Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely • Hacker News Board

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#191

Post by schoen » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

kawsper wrote: post #79

schoen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are also trying to make meat without animals, by culturing animal tissues outside of an animal. You can see on a number of previous HN threads on this topic that a lot of animal advocacy groups have been forming a consensus about supporting these. I don't think any limits have been established on their eventual "realism" or biological similarity to tissues grown inside an animal. See https://en.wikipedia.org/w…

As that Wikipedia article mentions we would need a plant-based growth medium to get the meat to grow. Today they are using fetal bovine serum as a growth medium, which is both expensive and it is a by-product from the dairy industry. When a cow coming for slaughter is identified to be pregnant, the cow is slaughtered and bled, and the fetus is removed from the mother and brought into a blood collection facility. The…

I didn't know about this aspect; thanks for pointing it out. Do you know how plausible alternatives would be? I guess the chemistry of the serum is pretty specific and maybe challenging to replicate, as in human blood transfusions most blood products are taken from a human donor rather than synthesized.

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#192

Post by jonbarker » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:26 PM UTC

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'…

Almost quit beef due to the info in Cowspiracy in which I believe they pointed out that if everyone were to switch to grass fed beef there would literally not be enough grassland to support it (this is probably true, with the assumption that various plant crops continue their unsustainable land footprint). However, having seen also "The Magic Pill" on Netflix, I've concluded the optimal solution is probably more, healthier beef, and less plant agriculture land. The real problem isn't the cows, it's what the cows eat, which is mostly corn, soy, grains etc. Put as simply as I can: if humans committed to eating fewer carbs, and eating grass fed fatty meat and high quality plant oils for the bulk of their calories, the resulting system would produce huge carbon capture because grassland in its 'growth phase' is a very efficient carbon sink, and is more supportive of healthy soil than fields of corn, soy, and grains.

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#193

Post by IncRnd » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #51

rmason wrote: post #36

With an ag background I've been following this story for a long time. It has excited enough interest in America that trials are underway, I believe off the coast of Maine to grow red algae but I can't find the link. But they've already had luck growing red algae off the coast of the Hawaiian island of Molokai. I've been to Molokai and although there's a lot of farmland there it's laying idle. Most of the land was use…

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…

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?

Yes. According to the numbers of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, this would be about a 6.4% reduction in total green house gas emissions. See below for the numbers

> Total emissions from global livestock: 7.1 Gigatonnes of Co2-equiv per year, representing __14.5 percent of all anthropogenic GHG emissions__. This figure is in line FAO’s previous assessment, Livestock’s Long Shadow, published in 2006, although it is based on a much more detailed analysis and improved data sets. The two figures cannot be accurately compared, as reference periods and sources differ.

> About __44 percent of livestock emissions are in the form of methane__ (CH4). The remaining part is almost equally shared between Nitrous Dioxide (N2O, 29 percent) and Carbon Dioxide (CO2, 27 percent).

  http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/
  Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

.44 * 14.5 = 6.38%

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#194

Post by rileyphone » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

asimpletune wrote: post #173

Chardok wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Thing is, building coral and sea life is super simple [same with killing it]." That is just simply not true. While it might be helpful to lay down structures for sea life, ocean acidification [1], algal blooms [2], and climate change are all contributing to mass death of sea life, and fast enough where we will see many species go extinct in our lifetime (bluefin tuna will be there soon [3]). Even related to your own…

Woah, I was really surprised by the different sizes of the fish.

Important to note is that the biggest fish caught in the 50s and 60s seem to all be goliath groupers (also known as jewfish) and are now critically endangered and illegal to keep. I imagine they still catch some on these charter boats, but they are required to release them once they do.

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#195

Post by louprado » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

dig-doug wrote: post #146

phkahler wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it turns out to make healthier cows? I'm not just making that up, I think it will probably have a positive effect - cows need iodine too! Not sure if it's enough to sway farmers.

Can't believe this comment is the only mention of iodine in both the thread and the article. I supplement iodine daily and it's honestly changed my life.

