RE: Top-ten reasons to go plant-based/vegan that actually aren't.
In terms of personal diet, it is my feeling that it is just that - personal. It depends on many factors of ones own physical make up as well as where one lives geographically. What may have worked or not worked for you may work for or not work for others in my opinion.
Having originally become an aspiring vegan for environmental reasons, that is the area of your missive that drew my focus. It should be mentioned that removing dairy from my diet has made a huge difference to my health; having not been aware of my Lactose intolerance before then.
6: Animal sourced foods are a major contributor to global warming.
First off it is the cow's burp not farts where the methane is coming from. You put them together in your missive.
Methane is methane is methane from my understanding, although my chemistry studies are high school level, so your example of boomers coming back from vacations went right over my head. It certainly did not convince me that cow burps are not a problem nor that the amazon is not being cut down to grow soy to feed them.
To me your sixth point does a disservice to the environmental movement; not to speak of veganism. My feeling, from a cursory scan, is that the rest of your post is primarily subjective yet presented as facts. That is my feeling as the time will not be wasted to debate it further.
If downvoting was not linked to monetary rewards this post would have received one from me.
The whole point from #6 is that while methane is methane and while the elderly couples traveling and the refugee elderly couples might be genetically equivalent as well, its the cycle length that makes the difference between contributing to global temperature (or population size) and contributing to global warming (or population growth).
The carbon atom in the cow methane was part of an atmospheric CO2 molecule a few months ago and will be so again in a hand full of years, when it (or its equivalent) will become part of a piece of grass again that will be eaten by a cow, as the cycle continues. A stable size global herd of cows will contribute to the global temperature, it will not contribute to global warming. The equivalent of the elderly couple that is traveling.
In contrast, a chemically identical methane molecule from a natural gas leak will behave more like the refugee elderly couple. It hasn't been atmospheric CO2 for at least a hundred milion years, but it will be in half a dozen years from now with no short-cycle capacity to compensate.
As a pro-nuclear environmentalist, I feel it the green anti-meat doing the disservice to the environmental movement by trying to high jack environmentalism with a false narrative not so much unlike the green ant-nuclear narrative from the 1980s.
If you care about the environment, try to get your head around the elderly couple metaphor. It's about stepping back and looking at it from a distance, from a system perspective. Because as you pointed out, from close up, looking at the two identical molecules, you can't see the bigger (system) picture.
As for down voting, I feel strongly down voting is an important part of the curative power of the platform as long as it isn't used to suppress freedom of speech (by down voting to a below zero value resulting in invisibility). So if you feel my post deserves a (non-silencing) down vote, even after my elaboration above, feel free to use your curative powers for such. I won't retaliate in any way.
If my understanding is correct you are suggesting that methane from cows comes from the grass they eat as opposed to the chemical process of digestion. For that reason you see the methane molocules from cows being the same ones recycling themselves from grass to cows and back to grass again.
If that assumption, on my part, is correct than my feeling is that you are incorrect.
Source
This correction to your theory is not meant as a form of debate... but just that... a correction of facts.
[Edit : Grammer]
The cycle Is a bit longer. Keep your eye on the carbon atom. Something like:
CO2 -> (C6H10O5)n -> CH4 -> CO2
The whole cycle takes about half a dozen years from atmospheric C02 back to atmospheric C02.
There is no "my theory" here that needs correcting. It's a matter of your "perspective". A matter of taking a few steps back, away from the details of chemical processes so you can see the whole elephant. Keeping your eye on the carbon atom can help with that if you insist on keeping zoom mode on.
Look at 100 years. Imagine a stable size Hurd of cows and a stable emissions natural gas leak, both producing methane.
Imagine measure both atmospheric CH4 and CO2 at 10 years in and 100 years in.
The CH4 levels will be equal at 10 and 100 years, the CO2 levels won't be. The rise in CO2 between year 10 and year 100 will be 100% attributable to the gas leak methane.
If you take a few steps back you will see it all starts to make sense, and if you are anyway like me, you will start feeling silly for not having grasped it before. It's easy to get blinded by the details, especially when powerful narrative has compelled you to do exactly that.
This form of thought probably has a name. One place that it has been demonstrated to me is from Isreali Zionists who tell North Americans to turn their attention to their Native Americans before pointing fingers at their treatment of Palestinians. As if colonialism in North America is any different than colonialism in the middle east. As if pipe line methane is different than that produced by the herds of cows that are not required for nourishment by most humans. It brings a picture of putting lipstick of a bovine to me.
It's called "system thinking". And yes, the later is different, fundamentally different. But apparently I am unable to clearly communicate how the systems view makes the difference between cow methane, like fossil methane contributing to temperature but unlike fossil methane not to temperature rise.
If you understand this, and you also grasp #8 and importantly #5, you will see that not only is eating beef not a bad thing for the climate, GFFR beef (not CAFO beef!), especially if grazed on high bio-diversity open forest type of grazing ground, should actually be considered an important tool in attenuating environmental decline. Buying GFFR beef from a local rewilding program helps the environment. Buying multi ingredient mono crop based meat replacement products with ingredients from all over the globe hurts it.
I know, once you have been emerged in the plant-based narrative for a few years, the narrative becomes part of your identity, and recognizing, to paraphrase Mencken, that the well known, neat and plausible plant-based solution is in fact fundamentally wrong, recognizing that your choices made you a bigger part of the problem, rather than part of the solution, becomes an impossible hurdle to take.
I hope, for you, you will soon find a better teacher than me, able to get through to you on this, as it is clear my explanations and métaphores dont resonate with you in an anny way meaningfully way. That's my fault though, not yours. I am convinced there are no bad students, only incompatible teachers, and right now, I'm sure, at least as far as you are concerned, I am one of those.