The Bison and the Bias: Rethinking Methane, Climate Science, and Scientific Integrity

 

This is not a minor technicality. It raises a fundamental question: are we still doing science, or are we using the appearance of science to drive predetermined policy goals?

Framing the Narrative: Anthropogenic by Definition

 

In addition, the figure that livestock are responsible for 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions rests on framing assumptions, not an immutable law of physics. These assumptions are that all emissions from domesticated livestock are ‘new’ and ‘anthropogenic’, while emissions from wild animals (like the 30–60 million pre-industrial bison of North America) are deemed ‘natural’ and excluded from baseline warming calculations. Yet cattle did not appear ex nihilo; they replaced ecologically similar wild herds. So why are all livestock emissions counted as additive, without subtracting the emissions of the animals they displaced?

Where Science Ends and Policy Begins

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for example, must produce emissions inventories that are uniform across nations. In doing so, it adopts a human-centred definition of ‘anthropogenic’ that is politically useful, but flawed and biased. These choices are rarely acknowledged in public discussions, where numbers are presented as scientific facts, not the products of embedded assumptions and intentional bias.

 

This matters not just because public trust in science depends on transparency, not on moral urgency or consensus alone, but above all because the conclusions presented are used to drive far-reaching and life-changing political policies implemented on a global basis.

 

If emissions estimates are based on cherry-picked baselines, narrow definitions, and exclusions that favour certain policy directions, then even accurate numbers will create a misleading picture of causality and responsibility.

What Should Count as ‘Anthropogenic’?

Methane from a modern cow and methane from a wild bison molecule-for-molecule do the same thing in the atmosphere. The reason one is counted, and the other isn’t, comes down to human management, not physical science.

 

If humans replace a natural ecosystem with a managed one of similar biomass and emissions, does that really constitute an additive climate burden, or just an ecological shift? The current messaging shifts natural methane contribution to the atmosphere onto human responsibility, while in the case of bison/cattle debate, as with others, the effect on the climate is neutral.

 

A fairer system would estimate the net new emissions from human intervention: the difference between current livestock methane and the emissions from the ecosystems they displaced. But this is rarely done.

 

Anthropogenic CH₄ = Cattle CH₄ – Displaced Bison CH₄

 

If the intention was to produce an objective view of man’s influence on the climate, such a basic, objective approach would be absolutely necessary. The fact that there is no such objectivity can only lead to the conclusion that the facts and the science are intentionally manipulated to produce a forgone conclusion, namely that human activities on the planet are responsible for global warming. 

Why This Matters beyond Methane

This is not just about cows and bison. It’s about how climate metrics are constructed and whether they meet the standards of good science, but more importantly still, what is behind this corruption of science.

 

Too often, when such questions are raised, the response is political, not scientific. Dissenters are labelled ‘climate sceptics’. This is a term that conflates methodological critique with ideological opposition. But scepticism is the engine of science, not its enemy.

We Must Reclaim Scientific Integrity

If climate science is perceived as being crafted to support predetermined narratives, it risks alienating exactly the thoughtful observers whose trust is most important.

 

We should not fear hard questions about our models, assumptions, or accounting methods. We should welcome them. That is how real science works, and how it earns the right to shape policy, not merely reinforce it.

 

It’s time to restore humility and honesty to climate discourse. Let us continue to address environmental challenges, but let us also insist that science remains science: transparent, objective, and open to critique, even if the politics are urgent.

From Scientific Framing to Structural Outcomes

The use of narrow scientific assumptions, such as counting cattle methane as wholly anthropogenic while excluding the emissions of the natural systems they replaced, may appear technical, even innocent. But these framing decisions, once embedded in international policy frameworks, don’t stay in the laboratory. They shape what counts as ‘sustainable’, who qualifies for funding, and who can continue to farm.

 

And the consequences are stark.

 

 

It is the product of policy design, subsidy structures, and technocratic governance, often coordinated at the international level.

