By Viv Forbes
The Green Wreckers who destroyed Australia’s cheap reliable electricity are now targeting our cattle industry.
They use fake science and false advertising to threaten our right to produce and consume real meat.
This stupidity relies on a totally false argument that grazing animals cause global warming by releasing carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere.
However, grazing animals have already reached “Net Zero”. They add ZERO carbon to the environment – they just help to recycle the same carbon products, endlessly.
Grasses and crops extract CO2 from the atmosphere and add minerals, water and nutrients from the soil. They then use solar energy to create plant sugars and release oxygen. All grasses are either eaten by grazing animals and termites, or burnt in grass-fires lit by humans or lightning. Then comes the rain, the grasses re-grow, and the cycle starts again.
Cattle harvest these crops and grasses, creating meat, bones and exhaust gases. (That’s real carbon farming.)
Some of the carbon products that cattle eat get exhausted from both ends as CO2 and methane but not one atom of new carbon is introduced to the atmosphere by grasses, crops or cattle. They are just cogs in the endless carbon cycle that supports all life on Earth.
Moreover, contrary to the usual alarms, the atmospheric warming impact of methane from cattle is negligible since the few radiation absorption lines of methane are swamped by the absorption bands of the much more abundant water vapour. The same heat cannot be trapped twice. As physicist Dr Tom Sheahen points out:
Worrying about methane emissions is the greatest waste of time
in the entire lexicon of global warming fanaticism. . . .
CH4’s effect is so tiny as to be completely irrelevant.
Cattle even aid carbon sequestration as their meat gets incorporated into long-lived human bodies.
As the decades and centuries pass, prodigious amounts of carbon are transferred from the atmosphere to grasses, to beef steak and hamburgers, to milk and cream, and thus to human bodies and bones.
Eventually, billions of human bodies are buried (together with the considerable carbon fixed in their wooden coffins). Unlike the carbon temporarily captured in soils, much of this carbon in human cemeteries is often permanently captured and buried.
Not only are Greens ignorant of the full carbon cycle of life, they also can’t count properly – they just measure what suits their red-green agenda. Moreover, sequestration (or trying to bury carbon forever) is anti-life and serves no useful purpose. All farmed soils will become severely deficient unless they are fertilised with organic nutrients (like composted biomass or cattle manure) and mined or manufactured fertilisers containing, lime, magnesite, phosphate, nitrogen and trace elements.
Cattle have always served human needs by converting inedible grasses into edible proteins and fats. Their hides make leather, and their bones and waste are recycled to make fertiliser.
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors treasured meat, supplemented by seasonal fruits, bulbs and tubers. When threatened by occasional starvation they learned how to process and eat grass seeds safely. We interfere with this ancient food heritage at our peril.
Men and cattle share millennia of history. Since the days of Aurochs and Longhorns, Bison and Buffalo, Nguni and Waygu, Yak and Zebu, men have hunted, protected, branded, worshipped, harvested, stolen, re-branded, milked and farmed Herefords, Santa Gertrudis, Shorthorns, Angus, Charolais, Jerseys, Friesians, Guernseys and many other breeds.
But now Green wackos from the aptly named “Extinction Rebellion” plan to ration and tax real meat while fraudulently labelling a manufactured plant-based concoction as “meat”.
Australia has about 26 million cattle producing meat, milk and cream. If meat is to be rationed why not also ration milk and cream for weet-bix, deserts and cappuccinos?
Why cull Australia’s cattle when India has more than 300 million cattle and lets millions of them roam freely because Hindus consider them sacred?
Why ration red meat in Australia when Brazil alone has more than 230 million cattle and South America’s beef consumption exceeds that of the USA and Australia, in total and per capita?
Why ration red meat in Australia when China, with about 97 million cattle, continually increases its meat consumption?
These cattle haters cannot be trusted. If meat rationing fails they will discover or invent a bovine disease that requires mass slaughter of cattle followed by more land closures and new decrees on carrying capacity. Even more land will be denied to pastoralists and their cattle.
