this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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The Climate Crisis
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The methane cycle is from the ruminates eating the grass, which is to say the microbes processing grass. The grass is going to grow with or without ruminates eating it, and microbes will process the grass all the same in a stomach or out on the grassland. I.e. the methane load is a function of the plant growth and not of the animals.
Is that not correct?
Clearly the microbes in a ruminant's gut are not the same as the ones in the litter layer on top of the topsoil. For one thing, one would be aerobic and one would be anaerobic. I would not expect them to necessarily have the same byproducts.
The effort you are spending trying hard to find loopholes that allow you to continue consuming animals could be better spent changing your behaviour.
I find optimal health on a ASF diet for medical reasons. That is a requirement in my life, sorry, it's not going to change.
I'm happy to talk about environmental stewardship and what would be the best way to maintain the planet.
Microbes exist outside of animals... that's how they get into animals after all
Even in a Aerobic context biomass creates methane https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-5-937-2008
The natural cycle of nature will include methane, with or without ruminants
Did you actually read that paper? It's talking about hundreds of nanograms of methane produced per gram of plant matter. The rumen produces about 20,000,000ng of methane per gram of grass.
I did, but I didn't see the anaerobic figure of production