Livestock farms not to blame

Madam, – The climate change conference in Geneva reported last week and media outlets chose to concentrate on feeding us with the story that eminent scientists at the UN IPCC say livestock farming is a major cause of global warming.

Common sense tells us that agriculture and livestock are pretty insignificant as far as the climate change story is concerned.

Methane produced by ruminant livestock is a tiny fraction of global methane emissions.

Most methane is produced by natural processes in swamps, jungles and bogs or is released from oil or coal extraction.

Rice paddy fields probably produce as much or more methane than all the world’s ruminants but we haven’t heard any suggestion that we should stop eating rice.

If you want to understand why we have a climate change problem, go to Heathrow and watch one aeroplane landing and another taking off every two minutes or so, with plans in hand to build a third runway.

Or go to Poland or Lower Saxony and watch them digging out vast quantities of lignite to burn in their power stations for cheap electricity or go to Brazil and see them tearing down vast tracts of rainforest.

Or you could go to China and other countries in Asia where they are constantly building new coal-fired power stations mainly fuelled by Australian coal.

Just please don’t try to pin all the blame for climate change on farming and particularly the largely pastoral beef, dairy and sheep production that we have in the UK.

Douglas Norrie. Denhead of Arbirlot, Arbroath.