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Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%

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Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%

#121

Post by jaakl »

dcolkitt wrote: post #72
HillRat wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Essentially it is covering earth with special clouds. Main problem here is that you can never remove them, if you keep things on earth unchanged then over decades of our everincreasing energy consumption and co2, methane etc production you just need more and more such protection, until the sun and blue sky is never seen. It is not resolving the problem, it is just hiding it more and more.

Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%

#123

Post by jaakl »

sak5sk wrote: post #49
nightski wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or transportation + electricity which is nearly 60% in the U.S.

It's pretty clear that the HN crowd wants to solve a mute problem with bioengineering and hacking. The ACTUAL problems, you know, the stuff that's so daunting that few startups will ever take on - well, we burry our heads in the sand. Any mention of this fact gets you downvoted. The same story with energy generation. HN has a big crush on nuclear. Nevermind that nuclear takes decades to approve and to build out - tim…

The root problem is that we consume too much energy and other resources, increasingly. Both per capita and in total. Our biological instinct is to grow in numbers as much as we can, and economical incentive is to sell (and consume) more and more. What can you do about these?

Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%

#124

Post by ehnto »

jimmaswell wrote: post #99
esotericn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit confused by this - are you saying that it'd end up being 100% of what you eat, or that it's actually a reasonable estimate of your beef consumption? (as an aside - $15 on fast food a day! for your sake I hope it's relatively healthy stuff!)

I haven't been to the grocery store much lately, and a Wendy's and McDonald's are within bicycling distance. I'll go to them once or twice a day often nowadays. When I first moved out, eating out so much would have felt like an intolerable budget failure, but I've found myself caring less and less over time. I try to stick to just the burgers, not soda or fries often. The jalapeno bacon fries at Wendy's have been an…

If you are going to eat out all the time, try to make it places that use whole foods like real chicken breast in their burgers. At least you're not getting all the processing guff that ends up in processed meat blends. Also give Japanese, Korean or Thai cuisines a go. You can eat pretty healthy and still eat out constantly with a lot of East/South East Asian cuisines.

Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%

#125

Post by mercutio2 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #96
m0zg wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Methane isn't stable in the atmosphere. It eventually converts to CO2 and H2O (within 10 years of emission). It's also an extremely miniscule portion of the Earth's atmosphere, at 1.7 parts per million. It is a negligible factor in global warming. EDIT: Methane is .00017% of the Earth's atmosphere. It cannot be a major factor in retaining heat in the Earth's atmosphere, even though it may be 20 times more effective t…

This is not how climate balance works.

There used to be a relatively stable equilibrium in the climate. There have always, and will always, be many mechanisms contributing to the overall total radiative forcing.

We can’t reduce how much water vapor is in the atmosphere very easily. But methane, we can.

It doesn’t matter that methane has low partial pressure. What matters is the total radiative forcing, and every molecule of uncombusted methane has a very high radiative forcing in the atmosphere.

Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%

#126

Post by petersellers »

chrisco255 wrote: post #101
petersellers wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no evidence of a fresh water shortage. The UN disagrees. [1] > We had the wettest year in 125 years in the U.S. this year. Surely you're not using a one time event to argue against the scientific consensus of climate change? > Beef is one of the healthiest foods on the planet, and we evolved to eat meat, and have been eating it for 2.5 million years. What does this have to do with the water consumption use…

Surely you're not arguing that the amount of water on the planet has decreased? Or that global annual rainfall has reduced? EPA shows that annual precipitation has consistently increased over the past century, so the water scare is a bad play: https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...

> Surely you're not arguing that the amount of water on the planet has decreased? Or that global annual rainfall has reduced?

No, I'm arguing that you are conflating precipitation with water accessibility.

Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%

#127

Post by tr3ndyBEAR »

goodalgae wrote: post #26

My 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…

If AT can do this for bovines, I wonder what the health benefits for us could be

Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%

#128

Post by anonytrary »

stephenr wrote: post #34
alphakappa wrote: post #3

There 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…

It’s simple really. After global warming causes sea levels to rise, the cows will be underwater anyway, they can just find their own seaweed to eat. Problem solved!

Hopefully we'll be beyond meat at that point /s. But yeah most panaceas are too good to be true, and are usually thought of by people forgetting to take into account all of the necessary terms in their equation.

Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%

#129

Post by cosmodisk »

esotericn wrote: post #82
m0zg wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

8% for the sake of what amounts to a flavour in your mouth is pretty earth shattering. Consider: would you spend 8% of your entire financial budget on beef? On an income of $30K, say, you'd spend $2400 on beef, ignoring all other food and other expenses? I'd even flip it around - take a random person off the street, in the UK, say, and tell them you'll give them 2 grand a year to stop eating beef. How many people do…

I spend about 15-20% of my salary on food.Probably a little bit less than half of it goes towards buying meat, including beaf. So,yes,I would.Do I really need to consume that much meat? Well, that's a different questions,but most likely not.

Re: Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%

#130

Post by choeger »

goodalgae wrote: post #105
2_listerine_pls wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the mechanism behind methane reduction?

The mechanism is mostly understood, but not perfectly. Most people know that a cow has multiple stomachs. The second stomach is called a rumen. A cow chews it's cud (essentially big mashes of grass and grain, which a stomach cannot digest). This cud is passed through the first stomach and into the rumen, which contains beneficial, digestive bacteria. The bacteria in the rumen essentially ferment the cud and make comp…

So, essentially they are poisoning the cows ever so slightly?
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