> The biomass of livestock is 14x larger than all other mammal, combined[1] (not counting humans). You have to be really intentional with the way you phrase things to point out that, yes, wild ruminants are essential to ecosystems.
Livestock have supplanted the biomass of wild ruminants and ungulates. As an example, North America had at least 60 million wild bison for millenia before it had 90 million cows. And that's not even accounting for the megafauna that existed prior to the mass extinctions of the Pleistocene (mammoths, giant bison, ground sloths, tapirs, steppe bison, saiga antelopes, giant muskox, wooly rhinos, etc etc) What do you think occupied the Great Plains before they mowed it down for corn fields?
The world has a billion cows, some estimate as many as 1.5 billion, at we expect that to grow significantly as China and India become more developed. I honestly don't think anyone would be worried about cattle if the world cattle population were 90 million. It would be somewhere below 1% if emissions at that point. It's literally a factor of more than 10x.
It's 90 million in USA, that's not disinformation that's a fact, and what I'm underscoring by pointing to the 60 million wild bison population in the mid 1800s in USA is that there hasn't been a significant change in global non-human mammal biomass.
Eurasia alone had 200+ million wooly mammoths during the ice age (note that wooly mammoths have 10x more mass than cows), and there were hundred of millions more megafauna with similar digestive systems for tens of millions of years.
At no point in the last 50 million years did any number of those species trigger large scale climate change. It probably would have been welcome in the midst of the ice age, to be honest.
Nobody is saying that cattle are the sole cause of climate change. Suggesting that is a non sequitur.
They are simply another artificial source of GHGs that are contributing to climate change. That's why you're statements are disinformation. The intention is to somehow equate the natural GHGs from species which arise very slowly and allow a balance to be maintained, generally, yes, in a cycle.
The point isn't that cows are a problem. It's that we've created a whole bunch of cows, very rapidly, without any corresponding plant life to offset the excess emissions they produce. While extremely unlikely, this could absolutely happen in a natural system, and it could still cause climate change if it did.
The problem is total GHGs in the atmosphere right now, of which livestock is a significant contribution.
> Nobody is saying that cattle are the sole cause of climate change.
I'm asserting they have zero effect on climate change, they have merely supplanted wild biomass that existed on a much broader scale for tens of millions of years and there is no evidence that an abundance of mammalian digestion has ever caused climate change in the 50+ million years that mammals have dominated life on earth.
> The point isn't that cows are a problem. It's that we've created a whole bunch of cows, very rapidly, without any corresponding plant life to offset the excess emissions they produce.
The only thing we've done is supplant wild mammals with domesticated mammals. In the absence of agriculture or even humans, mammals already dominated the planet.
As I referenced, wooly mammoths on one continent alone had a higher biomass than all the cows alive on the planet today. That is a completely extinct species, and there's hundreds of more extinct species where that came from:
You'll have to explain to me how it was that the Pleistocene featured such a high biomass of ungulates without a corresponding increase in temperatures.
>I'm asserting they have zero effect on climate change
This argument makes zero sense.
We know that the cattle produce methane via digestion. We know that methane is released into the atmosphere. We know that methane is a greenhouse gas. Thus, we know that these cattle, cattle that would otherwise not exist, are contributing to climate change.
This is a trivially demonstrable argument. The idea that you doubt it means that you are, at best, somehow deeply confused the relationship between GHG emission and climate change in general.
It makes perfect sense: the livestock methane has merely supplanted the wildlife methane that existed for 50 million years. In 50 million years of geological analysis on climate change, we have not documented one case where biological methane has triggered large scale climate change.
> Thus, we know that these cattle, cattle that would otherwise not exist, are contributing to climate change.
In the absence of cattle and especially in the absence of humans, other ruminants will naturally propagate, as they have a number of symbiotic relationships with various plant and animal species.
Ruminants have roamed the earth for 50+ million years, and they have been widely propagated in the hundreds of millions to billions of total global population for that entire time.
The Great Plains were filled with 60+ million American bison, a species which trends larger than cows themselves, but which is still so close genetically to cows that they can still breed together. Deer, antelope, elk, moose, sheep, goats, etc also have similar digestive systems and also existed in larger numbers in the wild prior to modern human expansion.
Livestock have supplanted the biomass of wild ruminants and ungulates. As an example, North America had at least 60 million wild bison for millenia before it had 90 million cows. And that's not even accounting for the megafauna that existed prior to the mass extinctions of the Pleistocene (mammoths, giant bison, ground sloths, tapirs, steppe bison, saiga antelopes, giant muskox, wooly rhinos, etc etc) What do you think occupied the Great Plains before they mowed it down for corn fields?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IgvgvDbG-Q