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Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

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121–130 of 282 posts

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#121
post #49
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It ended because it isn’t cost effective.

Correct. We were told that it was no longer cost effective.

All that really means is that it became cheaper to ship food from other places. If the cost of shipping went up, Hawai'i agriculture would be "cost effective" again.

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#123
post #65
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there any immediate economic incentive to adding algae into feed? You can charge more for it? Many consumers are willing to pay more for environmentally-friendlier options now.

1. That would only affect a small portion of the global market 2. You'd have verification problems, same as with a lot of things now claimed to be organic/free range/etc but aren't really in the sense people expect

There are already people intentionally buying beef straight from producers, to ensure that it's "grass fed". If warming enthusiasts cared as much about this issue as these paleo dieters do about avoiding flavorful beef, they could do the same.

As you say, the effect would be small, but why would that stop anyone from doing it?

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#125

Perhaps they should study the nutritional impacts of the resulting beef before they get too far with this. Grass fed beef is much tastier and much more nutritious than feed lot fed beef. Does feeding the seaweed reduce the need for using antibiotics required when feeding corn to cattle? That would be a real win.

It would be interesting to compare feedlot vs feedlot/algae vs grassfed. There is already a solution to this problem that has numerous other benefits. Revert all of the former grasslands that are monoculture fields of corn to raise grassfed beef.

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#126
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone provide a sense of scale and impact if these results were to hold and if the majority of the world beef production were to switch to it? My understanding is that around half of the world's greenhouse gas comes from livestock. Would it mean that this could cut our emissions by half? Would it be therefore much more cost efficient to have the government invest is growing and distributing red algae than whatev…

Your figure is from cowspiracy - it's worth looking up the film to discover its many other inaccuracies. https://newint.org/blog/2016/02/10/cowspiracy-stampeding-in-...

Excellent article, thank you for linking it. I love and appreciate my vegan friends (have been one in the past, might be again in the future), but they need to be realistic about convincing others to change deeply-ingrained eating habits.

Short of an apocalyptic event, you could spend 100% of your spare time and energy trying to get people to stop eating meat and you'd be lucky to get a dozen lasting conversions. It's simply not an effective use of resources to make that your main/only focus.

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFW your climate change denialism goes so far off the deep end that you literally claim that warmer water in the most global of the oceans isn't related to global warming...

Climate change isn't the weather. It isn't one year or several years, it's a trend over decades or centuries or millennia. Do you know what's normal? Abnormal weather. Exceptional circumstances happen all the time, weather conditions do not follow a bell curve. I am not at all denying climate change, but you can never point to an event and shout about it. It's a long term statistical trend, not a few coincidental eve…

> Warmer water is absolutely not related to climate change Warmer water is not absolutely related to climate change

I think you got your "not" in the wrong place. No, climate change isn't the only thing, however it can be, along with human caused acidification / pollution.

The fact is this systems are so complex and so integrated that we do not know "absolutely", but we have a good idea.

But hey, if it isn't absolute, lets carry on destroying our planet, we have a backup plan after all... oh wait

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#128

Does anyone know if there is any research on WHY this algae acts in this way? Would it be possible to either synthesise the chemical compound(s) involved, once identified without having to farm it?

It's really easy to grow algae. I have to clean it out of stock tanks constantly. Usually it's green, but if I leave a tank alone long enough the red will take over. This is fresh water mixed with cow saliva and some plant matter, but presumably it would be just as easy with salt water? Chemical processes typically produce CO2, due simply to their energy requirements.

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#129
post #20
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need more dill in my life! After weight lots surgery, any carbohydrates give me the most painful gas.

>I need more dill in my life! Yeah, sure, _until you don't_. Bear in mind that it's essentially an invasive weed if you have a backyard garden. Be careful if you attempt to grow it at home, it might take over.

I find cilantro completely outcompetes dill.

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFW your climate change denialism goes so far off the deep end that you literally claim that warmer water in the most global of the oceans isn't related to global warming...

Climate change isn't the weather. It isn't one year or several years, it's a trend over decades or centuries or millennia. Do you know what's normal? Abnormal weather. Exceptional circumstances happen all the time, weather conditions do not follow a bell curve. I am not at all denying climate change, but you can never point to an event and shout about it. It's a long term statistical trend, not a few coincidental eve…

The problem with that argument is that articles are written about individual events, and aren’t trying to be comprehensive evaluations of global warming.

It’s neither informative nor helpful to dismiss such individual articles as being non-indicators of global warming because they don’t cover all the other evidence at the same time.

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