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UnchainedTV: Have We Gotten Climate Change All Wrong? · UNCHAINEDTV'S Truth Files with Jane Velez-Mitchell

0:01
Welcome to the Unchained TV podcast with me, your host,
0:06
Jane Velez Mitchell.
0:08
We have breaking news for you.
0:10
Now we all know the planet is in crisis.
0:13
Don't need me to tell you that.
0:16
Global warming is creating so many problems.
0:19
There's climate anxiety and that climate crisis
0:22
is closer and closer.
0:25
We hear all the time about fossil fuels,
0:28
how terrible fossil fuels are.
0:31
But now there is a new paper suggesting
0:34
fossil fuels are not the main culprit,
0:37
that animal agriculture is the leading cause
0:41
of climate change.
0:43
Now, this is an extraordinary development
0:45
because it essentially means that everything
0:48
that's being done with the COP UN conferences
0:51
is missing the point and that we are not putting
0:55
the real culprit of climate change on trial.
1:00
We have the scientist who has just published
1:03
this paper with us today, Dr. Gerard Wedderburn-Bishop,
1:08
and he says he has the climate solution.
1:13
Now, I wanna put up the paper.
1:15
This looks very wonky.
1:17
Increased transparency in accounting conventions
1:19
could benefit climate policy,
1:22
a just published research paper.
1:24
But what if we told you that this is the key
1:29
to saving the planet?
1:31
What if I told you the gentleman you are about to hear from
1:35
has the real solution to climate change
1:38
because he is documenting the real cause,
1:43
the leading cause of climate change,
1:46
which is being denied by the powers that be.
1:49
Dr. Wedderburn-Bishop, give us, in plain English,
1:55
your thesis.
1:57
What are you saying, sir?
2:00
Thank you, Jane.
2:01
Yes, and I thought I'd actually do
2:04
something different today and tell you the origin story
2:08
about how this came to be.
2:11
And I think it, well, I just realized really,
2:15
it probably explains better the concepts
2:18
that we've worked through to come up with this result,
2:23
that animal agriculture is the leading cause
2:26
of climate change.
2:31
Over 10 years- Go ahead.
2:32
Yes, okay.
2:33
Thank you.
2:35
And thank you for your work, Jane.
2:37
You do amazing work and greatly admire what you do.
2:40
So thank you.
2:41
And thank you for having me on the show.
2:44
Yeah, so over 10 years ago, I left work.
2:48
My job was to map deforestation
2:51
for one of the state governments in Australia, Queensland.
2:54
And we were watching as 2,500 acres of bushland
3:01
was being cleared every day.
3:03
And over 90% of that was for grass-fed industries.
3:08
So I sort of, this had been building in me
3:12
to watching this, and the destruction is unbelievable.
3:16
You know, the noise of the big dozers,
3:20
the clanking of the chain,
3:21
they literally pull, you know, 60 foot, 100 foot trees.
3:25
They pull them out of the ground,
3:26
literally with this chain.
3:29
It's so destructive, so efficient at converting
3:33
from forest to grazing land.
3:37
And so this gets to you after a while.
3:39
It gets to your soul.
3:41
It makes you realise we can't keep doing this.
3:44
So I left work after decades in government,
3:49
federal and state.
3:50
I then was headhunted by a group called
3:54
Beyond Zero Emissions.
3:56
And their job was to look at Australia's emissions
4:00
of agriculture and land use,
4:02
and see how they could come down to zero.
4:05
And we did a plan.
4:07
We did a plan that was published in 2014.
4:09
And that is the origin story of these papers
4:13
that have just been published.
4:14
So I'll tell you the discoveries that we made
4:19
that led to these papers.
4:22
So first of all,
4:25
my job was to delve into Australia's greenhouse accounts.
4:29
Okay, every country does an analysis,
4:32
an assessment of their emissions,
4:35
and which gases and what causes.
4:38
And they submit that to the United Nations each year.
4:42
Now, these inventory rules were devised decades ago,
4:47
and they have controlled,
4:49
and they actually heavily influence
4:52
how we think about climate change.
4:55
And they control, in other words, our policy response,
4:59
what we do about it.
5:00
We know there's this much climate change,
5:04
this much emissions going in the atmosphere.
5:05
So what do we do about it?
5:07
So my job was to delve into the dark arts, if you like,
5:11
of greenhouse gas accounting,
5:14
and to look at Australia's national emissions
5:16
and our inventory.
5:19
So this struck me.
5:21
Now, tell me what you think of this.
5:24
When we burn fossil fuels, gas, oil, coal,
5:29
we produce carbon dioxide, right?
5:34
Now, when we cut down forests, we do the same thing.
5:39
In Australia, they bulldoze the trees together,
5:43
they call it stick raking.
5:45
They push them together, then they burn it,
5:47
and they burn it, and they burn it,
5:49
until it's all gone, it's all ash.
5:51
So either burning fossil fuels or burning forests
5:57
produces carbon dioxide.
5:58
Now, everyone knows that, that's no surprise.
6:02
But the interesting thing was this,
6:04
was that the people doing the deforestation,
6:09
like the industries driving that,
6:11
the grass-fed industries, basically,
6:13
they were being gifted offsets off their emissions
6:19
to the order of a discount of 2 3rds of their emissions.
6:24
Now, deforestation releases an awful lot of carbon dioxide,
6:28
but they were gifted this discount of 2 3rds.
6:34
Now, it turns out that that's the way we count it.
6:36
We count fossil fuels fully,
6:39
and we count deforestation only a third or so
6:43
of the emissions.
6:44
Okay, I'm gonna jump in,
6:46
because we gotta break it down.
6:48
So you're saying a new study finds
6:50
that agriculture has caused three times more warning
6:54
than fossil fuels,
6:56
and then you say that animal agriculture
6:59
causes more climate change than any other human activity.
7:03
Now, you have done a video on this
7:05
that is also on Unchained TV.
7:08
Let's play the clip.
7:10
If you wanna simplify it,
7:12
which is what we're trying to do today,
7:15
it's that they're accounting it wrong, bad accounting.
