Beware science-based ignorance

Capital Press Editorial

June 6, 2010

During this era of science-based politics it's crucial to double-check the science. Often policy-makers and others look at the numbers and jump to conclusions that, while science-based, are wrong.

The debate over how much livestock contributes to greenhouse gases is a perfect example of that.

It is not news that cattle emit gases, including methane and carbon dioxide. Anyone who has ever walked through a dairy barn knows that and probably stepped in a little of it, too.

That's basic biology, but in 2006, some United Nations scientists came up with the conclusion that livestock operations produce 18 percent of the world's greenhouse gases. On its face, that seems doubtful. When compared with all of the coal- and oil-burning power plants and all of the gas- and diesel-powered cars and trucks in the world, to argue that nearly one-fifth of world's climate change can be traced to the rear end of a cow or other animals seems far-fetched.

That's where Frank Mitloehner, a University of California-Davis air-quality expert, came in. Instead of joining the chorus, he did what any good scientist would do. He undertook research to determine the truth.

What he found was the U.N. scientists had thrown in every factor they could think of when adding up the impact of the livestock industry. They included such things as trucking cattle and feed production into livestock's carbon footprint.

But here's the catch -- they didn't do the same thing for transportation or other industries.

Hence, though the science may have technically been correct, the conclusions were wrong.

Instead, Mitloehner found that animal agriculture's impact on the atmosphere was far less than the U.N. scientists said four years ago.

In the United States, he found that transportation accounts for at least 26 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, compared to roughly 6 to 8 percent for all of agriculture. Of that, he said, "less than 3 percent is associated with livestock production."

In fact, a new report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization appears to agree with Mitloehner's conclusions. Worldwide, dairies contribute just 2.7 percent of the world's greenhouse gases. Moreover, North American's efficient dairy farms have the world's lowest per-animal emissions.

Of course, once politicians, anti-agriculture activists and others got ahold of the original study, they took to the mountaintops, decrying how "industrial" agriculture is not only making us fat but melting the polar ice caps, too. That the actual impact is much smaller will no doubt be ignored.

Call it science-based ignorance. Those with political agendas will interpret whatever data is available in a way that suits their needs, while the truth will be shunted off to the side.

Yes, the reliance on scientific studies beats wild guesses and intuition as a way of setting public policy. But only when the scope and context of the studies are fully understood can their true value be known.

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Source:  http://www.capitalpress.com/opinion/cs-dairy-air-editorial-052810-w-mitloehner-mug-and-cartoon