jkf
12hr ago
The land used for the grass and the cereals could be used for something else (growing trees, for example).
No, it couldn't -- cows (in the US) primarily graze in a place that has been know for hundreds (maybe more) of years as "The Great Plains" -- trees don't grow there.
Anyways, trees don't fix carbon either -- it doesn't really matter what you grow there, it's going to rot eventually.
Moreover the grass produces CO2 if it's not eaten by some other animal while the cow produces CH4. CH4 has a stronger greenhouse effect than CO2 and then it quite rapidly degrades and becomes CO2.
Actually proving that this made any difference would require writing out (and balancing) all of the reactions involved, including the ones taking place in the cow -- just saying "cows produce methane and that's even worse than CO2" doesn't really say anything about the quantities involved. I'm not going to do that work, because I'd be quite surprised if it didn't pencil out as a wash -- but you are welcome to write it up and if the methane from a cow's farts ends up significantly more impactful than all of the carbon contained in the grass a cow would eat over the course of a year I will eat a steak my words.
jkf
18hr ago
Like I say I'm not the hugest fan of intensive dairying, so fine if true -- but I do think they will run into trouble with energy inputs. One cow can generate a truly shocking amount of milk, and they don't really eat that much. The problem (to me) is that the demand for milk products is also truly shocking -- so anyway you slice it there's going to be some shocking resource usage going on.
Cows don't eat trees (much) though -- they eat grass, and after a year that grass is turning back into CO2 one way or another.
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