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Scientist discovers particular seaweed nearly eliminates cow methane emissions

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Re: Scientist discovers particular seaweed nearly eliminates cow methane emissions

#71

Post by woah »

kristopolous wrote: post #29
chillydawg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest producers are and will always be the mass market stuff, though. Who cares if 1% of beef is produced carbon neutral? It's nice, but it makes no tangible difference. Sadly this method of encouraging better behaviour won't work unless a costco or a mcdonalds, for some insane reason, wants to cut their profit margin and buy more expensive beef.

The worst move the environmental movement did is let the environmentally sensitive product be associated with consumption by a rich liberal urban elite. Until someone can fix this and disassociate ecological efficiency from the limousine liberal, these programs are unfortunately going to only be marginal. Minimizing environmental externalities can't be seen as optional. Lots of reasonable things increase cost - such…

Who cares about environmental friendliness? Liberals. Who has the money to pay extra for environmentally friendly products? Well-to-do liberals. I don't really understand how you think things could have gone differently.

Re: Scientist discovers particular seaweed nearly eliminates cow methane emissions

#72

Post by tootie »

vidarh wrote: post #41
tim333 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting puzzle as to how you'd monitor something like that for a global warming tax. Random cow inspections? Some kind of satellite thing?

Add a default per-cow tax, and deduct from it for purchase of a seaweed feed, and make it bite sufficiently that it becomes substantially cheaper to include seaweed in the feed. This is how Norway encourages bottle recycling: There's no law mandating recycling of bottles, but there's a substantial tax on beverage containers that you get a reduction of in proportion to your return rate. This has resulted in a return r…

US does the same actually. $.05 tax on all bottles, $0.05 payment for recycling. It used to get people to recycle but now the penalty is too small to be worth it. On the flip side, rooting through garbage cans for recycling deposits is now a viable source of income for urban poor.

Re: Scientist discovers particular seaweed nearly eliminates cow methane emissions

#73

Post by toomuchtodo »

erichocean wrote: post #56
faraggi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were the conclusions of your research?

Not the OP, but the typical conclusion would be "effective altruism indicates I should stay in tech and give money to helping fisherman transition to seaweed farming." It's very hard to pass this analysis, since "high tech" is almost universally more valuable to humanity, per unit, that something low tech like farming. If you're already in tech and you want to "help the world", giving money is almost always the best…

OP here. Your assuming I'd stay in tech to arbitrage the wage gap to give altruistically. You discount that maybe working in tech isn't what makes me happy (disclaimer: I like my current gig because of the people I get to work with, but nothing is forever), farming seaweed from my 41 foot catamaran (now depreciable as a business expense if commercially farming seaweed) might make me happier after working in tech for 15 years, and that I'm saving up to eventually leave the tech industry for living on a sailboat with my family.

> but the typical conclusion would be "effective altruism indicates I should stay in tech and give money to helping fisherman transition to seaweed farming."

Don't make assumptions. Life is meant to be enjoyed, and we work for a third of our lives. Perhaps some of us don't want to do the same work for our entire lives.

Lastly, tech isn't how I would give altruistically. I'd trade options and futures and donate the profits. The impact would be orders of magnitude higher than donating my hourly/salary wages.

Re: Scientist discovers particular seaweed nearly eliminates cow methane emissions

#75

Post by kiba »

erichocean wrote: post #56
faraggi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were the conclusions of your research?

Not the OP, but the typical conclusion would be "effective altruism indicates I should stay in tech and give money to helping fisherman transition to seaweed farming." It's very hard to pass this analysis, since "high tech" is almost universally more valuable to humanity, per unit, that something low tech like farming. If you're already in tech and you want to "help the world", giving money is almost always the best…

Agriculture is not "low-tech".

Re: Scientist discovers particular seaweed nearly eliminates cow methane emissions

#76

Post by huxley »

Retric wrote: post #67
gmac wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon neutral is essentially shorthand for doesn't contribute to climate change . Methane (a) contains carbon and (b) is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

> More potent Only in the short term.

Not that short-term.

Methane has a GWP (Global Warming Potential or equivalent impact compared to same amount of carbon dioxide) of 86 over 20 years; 34 over 100 years; and 7.6 over 500 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential

Re: Scientist discovers particular seaweed nearly eliminates cow methane emissions

#77

Post by huxley »

somberi wrote: post #19

Not just for Bovines, for humans too, Seaweed can come to rescue: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/02/a-new-leaf

I believe it's still pretty common to use a form of seaweed called Irish Moss as a thickener in ice cream.

Re: Scientist discovers particular seaweed nearly eliminates cow methane emissions

#78

Post by Retric »

huxley wrote: post #76
Retric wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More potent Only in the short term.

Not that short-term. Methane has a GWP (Global Warming Potential or equivalent impact compared to same amount of carbon dioxide) of 86 over 20 years; 34 over 100 years; and 7.6 over 500 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential

That's very misleading.

34 / 5 is 6.8 so most of that 500 year potential is front loaded to the first 100 years. The difference from 7.6 vs 6.8 is because it breaks down into some CO2. And in fact is less potent than C02 from year 100-400.

Re: Scientist discovers particular seaweed nearly eliminates cow methane emissions

#79

Post by amelius »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #7

There probably isn't an incentive to reduce methane emissions for farmers right now though, right? We'd have to pass regulations mandating a reduction, or an emissions tax or something.

> There probably isn't an incentive to reduce methane emissions for farmers right now though

I think we will be able to detect methane emissions on a large scale from space sometime soon, e.g. [1]. At that point, farmers can't escape the law in any way, and they will have an incentive to reduce emissions.

[1] http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0615/NASA-detects-meth...

Re: Scientist discovers particular seaweed nearly eliminates cow methane emissions

#80

Post by prodigal_erik »

tootie wrote: post #72
vidarh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add a default per-cow tax, and deduct from it for purchase of a seaweed feed, and make it bite sufficiently that it becomes substantially cheaper to include seaweed in the feed. This is how Norway encourages bottle recycling: There's no law mandating recycling of bottles, but there's a substantial tax on beverage containers that you get a reduction of in proportion to your return rate. This has resulted in a return r…

US does the same actually. $.05 tax on all bottles, $0.05 payment for recycling. It used to get people to recycle but now the penalty is too small to be worth it. On the flip side, rooting through garbage cans for recycling deposits is now a viable source of income for urban poor.

On the other other hand, we're essentially paying urban poor to empty cans and strew garbage over the sidewalk.
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