The Role of Global Institutions and Actors

 

But behind the rhetoric lies a centralising agenda:

• Promoting digital farming technologies, biotech crops, and carbon-tracking systems that smallholders often cannot afford or operate.
• Encouraging land ‘consolidation’ as a pathway to efficiency and carbon reduction.
• Steering funding and development finance toward corporate-aligned projects, often under the banner of ‘public-private partnerships’.
• Establishing metrics-based climate compliance systems (e.g., methane reporting and ESG benchmarks) that inherently favour actors with compliance departments, not local farmers.

 

Meanwhile, carbon offset markets, including methane reduction credits, are being developed as investment vehicles, with companies able to profit from buying up land and changing its use. The promise of ‘climate mitigation’ becomes the justification for land acquisition and control, often without reference to the social and ecological complexity of the regions involved.

Is This Science Serving Society, or Restructuring It?

The danger is that scientific language is being used to justify systemic shifts in land use, food production, and rural livelihoods, but without open debate about the power structures behind them, and above all based on manipulated theories and skewed (false) scientific conclusions.

 

The narrative begins with a natural methane molecule, framed as pollution.

 

But it ends with generational farmers pushed out, agro-ecological knowledge devalued, and global capital gaining control of basic human needs, all under the name of ‘climate action’.

 

This is not a conspiracy theory. It is a documented alignment of incentives—political, financial, and institutional—that favours centralisation, standardisation, and control. It may be dressed in the language of sustainability, but it consolidates power, narrows agricultural diversity, and side-lines those least able to navigate technocratic regimes.

For Science to Serve Society, It Must Remain Free from Political Interference

Science, when it is truly independent, asks uncomfortable questions. It tests assumptions. It invites scrutiny. But when scientific language is embedded in systems of control, used to justify policy outcomes that concentrate land and decision-making, it loses its independence, and risks becoming a tool of enforcement rather than enlightenment.

 

We must reclaim a space where scientific objectivity, ecological wisdom, and democratic oversight can coexist. That means challenging not only poor science, but the political and economic structures that benefit from it.

Winners and Losers in the Age of Engineered Consensus

As we step back to survey the broader picture, it becomes clear that the current climate narrative, framed around selective emissions accounting, enforced through international policy, and justified by questionable scientific methods,  is producing a very specific redistribution of power, wealth, and legitimacy. And that redistribution has both clear winners and clear losers.

The Winners

• Multinational agribusinesses and landholding corporations, who acquire distressed farms and consolidate production under the banner of ‘efficiency’ and ‘net-zero compliance’. 

• Financial actors, who profit from land speculation, green bonds, and carbon offset markets that often hinge on displacing traditional farming practices. 

• Agri-tech firms and biotech monopolies, who offer the ‘solutions’, such as patented seeds, precision farming tools, and methane-reducing additives, which are deemed essential in the new sustainability regime.

• Global governance organisations, who gain increasing leverage over national policy by setting scientific baselines that drive compliance. 

• Social engineers, public or private, who see environmental crises as opportunities to reshape human behaviour and consolidate control under the premise of ‘necessity’.

The Losers

• Smallholders, family farmers, and traditional rural communities, who find themselves locked out of subsidies, outcompeted by scale, or unable to meet the compliance burdens imposed in the name of climate science.
• Cultural identities, rooted in land, craft, and stewardship, are eroded as local economies are replaced by centralised, technocratic supply chains.
• Public trust in science, which suffers when people recognise that objectivity is being selectively applied to support predetermined narratives.
• The democratic process, which is sidelined when complex decisions are outsourced to ‘expert consensus’ that tolerates no dissent and permits no debate.
• Everyone, in the long run, whose freedom to live, eat, farm, and govern locally is diminished in favour of distant systems of control.

When Science Is Used to Justify Power, It Loses Its Power to Justify

Science should be a tool for discovery, not a weapon of enforcement. But when its methods are compromised to serve political or commercial ends, its reputation suffers. And with it, the public’s willingness to engage in shared truth-seeking, which is a vital component of any functioning democracy.

 

We must reclaim science from ideology, and climate from centralisation. That does not mean ignoring environmental threats. It means responding to them with integrity, grounded in full-spectrum thinking that honours history, complexity, and the freedom of all people to shape their own futures.

 

The only ‘reset’ we truly need is one that restores truth as a shared, unimpeachable value, not a managed narrative to achieve specific goals.