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Comment by himinlomax | Hacker News Reader

> After how long? A half-life of a decade, as I understand it? Not exactly the order of magnitude of luxury time we have to spare

Doesn't matter, if we keep the number of heads of cattle constant, the methane from them in the atmosphere will be constant.

If we keep using the same number of ICE cars otoh, the CO2 from them in the atmosphere will keep increasing. We would have to drop the number of ICE cars to 0 to stop the increase.

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If the amount of methane in the atmosphere is constant, the CO2 from that in the atmosphere will keep increasing.

Well unless there‘s a closed loop co2 - soy - animal - co2/methane - co2. Meat production will involve fossil fuels tho.

As the sibling already said: We're in a closed loop. Methane decomposes into CO2, so if you want to maintain a constant level of methane in the atmosphere, energy/mass conservation dictates that this carbon needs to come from somewhere else. Solution: It actually comes from the CO2, via grass growth & the cattle's digestive system. The amount of CO2, averaged over time, therefore cannot increase.

Cows don't eat coal or oil.

they eat oil (fertilizer is an oil byproduct).

That's not the case for grass fed beef.

What is % of grass fed beef? Why is Amazon decreasing?

Not if the methane is produced through carbon from plants, in which case methane will stay constant but CO2 being sucked from the atmosphere would occur at the same rate as methane emission.

It's sourcing food from petroleum that causes the problem.

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