Livestock, Methane and Climate

Abstract

Methane emissions by livestock have a negligible effect on Earth's temperature. For example, killing all of the approximately 1.6 billion cattle on Earth in the year 2025, when this paper was written, would only reduce atmospheric methane concentrations enough to change the temperature by -0.04 C. Killing all 1.3 billion sheep would lead to a temperature change of -0.004 C. New Zealand's pledge to reduce methane emissions of their livestock by 14% to 24% from those in the year 2017 would change the temperature by -0.000005 to -0.000008 C, far too small to measure. These are maximum temperature savings where methane emissions from domestic livestock are not replaced by other sources (such as wild ruminants and termites) during the inevitable rewilding of managed grasslands and rangelands.