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Severe Methodological Deficiencies Associated with Claims of Domestic Livestock Driving Climate Change 



Author(s)

Albrecht Glatzle

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DOI:10.17265/2162-5263/2013.10.004

Reduction of global livestock numbers and meat consumption have been recommended for climate change mitigation. However, the basic assumptions made to come up with that kind of recommendations reveal severe methodological deficiencies: (1) Carbon footprint, emission intensity, and life-cycle assessments of domestic livestock products reported in scientific literature consistently overlooked the necessity of correcting non CO₂ GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions (nitrous oxide and methane) from managed ecosystems for baseline emission scenarios over time and space (pristine ecosystem and/or pre-climate change emissions); (2) Uncertainties associated with the climate sensitivity of anthropogenic GHG-emissions have been ignored; (3) Inconsistencies in the methodological treatment of land use change (deforestation) in emission intensity calculations (per unit of product) can be detected in the literature; (4) The virtual lack of a discernable livestock signal in global methane distribution and historical methane emission rates has not been acknowledged; theoretical bottom up calculations do not reflect the relative insignificance of livestock-born methane for the global methane budget; (5) Potential substrate induced enhancement of methane breakdown rates have not been taken into consideration. A tremendous over-assessment of potential livestock contribution to climate change is the logical consequence of these important methodological deficiencies which have been inexorably propagated through recent scientific literature.

Global warming, GHG (greenhouse gases), methane, nitrous oxide, biodiversity, deforestation, baseline scenarios, life cycle assessment, carbon footprint, emission intensity.