Cats Leave Biggest Carbon Paw-Print Among House Pets, Study Finds

Cats are really bad for the climate, according to a new study. And so the next time it rains “cats and dogs”, you’ll know know who to blame. H/t: oekowatch.org.

German daily Bild, which has more readers than the WSJ, USA Today and NYT combined,  reports that cats leave huge carbon paw-prints and so make a significant contribution to climate change. Each househiold cat is repsonsible for the emissions of 2.2 tons of CO2 annually.

The information is based on a story appearing in health magazine Healthy Living and on a study from climate company ClimatePartner.

According to Bild, internet portal utopia.de tested the impacts of five different pets on climate. Bild writes:

Catfood, cat litter, waste… every cat leads to 2.2 tons of CO2 emissions annually. No other house pet leaves such a terrible ecological paw-print.

Just the manufacture of cat food and its packing leads to about one ton of CO2 per cat. The waste disposal of food cans and cat litter burdens the climate with an additional 1250 kg of carbon dioxide. Then you have to include the water consumption for cleaning the cat potty.”

The house cat is an even bigger climate sinner than a dog, says Bild.

What pet ought one keep if concerned about impacting the climate? The study says the canary bird is the ideal pet to keep, emitting only 0.028 tons of CO2 annually.

According to Wikipedia: “Cats are a common companion animal in Europe and North America, and their worldwide population exceeds 500 million.” That comes out to a billion tons of CO2 just on the account of cats. That’s the same as 100 million Europeans. Time to call the exterminator. Hey – it’s either them, or us.

Of course Bild reminds us that cats themselves are not really the problem, but people who keep them. Bild writes: “Humans by far are worse for the climate”.

20 responses to “Cats Leave Biggest Carbon Paw-Print Among House Pets, Study Finds”

  1. Ulrich Elkmann

    And no wonder. They domesticated humans to care for them and protect them, so that there could be oodles of these secret masters of the world around – so much more than in a “natural” state of events. And they fooled the humans into believing that homo not-so-sapiens was the master…

  2. DirkH

    This just shows how the AGW priests can bend their numbers against anything they don’t like. Probably the AGW peanut counter who wrote that drivel just got abandoned by his girlfriend; and now he wields his power to make the IPCC prohibit her from keeping her cat (which she loved more than him). Or something like that.

    Today cats.

    Tomorrow… YOU!

  3. R. de Haan

    Must Read: Solar Cycles cause global warming and cooling, not humans.
    So ‘Foxtrot Oscar’ and leave those cats and humans alone.

    Current research also shows that Earth’s oceans are now beginning to cool. It is also now clear that temperatures over the last century correlate far better with cycles in oceans than they do with carbon dioxide; and, the temperature cycles in oceans are caused by cycles of the sun. Yet the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) advocates, as well as the media, continue to ignore all of this, perpetuating fear and advocating spending billions of dollars on non-solutions.

    http://www.lunarplanner.com/SolarCycles-climate.html

    1. ArndB

      The next question should be who is doing the job during the winter season (at higher latitudes). How does a cold winter comes about like the winter 1941/42, six months after the Germans ambushed the Soviet Union. See for example the temperature record of Tallin/Estonia; details here: http://www.1ocean-1climate.com/, with about 8 to 9°C lower winter temperatures as in the pre war years. (See the last image) .

  4. R. de Haan

    That kind of crap provides cat killers an excuse to go wild on their sick habits and target humans as well.

    For me it’s incredible that going “Green” has become the latest trend among cat owners.

  5. biggreenlie

    What’s next?……Babies?……………let’s just keep allowing these “AGW IDIOTS” to present their absurd statements and in the end they too will become “the pariahs” of the World and will become redundant!

  6. Ulrich Elkmann

    They tried the “Babies!” angle already, several times. It used to be known as Malthusianism. And it was not just the “völkisch” nationalists since the 1920s (for them, of course, it was always Other Folks’ babies) or the white suprematists in America (or England, or Sweden, most of them Social Democrats) (like Lothrop Stoddard’s “The Rising Tide of Color”, 1920, or Madison Grant’s “The Passing of the White Race”, 1916), but also many, many Leftists (the most notorious being Paul Ehrlich, he of The Population Bomb). In fact, reading the statements of these well-intentioned humanitarians like Margaret Sanger, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, Mahatma Gandi, Nehru (to say nothing of Indira Gandhi), well documented in Matthew Connelly’s “Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population”, 2008, shows that the weighted and deeply human utterings by these people are indistinguishable from the most rabid ravings of Himmler and his ilk. And then there was/is China’s One-child policy.
    The angle “pets as a dangerous nuisance” was also pioneered by China in Mao’s early glory days. You can bet that James Hansen knows his idol well.

