Advice by Stuff writer Olivia Wannan that Burger King customers wanting to reduce their emissions should opt for a meatless burger is ill-founded
Stuff in an article examining the claim by Burger King that it has a low methane emissions burger also claimed that red meat has one of the highest greenhouse gas footprints of any food and this is also incorrect.
Stuff are confusing carbon emissions, which are not a greenhouse gas, with real greenhouse gas emissions such as CO2, methane and nitrous oxide, when they talk of greenhouse gas footprints.
Making statements about the relative environmental impacts of meat and non meat products based on their relative carbon emissions is to mislead.
Carbon emissions or CO2 equivalents are derived by using a system that quantifies different real greenhouse gases in terms of their carbon dioxide equivalence. Methane is said to have a global warming potential of around 28 times that of CO2 so every tonne of methane emitted is quantified as 28 tonnes of CO2 equivalent or carbon.
The problem is that for this equivalence system and the carbon emissions it creates to be genuine, both the emissions of methane and CO2 need to be causing an increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas and while some methane does, such as burning natural gas, most livestock emissions don’t. They are for the most part cyclical emissions which do not cause an increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas and therefore cannot be equated to emissions which do. To do so would be stupid in fact.
Dr Harry Clark, who is director of the NZ Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre and was quoted in the Stuff article has described the system of using CO2 equivalents or carbon as a system to quantify methane emissions that “does not measure the actual warming caused by emissions (of methane) and ignores the fact that methane does not accumulate in the atmosphere in the same way as CO2”. In other words they are using a system to quantify methane emissions which ignores fundamental scientific properties of methane. Drawing any conclusions about the impact of methane emissions based on such a system would be ridiculous.
While meat does produce high carbon emissions these do not mean anything because most of these emissions are just fake ghost theoretical emissions created by using a scientifically discredited system. The methane is cycling in a neutral manner to and from the atmosphere and is not causing any increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas and these emissions cannot be equated to an emission of CO2 which is not atmospherically neutral and does cause an increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas and does cause warming.
It is so disappointing that our media continue to publish false information about the impact of livestock emissions. With the amount of information out there that shows quite clearly that carbon emissions sourced from ruminant methane are not the same as and cannot be equated to carbon emissions such as CO2, there is no excuse for misleading the public this way.
The Stuff article clearly refers to meat having the highest greenhouse gas footprint, not carbon footprint so it is quite wrong, as it is to advise people they can reduce their emissions by not eating meat which produces mostly atmospherically neutral emissions, and to instead eat non meat products instead which usually have higher emissions when you factor in that all the emissions they produce do cause an increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas.
It is quite possible that the meat burger is producing less emissions of any real greenhouse gas which is causing a real increase in real atmospheric greenhouse gas than the fake product.
To read the article in Stuff click link