What Gets Regen Blogged Gets Manipulated (Part 1)
By Sarah Mock and Alison Grantham
Cattle (and livestock more broadly) are major net contributors to climate change.
The science and the measurements, including quantified uncertainty, is clear enough to guide us to better decisions.
In an agriculturally adjacent newsletter, someone recently called this essay, “What gets measured gets manipulated” brilliant… which made us wonder how we’re determining the difference between ideas that are brilliant and those that are simply comforting.
What stands out most about this essay is the breathtaking extent to which reality and good, plain common sense have been dodged in order to keep the Western-style cattle production in its privileged – and unquestioned – position. Well, we have questions.
This essay starts with the coastline paradox. We love the coastline paradox. Who doesn’t? It provides the logical basis for the idea that the coast of Britain is infinitely long. How fun is that?! So fun.
The essay did… get the point wrong though? The lesson of this paradox as presented by the essay is “the smaller the ruler, the longer the length [of the coastline].” That’s not quite right. The measurement tool you use doesn’t fundamentally alter the size of the thing being measured – it only alters the precision with which you’re measuring it. The coastline does not “grow” because you went from using a 30 m resolution satellite image to using a 30-cm resolution lidar image.
With lidar, you are simply getting a more precise measurement – you can measure around boulders, say, or sandbars, or other physical features that you simply could not detect in a less granular image. In some respects, methodology can change WHERE you are measuring, which can indeed change the length you measure. For practical reasons, in science, it makes sense that we aren’t always afforded the extra time or expense required to achieve maximum precision. One of the main points of science is quantifying the uncertainty of any measurement to provide an upper and lower bound of where the actual value falls, with 95% confidence.
Regardless, as measurement technology improves, scientists are generally able to reduce the size of the confidence interval, providing an estimate that may be +/-10% instead of +/-50%.
The fractals of it all (which is the real essence of the coastline paradox) get to a point that this essay doesn’t care about and thus doesn’t speak to. That point is that in some natural structures, like coastlines and crystals, similar patterns recur at progressively – and sometimes infinitely – smaller scales, which is how Mandelbrot got to the infinite coastline.
Reductively, with a small enough ruler, we could measure around not only every sandbar, every boulder, and every pebble on every beach, but also the distance between every electron and neutron that composes those pebbles too. But because the author omitted this aspect of the discussion, we will follow their lead.
The text where this whole point was glossed over:
“This trend of discrepancies, or ‘fractals,’ extends to the behavior of many other natural phenomena and doesn’t even consider that Earth is in constant flux, always transforming itself anew.”
A few notes on the gloss:
Fractals are not a “trend of discrepancies” as this sentence implies. Please, do not read agriculture blogs in search of fractal knowledge. I’d personally start with Chaos by James Gleick instead.
It’s nearly impossible to parse what “This trend of discrepancies… extends to the behavior of many other natural phenomena,” actually means. The behavior of natural phenomena can be characterized by a trend of discrepancies? What is “behavior of natural phenomena” in a general sense? What kind of discrepancies? How do they trend? I’ve rearranged these words every possible way I can think and my conclusion is, they don’t actually make sense at all. The essay shows you the Jack of Fractals, and with a wave of the hand, poof, it disappears.
“And doesn’t even consider that Earth is in constant flux.” I think the point of this statement is to say measuring things is hard (a very generous leap) and the fact that time is an additional variable makes it even harder. In general, we agree with this statement. *shakes hands with ourselves*
To the very next paragraph:
“Math, and our efforts to quantify and simplify everything, are dull tools to wield in an attempt to understand this complex planet.”
Math is a dull tool for understanding a complex planet! The good news is, very few people believe that math is the best tool, or the only tool, that we should wield to understand Earth (or any other planet). And yes, we agree that our efforts to simplify things, especially things that make us uncomfortable, often go terribly awry.
And in that way, perhaps we agree that people without a full understanding of what they’re talking about should probably resist the urge to simplify complicated things, like say, the climate science around methane. Especially in public forums.
Which brings us to a relevant question that the essay doesn’t really address– how do we really “measure” methane?
There are two main approaches scientists use to quantify methane: top-down, atmospheric-based approaches, and bottom-up, activity-based approaches. Top-down approaches are developed from atmospheric observations collected by satellites, airplanes, and surface monitoring. Scientists then combine these measurements of atmospheric concentrations into emissions estimates. This type of quantification supports our understanding that global atmospheric methane levels and emissions rates were decreasing from the ‘80s through the early 2000s, but then reversed course and began increasing more rapidly, with the highest annual increase in methane occurring in 2021, definitely not on track with any 1.5℃ IPCC pathway. Those pathways require a ~50% reduction relative to 2010 methane emissions in the next decade or so.
