Fossil fuels are the dominant cause of global climate change. Decades of rigorous scientific research, repeated validation, and global scientific consensus confirm this unequivocally. This core truth needs reinforcement because a provocative paper recently published in Environmental Research attempts to upend this established understanding by claiming that agriculture, particularly livestock farming, far outweighs fossil fuels in contributing to climate change.
The paper’s headline figure—that agriculture is responsible for around 60% of historical warming, compared to approximately 18% for fossil fuels—attracted media attention and sparked a heated debate, despite its fundamental flaws caused by deep biases. To state it clearly upfront, the paper’s conclusions are wrong, scientifically unsound, and misleading. It exemplifies how bias-driven methodologies can distort climate accounting and, in turn, confuse critical policy discussions. CONTINUE READING