This is a genuine query, I am not being perverse. Do vegetarians excrete more greenhouse gases than do carnivores?

Don't get me wrong, vegetaianism has much going for it - health wise, to offset cruel animal husbandry and because the world can't feed all its human numbers on a high meat diet - but I expect that a vegetarian diet does produce more gas (farts, to put it bluntly).

After all, there are nearly 7 billions humans excreting a certain amount of gas, so I imagine this adds up to something tangible.

I have no idea how significant this is, maybe not much. But perhaps it should be put into the greenhouse gas equation.

I am not doubting the author's treatise, just adding a little bit. Well, more than a little bit, a few million cubic metres possibly.

OH lord save us from vegetarians
yes eating meat is sinfull a cow had to die
but seeds are life too

How many seeds died for your soy latea?
or eco systems to grow your rice or your pasta

The self same soy that was grown on destroyed amazon rain forrest
processed by huge multinationals in a three stage chemical caustic wash process that polutes rivers

let ye with sin not throw stones to distract from the damage growing food does

Cows eat grass [if it wasnt eaten by cows it would decay naturally or be eaten by something else

I cant believe govt is spending money on this [and not giving out free the cure ,a simple baceria

To compare coal to cattle is pure cccrap

Csiro did research they found this micro bacterial gut flora that reduces methane in the intestine of the grass eater's by 90 percent [just by setting in place in their gut a one time bacterial solution]

If only coal could do that
clean coal means using our air once to burn coal
[then bury it forever
how much air can we afford to bury before we run out of air?

No doudt they had the same solution on mars at some stage
it didnt work for them
it wont work for long now
clean coal BAH

we have magnetic drive just using magnetic repulsion in a graduated series [free energy we can use today
[no coal needed]

but big coal wont let that happen
blooming vegetarians got nothing better to do than find fault not solutions
no meat makes their brains numb?

The problems with methane in general and livestock in particular
are actually far worse than William realises, and he clearly
knows more than most. See the submission to
the Garnaut review

http://www.garnautreview.org.au/CA25734E0016A131/WebObj/D0846772ETSSubmission-GeoffRussell-ProfPeterSinger-ProfBarryBrook/$File/D08%2046772%20ETS%20Submission%20-%20Geoff%20Russell%20-%20Prof%20Peter%20Singer%20-%20Prof%20Barry%20Brook.pdf

The question about vegetarian emissions is interesting. Global meat
production is only about 220 calories per person per day, but of course
it isn't shared evenly --- i.e., most of the world eats very little meat
anyway but the health and environmental costs are massive.
From memory, methane from human sewage is about 30 mega tonnes and livestock emissions are about 80-90 megatonnes.

P.S. I just realised that the Garnaut people have chopped the
header page from the submission I pointed to
in my previous post. The Submission is
from me, Professor of Climate Change at Adelaide University, Barry
Brook and Professor Peter Singer of Princeton.

INteresting study geoff

So im presuming the cow figures were figured by capturing stools and averaging themm out by weight ? using an average
so how was the samples gathered?

In situe or in the lab?
[was the water content considered [does fast drying the cow pat retain more/less methane ?
[was the stool sample truelly representative of what goes on in nature?]
[ is methane production constant [re gut coleny methane reduction teqniques?]

Does one breed emit more [or less than another ?]

A bull the same as a steer or a cow [lot fed the same as grass fed?]
what life span we talking about here?[in years]

What is the back ground methane rate for natural decay in dry climate [and in wet climates] it seems we can in the lab extract every micro gram [but is that the fact in nature] ,how about burying [as in dung beetles [does that affect the decay rate]

Home composting produces huge ammounts of methane [vegetarians are great composters ] and that compost pile [for a family of vegetarians could well emit more than a cow]has this home composting methane been counted?

how about methane capture of sewrage ?
[is vegetarian stool more methane than meat eater?]

i hate average statistics [not every cow was measured you at best can give a mean] based on what numbers ,what growth ratio is predicted above back ground levels of methane ?

how much methane a drying swampland emit compared to a wet swampland?

how about drying rivers [hot rivers compared to deep cold rivers ?
,we are being very limeted in just headlining cows and coal

Its all too pat the headline picks on cows [how much methane released by cows compared to extracting coal?
[that must be releasing huge ammounts of methane]
then the method it is burned

Not enough real data it does not compute