People Still Don't Get the Link between Meat Consumption and Climate Change

[NickB79]

12. Considering how much land we've converted to fields, fueled with synthetic fertilizer

I'd say the amount of biomass on the planet is substantially higher today than in millenia past. You are incorrect when you state "Increased atmospheric carbon has nothing to do with plant and animals it's all to do with fossil fuel burning." The use of fossil fuels to farm grains to then raise livestock at densities far above what natural systems could maintain means the livestock themselves become a huge new source of carbon emissions.

One example: we currently have 90 million head of cattle in the US today, with another 15 million in Canada and 8 million in Mexico. Before Europeans arrived, the closest comparable species was the bison, and they peaked out at 25 million head. We have almost 5 times as many cattle today as we used to have bison due to modern agriculture.

We're currently farming almost HALF the land mass of the entire planet (which is amazing considering how much land is unfarmable because of mountain ranges, deserts, ice caps, etc), and using so much nitrogen fertilizer that we're fundamentally shifted the nitrogen cycle globally: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1209_051209_crops_map.html

A fellow DUer here has put considerable effort into studying what agriculture has done to the sheer biomass of just animal life on the planet, and it's a bit shocking if it's anywhere near accurate: http://www.democraticunderground.com/112783229