7:20
You know how people get in trouble
7:22
for doing bad accounting when it comes to money?
7:25
Well, this is bad accounting when it comes to climate change.
7:31
Let's listen, and then we'll discuss on the other side.
7:34
All right.
7:36
Agriculture and climate change.
7:38
This video explores the three developments
7:41
in climate accounting and climate science
7:44
that upend our understanding
7:46
of which human activities cause climate change.
7:50
The first is consistent carbon accounting,
7:53
the subject of a 2024 paper.
7:55
By IPCC convention,
7:58
we measure the full carbon dioxide emission
8:00
from fossil fuels,
8:01
but only about a third the emissions from land clearing.
8:06
This is inconsistent because all carbon emissions
8:09
are equally absorbed by growing vegetation and the oceans,
8:13
with the remainder staying in the atmosphere.
8:16
The airborne fraction affects our climate.
8:18
But emissions from both of them behave the same way
8:22
in the real world.
8:23
So why account for them differently?
8:26
Using consistent accounting,
8:28
we find that land clearing
8:30
has emitted more carbon than fossil fuels.
8:34
Extensive land users, therefore, become heavy emitters.
8:39
And the most extensive land users are animal agriculture.
8:44
So basically what you're saying, sir,
8:47
is that the powers that be,
8:49
including the United Nations,
8:51
are doing bad accounting
8:53
when it comes to the causes of climate change,
8:58
under-reporting animal agriculture
9:01
because they're under-reporting forest destruction
9:06
as opposed to fossil fuels.
9:09
And now it's very interesting that you should say that
9:13
because there have been articles
9:15
that have questioned the policies of the IPCC.
9:21
I will play those in a second,
9:23
but tell us in people terms,
9:25
why on earth, given that our earth is in crisis,
9:30
would they do bad accounting
9:33
when it comes to what's causing climate change?
9:38
Yes, thanks, Jane.
9:39
There are actually good reasons
9:41
for doing what they did early on.
9:44
You see, when the rules,
9:46
when the conventions were developed over three decades ago,
9:51
they knew that most of the emission of carbon
9:54
from any source was actually drawn down
9:56
by other growing vegetation.
9:58
So nature has been doing an amazing job
10:01
at sucking down our CO2.
10:06
And so what they reasoned was this,
10:08
that they reasoned that what's left in the atmosphere
10:12
is the part of that emission
10:14
that actually influences climate.
10:16
What's drawn down by vegetation is locked up.
10:19
Therefore, it does no longer influence climate.
10:23
And there is logic in that,
10:24
except that exactly that same process
10:28
happens to fossil fuel carbon dioxide.
10:30
When we burn fossil fuel carbon dioxide,
10:33
most of it is drawn down into vegetation,
10:35
but we count it differently.
10:37
So as you said, you hit the nail on the head.
10:40
It's just due to dodgy accounting
10:44
and it's accounting rules are hidden.
10:48
Most of us don't delve into that level
10:51
of how we add up, how we look at our emissions,
10:57
but that's the problem.
10:58
Okay, so let me go to an article that I wanna highlight.
11:03
The meat industry blocked the IPCC's attempt
11:07
to recommend a plant-based diet.
11:09
A leaked draft revealed how the meat industry
11:13
is obstructing efforts to curb climate change.
11:17
So, you're saying, well, this was done in good faith.
11:24
They did this because they thought it made sense at the time
11:28
but that article implies that they know full well,
11:32
the IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
11:36
It's the UN's leading climate change agency.
11:41
They have those infamous COP conferences
11:43
where they get together all over the world
11:45
and nothing much is accomplished.
11:47
Climate change is just getting worse.
11:50
Now, if they were so right and you were so wrong,
11:55
climate change would be getting better
11:57
because they keep having these climate conferences,
12:00
but it's just getting worse.
12:02
And even mainstream media is starting to describe
12:04
these COP conferences as a bit of a joke.
12:07
Now, you're saying, well, you know,
12:09
they were good-hearted and they're blah, blah, blah,
12:12
but this article implies that there may be financial motives
12:18
or industry pressure at work to suggest strongly
12:24
to the UN, no, do not recommend a plant-based diet.
12:29
I can tell you that organizations like the Plant-Based Treaty
12:33
have been fighting like crazy to get just plant-based meals
12:37
served at these COP conferences.
12:40
And we've had a reporter at the Glasgow COP conference
12:44
go in and be hard-pressed to find
12:47
there were a couple of measly vegan items.
12:50
They're serving meat.
12:52
So is it a question of meat eaters
12:55
don't wanna change their habits?
12:57
Is it a question of the meat industry
12:59
putting pressure on the United Nations?
13:02
Not to make a switch and say animal agriculture
13:06
is the leading cause.
13:08
I would guess it's a combination of those factors.
13:11
What do you say, Doctor?
13:14
Yeah, I think you're dead right, Jane.
13:17
The industries know full well what's really going on,
13:22
and they've known it for a long time.
13:25
And they've hidden behind the rules, if you like,
13:28
the conventions.
13:29
In fact, they try to double down
13:31
on pulling the wool over our eyes.
13:34
But you may have noticed that, well, in Australia, at least,
13:38
the green beef and the climate-neutral beef claims
13:43
that they were making just a few years ago,
13:45
they've realized that this is just not quite the case.
13:49
So they've silently withdrawn those claims.
13:52
But they still push ahead with the disinformation,
13:56
and they still push hard.
14:00
You see, the government, the United Nations body
14:04
that looks after climate is a really interesting
14:09
combination of two faces.
14:12
You see, there's dozens, in fact, hundreds of scientists
14:16
who work together on climate science.
14:19
And they've put out these big reports on climate science,
14:22
what is the science, what's happening,
14:24
and trying to get a better understanding
14:27
of what's going on.
14:28
And that science is solid.
14:30
However, from that science,
14:32
they produce policy documents and guidelines,
14:36
which are what we're talking about here,
14:37
the guidelines on how to count emissions.
14:40
And those documents are actually policy documents.
14:44
They're political documents.
14:46
So that's where the lobbying and the influence comes in.
