I read a blog on the Scientific American website titled People Still Don't Get the Link between Meat Consumption and Climate Change which touches on methane's contribution to global warming and how the reduction in meat consumption in industrialized nations can realistically lead to significant changes in global warming.

According to a 2015 Chatham House Report “Changing climate, changing diets”, people in industrialized countries consume on average around twice as much meat as experts deem healthy. In the US the multiple is nearly three times. Adoption of a healthy diet would therefore generate over a quarter of the emission reductions needed by 2050!

I haven't looked into this aspect of climate change, so I searched some info on methane gas and found this.
https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html

Methane's lifetime in the atmosphere is much shorter than carbon dioxide (CO2), but CH4 is more efficient at trapping radiation than CO2. Pound for pound, the comparative impact of CH4 on climate change is more than 25 times greater than CO2 over a 100-year period.

This leads me to Causes of Climate Change, which has a nice slide show that talks about climate forcing and talks about natural forcings, human-induced forcings and their net change on earth.

https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/science/causes.html

So us carnivores can reduce our meat consumption to have a positive effect on the environment.

I live in California, where there's been years of drought, when asked to ration water, many people did and it had a positive effect. People let their lawns dry up, bought tanks to store reclaimed water for their yards, etc.. So, reducing meat consumption seems like it could be a realistic campaign where we can play a part in reducing global warming.

Coal mining and waste management are more important sources of methane that shouldn't be in the atmosphere. Ruminants are just a part of the contribution from agriculture. If meat is the culprit, think in consuming less of everything, starting from rice. Combine methane with nitrous oxide and you'll realize "eat less meat" is just the culprit in fashion.

ElDiablo wrote:So us carnivores can reduce our meat consumption to have a positive effect on the environment.

Isn't it to have a reduced negative effect, rather than a positive one?

The reason I'm practically a vegetarian these days (my no.1 rule is don't be 'that guy' so in a guest's house I won't put them out and eat what I'm given) is because of the environmental argument more so than any appeal to my empathy over cruelty to animals.

Though that latter argument has oddly grown on me too since.