Methane emissions have been rising since 2006
Rising global methane emissions is a phenomenon that scientists have been investigating through various analytical techniques to explain. Isotopic signatures of atmospheric methane indicate the increasing fluxes of the gas is originating from both the energy and agricultural sectors, as well as from warmer, wetter wetlands of the mid- to tropical latitudes. These increases are systematically underestimated in the US' inventory by 50-70% (Lu et al. 2023, Lindsey and Scott 2017).
Bottom-up, activity-based approaches take information like the inventory of cattle, the number of landfills, or the miles of natural gas pipeline and convert them using emissions factors into estimates of GHG from a given sector. When it comes to methane from livestock, it is these types of approaches that scientists use to quantify the amount of enteric, or methane burped by ruminants, and manure methane emitted by the livestock sector annually.
In another recently published study, scientists identified uncertainties in enteric and manure methane emissions, and proposed approaches for reducing uncertainties. For enteric emissions, the bigger piece of the methane pie in the US, current estimates of uncertainty are up to +/-20%, though multiple studies have a smaller downward error, -11% to -16%, and a larger upward error, +18-20%. Scientists classify this level of uncertainty as medium in the scheme of methane emissions estimates, far lower than uncertainty around manure emissions, which studies estimate as upwards of 60% in both directions, making scientists’ confidence in national estimates of manure methane emissions “low.” Improving this confidence by reducing uncertainty so the signal is greater than the noise is critical to make methane inventories useful measurement tools for managing towards this 30% reduction by 2030 relative to 2020 emissions.
Agriculture (blue), mostly cattle, and dairy + swine manure lagoons are a major and growing methane source.
This inventory may underestimate emissions by up to 50%, as more recent studies based on satellite and surface measurements of methane suggest energy emissions may have increased rather than decreased relative to 1990 since 2007, and emissions from agriculture and wetlands may be higher than inventory estimates (Miller et al 2013, Lu et al 2023).
And manure methane is not just a cattle problem. As of 2015, a little over half of manure methane came from the dairy sector, almost 40% came from swine, 5% from poultry, 5% from beef cattle and a rounding error from everything else (sheep, goats, etc.). So, uncertainty about manure methane emissions derives largely from uncertainty about how that manure is being managed on farms – in a tank? An uncovered lagoon? How watery is it? Is it aerated? How long does it sit before it’s spread? Is it surface applied or injected? Where exactly are all these lagoons and is storage just a winter phenomena (as it used to be), or is manure being stored through the heat of summer too?
All these factors have shifted as the structure, geography, and methods of livestock husbandry have moved to more concentrated, higher density models in hotter places and seasons increasing emissions from manure a whopping 78% (or more) since 1990. Better collection of this on-farm management information could dramatically improve confidence in whether manure storage is responsible for 10%, 15%, or even more of US anthropogenic methane.
Despite an overall decline in cattle numbers, enteric emissions increased in recent decades.
It is both the cow and the how that drives enteric methane emissions. Even in 2015, nearly the all-time recent nadir of cattle numbers had higher enteric methane emissions than in 1990.
Clearly, each approach (top-down or bottom-up) comes with its own benefits and drawbacks, so the latest consensus guidance recommends implementing hybrid approaches.
Returning to the essay, the author transitions to labeling methane “the boogieman of greenhouse gasses.”
So let’s talk about the state of the science when it comes to methane, which is indeed both a worse boogieman than CO2, and “the only plausible way to limit warming over the next 20 years.” How is it both boogieman and potential salvation? The short answer is its structure. Methane’s structure with all four of those hydrogens hanging off the carbon makes it both 80-90 times more effective at trapping heat than CO2 on a molecule-to-molecule basis over a 20-year time horizon and more unstable (read: shorter lived in the atmosphere). Estimates of methane’s half-life in the atmosphere vary but converge around a decade whereas carbon dioxide’s is centuries.
These attributes are why we have initiatives like the Global Methane Pledge, which the US and 53 other nations have signed. The Biden Administration's methane plan recognizes that anthropogenic US methane emissions come from oil and gas (35%), livestock (40%), and landfills (20%), but is focusing mandatory reduction efforts primarily on oil and gas and landfills.
