It's an animal product with the obvious ethics problems and cow methane boosting the co2 footprint.
No mediocre substitute holds up to real butter, cow farts and ethics be damned.
This is coming from someone who thought Country Crock was real butter until I was a teenager, because that's what my mother always bought.
I can't even put it in macaroni and cheese these days, let alone on my toast.
Even the expensive stuff like "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" is nearly repulsive compared to real butter IMO.
CH4 + 2O2 -photons---> C02 + 2H20
I'm not sure what time scale of heat per mass equivalencies are based on in your example; there is approximately 28 : 1 heat/mass eq. ratio at the 100 year scale, during which time the heating effect decreases exponentially with the decrease in methane concentration[0]. After 100 years the ratio is approximately 1:1 since almost all methane has decomposed.
A possible solution would be methane fixing bacteria (methanotrophs) in the guts of cows or in the ocean where > 75% of the current concentration atmospheric methane originates. The ocean also contains a significant amount in solid form that gets released as temps rise. [0]
[0]http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/12/09/warmer-pacific-oce...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_cattle lists a few sources for the 4 years figure.
Not to say that I am not a fan of less selective counting. I in big favor of counting footprint based on a person complete effect on the environment rather than specific choices. If we counted everything from purchases of items, clothes, travel, commuting, diet, and so on, I am convinced that the end result is more enlightening than just looking one diet item vs an other.
And speaking of feed lots ... eeyew.
For which you don't kill the animal.
> with the obvious ethics problems
This may or may not be "obvious" decades or more in the future, but I think people who hold this idea are in the minority at the moment.
> cow methane
Point taken.
Milk cows are continually raped for the duration of their lives: http://www.humanemyth.org/happycows.htm
This is misleading and utter bullshit (no pun intented). By that reasoning, every routine examination at the gynecologist or proctologist would constitute rape.
We have no reason to suspect that a cow feels "raped" during artificial insemination, or anything more than slight physical discomfort.
No, you're misreading my post. My argument boils down to "Stop projecting complex human emotions onto bovines without evidence."
I'm not a vegetarian, but I thought dairy necessitated pregnancy, and as such went hand in hand with veal production. Is this incorrect? Input from someone with experience in the domain would be helpful.
(I've googled it but the sources primarily seem to be extremely biased).