However, even if all cattle suddenly vanished from the face of the Earth, grass growth would explode to feed mammoth bushfires, or be consumed by termites, or just rot – a real Negative Sum game to achieve world starvation. Maybe de-population is their plan?
Here is a message for the cattle haters, people haters and meat counterfeiters: “Hands Off our Grasslands, our Cattle and our Real Meat.”
Read More:
Loony Greens demand a Meat Tax:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/01/05/loony-greens-demand-meat-tax/
Consumers don’t want plant food labelled as meat:
https://www.stockjournal.com.au/story/7382435/aussie-shoppers-confused-by-fake-meat-labels-surveys-emphatic-result/
Greenhouse Gases – the effect of CO2 from ruminants is trivial and methane is irrelevant:
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/allison-sheahen-final-the-journal-sept-2018-v6.pdf
UN claims Meat is the World’s most urgent problem – Not Even Close:
https://climatechangedispatch.com/unep-claims-the-worlds-most-urgent-problem-is-meat-not-even-close/
World must reach ‘peak meat’ by 2030 to meet climate change targets:
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/12/world/peak-meat-2030-lancet-intl-scli-scn/index.html
Real Meat is a Natural Product Fuelled by Solar Powered Bio-Mass:
https://saltbushclub.com/2020/12/10/fake-meat/
Viv Forbes has tertiary qualifications in geology, chemistry, physics and soil science and is Executive Director of the Saltbush Club. He and his wife have spent a lifetime raising cattle, sheep and goats on natural pastures using rotational grazing with minimal chemicals or drugs. They understand soil health and the Carbon Cycle of Life. They eat real meat raised on natural pastures.
Get the maths done on emissions of plant based meat (or the vegetarian diet for that matter).
Grass fed beef is basically net zero emissions, correct.
Fertiliser, diesel, chemicals and other carbon inputs for crops produces 10 times the emissions of grass fed beef, and the fertiliser and diesel components are not offset by the growing crop. This also exposes soil and burning stubbles releases any recovered photosynthesised plant carbon straight back into the atmosphere.
The plants grown for fake milk and fake meat are far more chemical and fertiliser intensive than traditional oats or wheat or barley.
Plant based proteins and fake meat are 10 times worse for the atmosphere than grass fed beef.
I don’t know why the meat and livestock industry does not investigate and advertise this.
Just simply—
About livestock and methane farts and global warming.
Grass grows by absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere via photosynthesis.
Livestock eat the grass, digest it, convert it to sugars and use that to grow meat and fat, make manure and run about.
Some of the grass ends up being converted to methane during digestion which gets belched and farted out into the atmosphere, where it is soon degraded and converted into CO2 by the natural hydroxyl radical. Some is also converted into CO2 by respiration, but far less CO2 than originally went into the grass. This returned atmospheric CO2 is soon snapped up by CO2 starved grass and plants, and eaten by livestock, and so on.
Nett result, there is less CO2 in the atmosphere, as some has been sequestered into meat and fat for us to eat, or hides and fibre for us to wear. Some of the “carbon” gets sequestered into the soil as manure.
Thus livestock farming ACTUALLY reduces atmospheric CO2, or GHGs, and thus has a beneficial effect on reducing global warming! (If any).
It has also been shown that protein deprivation in Neonates (new borns) and young children leads to defective neural development and subsequent diminished IQ.
The studies were done, predominantly in Africa.
I saw somewhere that the UN has ruled that people will get 14 grams of meat per day, to help eliminate global warming!!!
White-ants destroy things but Green-ants are from an imported species, now rapidly mutating to destroy our future.
This wee extract from ‘The versed writing of Jock McPoet’ may entertain, inform and amuse.
************************
The business lunch invitation invited guests to advise any dietary preferences. The author’s stated preference of ‘carnivore’ was greeted with shock and horror at the registration desk. Clearly for some, the carnivore is over.
‘Fair cow’
Some of us are so contrarian
Who eat only vegetarian.
We could evolve just like a cow
Eating tasteless grass-like chow.
But our molars were designed
To chew meat, which is refined
Grassy stuff, turned into steak …
Better for your teeth than cake.
