The biggest double whammy of all time ! First we destroy our unique life support system that provides the oxygen that is essential to life by felling large areas of prime rain-forest. Then we clear it by burning, thereby adding further carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Then because the soil is of such poor quality we apply tons of fertiliser, fungicides and pesticides to encourage the growth of soy bean. Why do we need the soy bean ? To feed the herds of cattle that are then raised on these huge sites, and here comes another whammy- every cow is believed to generate some 500 litres of methane gas every day- a greenhouse gas that is some 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Imagine the world cow population of say 10 billion i.e 5 trillion litres of methane, and here is the biggest whammy of them all- meat is not essential to maintain human life, in fact over half the world have led a very healthy existence living off rice and noodles, yet many of those people in China and India, who are now that much better off want to enjoy the same standard of cuisine which we in the west seem to take for granted, and the only way of doing that is to raise more cows, since more cows mean more burgers and the more burgers we eat the more methane we pump into the atmosphere.Is it any wonder that concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide are increasing? To compound matters we now learn that the planet's principal carbon sinks are at the point of reversing from being a carbon sink to a carbon emitter and we think we can curb global warming? Mankind's future tenure of the planet is now in jeopardy and Nature is holding all the aces !