What I find missing in all the cow discussions is any mention of the huge number of bovines that roamed suitable areas of the planet, such as the North American plains, before they were mostly killed off and made room for cows.
Was the mass slaughter of buffalo that happened on 19th century USA good for climate? --Photo of a gigantic skull pile, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bison_skull_pile-restored...
For how long and how many animals similar to cows were there before we killed them in most places?
Why are the cows such a climate catastrophe now, but the previous gigantic wild herds were not? (An actual question, not a rhetorical one, as I said, I did not study or investigate this, only noticed it)?
-------------
As far as my thinking goes, the main problem is and has been that we dig up ancient buried biomass (coal, gas, oil). We have an above-ground carbon cycle, and it does not really matter that much if there is stuff burned and carbon shifting around various forms, as long as it's in the above-ground cycle.
The problem, to my knowledge, is that we fed gigantic amounts of below-ground carbon into the above-ground cycle.
I did not check the numbers (someone, please?), I think below ground we have far more biomass than we could ever plant as forests above ground? That's why I'm not excited about tree-planting projects as "solution". As far as my understanding goes, only a complete shutdown of all coal, oil and gas extraction can even begin to address our problem. And then we still need to get a lot of carbon back underground.
Cows act solely within the above-ground cycle, so I don't see them as a valid focus, but as a distraction. My focus would be on the processes that add below-ground carbon to the above-ground cycle.
If the above-ground carbon cycle only has prehistoric amounts of carbon to begin with, would cows, burning forests, etc., still be a global climate problem? As far as I know, that's not the case (independent of local deforesting issues, just looking at the "global warming" problem).
I know I'm ignoring always present movement - without humans - between above and below ground - only counting safely long-term stored carbon, not sure what those net movements are (without human activity)?
I also ignore "details"; such as if carbon is in CO2 or CH4 in the atmosphere. I think that evens itself out longer term and would be enough for an above-ground cycle that is not increased artificially. Our problem is the speed with which we add below-ground sources to the above cycle.