14:51
You know, the meat and dairy industries lobbies,
14:57
in fact, outnumber the fossil fuel lobbies
15:01
at some of these climate conferences.
15:04
So they know that truth will come out eventually,
15:08
but they're increasingly trying hard to keep a lid on it.
15:12
But that's the problem.
15:15
If the truth comes out eventually, it may be too late.
15:20
Now, according to Sir David Attenborough,
15:22
who has a great documentary called Breaking Boundaries,
15:25
there's only something like nine boundaries.
15:27
Like once we destroy the ice caps,
15:29
we can't call amazon.com or go on our phones
15:32
and order new ice caps.
15:34
Once species are extinct,
15:36
aside from some crazy scientists
15:37
trying to play God with the wolves,
15:39
we're not gonna be able to get these species back.
15:42
These boundaries are being broken at lightning speed.
15:47
So it's not a question of the truth will come out.
15:51
The truth has to come out soon.
15:53
There are some who say we're already past
15:54
the point of no return.
15:56
And part of the problem is the mainstream media
15:59
is not covering this issue.
16:02
I wanna give you an example.
16:04
There was an incredible article
16:06
in the New York Times in 2023.
16:09
So now just about two years ago,
16:11
and it says, save the planet, put down that hamburger.
16:15
Researchers examined the diets of 55,500 people
16:18
and found that vegans are responsible
16:20
for 75% less in greenhouse gases than meat eaters.
16:25
This was a Oxford University study.
16:29
So not some little side thing or some irrelevant group.
16:35
This is Oxford University,
16:37
one of the greatest institutions,
16:39
educational institutions in the world.
16:42
Now, nobody picked up on this article.
16:44
And this article wasn't like the top.
16:46
Listen, this is essentially the solution to climate change.
16:50
If everybody reduced their greenhouse gas emissions footprint
16:52
by 75%, then collectively we would reduce
16:57
human induced greenhouse gas emissions by 75%.
17:00
You'd think this would be on the front,
17:03
right at the very top.
17:04
Hey, we've got a solution.
17:05
You'd think that CNN and NBC and CBS and ABC
17:09
and all these places would cover it.
17:11
No, not one pickup.
17:15
See, advertiser-based mainstream media,
17:18
which is why I started Unchained TV.
17:20
I started Unchained TV because I was
17:23
in the mainstream media for 30 years.
17:25
You don't have to have somebody knock on your door
17:28
and say, hey, don't talk about this.
17:29
All you see is the advertisers.
17:31
The advertisers tell you who's keeping the lights on
17:33
at the news media, okay?
17:35
And it's mostly fast food and pharmaceuticals.
17:37
And they are one in the same
17:39
because people wouldn't need all those drugs
17:41
if they weren't eating all the bad food
17:42
that's giving them high cholesterol,
17:44
heart disease, obesity, cancer.
17:48
Nobody talks, nobody in the media talks about the fact
17:50
that processed meat is officially declared cancer causing
17:54
by the World Health Organization.
17:57
Nobody, they never mention it.
17:59
I mean, you really have to dig hard to find that.
18:02
So when we say, oh, you know,
18:05
there's these accounting errors, are we underplaying it?
18:09
Is this, I don't wanna be conspiratorial,
18:11
but is this a conspiracy to keep the truth
18:13
about climate change from us at our own expense?
18:17
Because everybody's gonna suffer eventually,
18:21
even the executives at the meat industry.
18:23
If the planet becomes unhabitable for humans
18:26
because it's just too damn hot, they will be affected too.
18:31
I mean, is this mass slow suicide?
18:36
Yes, you're dead right, Jane.
18:39
The planetary boundaries that we've busted through
18:42
that we know we've way overstepped,
18:45
six of the nine planetary boundaries,
18:47
we're already over the limit.
18:49
And the greatest driver in at least five of those
18:52
is actually agriculture, the greatest driver.
18:55
That's well-recognized.
18:57
But as you say, it's just not coming out.
19:00
Everyone targets fossil fuels.
19:02
If you stop someone in the street and said,
19:03
what's causing climate change?
19:06
They would say carbon dioxide and fossil fuels.
19:08
But the fact is, it's cutting down the three trillion trees
19:13
that we have on planet Earth.
19:15
It's releasing all that methane that we have,
19:18
methane that in the short term
19:21
is the biggest lever we have actually of controlling climate.
19:26
But the methane just, it paused for a while
19:30
just after the turn of the century.
19:32
The methane in the atmosphere paused for a while
19:34
and everyone was saying, oh, this is wonderful.
19:36
We don't have to worry about methane anymore.
19:38
But the trouble, after a few years, it just kept going up.
19:41
And now it's going up more steeply than ever.
19:44
And the interesting thing is that they don't know exactly,
19:48
they can't put their finger on
19:49
where this methane's coming from.
19:50
But there was a report came out
19:52
in one of the Australian universities just last year
19:56
that said that they looked at slaughterhouses
20:00
across Australia and they looked at numbers of animals.
20:03
Australia has tight regulations.
20:06
They have an agency that counts
20:07
all the agricultural statistics.
20:10
And they were saying there's so many cattle in Australia,
20:13
so many sheep, et cetera.
20:14
But this study looked at how much meat is being produced
20:17
and all of the stats about the animals.
20:21
And they found that the number of animals could be under,
20:25
of beef cattle could be undercounted by 70%.
20:30
And that's Australia,
20:31
one of the most regulated countries in the world.
20:34
So you, and it's because the farmers
20:37
were hiding their numbers.
20:39
They didn't, they pay taxes based on the number of cattle.
20:43
So they don't want to declare the full number of cattle.
20:46
And if that's happening in Australia,
20:48
it's got to be happening in many other countries.
20:51
So all this methane and all the trees
20:54
and carbon dioxide emitted there.
20:56
And yet, as you say, we're still being told, look away.
21:03
Look away.
21:04
This is a real problem.
21:06
And we're only, and papers like these
21:09
that have come out recently.
21:10
And mind you, my two papers are getting a lot of traction,
21:13
which I'm very pleased to see in science circles,
21:16
because that's where it starts.
