Mitloehner believes his original quote was slightly different, and his main concern is that the FAO’s flawed assertion that livestock accounts for more emissions than transportation will lead policymakers and consumers to make the wrong choices.
“I didn’t say that there is no reduction in greenhouse gases associated with animal protein consumption, but that it is a relatively small contribution and that consumers can do other things that have greater impact on this,” he said in an interview.
(Mitloehner’s talk was based on a peer-reviewed paper he co-authored last fall. The press release issued by UC Davis noted that the report “was supported by a $26,000 research grant from the Beef Checkoff Program, which funds research and other activities, including promotion and consumer education, through fees on beef producers in the U.S. Since 2002, Mitloehner has received $5 million in research funding, with 5 percent of the total from agricultural commodities groups, such as beef producers.” The more recent release from the American Chemical Society did not include this detail, and neither did many news articles, with the exception of a blog post in the Guardian. The post made it clear that the author did not think Mithloehner was “in the pocket of Big Beef,” and that his criticisms of the FAO merited further investigation, but rightly criticized other outlets for overlooking an important detail of the story.)
So what about that 18 percent figure, then? Mitloehner is indeed skeptical about its accuracy, but he does not claim to be certain that it is wrong. He suspects that the FAO did not do a lifecycle analysis of the transportation industry because the data needed to do so is simply not available (which the FAO later confirmed). Without that information, Mitloehner argues, a comprehensive analysis is difficult.
“If you want a global assessment, then you really need those detailed emissions numbers,” he said. “We might have them for the United States, Germany, and Britain, and so on, but I question whether we have them for Paraguay, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan. And if you don’t know what the pieces of the pie are, then how do you know what 100 percent is? And if you don’t know what 100 percent is, then how can you say livestock is 18 percent?”
Gerber, the livestock policy officer at the FAO and co-author of “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” conceded that the comparison between livestock and transportation emissions was deeply flawed, but defended his organization’s estimate of the former’s relative contribution to total global emissions. “We still stand entirely behind the 18 percent figure,” he said.
The FAO will post a “technical note” (and issue a press release) on its Web site this week, responding to Mitloehner’s criticism and explaining what was and wasn’t included in its assessment. Gerber argues that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s figure for the total global emissions, which the FAO used for its calculations, is accurate, and that because the FAO used the same methods as the IPCC to do its lifecycle analysis of the livestock industry, comparing its subset to the total is fair. The lack of a lifecycle analysis for the transportation industry doesn’t change that, he added, arguing that such analyses have a greater effect on how the emissions pie is carved than on the size of the pie.
“In the IPCC’s analysis, you have everything—all transport, all agriculture, deforestation, manufacturing. You name it; it’s there,” Gerber said. “But if you were to add up lifecycle emissions for every industry, you would come up with more than 100 percent because of overlap [in other words, part of the livestock industry involves transportation, and part of the transportation industry involves livestock, so certain activities get counted more than once]. In depends on how they’re partitioned. So, lifecycle analyses are mostly a problem only when trying to compare different sectors.”
For instance, Gerber said the IPCC attributes only about 5 percent of global emissions to livestock (out of roughly 14 percent from agriculture overall) because it did not perform a lifecycle analysis like the FAO did.
This is a helpful contribution. But I'm still left wondering why Dr Mitloehner is so preoccupied with the FAO's reference to the GHG emission the IPCC attributes to transport. The FAO report only mentions the comparison with transport twice from what I can see - in the summary and conclusions and only to try to put its livestock life-cycle estimate into some perspective - ie the perspective of global inventory estimates. The fact that the IPCC transport emission estimate is not a 'life-cycle' emission is irrelevant. The idea that you have to apply life-cycle assessment approach to all sectors to know what the 100% is in relation to the FAO livestock emission number seems to be rooted in misunderstanding of both the FAO livestock emission estimate and global emission estimates. Pierre Gerber from the FAO is absolutely right - totalling sector life-cycle data would lead to more than 100%. The idea too that deforestation emissions should be attributed only to the regions in which deforestation is occuring side-steps the reality of globalised food markets. Consumers of livestock products in all developed economies are 'tele-connected' to resource use across the world through markets. For example, an indirect but potent connection between demand for beef on global markets and deforestation in the Amazon is cogently reported in the literature even though little beef is exported from these regions. Unless the USA is an economic island, the same is true of US consumers, even if they don't eat beef (see the 'How Low can we go report:
http://www.murphy-bokern.com/publishedreports.html
Overall, the FAO report has stood up well to this hostile scrutiny. It aligns with more detailed and regional assessments done for the UK. To undermine it by focusing on minor aspects on the margins of the research it reports borders on mischieve.
#1 Posted by Donal Murphy-Bokern, CJR on Mon 29 Mar 2010 at 07:28 PM
Dr. Mitloehner is correct in that, because regualtory agencies are "number hungry" (i.e., they will use emission numbers in formulating environmental regulations that may or may not be accurate for a particular region) an industry - agricultural industries specifically - may be over regulated due to insufficient scientific evidence. In California, agriculture was exempt from air quality regulations until fairly recently. When brought under the regualtory umprella, the dairy industry was being regulated using a 1938 emissions study that grossly overestimated emissions from dairy animals. It was several years before new scientific data could ascertain a proper emission factor for dairies. A lazy media once again doesn't do its proper job of vetting statements and sensationalizes a story when there was no need to. The least the media should have done was contact Dr. Mitloehner to determine "where's the beef?"
#2 Posted by Ron Harben, CJR on Mon 29 Mar 2010 at 08:30 PM
The sad thing is that it's not even the beef! It's the industrial process used to create cheap beef. If instead of plowing under the prairies and using petro intensive agriculture to raise cheap subsized corn to feed cows we used intensive rotational grazing we'd likely turn beef production into a carbon negative process.
#3 Posted by Adam, CJR on Wed 31 Mar 2010 at 02:30 PM
Is livestock more than 51% of global warming?
The paper by Dr Murphy-Bokern "How Low Can We Go" examines the large impact of livestock production on the climate. Conclusion: Reducing meat consumption is good for the climate.
It was bizarre to see a piece in The Times, (Feb 12th) reporting this study which starts "Becoming a vegetarian can do more harm to the environment than continuing to eat red meat, according to a study of the impacts of meat substitutes such as tofu." This nonsense was repeated in the media across the world.
Much of livestock's impact on climate is via the methane generated. "How Low Can We Go" and "Livestock's long shadow" rate methane as 25 times Carbon Dioxide. This is the Global Warming Potential (GWP) for methane measured over 100 years. In contrast, the GWP for methane measured over 20 years is 72 times carbon dioxide.
Some scientists now believe that global warming should be slowed quickly because we need time to develop strategies for the longer term. So why not rate methane at 72 times carbon dioxide?
The biggest obstacle is not understanding the science of climate change, it is overcoming the mis-information and media nonsense such as The Times piece.
A recent paper by World Bank environmental advisors for the World Watch Institute, "Livestock and climate change" criticised "Livestock's long shadow" claiming 51% of global greenhouse emissions are caused by livestock. They used the the twenty year measure for methane (72).
No report in The Times.
P.S. A recent paper by Schindell et al. uprates methane to 105 times carbon dioxide when measured over 20 years ("Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions", Science 30 October 2009).
So does livestock exceed even 51%?
#4 Posted by Geoff Beacon, CJR on Fri 2 Apr 2010 at 07:02 AM