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Methane traps about 80 times more heat than CO2 over the first 20 years, before it degrades into CO2 and then overall ends up trapping about 25 times more over the first 100 years.

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/why-do-we-compare-methane-ca...

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Sure, but that methane + CO2 has been in a steady cycle (cow -> air -> grass -> cow) and fairly constant quantity (before mass agriculture there were e.g. numerous bisons in the US), so they’re not contributing to “global warming” (i.e. a rise in temperature).

All of that warming is caused by fossil fuels.

This is a very interesting discussion, and I feel like I'm learning a lot.

One thing I figured was worth checking was how many bison there were pre-industrialization, and how many cows there are now.

Some quick googling seems to say:

~60,000,000 Bison in North America in 1600

~1,000,967,000 Livestock Cattle worldwide in 2021

https://allaboutbison.com/bison-in-history/bison-timeline/ https://beef2live.com/story-world-cattle-inventory-1960-2014...

> ~60,000,000 Bison in North America in 1600

94,400,000 cattle and calves in USA in 2017.

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/nahms/downloads/Dem...

I think the overall question is whether the decrease in bison is offset by the increase in cattle. Bison primarily decreased in NA, but cattle increased worldwide.

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