News of adherents bailing may be slow in coming, as so many have embraced climate change as a secular religion (2,3,4).  There are still a lot of Lieutenant Onodas out there (5), especially in academia, the source of the 2^nd news item.  

Lt. Hiroo Onoda followed his elite intelligence unit into Lubang, a tiny island in the Phillipines, in December 1944. Within weeks of his arrival, a US attack forced Japanese combatants into the jungle – but unlike most of his comrades, Onoda remained hidden on the island for nearly 30 years. He was discovered, still battle ready, and refused to surrender until they brought in his commanding officer to tell him the war was over.

If you don’t read the University Record, you missed this (6).  Teams from the 2 UofMs (Michigan, Minnesota), led by Michigan’s Prof Goldstein, compiled greenhouse gas data in all 3531 cities in the contiguous USA (7).  Rather than measurements, gas volumes were derived from amount of pork, beef, and chicken consumed in each locale, determining supply chains for the meat consumed and from these data, generated a map of the “mat generated” greenhouse gasses.  Their paper appeared in one of the Nature journals, considered by many in academia as the most prestigious science journals.  Perhaps Nature has different standards, but this so-called” scientific” paper doesn’t even have a methods section!   Instead, there’s a whiny introduction citing other more accurate methods they could have used if only they weren’t so costly, labor intensive, or held by private companies they’d have to pay to use.  They did generate some nice maps, like these which show levels of meat generated greenhouse gases pretty much following population density. 

Fig. 1 | Meat consumption and carbon hoofprint across the USA. a, Per capita meat consumption (beef, chicken and pork) (kg percapita) (top) and hoofprint (kgCO₂e per capita) (bottom) for 3,531 US cities. b, Comparison of per capita meat consumption (left) andhoofprint (right) for California (top), the Northeast (middle) and Texas (bottom). Consumption values are before retail and consumerlosses (for example, kilograms delivered to retail). Based on uncertainty analysis, there is a mean absolute percentage error of 26%from baseline across all cities (Supplementary Fig. 1).

But eating meat is like driving an EV: the greenhouse gasses propelling the activity are generated far from the activity itself.  The authors propose a couple ways to mitigate this horrible scenario: reducing food waste and substituting other protein sources for beef.  At least they didn’t cite the European model of killing as many cows as possible.  Indeed, their model implies it’s the eaters’ fault, not the cows’.  Might the map provide the EPA enforcement force with targets as they set about offing the eaters?  Given how Mr. Gates relishes reducing the population, perhaps he’ll be participating.  Surely the Lt. Onodo’s in today’s Climate Commandos won’t be taking this lying down.  They can track methane from space now (8)!  Pray they don’t weaponize the agent transmitted by the Lone Star tick that causes “alpha-gal syndrome”, in which victims develop an intense allergy to red meat (9).  Just like a “vaccination”!  Could we coax Dr. Fauci out of retirement?Hard to say when this anti-meat crusade began.  The 2018 UN encyclical on climate change mentioned that we need to focus on some of the agricultural sources of greenhouse gasses (10).  With those ruminants producing methane as a byproduct of digesting vegetation we cannot, turning it into protein and milk we can.  With apologies for every sniggering adolescent out there, please know that most of the methane comes from eructation, not flatulence (11).  

Indeed, an entire industry has grown up to address the “problem”, from sophisticated monitoring to mask traps to measure to modify to the cow’s microbiome to be less gassy (12).  The frenzied self-righteousness that arose predated any actual changes in eating behavior, but we were made to feel guilty when we bit into a juicy steak rather than bugs, lab grown meat (“cellular agriculture”) or a full conversion to veganism.  Those Petrie dish patties were lauded as almost o.k., any loss of taste from the real thing more than made up for by the good feeling to be had by knowing how such eating behavior was doing for the environment.  It all came together to transform one of man’s most beloved and helpful domesticated animal into some kind of villain.

While there wasn’t a little boy standing to comment on the emperor’s attire, Investigators from Virginia Tech published in early 2021 that sudden disappearance of all dairy cattle from the US would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a whopping 0.7% (13).  Not to mention all the nutrients that would no longer be provided to a hungry population.  The EPA estimates that all greenhouse gasses from meat and dairy production account for just 4% of domestic emissions (14).  If every man, woman, and child in America turned vegan tomorrow, estimates suggest the US would produce just 3% fewer emissions (15).