21:18
It's got to start in the science
21:19
for the group think to change.
21:23
And I think it might be getting that traction.
21:25
So these are interesting times.
21:29
We're starting to open our eyes
21:31
to the true effect of what we're doing.
21:35
What influences climate change?
21:37
And biodiversity, as you say,
21:39
and nutrient pollution and deforestation
21:43
and water cycles and ocean dead zones and water pollution.
21:48
All of those things,
21:50
the biggest cause of those things is animal agriculture.
21:56
It's well known.
21:57
We're talking to Dr. Gerard Wedderburn-Bissup,
22:01
who has published this paper.
22:03
And, you know, it looks sort of innocuous
22:05
and not very dramatic,
22:08
but it literally could be the key to saving our planet,
22:12
saving the human race
22:15
and all the other species on this planet.
22:18
And it simply says increased transparency
22:20
and accounting conventions could benefit climate policy.
22:24
And these papers are written
22:26
just because they're scientific papers
22:29
in a very wonky fashion.
22:31
I mean, if I were writing the headline
22:34
as somebody who worked in news, even tabloid at times,
22:37
I would say, hey, wake up human race.
22:40
We've put the wrong culprit on trial for the climate crisis.
22:45
And the real killer is sitting in the gallery laughing,
22:49
but we can't do that.
22:51
So we're trying to break it down for you
22:54
and tell you why this paper is so absolutely extraordinary.
22:59
And the three reasons are, well, first,
23:02
we've already covered one, bad accounting.
23:05
And that's sort of the overarching reason.
23:08
They're not counting the burning of trees
23:11
and the destroying of forests.
23:13
And correct me if I'm wrong,
23:15
I'm no scientist,
23:16
but the bottom line is trees absorb carbon.
23:19
If you destroy all the trees
23:21
and you give planet earth a buzz cut,
23:24
there is not gonna be the ability to absorb that carbon.
23:28
That is a lost opportunity.
23:31
So I wanna ask you about that.
23:34
Is part of the problem that it's like,
23:37
if it doesn't exist, we don't count it.
23:40
The opportunity cost, we have destroyed,
23:44
well, you can tell me what percentage
23:47
of planet earth's forests for cattle grazing
23:50
and to grow food to feed 92 billion animals
23:55
we kill every year.
23:57
And unfortunately, the number of animals being killed
24:00
continues to rise to mind boggling levels.
24:05
So is that part of the accounting problem
24:09
that we've destroyed all these forests
24:11
over thousands of years, really,
24:13
but accelerating right in the last 200 years, certainly.
24:19
And because those forests aren't there,
24:21
they're not absorbing carbon,
24:22
which is not allowing...
24:25
If you can't absorb carbon,
24:26
then the carbon remains in the atmosphere.
24:28
But does that make it trickier to calculate that?
24:33
Yes, the climate science is actually going ahead
24:38
in leaps and bounds at the moment.
24:40
We've got these new measures to measure
24:42
the impact of each gas, which I've used in the paper,
24:46
rather than the old measures
24:48
that look at the time of emission.
24:51
We've got a lot better understanding
24:53
of atmospheric chemistry.
24:55
So we know that when we release methane,
24:58
we produce all these downstream gases
25:01
and further warming.
25:04
But at the same time,
25:05
we're still using the outdated accounting.
25:08
There are two other factors
25:11
apart from the dodgy accounting of trees.
25:13
We're gonna get to that in a second.
25:15
Let me get to this.
25:16
Gene just got here.
25:18
So the industrial development
25:19
and A plus billion using fossil fuels
25:22
has no negative effect on the atmosphere.
25:25
Am I understanding what he is saying?
25:27
Essentially, I think Gene is challenging you,
25:30
saying, hey, fossil fuels, all that smoke going out.
25:34
I don't think he's saying that.
25:36
He's saying it's certainly got problems,
25:40
but it is not the leading cause is what he's saying.
25:44
Can you clarify and answer her challenge, doctor?
25:49
Yes.
25:50
Yeah, Gene, you're dead right.
25:54
This is what most of us think.
25:56
And the reason for that
25:57
is because we follow the government line.
26:01
Now, the other interesting part,
26:04
the third factor in this paper that we just looked at,
26:09
the third factor that makes a huge difference
26:11
as to what has caused the climate change
26:15
we're now experiencing is another dodgy accounting.
26:20
And that is that we, up until now, we haven't,
26:23
well, when we burn fossil fuels,
26:25
we create carbon dioxide, which warms the planet,
26:28
but we also release aerosols.
26:31
If you've ever been to a big industrial city,
26:34
particularly in Asia, Europe's cleaned up their act.
26:38
They had these gray skies that were causing acid rain.
26:41
North America's cleaned up their act.
26:44
They're cleaning their skies.
26:46
But in the big industrial cities in Asia,
26:49
you might see this white smog or gray smog
26:53
that just hangs over the city.
26:54
It irritates your sinuses and your eyes.
26:57
And it's aerosols,
26:59
and it's produced from burning fossil fuels,
27:01
like mostly things like coal and dirty diesel,
27:07
which the shipping uses.
27:10
But these are really interesting,
27:13
and they're just uncounted.
27:15
They're off the books.
27:17
The aerosols are cooling emissions.
27:20
They reflect the sun's rays.
27:22
So the aerosols cause cooling.
27:25
And they're incredibly efficient and effective.
27:29
And they have prevented, they have masked, if you like,
27:33
three quarters of the warming from fossil fuels.
27:36
So yes, we've produced an awful lot
27:38
of fossil fuel emissions,
27:40
which is in the atmosphere, still, some of it.
27:43
But we've also produced a lot of masking
27:45
that has cooled nearly a degree of warming.
27:50
Let me jump in and clarify this,
27:56
because this is really complicated.
27:59
So you're saying as part of fossil fuels,
28:03
as part of fossil fuels,
28:05
when fossil fuels are released,
28:07
all the smoke, right?
28:09
Oh, it's burning our eyes.
28:10
There's also a cooling element
28:12
within that fossil fuels that goes out,
28:15
and that cooling element is called aerosols?
