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Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

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Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#131

Post by holografix »

colechristensen wrote: post #114
torstenvl wrote: post #110

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…

“Exceptional circumstances happen all the time”. Yeah it’s called an oxymoron.

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#132

Post by iopq »

holografix wrote: post #131
colechristensen wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

“Exceptional circumstances happen all the time”. Yeah it’s called an oxymoron.

If one billion events happen in a day, then some one-in-a-billion event is likely to happen every day.

Some of them, like a coin landing perfectly sideways will just go on Youtube. Some of them will end up in the news.

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#133

Post by ransom1538 »

Mister_X wrote: post #59

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, because right now the West coast from San Francisco North to at least Fort Bragg, has been suffering a kelp die off of great proportions. No one is quite sure whats going on, but apparently due to climate change, or at least warmer ocean water from further South that we've had for the last 5 or more years, has caused the kelp to die off at a rapid rate, to the point o…

"catastrophe as the Australian coral die off,"

I went deep sea fishing in Florida a few months back. It took forever to get to a place where there were actual fish. I asked the captain why, basically, he knows where there are large shipping container wrecks and that is where all the sea life is.

Thing is, building coral and sea life is super simple [same with killing it]. You literally can just lay down wire grids and get things moving [1].

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-26/scientists-discover-ga...

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#134

Post by chaseha »

fratlas wrote: post #8
wollstonecraft wrote: post #2

Bromoform kills methanogens.

Dumb question. Could Bromoform be put in the existing feed?

Also wondering this. The article mentions the difficult problem of scaling up red algae farming - could the active ingredient not be synthesized commercially and added to feed that way?

edit, from Wikipedia: "The substance may be hazardous to the environment, and special attention should be given to aquatic organisms. Its volatility and environmental persistence makes bromoform's release, either as liquid or vapor, strongly inadvisable. ... Bromoform is a confirmed animal carcinogen" Although I presume the bromoform binds to the enzymes and/or otherwise reacts in the stomach, as usual there are pros and cons associated with this sort of thing

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#137

Post by skosch »

konschubert wrote: post #81
abainbridge wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My understanding is that around half of the world's greenhouse gas comes from livestock That's not right. The highest number I've been able to find for the whole of agriculture is 24% of world greenhouse gas emissions. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... About 25% of that is methane from livestock ( http://old.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/greenhouse-gas-emissi... ) So livestock is about 6…

One also has to consider that the methane decays over a matter of decades. Other than CO2, which stays in the atmosphere until it is taken out. So, even if methane takes a big share in current greenhouse emissions, its share in the accumulated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will be lower. The climate change it causes is temporary. (Disregarding runaway effects.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane

Decades – we don't have decades to fix this.

Also, it decays into CO2, so to claim that its effects are temporary is misleading. On top of that, as long as the carbon is in a CH4 bond, it traps at least 20× as much radiation. Please don't dismiss the significance of methane emissions.

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#139

Post by skosch »

slfnflctd wrote: post #126
lozenge wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

The economics of veggie proselytism actually look pretty good.

Animal Charity Evaluators found that for every $11 spent in online ads, you could make one person go to a website, sign up with their email, and pledge to go vegetarian for a year. The average vegetarian [1] produces 1.5 metric tons less CO2eq per year, so this means that the online ads decrease carbon at a cost of $7.40 per ton. That's cheaper than buying typical carbon offset certificates ($10-$15 per ton).

Maybe it's too optimistic to assume that everyone who makes a pledge on the website actually stays vegetarian for a year, or that they were average-level meat consumers before. Still, animal farming is bad enough that reducing it is probably cost-competitive with other current CO2 reduction approaches.

[1] I'm not sure if their use of "vegetarian" means "completely vegan".

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