Which supplement you are taking and where are you buying it ?

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#196

Post by ahartman00 » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

malloryerik wrote: post #54

louprado wrote: post #33

For a moment this was the best news I had read in years, until I noticed the story is a year old and the research paper[1] is two years old. Hopefully there has been some progress in the past years but if that were the case we would should have seen another headline by now. At least I haven't. Normally 2 years wouldn't be much time to go from a research paper to production. But this appears to be a simple solution to…

Is there any immediate economic incentive to adding algae into feed? Wouldn't you agree that markets don't deal effectively with many or most commercial endeavors' unwanted side effects (negative externalities), and so authorities often need to step in when market failure causes damage? In this case, if the science is real, a global treaty would seem in order to simply mandate the effective use of seaweed in cow feed…

"Is there any immediate economic incentive to adding algae into feed?"

the incentive is trivially simple. free seaweed. im assuming there is fiber, and at least some nutrients in seaweed, but no farmer is going to turn down free food. to me it seems like it would be very similar to alfalfa/hay.

not sure what that would cost, or if that much can be produced however. also, dairy farmers at least care very much about the ratios of various feedstocks, so the assumption about nutrition is important.

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#197

Post by gamblor956 » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC

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…

Per various articles I could find on the West Coast Kelp Die Off, it appears that multiple years of warm El Nino waters, a massive starfish wasting disease, and urchin boom resulted in a 3-pronged assault on kelp populations. Now that the El Nino waters have cooled, and the starfish population is returning to normal, 2 of the 3 stress factors are being reduced. The last--the urchin population--is being controlled through a combination of the regrowing starfish population and man-made efforts like urchin vacuums.

See https://www.kqed.org/science/1357320/scientists-and-fisherme....

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#198

Post by gamblor956 » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:56 PM UTC

throwaway5752 wrote: post #116

Havoc wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's as big a catastrophe as the Australian coral die off Not really. Kelp grows at 3+ inches a day. Coral <1 inch per year.

The rate of growth is immaterial if the die-off is because of a permanent change, which there is every reason to believe is the case (based on every model of climate change, and it will only get worse). Also, the rest of the trophic web that the kelp forms the basis for is hosed. Since they are one of the most productive ecosystems, it's kind of a big deal.

There are different types of kelp, not all of which are as sensitive to water temperature. For example, SoCal's kelp forests were not as devasted as NorCal's kelp forest. The biggest concern for SoCal's kelp forests are controlling the urchin population. Moreover, kelp populations are easily restored through cuttings--an entire forest can be repopulated in less than a decade because kelp grow so quickly.

Kelp die-off is a problem, but it's a temporary and addressable problem.

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#199

Post by Jach » Thu, May 10, 2018, 5:08 PM UTC

skosch wrote: post #137

konschubert wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How many years do we have to fix this then? Alternatively, at what point will activists start saying we passed the point of no fix and give up their activism?

Re: Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely

#200

Post by schiffern » Thu, May 10, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

ppeetteerr wrote: post #154

louprado wrote: post #33

For a moment this was the best news I had read in years, until I noticed the story is a year old and the research paper[1] is two years old. Hopefully there has been some progress in the past years but if that were the case we would should have seen another headline by now. At least I haven't. Normally 2 years wouldn't be much time to go from a research paper to production. But this appears to be a simple solution to…

Either we impose a gas credit system on the cattle industry or, more likely, governments subsidize dairy farmers that use algae in their feed. Either way, there is no financial incentive to produce less methane. It will require regulation

>Either way, there is no financial incentive to produce less methane.

There is a distinct thermodynamic incentive to reduce methane, because the methanogenic bacteria are "eating" the energy that the cow would otherwise absorb.

This translates directly into a financial incentive, because the cows require less feed.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1d58/15b6d22d81070c173f6281...

>Methane is a by-product of the microbial fermentation of carbohydrates in the diets of ruminant animals. Because cattle can lose about 6% of their dietary intake energy as CH4, substantial research to estimate this production and to reduce CH4 emissions has been completed (Johnson and Johnson, 1995).