28:19
Yes, exactly right.
28:20
And up until now, we just have not counted those aerosols.
28:24
Okay, now I wanna jump in
28:26
and play your clip on that in your video,
28:29
and then we're gonna discuss it more.
28:31
Pay attention.
28:32
This is like an SAT test, all right, people?
28:34
I'm no scientist.
28:36
But if you think, if we can simplify it
28:39
so that the general public can understand it,
28:41
that's the first step.
28:43
Because right now, this is all
28:45
going over everybody's head
28:47
and nobody's paying attention
28:48
while we are getting to the point of no return
28:50
in the climate crisis, all right?
28:53
This is extremely important
28:55
that we focus on the fact
28:57
that within the fossil fuels,
29:00
there's something called aerosols that also cools.
29:04
So it's kind of like reducing the impact
29:08
of the fossil fuels.
29:10
Correct me if I'm wrong, okay?
29:12
But that's not counted.
29:14
So all that's counted is the negative part of fossil fuels,
29:18
whereas the aerosols are not counted.
29:20
Therefore, that continues to exaggerate
29:24
fossil fuels' impact on climate change.
29:27
Now, with that little background, watch this,
29:29
and then we're gonna discuss it on the other side.
29:31
The third change is inclusive accounting,
29:34
including both heating and cooling emissions.
29:38
The paper that explores these last two developments
29:41
was published in February, 2025.
29:43
So let's take a closer look at these two.
29:46
The IPCC has published effective radiative forcing
29:49
of 11 gases that show warming caused by each gas
29:53
from 1750 until 2020.
29:56
The aviation industry routinely uses ERFs
30:00
because it's similar to agriculture,
30:03
a combination of long and short-lived emissions
30:06
and other atmospheric interactions.
30:09
We can see the warming from each gas in the IPCC diagram.
30:14
This is carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide,
30:19
halocarbons, and others, including cooling aerosols.
30:23
ERF boosts the relative warming from methane
30:27
by a factor of three.
30:28
Cooling aerosols are emitted when we burn fossil fuels.
30:33
Their impact is strong.
30:35
They have prevented nearly a degree centigrade,
30:39
masking three quarters of all fossil fuels' warming.
30:42
Emissions of each gas are then allocated to sectors,
30:45
and we can see in this graphic how each gas contributes
30:49
to each sector's warming or cooling.
30:52
Above the line is heating, and below the line is cooling.
30:56
The combined warming caused by each sector
30:59
is the black dot.
31:01
This is fossil fuels, which is responsible
31:04
for 18% of warming up to 2020.
31:07
This is agriculture, making up 60% of global warming,
31:11
and within the agriculture sector,
31:13
animal agriculture is responsible for 53% of global warming.
31:18
Animal agriculture is therefore the leading cause
31:21
of climate change.
31:24
This is, I gotta do my breaking news banner all over again.
31:29
This is breaking news.
31:31
This is probably the most important discussion
31:33
happening on planet Earth right now
31:35
because if we don't have a planet,
31:37
well, the planet will always survive us,
31:39
but if we don't have a livable planet,
31:41
then nothing else matters.
31:43
And there's a new paper that this doctor,
31:47
scientist has put out that makes the case
31:49
that the impact of fossil fuels is being exaggerated
31:54
because it's not including the aerosols
31:56
that cool it down, all right?
31:59
And the impact of animal agriculture is being underestimated
32:04
due to accounting, whatever you wanna call it,
32:08
ledger domain or whatever they say, fancy accounting.
32:15
And this is as a result possibly of pressure
32:18
from the meat and dairy industry.
32:20
And who knows, other industries that also make money
32:23
from the meat and dairy industry would include,
32:26
for example, the pharmaceutical industry.
32:28
I'm not saying that the big pharma
32:30
is putting on the pressure,
32:32
but what I am saying is that there is a huge, huge, huge
32:36
financial incentive for some people
32:39
to keep the impact of meat and dairy minimized
32:45
when it comes to climate change.
32:46
Because you ask the average person on the street,
32:48
well, hey, how are you counteracting fossil fuels?
32:51
Not everybody can go out and buy an electric car.
32:54
It's very amorphous.
32:56
It's not like I could stop my fossil fuel emissions,
33:00
but I can three times a day choose to eat a plant-based diet.
33:04
That's something very realistic that I can do,
33:07
and I have been doing for the last 28 years.
33:10
So the point is that this is shocking.
33:16
It is shocking.
33:18
And I know that there has been some controversy
33:22
in terms of why is this reporting happening,
33:26
but it hasn't gotten into the mainstream.
33:29
When I find articles on this kind of issue,
33:33
it's usually on some not big network.
33:38
So here we have Green Queen reporting
33:40
that World Bank bats for alternative proteins,
33:43
calls for shift away from meat and dairy subsidies.
33:47
The World Bank itself, this is a World Bank website,
33:51
says changes in farm and food production
33:53
can cut greenhouse gas emissions by a third.
33:56
And then the third headline says,
33:58
World Bank tiptoes into fiery debate over meat emissions.
34:02
So we're basically having a behind the scenes battle
34:07
over whether they should come out, essentially.
34:11
This is a coming out story.
34:14
Doctor?
34:16
Yes, absolutely.
34:17
It's been hidden for way too long.
34:20
And in fact, to get back to where we started
34:24
on how we measure emissions from cutting down trees,
34:29
I spoke to one of the lead authors
34:30
of the Global Carbon Budget.
34:33
This is the reference body, if you like,
34:36
for emissions in carbon dioxide.
34:38
And he said that he was involved
34:40
with the United Nations three decades ago
34:43
when they were forming those rules, those conventions.
34:48
And he recommended that they use full accounting
34:53
of all emissions, as I have done.
34:56
But it was overruled because the rules that came out
35:01
were considered a policy document, the guidelines.
35:04
That's considered policy, and therefore they're influenced
35:07
by different countries' input.
35:10
So yes, we've been doing some tricky accounting,
35:14
some creative accounting on several different things.
35:18
We've been discounting emissions from land clearing.
