Nicholas D Carter

Q&A: What the ‘controversial’ GWP* methane metric means for farming emissions - Carbon Brief A controversial way of measuring how much methane warms the planet has stirred debate in recent years – particularly around assessing the climate impact of livestock farming.

New methane GWP* article that covers my Seeing Stars report.

www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-the-...
@carbonbrief.org

What's still a red flag to me is the academics who championed GWP* continue to avoid calling out when it's being misused (ie. Frank using GWP* to claim Cali dairy can net cool).

The climate movement’s biggest weakness What the climate movement is getting dead wrong.

"meat industry narratives are welcomed and legitimized in much of the environmental movement (which) has contributed to public ignorance of the industry’s pollution"

www.vox.com/future-perfe... @kennytorrella.bsky.social

Simply reducing beef and lamb consumption to one serving a week -- as recommended by EAT-Lancet -- could reduce emissions by almost 3 billion tons CO2-eq. The equivalent of all of Russia's annual emissions.

Thanks to @melinawalling.bsky.social for including my thoughts in this article.

The EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy, sustainable, and just food systems The 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy, sustainable, and just food systems presents new evidence-based insights on nutrition and human health, within safe and just planetary boundaries. New to this...

As the report notes: disinformation & corporate power - with meat giants lobbying & funding biased science - remain major barriers to this shift.

Full report: www.thelancet.com/commissions-...

Drawdown® Explorer We know what we need to do: stop climate change as quickly as possible. Now, with the Drawdown Explorer, we know how to do it.

Many solutions flagged:

Shift subsidies from meat/dairy → plant foods.

Taxes, warning labels & ad bans on unhealthy foods (esp. for kids).

Protect & promote traditional plant-based diets.

Side note: see this new broader solutions explorer: drawdown.org/explorer

🫘 By 2050: this shift sees –33% ruminant meat, +63% fruits/veg/nuts
💊 Cut antimicrobial use by ~42%
🌱 Labour falls <5% when offset by growth in plant foods. Likely net if considering restoration work.
📈 10-25x payoff: $200–500B cost vs $5T benefits/yr

Food systems are the #1 driver of environmental breakdown, public health crises & inequity, based on new EAT-Lancet report by 50+ experts in 35+ countries.

Findings:
❤️‍🩹 Prevent ~15M deaths/yr by shifting to this mostly plant-based diet
🌍 Food drives 5 of 6 breached planetary boundaries

🧵

In general I think it's hard to combat scientific misinformation when some of the best research is locked behind an academic paywall, while lots of nonsense gets published free for everyone to read in predatory journals.

Really proud of our team at Project Drawdown.

We just launched the biggest thing we’ve ever done — by far.

A billion times more data than anyone has ever collected before, providing localized intelligence on 150+ climate solutions.

For free.

www.reuters.com/business/wor...

JBS, the world’s biggest meat producer, leads deforestation & methane emissions - and now faces for more slavery-like abuses.

So Brazil’s labor minister steps in to protect... JBS, not workers.

The only logic here is to cut demand for animal-sourced foods & enforce strict accountability.

There. Is. No. Such. Thing.
Cattle ranching is among the most destructive of all the world's industries.
"Regenerative" cattle ranching is simply greenwash.

We rightly put much focus on the climate emergency but the acceletating loss of biodiversity is equally an existential crisis, and what we eat is the biggest driver. Food production also plays a major role in our breaching of other planetary boundaries.

Food impacts on species extinction risks can vary by three orders of magnitude - Nature Food What we eat, as well as where and how it is grown, impacts species extinction risks through agricultural land use. Using a new global biodiversity impact data product, this study estimates how many sp...

Based on this new study:

Ball, T.S., Dales, M., Eyres, A. et al. Food impacts on species extinction risks can vary by three orders of magnitude. Nat Food (2025).
doi.org/10.1038/s430...

Agriculture drives more biodiversity loss than any other sector, with ruminant meat causing extinction risks ~340× higher than grains by mass and ~100× higher than legumes both by mass and when adjusted for protein.

SHIFT

We always get asked, "What can I *personally* do to help address climate change?"

Sadly, there hasn't been a very good answer to this question. Previous guides often treated people as monoliths, giving them a one-size-fits-all answer.

But that's changed now. Enter SHIFT.

jointheshift.earth

Global Methane Budget 2000–2020 Abstract. Understanding and quantifying the global methane (CH4) budget is important for assessing realistic pathways to mitigate climate change. CH4 is the second most important human-influenced gree...

'Cows just replaced the methane from wild bison'

Not even close.

At their peak, wild ruminants incl. bison emitted ~15 Tg CH₄/yr

Today’s 4+ billion farmed ruminants emit over 100 Tg CH₄/yr

That’s nearly 7x more methane.

essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/...

Why ‘no additional warming’ is a dangerous climate loophole Carbon budgets should be sent back to the climate council with clear instructions to reassess them against Paris commitments

I have a new column out today in The Irish Times: “Why ‘No Additional Warming’ Is a Dangerous Climate Loophole.”

www.irishtimes.com/environment/...

EDF senior scientist: "Diet is just too controversial, we just don’t know viable solutions and the data isn’t conclusive." 🙄

Wow...

Methane panel starting in just over an hour.

Still time to register:

us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Animal scientists like Frank here are closer to industry vets & reps than climate scientists.

They play the victim pretending they are aligned for working class farmers but are paid by the billionaire corps hurting farmers & externalizing eco & economic impacts that burden us all.

There are coordinated livestock industry efforts to change how methane is measured leading up to COP30 in Brazil (🧵)

Join us next Wednesday, September 3rd to learn more: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

If you're new to this topic, our report on methane and GWP* is a good primer: changingmarkets.org/wp-content/u...

As these independent scientists have also warned, the GWP* approach that prioritizes warming over time vs. emissions accountability is not in line with the Global Methane Pledge or the Paris Agreement:

biogenicmethane.org

If GWP* lobbying is successful, this could lead to some of the single highest methane emitting companies or countries falsely getting credit for cooling.

There are broader issues too. This sketchy accounting could justify increasing an areas fossil fuel sector.

“…increasing numbers is directly linked with increasing CH4 emissions... continued global livestock population growth between 1990 and 2019, including increases of 18% in cattle and buffalo numbers, and 30% in sheep and goat numbers, correspond[s] with CH4 emission trends” (IPCC, AR6 WGIII, p771).

There are coordinated livestock industry efforts to change how methane is measured leading up to COP30 in Brazil (🧵)

Join us next Wednesday, September 3rd to learn more: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

See the broader paper's key points on new ways high agricultural methane-emitting countries are trying to escape basic climate accountability:

bsky.app/profile/hann...

Figure 5. Trade Flows (USD) of Animal Sourced Food Products (ASFP) & indirect Land Use Change (iLUC) from animal feed. a: Aggregated trade flows from high and upper-middle income countries to low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and high-income countries. b: The percentage of the total iLUC area attributed globally by animal feed demand within countries classified by economic status.

Rich countries’ meat & dairy aren’t feeding the world.

Under 6% goes to nations where most underfed people live & 70%+ stays in rich markets & extracts global resources.

Meanwhile, we know that systemic shifts plant-based could feed 3.5B more people.

New study: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...