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Notes -
So, the way methane works is: it lasts about 12 years in the atmosphere, during which it gets completely broken down. But you have a lot of cows (~1.5B) constantly producing methane so you can think of the situation as a submarine that is constantly losing oxygen because of a leak but is also constantly getting air because of an open air tank. The overall result amounts to about a 0.5° increase in the planet's heat because of these cows. In other words, if you had a magic wand and made all the cows disappear, global temperatures would drop by about half a degree over the course of the next decade.
So methane has a significant negative impact on the climate but it can largely be managed and ameliorated through good policies. Proper manure storage can cut emissions by 50%, for example. Which is still worth discussing and thinking about, of course. But my priors were "cows are objectively bad, we need to cull the vast majority of them if we want humans to continue existing on this planet" which is very far from "the ecological impact of cows is a solvable problem".
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