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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%

#201

Post by vallode »

blue_devil wrote: post #198

More of a philosophical perspective here: The eco-systems on Earth have evolved over a long time. Without bias against scientific progress, why do we think we can "solve" this without going down a slippery slope of creating another problem? When is comes to complex systems that we don't completely understand, maybe the simplest solution is to just restore the system, that is "give up" on cows as human feed.

Personally I think this is a pessimistic point of view. The reason we think we can "solve" these issues is because we have been doing a good job of using tools to help us along the way of human history.

If we do as you propose, where do we stop? What makes us think we can "solve" anything? Computing, timber, fire, clean water. The truth is that humans are a part of the eco-system, and the system will evolve with us. I support slowing down certain things, so we do not hit a dead-end, since I am vegan myself. Giving up will not solve anything, especially since we have a hell of a lot of clean up to do.

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

#202

Post by blue_devil »

m0zg wrote: post #77
mateodelnorte wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>>Certainly not negligible, but not earth shattering either.

The irony is that this complex compound problem is exactly the kind of problem that tricks human thinking. We are really bad at instinctively comprehending the compounding of many small factors. Many serious industrial accidents like the Three Mile Island one did not ensue from one big error (as we would think) but a compounding of a lot of small bad things that just happened together.

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

#203

Post by chrisco255 »

mercutio2 wrote: post #125
chrisco255 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mole…

It doesn't matter if it has a strong effect at the molecular level if it exists in miniscule quantities 4 orders of magnitude less than water vapor while not trapping any part of the light spectrum that is not already captured by H2O and CO2. It has negligible, near zero effect at present. Sorry, if you factor the 20x factor for methane heat retention times .00017 it's the equivalent of increasing the amount of water vapor from 4% to 4.004% of the Earth's atmosphere. It is negligible no matter which way you look at it. If a .004% difference in humidity made a dramatic effect on heat retention you'd feel it.

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

#204

Post by pbhjpbhj »

m0zg wrote: post #115
esotericn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> you'll give them 2 grand a year to stop eating beef I think the vast majority of people would turn down your offer. There's too little enjoyment in life as it is. Life without steaks and beer is not worth living for most people.

We can afford steak a couple of times a year, but minced beef (which I think is what's called ground beef in USA) is a major source of protein for us.

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

#205

Post by Avamander »

Accacin wrote: post #200

Disclaimer: I'm plant-based, and of course biased. What would it take people to realise that eating meat is just not good for the environment and rather than going through all these 'fixes', just stop eating meat? We're getting to the point where we're going to have to sacrifice some 'comforts' IMO.

> We're getting to the point where we're going to have to sacrifice some 'comforts' IMO.

Why can't those comforts we "sacrifice" be cruises, gasoline/diesel cars and all advertising? My point being that saying "we're going to have to make some sacrifices" and pointing at someone else never works unless the person pointing has a lot of power to enforce it.

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

#206

Post by vtrips »

benj111 wrote: post #178
vtrips wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather we focus on cutting down the rest of the 90% of emissions than the natural emissions which have been occurring since before the industrial revolution messed it up. There is a fine balance in nature and maybe cows are the wrong place to experiment.

How many cows were there pre industrial revolution compared to today? I would guess at at least 2 orders of magnitude increase, is that all 'natural'?

Look I'm not putting up an argument where neither of us have the data to look at this factually, but I don't think we had any problems in the pre industrial revolution era.

My point is - The focus should be on optimizing the sources that contribute the most to these emissions.

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

#207

Post by solveit »

hannob wrote: post #172

Skeptical science remark: This whole "if cows eat seaweed that'll vastly reduce their carbon footprint" is based on a single study with 12 cows. If you take into consideration that especially small, never replicated studies often don't hold up to scrunity the next thing to do is not to ask how to produce the seaweed. The next reasonable step would be to try to replicate this study in a larger sample (and probably als…

You're absolutely right, but the effect size is pretty damn impressive and I expect this to at least partially replicate.

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

#208

Post by rkul »

blue_devil wrote: post #198

More of a philosophical perspective here: The eco-systems on Earth have evolved over a long time. Without bias against scientific progress, why do we think we can "solve" this without going down a slippery slope of creating another problem? When is comes to complex systems that we don't completely understand, maybe the simplest solution is to just restore the system, that is "give up" on cows as human feed.

Your argument implies that cows who did not eat seaweed survived and therefore we see cows not eating seaweed now.

Since cows cannot live underwater and seaweed does not grow outside water, these "two worlds" could not meet and the outcome of their interaction is unknown. It might work, it might not, however, evolution was not here yet.

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

#209

Post by Hitton »

That's cool, but let's not forget that methane stays in atmosphere only for 12 years. That means that if methane production stays constant, it doesn't actually increase amount of methane in atmosphere. Therefore I think that reducing production of greenhouse gases with longer longevity should be preferred.

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

#210

Post by blue_devil »

vallode wrote: post #201
blue_devil wrote: post #198

More of a philosophical perspective here: The eco-systems on Earth have evolved over a long time. Without bias against scientific progress, why do we think we can "solve" this without going down a slippery slope of creating another problem? When is comes to complex systems that we don't completely understand, maybe the simplest solution is to just restore the system, that is "give up" on cows as human feed.

Personally I think this is a pessimistic point of view. The reason we think we can "solve" these issues is because we have been doing a good job of using tools to help us along the way of human history. If we do as you propose, where do we stop? What makes us think we can "solve" anything? Computing, timber, fire, clean water. The truth is that humans are a part of the eco-system, and the system will evolve with us.…

Or it might be a realistic point of view.

My point was not give up on _solutions_. I am saying that there are real issues to be solved - for example, we do need some way to heat homes, we do need to transport ourselves - so find sustainable solutions to those. Provably (medically), we do not _need_ to be eating 60 kg of beef per person per year.

The more we tinker with the system, the higher the risk we break something else. It's an inherent property of complex _systems_ that they are complex, and well, systems. Is it worth tinkering to try to solve a popular, but not essential issue like how can we continue to grow cows for human feed?

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