Let me be straight up. I'm a physicist, I've no doubt about climate change and the part we play in it. I had been reading about cattle being one of the alleged main causes of climate change.
I get that they make methane, and we have a LOT of them, So I ran some numbers:
Roughly 93 million cattle in the United states in 2017 (some sources claim lower, but I'm going with the higher one).
Prior to humans killing the Buffalo off, there were approximately 50-100 million of them across the united states.
A quick Wiki search, estimates that buffalo (bison) produce significantly more methane than domestic cattle (though I don't know for sure that this is true).
These numbers seem to match up pretty well insofar as they're greenhouse gas contributions, so now I'm wondering if the argument is viable? I know there were other herds around the world too, so I just found myself rather curious. Has anyone run the numbers thoroughly?
On the flip side, I could see the sheer number of humans being an issue, I'll try and run that later.