9 Aug 2009
One other thing I found out about the UNITED NATIONS during my researches is that all signatories to UN and UNESCO initiatives, like the Smart Cities programs etc, are regarded as “as contractors”.
Don’t ask me to find it again, as I have other,more pressing, things to do; but I found this whilst researching UNESCO in regard to the former Mayor of Geelong, who a couple of years ago was off to Poland to attend a UNESCO conference.
One of the UNESCO documents I found referred to the alleged CONTRACTORS.
So your council-most are signatories to UN/UNESCO programs, are in a business relationship with UNESCO.
This is not surprising, as all councils are corporatised, are operating under ABNs, and are registered for GST.
On inquiring into their CORPORATE activities they will often claim “commercial in-confidence”.
Proof enough?
The UN has no right to rule anything unless we ratify it. We have never voted to join the UN and cannot elect our representatives or vote on any matter.
Another meat extract
The inspector in the Snoopy cartoon cried, ‘Ahah, the plot thins’. ‘Surely you mean the plot thickens’ said Charlie Brown. ‘You haven’t seen the plot’ said the author, Snoopy.
An inordinate amount of time and government (aka taxpayers’) money has been spent on researching the methane contributed to the atmosphere by animals. Someone (presumably in Canberra) came up with the suggestion that by exterminating feral camels in outback Australia, we could mitigate ‘climate change’. Unbelievable.
Our central planning bureaucrats, (survivors will be those fat cats)
Now plan to tax and trade emissions, a power game to fill ambitions.
(Meter cow gas … tax and file ‘em ? In-mates will run the asylum)
Trade emissions – any quota, can’t change the climate one iota.
So please grab your phone and pen, ask your local Member when
They’ve done their due, due diligence, for ignorance is no defence.
Jock McPoet
Humans would not have evolved without having the ability to eat meat. That protein allowed the expansion of brains and brain-power and the ability to live almost anywhere on Earth by eating animals that are able to survive where humans cannot.
Surely people have a right to freedom of choice.
Strange how one side – those with independent thinking who only wish to exercise their rights to freedom of choice, are dictated to and dominated by another side. The socialist programmers – war mongers – usually known as Labour Parties – Democrats – Socialists – Communists, dictate to the peace loving other side.
A 2 month drive through the Australian outback tells me termites are thriving everywhere.
If cattle do not harvest the grass, then the termites will. Termites generate vast quantities of methane currently so if activists succeed in shutting down beef farming, the resulting reduction in methane will be offset by an expansion in termite related emissions. Range fed beef should not be compared with feedlot beef when discussing methane.
Let THEM eat bugs!
Viv,
You have exposed the dangers that lie ahead. If the livestock industry don’t get on the march, then they are fooling themselves, and good for you to send this warning out. There are plenty in the Liberals’ and LNP who do not realize the harm that would be done to Aust. by the Gov agreeing to some stupid action re Man made Climate Change in Glasgow especially with the time frame of 30 years!
When there is by far a greater danger to our Nation and life style obviously coming from China, so when will these naive people realize this? I hope well before rockets and fall on our Nation.
David Feez
And what about dog food? Is that exempt? There is a national dog-owning obsession among city people at the moment. “Fur babies”! Why don’t the greens attack dog owners? They probably all own dogs themselves. Hypocrites.
Why not pressure the AMLRDC (Australian Meat Livestock Research Development Corporation) into promoting beef? Which is their job?
This kind of letter simply promotes hysteria. I do not enjoy references to the “Loony Greens” as this does not dignify the political process. Unfortunately the Nationals who should be defending our interests, and who have less members that the Greens, are nothing more than servants for the mining industries.
I am a Liverpool Plains farmer whose family has farmed here for many generations, and it has been announced by the Nationals that they intend to establish CSG right through the heart of the plains. So sorry, I am for science and sensibility, not some hysterical, divisive letter. Pressure the AMLRDC and get some action out of them.
Fantastic stuff Viv. All power to you and your supporters.
