Lesson for teenagers included how cattle’s methane emissions contribute to climate crisis, but it was then scrapped

Lesson for teenagers included how cattle’s methane emissions contribute to climate crisis, but it was then scrapped

A beef industry-funded effort to teach teenagers about cattle’s climate impact was quietly scrapped following backlash from some ranchers, who disputed the premise that cows contribute to global heating.

The episode is the latest example of the livestock industry’s decades-long battle to determine what US children learn about cows and the climate.

The American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture (AFBFA) and its Food and Agriculture Center for Science Education produce a free science curriculum used by around 1.2m students across more than 100 school districts nationwide.

  • andyburke@kbin.earth
    11·
    16 hours ago

    Using figures from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it showed that methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, though it has a short atmospheric life. The lesson also contained an error, stating livestock accounts for about 2% of human-caused methane emissions, when the true figure is a little over 30%, said Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University.

    • justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io
      34·
      16 hours ago

      Yes I know the numbers. But how are we getting those when the only method we had to track atmospheric methane was shut down by the orange moron?

      Edit: When that satellite was up, massive unreported industry leaks were found almost immediately. Industrial farming of cows is an issue, but the oil and gas industry deserves more blame than it gets.

      • Natanael@infosec.pub
        3·
        4 hours ago

        You can estimate from being able to measure on individual cows across breeds and extrapolating

        • justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io
          1·
          24 minutes ago

          It’s not based on breed but on diet.
          The reason I ask is that the oil industry is lies. We rely largely on their own self reporting for tracking Methane leaks after Trump took the satellite offline.

      • andyburke@kbin.earth
        101·
        16 hours ago

        Come with some numbers proving your view instead of spreading uncertainty and doubt. You should have numbers with provenance akin to those being used by the academic who pointed out the error, not like the number in the beef industry’s "educational"material that was off by an order of magnitude.