Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some variant of this same comment is on every single thread about this here. We need to tackle all of the "only 5%" issues.
Or transportation + electricity which is nearly 60% in the U.S.
Yep, that as well.
Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%
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Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%
#72I saw some math once... not sure how correct it is, but it was something like given the co2-equivalent emissions of methane, even if all cows simply disappeared tomorrow, it would still only take care of about 5% of our global GHG emissions. So if that's true it wouldn't really be a gamechanger. Still worth doing though (the seaweed, not the mass slaughtering)! And if everyone plants 350 trees then maybe we'll get so…
5% doesn’t solve the problem, but it makes it more tractable. Enough 5% (or 4%, 3%, 2%…) solutions that integrate well into the existing economy, and you get GHG emissions into a range where the complex, expensive, and disruptive (in the traditional sense of the term) game-changing technologies become reasonable. At some point we will end up diverting a sizable percentage of global productivity to either scrubbing CO…
> At some point we will end up diverting a sizable percentage of global productivity to either scrubbing CO2 or dealing with the effects of our failure
Not necessarily. Current research indicates that stratospheric aerosol injections could lower global temperatures enough to offset greenhouse gas at a price tag of $3 billion per year. That's only 0.002% of world GDP.
The technology's well-understood and the effects are already well-tested as it basically mimics the global cooling seen after major volcanic eruptions.
I'm not saying it's a sure shot. But it's a very very promising technology that could potentially sidestep the need to reduce carbon emissions whatsoever. At the very least we should at least be funding more research and doing small-scale deployments to test it in production.
[1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d
Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%
#73But not water usage, land usage, suffering for sentient beings, transport of feed, waste of human food for feeding etc etc
Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cows are much better at extracting nutrients from, say, grass than humans are. In places where nuts, vegetables, fruits aren't available, meat may be a more environmentally friendly choice.
But almost nobody is eating pasture-raised meat, though the industrial meat complex loves that you think that or are pointing it out as if that's how beef is made.
The US farming methods (grainfed, feed lots, etc) are very different from what we do in New Zealand.
In New Zealand every farmer I've ever met (and I've met many) let their cattle feed on fresh pasture almost entirely. We are blessed with lots of land per person, and lots of rainfall, perfect for growing grass. In the dry part of summer or the cold part of winter when fresh pasture isn't growing fast enough, they supplement with hay and silage (both produced from fresh pasture that is typically harvested at the beginning of summer).
But I know that outside of my own experience, other things are occasionally fed such as waste products from food processing, brewing, etc. And I know that when you sell animals you can legally tick "grass fed" as long as the animal has had access to pasture, regardless of what percentage of their diet actually came from that pasture. So it is possible that some cattle from NZ have eaten mainly non-grass foods, but in practice I've never actually seen that happen.
As for seaweed, we have a lot of coastline so we could utilize this strategy more effectively than the US could.
Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
From an environmental perspective, it's easier to directly consume fruits, vegetables and nuts yourself, rather than have an animal do the same, then eat the animal. That doesn't address the human appetite for animal proteins, but there is beyond meat.
No, it’s not. Most of the places where nuts are grown in industrial scale are water challenged. Animal agriculture is unsustainable at the scale we operate in today in the United States. Meat doesn’t equal feedlot, and pastured ruminant agriculture helps sustain the land.
That still leaves fruits and vegetables, which proportionally compose much more of a diet than nuts.
Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%
#76My company is currently working to grow Asparagopsis Taxiformis, here in the US, for this purpose. I agree with comments that we have big issues to tackle in regards to methane sinks failing, such as permafrost, and there are things to be said about people moving en masse to plant based diets – but, the future will always be a mix of tomorrow and today. Many people will still eat beef, and we need to ensure we reduce…
What's the mechanism behind methane reduction?
Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like just growing seaweed won't be enough though. You'd have to grow it _in close proximity to the cows_, otherwise there are other greenhouse gases that will be emitted before the cows can eat it. It's also unclear to me what this means in terms of water consumption, and therefore sustainability. I'd be curious to hear how (if at all) these issues could be addressed.
An additional thing to consider is that not all greenhouse gases are created equal. You can find any number of articles to cite as source that methane is 20 to 30 times worse for the atmosphere in causing warming than carbon dioxide. https://blogs.princeton.edu/research/2014/03/26/a-more-poten...
I've run the numbers and it looks like all cattle on earth emit something like 150MT of methane per year. Multiplied by 20 (to get CO2 equivalent), that's 3GT. That's about 8% of the yearly total CO2 emissions (37GT). Certainly not negligible, but not earth shattering either. For comparison, per-capita CO2 emissions in the US are 16.5 metric tons. Per cow methane emissions are about 100kg per year or 2-3 tons in CO2 equivalent.
Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%
#78There are many planet saving discoveries like these. There's also a catch, which is why the planet hasn't been saved yet. > “If we’re able to work out how to scale up the seaweed to such a level to that can feed all of the cows and the sheep and the goats around the world, then it’s going to have a huge impact on the climate; And there you go. That's the hard part that you cannot just hand-wave away. You also have to…
True that that's a non-trivial problem, but seaweed farming is actually something that we could massively scale up. With vertical farms, a ton (metaphorically speaking; more than that literally) of food can be grown in a small surface area of ocean. Would be much more efficient for feeding livestock than relying on farmland that could be growing human food. (Although as an aside I'm personally in favour of a decent a…
Why not have the herd on a surface barge and have an automated system pull seaweed up a conveyor belt to feed them? This would free up the land acreage for human use!
Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%
#79My company is currently working to grow Asparagopsis Taxiformis, here in the US, for this purpose. I agree with comments that we have big issues to tackle in regards to methane sinks failing, such as permafrost, and there are things to be said about people moving en masse to plant based diets – but, the future will always be a mix of tomorrow and today. Many people will still eat beef, and we need to ensure we reduce…
What's the mechanism behind methane reduction?
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Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%
#80My company is currently working to grow Asparagopsis Taxiformis, here in the US, for this purpose. I agree with comments that we have big issues to tackle in regards to methane sinks failing, such as permafrost, and there are things to be said about people moving en masse to plant based diets – but, the future will always be a mix of tomorrow and today. Many people will still eat beef, and we need to ensure we reduce…
This would be a tremendous benefit if it can be deployed at scale, which I'm sure it eventually could. HOWEVER, This solution fails to address the excessive amount of water consumption required to raise these cows. fresh, clean water is already becoming a major global crisis. The simplest and most effective solution to ensuring our survival as a species remains switching to a plant-based diet. Too many people adopt a cow-first mentality when we should be adopting a humanity-first mentality. The future is Vegan!