Only last Christmas dinner I exclaimed to all at the big table, including nieces and nephews, in laws etc mostly of Lefty persuasion that we were about to consume “ the ultimate vegetarian made meat- herbivore meat”
There was stunned silence, odd looks and then they all admitted “it was rather nice NZ lamb Uncle Don”.
I had made a convincing argument that none were able to refute.
It seems that after 20 plus years of constant misinformation about meat and climate, well their brain had been conditioned to how all is bad – very bad. And looking at NZ farming today, well it seems we are at “peak abuse” and all driven from misinformation.
So why should I care? Well farming was my life and well I have history – form!
In 2003 I was a major part of FART (Fight Against Ridiculous Taxes) where society stood with farmers and believed that taxing belching and burping ruminants was fantasy-land stuff. We marched on Parliament and in theory we thought we had killed of the concept. But later on I was to find that elements in other farmer-owned lobby or levy groups were undermining us politically.
Then in 2008/11, I was the National President of Federated Farmers of NZ.
Why didn’t I fix the lie? (that methane all bad and was deleterious to the planet’s temperature).
Well I tried.
I even did masses of media and addressed conferences in NZ and Australia informing that taxing for something such as methane was a nonsense and would only move capital from farming, making farming less viable and recanting all the time that NZ farming already was at the gold standard – that being subsidy free farming.
My big play was that subsidy-free farming made farmers really efficient resource users and the legislated ETS ( Emission Trading Scheme) was in fact a major impediment to what we already had – an Efficiency Trading Scheme.
The government of the time, National Party (the equivalent of the Libs in Oz) didn’t like my constant carping about climate and methane nonsense. Some got quite nasty. I’m no softy but in todays world, some of their actions would be deemed bullying (such as the time when I was roughed up by a Ministers minders in the Wellington airport)
So looking back, I was too respectful, too nice.
Today I’m gutted I didn’t have access to papers from Sheahen, Happer, van Wijngaarden et al and their knowledge that clearly exposes the methane lie being driven by many governments.
I had a CC policy advisor input who I now know was just keeping in safe sync with the Wellington political machinery and I was an irritant who would go away in 2011. When I retired I commented that it was a disappointment that we hadn’t kicked the methane lie for touch, he said “but Don, it’s my job”.
And so in the intervening years observing and watching this subject what I see a group of appeasers in the farmer lobby space and it is clear someone has to shout out to politicians, bureaucrats, self interested ” scientists or Carbon traders and all the brainwashed, to bloody well “STOP LYING”.
I will always remember Don’s honesty and determination in the Fight Against Ridiculous Taxes here in New Zealand. The era of overpaid Chief Executives with meaningless degrees have put paid to open and honest debate in all walks of life.
Brilliant piece on cattle net zero, Viv.
We are constantly told our wood-burning power stations are net zero because they are just putting the CO2 which the trees removed back into atmosphere. Same must apply to cattle. I hadn’t thought of that.
To be consistent, surely those who would seek the elimination of the pastoral industry should also demand the elimination of those magnificent herds of wild herbivores, the stars of Attenborough documentaries, from Africa, Europe (including Santa’s reindeer herds), Asia and the Americas. The wild carnivores will just have to evolve rapidly.
In the Dutch language there is term known as “Miere neuker”. Literally translated, it means one who would have relations with an Ant. But the connotation goes deeper in that one would have intrinsically investigate and locate the sexual organ of the insect in the first place before embarking on the logistics of engaging in the act. I consider the CO2 argument and climate alarmists in the same vein of pointless enquiry.
Do any of them(greens and animal sooks) stop to consider why there is so little CO2, volumetrically, in the atmosphere at any one time? It is exactly because of that carbon cycle referred to in the article and earlier comments.
Guess what plant based medium is the greatest consumer of CO2 on Earth? …… The Oceans Algae and seaweeds … they leave land based plants, cultivated or not, for dead, in the competition for CO2.
The Greens, well, they will probably want to drain the swamp if they realized this.
This is what the UN has in store – “Eat Bugs not Meat”:
https://dailycaller.com/2015/05/04/kofi-annan-eat-bugs-to-stop-global-warming/
Viv Forbes