But wouldn’t less meat be a benefit not only to the planet, but to the eaters?  I’ve been hearing about the horrors of red meat since medical school (I graduated ’79).  Often touched with a “meat is murder” layer of guilt, cutting into that steak could be a political statement.  In late 2019, a metanalysis was published in Annals of Internal Medicine (one of the premier journals in my field) evaluating claims that red meat consumption results in increased risk of heart disease and cancer.  From 61 studies involving 4 million participants examining these associations, they concluded “certainty of evidence for these risk reductions was very low” (16).  But if we still crave meat, we can now get it from the lab, avoiding all that messy animal stuff (17).

Our ancestors began herding cattle 8,000-10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent and Africa, just slightly after civilization began so man could brew beer.  Cows depositing their waste material and walking all over it make for fertile ground that can be cultivated to grow other foods.  As our bovine friends fight for their lives, some of their human proponents have pointed out that the fields in which cows graze make excellent carbon sinks, (18) and that methane can be used a fuel (19), even powering tractors (20)! 

Yet, the global warming (sorry, climate change) fanatics continue to push for eradication of cattle.  Most of that force has been applied in Europe, but quietly in the US the size of our beef herds is decreasing, and beef prices are skyrocketing.  I don’t think this was part of the Green New Deal, but how long are those bills congress passes these days, so who knows what might be in ‘em!?  The EPA and USDA continue their war on ranchers, using things like obscure water rights regulations and emissions reporting requirements. Their plight may be improving, as the Supreme Court has decided in their favor, ruling they cannot use regulation on water rights to regulate discharges (21).  Perhaps under pressure from Trump’s EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, the agency is refashioning itself as a champion for hungry broke Americans by announcing how rollbacks of some of its regulation will be a boon (22).

The Woke EU bureaucrats have heaped so many regulations and policies on their charges, it’s hard to know where to holler “uncle” first.  Every now and then the tractors and manure spreaders in the streets and flinging of animal feces at government buildings become so unavoidable, they leak into our mainstream media.  The Netherlands was the first eruption, as the government plans to reduce emissions by halving the country’s number of livestock (23).  Farmers took to the streets in their big vehicles, and the Netherlands now has a center-right government.  I think the cows are still happily chewing away at their share of that green little county.  But protests were continent-wide: Germany, France, U.K., Poland, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Greece, the Czech Republic (24).  Not all beefs – as it were – were about cattle, with issues on imports, fuel subsidies, and unfair competition getting attention.  The pressure has brought around real change, like the EU deciding to exclude cattle farming from regulations on livestock emissions (25).  Always available to governments is the brute theft of taxation, and the Danes see that as their way forward to a cooler future (26).

The war on Elsie looks like its winding down, but with so many true believers left in positions of authority, you can never be too sure.  What can one person do?  I believe a meme I saw a few days ago pretty well sums it up

Bon appètit!

References

1. Gates B.  Three tough truths about climate.  Gates Notes 10/27/25.  https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate

2. mfbukowski.  Climate Change as Secular Religion.  Mormon dialog and discussions board.  1/24/18.  https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/70111-climate-change-as-a-secular-religion/

3. Kuehn EF.  Is the Climate Crisis a Secular Eschatology?  University of Chicago Divinity School 10/3/19.  https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/articles/climate-crisis-secular-eschatology

4. Baker G.  St. Greta Spreads the Climate Gospel.  Wall St Jl 9/20/19.  https://www.wsj.com/articles/saint-greta-spreads-the-climate-gospel-11568989306

5. Balmont J.  Onoda: The man who hid in the jungle for 30 years.  BBC 4/13/22.  https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220413-onoda-the-man-who-hid-in-the-jungle-for-30-years

6. Davenport M.  Revealing the ‘carbon hoofprint’ of meat consumption for American cities.  Michigan News 10/20/25.  https://news.umich.edu/revealing-the-carbon-hoofprint-of-meat-consumption-for-american-cities/

7. Goldstein BP, Pelton REO., Gounaridis D. et al. The carbon hoofprint of cities is shaped by geography and production in the livestock supply chain. Nature Clim Chan (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02450-7s

8. New NASA Instrument Catches Super Methane Emitters Red-Handed.  The Weather Channel 10/27/22.  file:///Users/bobscomputer/Desktop/cow%20farts/New%20NASA%20Instrument%20Catches%20Super%20Methane%20Emitters%20Red-Handed%20-%20Videos%20from%20The%20Weather%20Channel.html

9. The Mayo Clinic Staff.  Alpha-gal syndrome.  Mayo Clinic 8/8/25.  https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alpha-gal-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20428608

