It's a popular misconception that cows contribute greatly to the global warming. The general story is that recently a lot of people in emerging countries (and specifically China) have increased their beef consumption and you need more cows for that, and hence more methane emissions from their burps. And since methane is many times more potent than CO2 ... you know the rest.
What people don't take the time to check is if the story is true. The global inventory of cows was constant at very close to 1 billion for the last 45 years [1]. The half-life of methane in the atmosphere is about 7 years [2], so all the burps released by cows today simply replace burps that decayed from cows of decades past. Overall, cows don't contribute to an increase or decrease in the level of methane in the atmosphere.
[1] http://beef2live.com/story-world-cattle-inventory-1960-2014-...
Scientists know this when they state that over a 100 year period, methane traps 32 times more heat than CO2 [1]. This is the number widely cited. Over a 20 year period it is even worse: 104 times greater! Considering we are trying to drastically reduce the human contribution to global warming over the next 10 to 20 years, methane is a great thing to focus on.
Other thoughts:
It is interesting that the cow population only increased 35% since 1960 according to that source. But what about the methane per cow? Some quick searches suggests the slaughter age may have decreased from 3 years to 15 months during that time. They are growing much faster, fed grain that leads to the methane burps. At a minimum several times more emissions per cow.
CO2 only sticks around for 100 years, by your line of reasoning we should just shrug that off too?
Considering than methane is two orders of magnitude more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2 [0], removing it from the atmosphere will also do good alongside reducing CO2 emissions.
[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-gree...
“If we can imagine a horse having two or three explosive spears stuck into its stomach and being made to pull a butcher’s truck through the streets of London while it pours blood in the gutter, we shall have an idea of the present method of killing. The gunners themselves admit that if whales could scream, the industry would stop, for nobody would be able to stand it.” - Dr Harry Lillie, 1946.
Lillie was a a surgeon and medical officer aboard British whaling ships in the Antarctic during the 1940s.
And nowhere did I say that they are. Unlike fish, they're harvested in a way that doesn't result in wasteful and incredibly destructive bycatch.
And frankly, it's hard to think of a form of butchering or mass-scale animal harvest that wasn't brutal in the 1940s. Factory farming today is a worse fate than most people can ever imagine hell to be, yet most of us (my hypocritical self included) are still providing financial support to it.
Eating meat (at least as it is now) results in a death no matter how you go about it. The options we have are let an animal have a free life and suffer at the end, let an animal suffer its whole life then pop it in the brain to "stun it", or let it watch itself bleed out if you're going for halal/kosher food. Hunting and modern whaling are ironically more humane than most other methods of meat consumption we have.
There is no comparable suffering of a mammal that the cruel and draw out method killing a whale.
It would be best compared to how the English hung drew and quareted the worst condemned prisoners.
You are now bringing up strawmen. We are talking about whales. Not chickens.
Yes battery chicken farming is aweful, so I don't eat battery chickens or eggs. Pig farming is terrible and if I didn't have religious objections to eating in the first place I would avoid that too. I also eat ethically grown beef.
Just because other animals are mis treated does not mean anyone should give whaling a pass.
If you truly belive fish are so bad, maybe you should avoid that too.
Sure, they're only "near threatened". [1] I wonder though which classification would finally make Japan cut their whaling quota.
Regardless, it's not nearly as bad as eating the verifiably endangered yet popular bluefin tuna[2] or any variety of sturgeon or its caviar, of which pretty much all are on the verge of extinction.
They're direct contributors to global warming and rainforests are being clear cut to make way for pastures. In contrast, the whales that Japan harvests, minke whales, aren't endangered, their consumption has negligible impact on the environment, and they're quite delicious.
I grab whale sashimi whenever I see it at the supermarket and I keep a couple cans in my cupboard just in case I get a craving. I don't eat it often due to the risk of mercury accumulation, but I can't think of a good reason to not eat it every now and then. From an environmental standpoint, it's also preferable to fish, since trawling absolute destroys environments and nets as a whole end up killing a lot of "waste" fish and dolphins that people won't eat. Whaling is targeted and doesn't really have much collateral damage in comparison.