35:23
We've been ignoring cooling emissions.
35:28
And it works out also that when we compare methane
35:33
to carbon dioxide, the warming from methane
35:37
using the latest and the most accurate climate science
35:42
we have, which is a measure called
35:44
effective radiative forcing, forget the name,
35:47
but using the best science we have,
35:50
we find out that methane has caused three times
35:53
more warming than we thought it had caused
35:56
using our accounting rules.
36:00
So you put those three things together
36:03
and it flips the script.
36:05
It totally changes what our understanding is
36:09
of what has caused the climate change
36:11
that we now experience.
36:13
What is the driver of those extreme storms,
36:17
that flooding, those fires, the ice caps melting,
36:21
the ocean currents changing?
36:24
What is the real cause of those?
36:26
And we find rather than fossil fuels, it's agriculture
36:31
and mostly, 90%, animal agriculture.
36:35
So this definitely flips the script.
36:38
It's not new science.
36:41
I'm using other people's data, not using the best data,
36:44
the global carbon budget data and other data
36:47
about emissions from land clearing.
36:50
And I'm using the IPCC's own science
36:53
on effective radiative forcing,
36:56
but comparing gases basically.
36:59
So using the latest science and the latest data
37:03
shows that we've got it wrong.
37:06
We've had it wrong for decades
37:09
because we set those rules when we did to the wrong measure.
37:14
Now, the industry pressure will be to maintain those rules,
37:18
to keep the rules in place.
37:20
But what's gonna happen, and I'm getting good traction,
37:23
good feedback from the science community,
37:25
that the science will move on.
37:28
The science will recognise all of these things
37:32
that I've been saying, and it already has.
37:34
I'm not the first on any of these three measures.
37:38
I'm not the first to publish on that.
37:40
I've just put them together.
37:41
So the science is already out there,
37:44
and my paper is pulling it together.
37:47
It has a waffly title.
37:48
It's awful. It's a terrible title.
37:51
I had a much better title to start with,
37:52
but in the review process, in the peer review process,
37:56
it's very difficult to get a paper over the line.
38:00
You have to tone down all the...
38:03
Doctor, you're doing more than 99.999999% of the population
38:09
to get the truth out there.
38:10
We applaud you.
38:11
What we're trying to do is break it down
38:14
so the general public can understand,
38:18
because they can't really challenge
38:20
the talking points of the establishment
38:25
unless they understand it themselves.
38:28
I cannot go out and argue animal agriculture
38:31
is the leading cause of climate change
38:33
unless I understand why animal agriculture
38:35
is the leading cause of climate change.
38:37
So we have to break it down.
38:38
Now, there's so much else I wanna talk to you about.
38:41
The second, we jumped ahead.
38:44
The second issue that you raised,
38:46
you raised three issues.
38:47
One, overarching bad accounting.
38:50
Number three, which we talked about,
38:54
is aerosols not being included
38:57
since they are a cooling agent that cools fossil fuels
39:01
and they're emitted by fossil fuels.
39:03
Since they don't count that,
39:04
it exaggerates the impact of fossil fuels.
39:07
But then there's a heating element
39:10
that is even more complicated.
39:13
So put your thinking caps on, people.
39:15
I'm gonna concentrate.
39:17
This is a very short one, but this is crucial.
39:20
Here's another thing that isn't being counted.
39:23
Agriculture and climate change.
39:25
The second development is to use
39:27
effective radiative forcing
39:29
rather than global warming potentials
39:32
to compare different gases.
39:34
ERF is the best climate science there is.
39:38
It's not a future projection,
39:40
but fitted to known measurements.
39:43
Okay, effective radiation.
39:46
I can't even say it.
39:48
In people terms, you're talking to a third grader now.
39:51
What the heck are you talking about?
39:55
Yes, and Jane, it's not that easy to convey
39:58
because what happens in the atmosphere is very complex.
40:03
You have different chemical reactions
40:05
at different heights in the atmosphere.
40:08
You have methane, for example.
40:10
It breaks down to form a little carbon dioxide eventually.
40:15
It also breaks down to form ozone.
40:19
And ozone at the surface of the planet
40:22
is a strong greenhouse gas.
40:25
But let's get back to the effective radiative forcing,
40:30
if I said that right.
40:31
Yes, effective radiative forcing is a model, if you like,
40:37
that combines all the impacts of all the different gases.
40:41
So we've had other measures that compare gases,
40:45
say methane to carbon dioxide,
40:47
and they're trying to fiddle that
40:50
to downplay the impact of methane.
40:53
But if you look at the best science there is now,
40:55
which is this effective radiative forcing,
40:57
you find that the impact of methane is three times more
41:03
than if you were to use the measures
41:06
that are now in the guidelines, in the rules.
41:10
So, you know, we've used odgy accounting.
41:13
We've also used measures to compare gases
41:16
that do a terrible job of measuring
41:20
what the real warming is from methane, in particular.
41:23
Methane is the big one.
41:25
Here's the thing.
41:25
I thought, maybe I'm completely wrong,
41:28
but I thought it was something about reflection.
41:32
I don't understand effective radiation, whatever that was.
41:36
Say it what it is, and then explain it
41:38
as quietly as you possibly can, as simply as you can.
41:44
Yes, effective radiative forcing is a,
41:49
it's a measure of our emissions,
41:52
what our emissions do to the temperature
41:55
on the surface of the planet.
41:58
How much warming do they cause?
42:01
The radiative forcing is a measure
42:04
of watts per square metre.
42:06
In other words, if you were to shine a light bulb
42:09
above your head, you would receive a certain amount
42:15
of warming from that light bulb,
42:17
from that heat source, if you like, on your head.
42:22
Mine in particular.
42:24
But that warming depends on the strength
42:27
of the light bulb, right?
42:29
Now, in climate science, each of the gases traps heat,
42:37
like carbon dioxide traps heat, and it vibrates.
42:43
Methane traps heat, and those molecules vibrate,
42:46
and they emit warming.
42:49
So the energy that's being taken from the sun's rays
42:55
and then hits these gases and then warms the planet.