  7. Sundance

    I find this news on cats very exciting because the next time a vegan suggests I hurt the planet by eating meat I now have the perfect comeback. I can tell them that I am better than them because I eat enough kittens (you have to eat them when there young for maximum GHG reduction) to have a negative carbon footprint. :*)

    1. DirkH

      German Vegans, are they not just loveable, tolerant chaps? 😉
      “Vegetarians are killers”
      http://www.vegetarier-sind-moerder.de

      Have fun with Google translate…
      There must be something in meat that makes people relaxed. Maybe it’s the vitamin B.

  8. Uh, Oh, Climate Alarmists: You Have To Get Rid Of Your Cats » Pirate's Cove

    […] even mention this. The Warmists might just do something radical and violent. Story via No Trick Zone, from the German news site Bild Catfood, cat litter, waste… every cat leads to 2.2 tons of CO2 […]

  9. R. de Haan

    @ArndB
    3. Juni 2011 at 19:16 | Permalink | Reply
    “The next question should be who is doing the job during the winter season (at higher latitudes). How does a cold winter comes about like the winter 1941/42, six months after the Germans ambushed the Soviet Union. See for example the temperature record of Tallin/Estonia; details here: http://www.1ocean-1climate.com/, with about 8 to 9°C lower winter temperatures as in the pre war years. (See the last image) .”

    Think Negative Arctic Oscillation, Negative NAO and blocking high’s, so i.m.o nothing news under the sun

    Also realize that dring this period there were also anomalous warm area’s like
    Alaska.

    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1256/wea.248.04/pdf

  10. NikFromNYC

    I’ve added “No pets!” to my Authority poster:

    Here I present The Quick Glance Guide to Global Warming:
    Denial: http://bit.ly/m6xySt
    Oceans: http://oi53.tinypic.com/35b9g08.jpg
    Thermometers: http://oi52.tinypic.com/2agnous.jpg
    Ice: http://oi52.tinypic.com/2upvlvm.jpg
    Earth: http://oi56.tinypic.com/2reh021.jpg
    Authority: http://oi52.tinypic.com/wlt4i8.jpg
    Prophecy: http://oi52.tinypic.com/30bfktk.jpg
    Psychopathy: http://oi52.tinypic.com/1zqu71i.jpg
    Thinker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n92YenWfz0Y

  11. DirkH

    Aló Presidente! Green Commander-in-Chief Kretschmann I. of Baden-Württemberg holds an audition at the town hall place of Stuttgart and says he wants to do so once a month. Video, German.
    http://videos.t-online.de/kretschmann-trifft-s21-gegner/id_46923790/index

  12. DirkH

    Looks like the Greek have a certain grudge against the EUSSR. See the 2nd image in this gallery.
    http://www.ftd.de/politik/international/:protest-gegen-sparpakete-griechenlands-wutbuerger/60060607.html

  13. ArndB

    @ R. de Haan, 3. Juni 2011 at 23:01
    # „Think Negative Arctic Oscillation, Negative NAO and blocking high’s, so i.m.o nothing news under the sun”.

    And what is behind AO, NAO, El Nino, PDO and the pre WWII Arctic warming? It is the ocean. In winter 1941/42 it was the North and Baltic Sea. Concerning the two decades warming from 1919 to 1939 the event had a lot to do with water from the Gulf Current (the West Spitsbergen Current) and sea conditions near the Fram Strait as explained
    Here: http://www.arctic-heats-up.com/ , and
    Here: http://www.arctic-warming.com/ ,
    wishing a fine weekend.

  14. Adrian O

    Wow!
    Cats like warmth.
    They are sneaky.
    The whole global warming – IT’S THE CATS!!!!
    (too late for hu m a n s . . .

  15. Ulrich Elkmann

    Humans love warmth, too – just check where millions of them spend astonishing sums of money each year to vacation (warning: this comes close to doing something like empirical science: looking up facts and taking them seriously, instead of making them up and distorting them). They just don’t like heat without air conditioning. Of course the cats are considering human well-being as well: They prefer their staff friendly and helpful. But it will be of no use (see posts above): Since increasing CO2 is not driving temperatures up, their vicious plan will come to nothing. Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s cat can bite her “master”…

  16. John F. Hultquist

    Everyone should have 3 or 4 cats in their home. The added CO2 will allow you to grow houseplants and vegetables to feed your family and trade for other goods. More cats yield more and better plants. Sequester CO2 in this manner. You will need another cat or two. The cycle speeds up. Very soon you will have solved most of the world’s problems – I’m still working on how this process can get rid of Al Gore, James Hansen, and Paul Ehrlich.

  17. Keystone Pipeline: Housecats Have More Emissions Impact | Watts Up With That?

    […] than two hours of U.S. emissions, a negligible amount. Seventy-four million US housecats annually cause an estimated 196 times this emissions volume. Why isn’t Greenpeace urging President Obama to ban […]

  18. Keystone Pipeline: Housecats Have Greater Emissions Impact

    […] two hours of U.S. emissions, a negligible amount. Seventy-four million US housecats annually cause an estimated 196 times this emissions volume. Why isn’t Greenpeace urging President Obama to ban […]

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