Vox, who has been reporting some evaluation of cow "emissions," and doing a little panic-mongering into the bargain. The problem? They predictably get almost everything wrong. [On the "Climate Realism" website, the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy's Linnea Lueken has the receipts]<https://climaterealism.com/2024/12/no-vox-measuring-burps-and-farts-will-not-save-the-planet/).

A recent article at Vox, titled “Scientists are measuring burps and farts. It could help save the planet,” claims that methane produced by farm animals is causing dangerous global warming, and thus that reducing agriculture-related methane is critical to limiting warming to the 1.5°C target established for political ends in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. This is false. Animal related methane is not a threat to the environment, contributing little if anything to global warming.

Part of what Vox doesn't understand (and that's a lengthy list) involves the nature of methane and its half-life in the atmosphere - which, one would think, would be something that should be added to the evaluation.

Although methane is, as Vox says, a “powerful” greenhouse gas with much more warming potential per molecule than carbon dioxide, it has a short atmospheric life as so plays a relatively minor role in the atmosphere when it comes to long-term warming. NASA, one source for Vox’s story admits as much. What Vox and NASA neglect to mention, however, is that methane’s absorption bands occur at wavelengths that the most powerful and abundant greenhouse gas, water vapor, making up as much of 97 percent of the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, already covers. Methane, a small trace gas, is a very minor player despite alarmism surrounding it. //

But beef production only represents 2 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and is beaten out in emissions by crop agriculture, which contributes 10.2 percent of U.S. emissions. These numbers are likely similar in most western countries. Climate Realism has covered these facts multiple times before, here, here, and here, for example. The facts haven’t changed, yet climate alarmists arguments are never revised or improved.