42:58
If we didn't have these gases, by the way,
43:01
we'd live on a frozen planet.
43:04
So we need some of it, but we don't need
43:07
as much as what we have now.
43:09
And so the effective radiative forcing
43:12
is a measure of how much warming do we feel
43:15
on the surface of the planet from that amount
43:19
of gas in the atmosphere.
43:21
And it is the best science we have right now.
43:24
These are the best models.
43:26
They're not forward projections, they're fitted to data.
43:29
But you're saying it's being miscalculated.
43:32
Yes, using the measure that we use now,
43:36
which is a thing called global warming potential,
43:40
it actually miscounts the warming
43:44
from the non-carbon dioxide gases, particularly methane.
43:48
Methane's the biggie.
43:49
Methane is really interesting
43:50
because even though it's here for only 10 years or so,
43:55
methane has caused, since 1750,
43:58
methane has caused half of the current global warming
44:02
we are now experiencing.
44:04
So methane has been responsible
44:06
for 0.6 of a degree of global warming.
44:10
Now, you don't hear that very often either.
44:14
That's hidden away.
44:16
Let me jump in and ask a question
44:18
because this is so important and so informative.
44:21
But when people talk about methane and animal agriculture,
44:25
they generally make a joke, oh, cow burps and cow farts.
44:29
Now, why is that a ridiculous to reduce it to that
44:34
when it's so much more?
44:36
And how would you characterize
44:39
animal agriculture's contribution to methane gas?
44:46
Yes, well, it's well known that methane,
44:50
the largest source of methane is animal agriculture.
44:53
It comes from them digesting their food,
44:55
their grass and burping and et cetera, as you said.
44:59
It also comes from the waste that's washed out.
45:03
It also comes from, in piggeries, for example,
45:09
all their waste is washed into lagoons,
45:13
which you don't wanna go anywhere near
45:15
and they produce an enormous amount of methane.
45:18
And not only that, it's also when these foods,
45:25
when animals are eaten,
45:28
the waste that is then produced from us and in landfill,
45:33
it also produces methane.
45:35
So methane is by far the biggest,
45:41
by far the biggest source of methane is animal agriculture.
45:45
There's no question of that, that's known science.
45:48
Close behind that is methane from fracking,
45:52
from coal seam gas.
45:55
And that comes from coal mines
45:56
and comes from natural gas exploration,
46:00
leaks in both of those.
46:03
So, yes.
46:05
Okay, so I wanna get back to a couple of things
46:08
while we have a few minutes left.
46:10
One is that, again, correct me if I'm wrong,
46:12
I'm no scientist, but my understanding is back in 2006,
46:16
the United Nations published a report
46:18
called Livestock's Long Shadow, which is still online.
46:21
You can just Google livestock's long shadow
46:24
and it comes up.
46:25
And essentially it says that animal agriculture
46:29
is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions
46:32
than all transportation combined.
46:34
And when people think of fossil fuels,
46:36
a lot of times they think of transportation.
46:39
There's giant factories,
46:40
but again, they have no control over that,
46:44
they have control over what they drive.
46:46
So when the United Nations said that animal agriculture
46:49
is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions
46:52
in all transportation combined,
46:54
that was a big thing.
46:56
Again, not getting the kind of coverage,
46:59
but then my understanding is they began backtracking on that.
47:03
And according to some reports,
47:05
there was industry influence
47:08
and then it somehow went down to 18%
47:11
and then it went down to like 14.5%,
47:15
which is what a lot of news media cover.
47:17
No wonder they don't think it's worth covering
47:20
when it's only listed as 14.5%.
47:23
But that can't really be true
47:24
if what you're saying is right, it's the leading cause.
47:28
So do you know anything about the politics
47:30
of why the United Nations in 2006
47:33
essentially admitted sort of what you're saying,
47:36
that animal agriculture is responsible
47:38
for more greenhouse gas emissions
47:40
than all transportation combined,
47:42
and then proceeded to backtrack on that for decades?
47:46
Yes, yes.
47:48
That report was a seminal report,
47:51
it was brilliant at the time and well needed.
47:55
It didn't count everything, of course,
47:57
but what happened to the guys
48:00
who were the authors of that report
48:02
is that they were hounded out.
48:04
See, that organisation that produced the report
48:06
was the Food and Agricultural Organisation.
48:09
And that United Nations body is dominated by industry.
48:14
And of course, the biggest of those
48:15
is the one with the most money
48:17
is the meat and dairy sectors.
48:21
So they hounded out these authors.
48:24
Some of them left the agency, some of them retired.
48:30
Some of them wouldn't speak to media after that.
48:34
It was a terrible travesty.
48:38
And then they got industry involved
48:40
and they downgraded the 18% to 14.5%.
48:44
But of course, they didn't count things properly
48:46
which is what this work does.
48:51
So yes, for so long,
48:55
the emissions from meat and dairy have been downplayed.
49:00
And there's lots of pressure now, right now,
49:03
to change the metrics that we have to measure methane.
49:07
And from this work, we know that methane is under-reported,
49:12
but what they wanna do is further reduce,
49:16
pardon me, further reduce the influence of methane.
49:22
So they're coming up with all sorts of new metrics
49:24
called Global Warming GWP Star,
49:28
which is a model which says that,
49:30
okay, a constant number of cattle,
49:33
constant emissions won't produce any more warming.
49:38
The problem with that is that it's not constant.
49:41
The emissions are going up,
49:42
they're skyrocketing in the atmosphere.
49:45
And also their constant level is disastrous for the planet.
49:51
And the interesting thing about this research
49:53
is that their research also shows
49:57
that if you reduce methane, it actually causes cooling.
50:02
So they're arguing that a constant level of methane is fine.
50:08
But methane is like,
50:11
we've got two big levers to control the climate.
50:14
One of them is carbon dioxide,
50:16
and that's a big lever that takes a long time to move.
50:20
And one of them is methane, which is also a big lever,
50:23
but it can move very quickly.
50:25
Now we have this methane lever
50:27
and we can move it very quickly.
50:28
We can move it by going away
50:32
from meat and dairy production very quickly.
