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Global Warming Essay

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The main reason why I chose to research this topic and why it fascinates me, is mainly based on the fact that our society has convinced us that animal agriculture, which fuels meat consumption, is not responsible for most of our greenhouse gases. When in fact, numerous studies has proven that livestock, and the byproducts that come along with it are responsible for approximately 51% of all worldwide GHG emissions3. Along with that, I find it interesting that livestock is blameworthy “for 65% of all human-related emissions of nitrous oxide– a greenhouse gas with 296 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.”3 I found all of the information very interesting, but I had to see the application and actual data.
Upon reading and …show more content…

Another data set was collected from a food frequency questionnaire that was set to estimate the consumption of 130 food items over 12 months, which resulted in steady data collection.1
A second method used was for classifying the six diet groups. The high meat-eaters were those who consumed more or equal to 100 grams of meat a day, medium meat-eaters consumed 50 to 99 grams of meat per day, low meat-eaters consumed 0 to 50 grams of meat per day, pescitarians, vegetarians, and vegans. Initially I loved this categorization method, however a breakdown of various meats (beef, pork, etc.) would have been helpful, for each animal produces a different amount of GHG emissions.
The third method used was for calculating GHG emissions, which analyzed 130 food items form UK food consumption tables1, weighted by kgCO2e per 100 grams of food. This method was adapted from another study, investigating carbon taxes on foods in the UK1. A food balance sheet from the Food and Agriculture Organization from 2013 was also used, and I thought that this form of data collection was useful but came short. In this study they didn’t have every single food item consumed in the provided appendix, so they constructed an ‘adjustment for density’ algorithm to be used for the following: cheese, fruit juice, dried fruit, soy milk, etc.. How else would one count a GHG emission for

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