An Environmental Article used with permission from All-Creatures.org

Virginia Bell reports on Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop's new paper, which provides evidence that animal agriculture is the leading cause of climate change and discusses why this was not previously recognized.

Fossil Fuels are Not the Main Cause of Climate Change
From Virginia Bell
March 2025

Photo from Canva

Fossil Fuels are not the Leading Cause of Climate Change
Animal Agriculture is the Leading Cause of Climate Change

People would be forgiven for thinking that climate change is the only emergency facing the planet, and that the only way to fix things is to end fossil fuel extraction and develop sustainable energy. Everyone tends to concentrate on climate change and fossil fuels, turning what amounts to a blind eye to other threats - loss of biodiversity, ecosystems collapse, pollution, animal agriculture.

This suits businesses, as there's plenty of money to be made from technological methods of tackling climate change.

Breaking News

Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop, who served as principal scientist on Natural Resources for the Queensland Government, has presented a paper explaining that fossil fuels are not the leading cause of climate change, animal agriculture is, and also explaining how the mistake that fossil fuels are the leading cause arose.

The 3 reasons why animal agriculture was not recognised as the leading cause of climate change are:

1. Deforestation has been undervalued
2. Methane has been undervalued
3. The cooling effect of fossil fuel emissions has been ignored.

Deforestation has been undervalued.

Carbon from deforestation and carbon from fossil fuels have been calculated differently. The IPCC undercounts CO2 emissions from deforestation and land use change by using net accounting for land use change emissions and gross accounting for fossil fuel emissions, even though a CO2 molecule emitted from deforestation behaves exactly the same as a CO2 molecule emitted from fossil fuel combustion.

They should be calculated in the same way. When they are, we see that we have released more carbon from deforestation than we have released from fossil fuels. In fact, we have released 3 times more carbon from deforestation since 1750 than previously acknowledged, and 19% more carbon from deforestation than from fossil fuels.

Animal agriculture is the main driver of deforestation.

Methane has been undervalued.

The harmful effects of methane have been underestimated, also by a factor of 3, since 1750.

We know the figures for the heating effects of the various greenhouse gases, and we know how much of each gas has been emitted. Which enables us to see that methane’s heating effect has been underestimated by 3 times.

The cooling effect of fossil fuel emissions has been ignored.

The cooling effect of fossil fuel aerosols - sulphur dioxides and nitrogen oxides - has not been counted, despite having prevented 0.9%C warming. That’s nearly 1%C global warming having been prevented by fossil fuels! How could that have been ignored by the IPCC in its calculations?

IPCC’s improved method of calculation

The IPCC had been using global warming potentials covering 100 years to compare the heating effect of different greenhouse gases – the GWP100 method. This works for nitrous oxide, which lasts for 100 years. It doesn’t work so well for carbon dioxide, which lasts for several hundred years, and very much doesn’t work for methane, which lasts for 9 years.

Scientists have now come up with the GWP star system of calculating the heating potential of greenhouse gases.

Data from 1750 to 2020

The Global Carbon Budget shows all the CO2 released from fossil fuels every year from 1750.

The gross and nett land carbon emissions for each year from 1750 can also be shown. These are mainly caused by deforestation.

All the CO2 emitted since 1750 has been counted and assessed for how much warming has been produced.

So the effective radiative forcing can be calculated, and it can be shown that we’ve emitted more carbon from deforestation than we have from fossil fuels. It can be seen that methane has produced 3 times more warming than previously thought, and 90 times more warming than CO2.

The effective radiative forcing

Recently the IPCC worked out the effective radiative forcing (heating effect) of 10 greenhouse gasses from 1750 to 2020.

The infographic shown below is taken from Gerard Bisshop’s Paper on climate change, and is based on the IPCC figures. It shows the net/average warming of the different greenhouse gases. The cooling effect of the gases is shown below the 0.000 line. The heating average is the dot above the line.

Temperature change since 1750. The latest data shows that:

• Fossil fuels have produced 0.21 degrees Centigrade rise in temperature
• Methane has produced 0.6 degrees Centigrade rise in temperature
• Agriculture has produced 0.74 degrees Centigrade rise in temperature, of which
• Animal Agriculture has produced 0.64 degrees Centigrade rise in temperature
• Animal agriculture has produced 3 times as much warming as fossil fuels.

Also, the Carbon Opportunity Cost has been ignored.

It should be pointed out here that the IPCC ignores the vast majority of anthropogenic CO2 emissions associated primarily with animal husbandry activities by claiming that they are part of the “natural” cycle.

This presumes that the artificial impregnation of billions of farmed animals, the fishing of the oceans with miles wide nets, the chopping down and burning of vegetation that the farmed animals did not eat in order to maintain grazing lands and prevent forests from regenerating – it presumes that all these activities are natural processes for which humans bear no responsibility.

The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report shows these activities to be responsible for more than 5 times as much emissions as fossil fuel combustion.

How to save the world

If we end fossil fuels while doing nothing about animal agriculture, global warming will increase alarmingly because the cooling effects of fossil fuels will have ended quickly, while the heating effects of fossil fuels will linger for decades and the heating effects of animal agriculture will rise unchecked.

We need to end animal agriculture as the first priority, so that its high levels of warming are checked and land is freed to draw down the excess carbon in the atmosphere, giving us space to change over from fossil fuels to green energy gradually.

Trees are a powerful ally in fighting global warming.

Forests have an immensely important role to play. They hold 90% of the above ground carbon.

76% of all CO2 emissions have been locked up by forests from 1750-2020.

The oceans have soaked up 90% of the global warming.

Methane is key to warming or cooling. It is the best lever we have for reducing global warming.

Nature will help and is helping us. We have to look after nature. We can and must do this by:

• Ending methane emissions
• Rewilding
• Protecting forests
• Planting trees
• Most of all, ending animal agriculture and divesting from banks and businesses that invest in animal agriculture.

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: March 4, 2025
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