10. De Coninck H et al.  Strengthening and Implementing the Global Response in Global Warming of 1.5⁰ C, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, 2018, https://ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SR15_Chapter4_Low_Res.pdf

11. Holmes B.  Cleaning up cow burps to combat global warming.  Knowable Magazine 6/10/24.  https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/food-environment/2024/reducing-methane-emissions-from-livestock

12. How Dairy Farmers Are Reducing Methane And Greenhouse Gas Emissions.  Undeniably Dairy 2/2/22.  https://www.usdairy.com/news-articles/farmers-reducing-methane-gas-from-cows?gclsrc=aw.ds&campaignid=21324250699&adgroupid=168030205092&keyword=cows%20burp%20methane&device=c&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21324250699&gbraid=0AAAAAC58wDew5xr8t9hMKxYk2mdaHn-MI

13. Esterhuizen M.  Virginia Tech Researchers Find that Removal of Dairy Cows Would Have Minimal Impact of Greenhouse Emissions.  Virginia Tech 1/6/21.  https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2020/12/cals-white=research.html

14. Environmental Protection Agency.  Inventory of U.S.Greenhouse Gas emissions and Sinks: 1990-2017, April 2019, https://www.epa.gov/sites/produ ction/iles/2019-04/document/us-ghg-inventory-209-chapeter-executuve-summary.pdf

15. USDA/Agricultural Research Service.  Exploring a World without Food Animal.  Science Dailu 6/18/2021, www.sciencedaily.com/rleSES/2017/12/12/17120622218.HTML

16. Johnston BC, Zeraatkar D, Han MA, Vernooij RWM, Valli C, El Dib R, Marshall C, Stover PJ, Fairweather-Taitt S, Wójcik G, Bhatia F, de Souza R, Brotons C, Meerpohl JJ, Patel CJ, Djulbegovic B, Alonso-Coello P, Bala MM, Guyatt GH. Unprocessed Red Meat and Processed Meat Consumption: Dietary Guideline Recommendations From the Nutritional Recommendations (NutriRECS) Consortium. Ann Intern Med. 2019 Nov 19;171(10):756-764.   https://annals.org/aim/articlr/doi/10.7326/M19-16

17. DutkiewiczJ and Rosenberg GN.  The Sadism of Eating Real Meat over Lab Meat.  New Republic 2/23/21.  https://newrepublic.com/article/161452/sadism-eating-real-meat-lab-meat

18. Reed B.  Cows help farms capture more carbon in soil, study shows.  Guardian 9/28/24. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/28/cows-help-farms-capture-more-carbon-in-soil-study-shows

19. Melnick P.  Dairy Farm Sustainability: Turning Methane into Energy.  New England Dairy 4/23/25.  https://www.newenglanddairy.com/blog-post/cows-greenhouse-gas-emissions/

20. Blain L.  Dung-powered tractor drives down agricultural emissions. New Atlas 1/16/23.  https://newatlas.com/energy/cow-dung-tractor-biomethane/

21. Wolfson L.  Supreme Court Ruling For Western Ranchers Over EPA Is A Win For Private Property Rights.  Harriett Hagem Wyoming’s Congresswoman 5/25/23.  https://hageman.house.gov/media/in-the-news/supreme-court-ruling-western-ranchers-over-epa-win-private-property-rights

22. EPA Press Office.  EPA Announces Action to Support Lower Food Prices for Americans and Reduce Burden on American Farmers by Addressing Meat and Poultry Discharge Regulations.  EPA 8/30/25.  https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-announces-action-support-lower-food-prices-americans-and-reduce-burden-american

23. Ro C.  The Netherlands, A Country Of Livestock, Grapples With Eating Animals.  Forbes4/29/24.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinero/2024/04/27/the-netherlands-a-country-of-livestock-grapples-with-eating-animals/

24. Salmonsen D. Why are EU farmers protesting?  FB 2/28/24.  https://www.fb.org/focus-on-agriculture/why-are-eu-farmers-protesting

25. Igina M.  Emission-Intensive Cattle Farming Excluded From New EU Rules for Livestock Pollution.  EARTH.ORG 3/13/24.  https://earth.org/emission-intensive-cattle-farming-excluded-from-new-eu-rules-for-livestock-pollution/

26. Euronews.  Danish livestock farmers to be taxed for cow and pig-made greenhouse gases.  Euronews.com 6/26/24.  https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/06/26/denmark-cow-and-pig-burp-tax-to-be-rolled-out-in-2025