A general implication in this essay, however, is that *if* we believe that methane is worse than other GHGs, then we are necessarily and unfairly villainizing, and calling for the destruction of, cattle. This is a fantastical, and completely irrational and erroneous leap. Those who want to preserve the livability of our planet may want to dramatically curb the impact of livestock on the environment, but I have yet to hear one person, no matter how radical, call for wholesale destruction of livestock. No part of the political establishment, including the Biden administration, hates cows or any part of the agricultural sector. Despite burping up and pooping out the largest segment of our national methane emissions (40%), the Administration’s plan reads, "the President calls on the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to work with farmers and ranchers to identify voluntary, incentive-based approaches that will advance climate goals."
One more time for the folks in the back, "voluntary, incentive-based goals."
So just to take stock of this essay’s argument so far:
The precision with which you measure something alters the resulting measurement. (Okay!)
That means that math is inherently flawed and we can’t trust it. (Hold on…)
Yeah, like the math we use to measure that so-called “climate change” driver methane. (Excuse me?)
And because we use that scrub math to measure methane, that makes people hate cows… #unfair. (Um, no.)
This uneasy journey takes us to our first really explicit logical fallacy, a good, old fashioned false dichotomy.
“Methane has become the number one argument in recent calls to end all livestock farming in favor of “rewilding” landscapes to restore populations of wild animals.”
This is a textbook example of a false duality. There is no upcoming national ballot measure where we have to choose between “keep livestock, end nature” and “rewild landscapes, no more meat.” That’s bad logic! And that’s leaving aside the fact that “methane” is by no means the “number one argument” for ending livestock farming and “rewilding” landscapes.
There are much bigger, more common, more obvious, more “number one arguments” for ending animal agriculture other than “methane.” A few that come to mind; animal welfare (confining animals is tough on sentient creatures), environmental health (confining animals creates huge negative impacts on water, soil, air, etc.), and human welfare (the effects of confining animals (smells, sounds, pollution, etc.) are bad for human health and well-being). But let’s not talk about any of those, because this essay doesn’t want to engage with those decades old, well-considered, thoughtful, and difficult debates.
Instead, it engages with the slippery slope argument that we can never eliminate all methane sources:
“If we’re using methane emissions as our ruler for a ‘healthy planet,’ then we’ll still be at war with a ‘rewilded’ world because methane emissions would not necessarily decrease.”
If you hate methane, goes the argument, then you hate all wild animals, too, because some wild animals also produce methane. The suggestion seems to be that after we’ve gone out and, like idiots, cleaned up modern livestock production and restored native landscapes, all those ruminants are going to dig pits, build barns, go inside, selectively breed themselves into gargantuan, unlivable versions of themselves, and then breed and multiply vastly beyond the limits of their environments by having other animals (the birds, I guess?) bring them feed grown all around the world.
Oh wait. They aren’t going to do that? That’s why comparing “native populations of wild ungulates” to “modern livestock production” is a red herring.
So we don’t find ourselves in another paradox, there is no math equation deciding what metrics matter. There are no methane-motivated death squads on the move, and no one is calling for them either. No one believes that we should kill all ungulates because they produce methane.
And then we get to the South Sudanese wetland.
“If we’re still using methane as our ruler, we should eliminate this methane source, too, right?”
This point further ups the ante on our slippery slope fallacy, and worse, it’s an argument aiming to convince us to give away all of our agency. It suggests we should do nothing because the system, the way it is right now, is the *best possible option* because the alternative would be for us to destroy our home and the treasures it holds. No one Is arguing that to avert climate change requires us to destroy all methane from every source on our whole planet, except for this essay and other people who are trying to convince you to accept the status quo and butt out of agriculture’s business.
Again, let us give credit where credit is due, as with the following quote.
“Fixating on only the easily quantifiable at the expense of a planet full of things that are inherently resistant to reductionistic measurements is the same industrialized, monoculture thinking that got us into this climate crisis in the first place.”
Yes! The problem is, that is exactly what this essay is doing. Never have we heard *anyone* so “fixated” on an “easily quantifiable” variable, and willing to put it toe-to-toe with our planet. Our world, like our lives, is resistant to reductionist measurements, which is why so few people do it, besides bad-faith debaters of course!
(We’ll just sneak in that “cattle are good, period.” is about as reductionist, industrialized, and monoculture as an idea can get. But that does seem to be the central idea of this essay.)
Thanks for reading part one of our What Gets Regen Blogged Gets Manipulated series. We’ll be back soon with part 2 - ‘Has Science Betrayed Us?’.