50:35
And that can actually cool the planet.
50:38
In fact, it's the only gas.
50:40
Methane is the only gas that can cool the planet
50:43
in the near term, in decades, not centuries.
50:47
So it's a farce what they've done.
50:52
They're trying to minimize the so-called impact of methane,
50:57
but it's actually much stronger
50:59
than they recognize even now.
51:03
We are speaking with a scientist
51:04
who says he has the climate change solution,
51:07
Dr. Gerard Wedderburn-Bissup.
51:09
And he has just published this paper,
51:11
which sounds a little milquetoast,
51:13
increased transparency and accounting conventions
51:15
could benefit climate policy,
51:17
but its impact is revolutionary.
51:19
Summarize it, sir.
51:21
Yes, summarize it.
51:22
There's three things.
51:24
Okay, if you were standing at a bus stop
51:26
and someone says,
51:27
animal agriculture, the leading cause of climate change,
51:30
how can that possibly be?
51:32
Okay, well, there's three things, I think,
51:34
that if you can just remember these three things,
51:38
this is the basis of that.
51:41
Number one, we'd be using dodgy accounting
51:46
to measure tree clearing.
51:48
Number two, we've been using the wrong metric
51:51
to compare gases, methane and carbon dioxide.
51:55
And number three, we haven't counted at all
51:59
the cooling emissions.
52:01
So that's it.
52:02
It's dodgy accounting for deforestation,
52:05
it's comparing gases and it's cooling emissions.
52:08
Those three things add up to make a huge change
52:11
to our understanding of what is causing
52:15
current present day climate change.
52:19
What needs to happen to get the United Nations
52:23
and governments around the world to realize this?
52:26
Because the implications of what you're saying
52:30
is essentially another way of saying that is saying,
52:34
the US government is fueling the climate crisis
52:37
with its subsidies to animal agriculture.
52:42
Whereas animal agriculture, according to your paper,
52:45
is the leading cause.
52:47
Whereas the US government subsidizes animal agriculture
52:52
in the billions of dollars
52:55
of the average fast food hamburger would cost
52:57
not a couple of bucks, but maybe 30 bucks
53:00
if it wasn't subsidized by the US government.
53:04
Wherefore the US government and other Western governments,
53:08
but particularly the US government
53:09
is funding the climate crisis.
53:11
The very crisis that many in the government over time,
53:17
I'm not talking about any administration here,
53:20
have said they wanna solve.
53:21
So they're spending a lot of money
53:22
trying to solve the climate crisis
53:24
that they are actually creating themselves.
53:27
It's criminal.
53:29
Yes, it's absolutely criminal, Jane.
53:32
And these two papers actually go into
53:34
the policy implications of this work.
53:38
And the World Bank produced a report last year
53:42
that looked at agricultural subsidies globally.
53:46
And they discovered that,
53:48
this language is rather interesting,
53:50
that they discovered that the agricultural subsidies
53:53
are overwhelmingly harmful to the planet.
53:57
And of course, most of those go to meat and dairy.
54:00
So those policies are what this paper targets.
54:07
If we gain a new understanding of the dangers,
54:11
the full impact of deforestation,
54:14
that will put more money into the carbon market
54:17
to stop deforestation.
54:19
If we gain a new understanding of the emissions
54:22
from agriculture, that puts new emphasis on policies
54:27
that rein in that colossus
54:31
that produces all these greenhouse gases.
54:35
And subsidies are an obvious place to start.
54:38
The subsidies distort the market so fully
54:45
that we think meat and dairy is cheap.
54:48
It's not, it's only because of the subsidies.
54:50
But also, no one is paying for the harms to the planet.
54:55
The climate harms and the water harms, et cetera,
54:58
no one's paying for those.
55:00
So the subsidies are a start,
55:03
but also the climate harms are a big part of the future.
55:08
We must change those policies.
55:10
I could talk to you all day long.
55:13
The question is, how do we get the world to,
55:15
I think some very smart people are aware of this.
55:21
Bill Gates actually went on national television
55:25
and said, we need to switch to synthetic meat,
55:29
which was his nerdy way of saying,
55:31
we need to stop subsidizing animal agriculture
55:34
and pushing animal agriculture.
55:35
And he was laughed at, Bill Gates.
55:38
So the question is, how do we make this change?
55:41
How do we convince the powers that be
55:44
that it is in their self-interest,
55:46
which obviously it is.
55:48
I remember taking this history course,
55:50
nothing to do with animals or anything,
55:53
but this professor was talking about people on Easter Island
55:56
and they're in this remote island
55:59
and they have these giant statues that they're famous for,
56:02
and they love to roll them around with trees, big logs.
56:06
And they kept chopping their trees
56:07
and chopping their trees and chopping their trees.
56:09
At a certain point, the professor said,
56:11
they had to realize if they chop down that last tree,
56:13
since they're on a remote island,
56:15
they're spelling their own death.
56:17
But he said, they went ahead and did it anyway.
56:20
That's where we're at.
56:22
We are committing slow suicide
56:25
because we are not looking at the real causes.
56:28
I myself personally was told, you be quiet.
56:33
When I tried to raise this issue,
56:35
I would say six or seven years ago at a climate rally,
56:39
I was told to shut up.
56:42
People don't wanna hear it
56:44
because they don't wanna change their behavior.
56:46
They love their meat.
56:47
They love eating animals.
56:51
So, I'm 30 years recovering as a recovering alcoholic.
56:54
I thought I couldn't go a day without a drink.
56:56
And guess what?
56:57
I haven't had a drink for 30 years.
57:00
We can wake up.
57:01
We usually have to hit bottom though.
57:03
But in this case, we have to collectively hit bottom
57:06
and how many fires, floods and tornadoes
57:10
and the media covers that.
57:13
I call it catastrophe porn.
57:15
They're not talking about the solution.
57:17
They're just getting ratings off of the horror.
57:20
We have to do something about it
57:22
and we have to do something now.
57:27
Excuse me.
57:28
I get upset when I talk about this
57:30
because we're killing our planet.
57:33
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