371–380 of 409 posts
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What about creating bromoform directly in a lab? Is that possible? If so, then direct application to the feed wouldnt require en massed sea farming.
In a paper on this topic this was tested and pure bromoform doesn't have the same effect, the authors speculate that is due to delayed release from the seaweed structures.
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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…
How well do people understand the difference between modern cow diets and the diets of say aurochs? What other nutrients are missing from modern feedlots?
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What is the feasibility of this, deploying it on a large scale? I did some quick calculations on a napkin. Apparently there are between 1 billion and 1.5 billion cows [0][1]. Let’s just say 1.5 Billion. In New Zealand the beef (dry cow) vs dairy cow ratio is almost 1:1 [2], but I assume that countries like India have more dairy cows, so I just assumed that 60% percent of cows are dairy cows. Apparently dry cows consu…
The US produces 912,358 tonnes of corn per day (or 900 million kg). I suspect corn is much easier to grow than seaweed though. Just as a perspective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_...
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"is based on a single study with 12 cows." Its not - most often "skeptical science remarks" although popular, are poorly informed and misleading. A quick scholar search shows numerous studies broadly agreeing with the one featured here, including the seaweeds effects on sheep digestion and microbial and metabolic details: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=asparagopsis+methane
> most often "skeptical science remarks" although popular, are poorly informed and misleading. I thought I was the only one who noticed this! Seems very popular and common in forums like HN and Reddit, but less so elsewhere.
Yes, significance testing has some flaws, but they mostly show up at the margins, and complaining about sample sizes has nothing to do with that anyway.
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> most often "skeptical science remarks" although popular, are poorly informed and misleading. I thought I was the only one who noticed this! Seems very popular and common in forums like HN and Reddit, but less so elsewhere.
I would prefer being skeptical instead of blindly accepting things. This behavior will instigate another to provide evidence or a counter-argument. This makes for great discussion, in most cases I think it is healthy.
So often, it's just dismissive hot takes with a sprinkling of jargon and absolutely no substance whatsoever.
Substantive critique is fairly rare.
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I'm also sceptical that the recently proposed diets of fruits, vegetables and nuts actually work out. AFAICT it's an outstanding problem in nutrition science concerning how many of the calories in nuts that humans are able to digest. And yet it seems like the proposed diets just assume "all calories are equal". I've seen reports from journalists who have tried following those diets saying they were constantly hungry.
> I've seen reports from journalists who have tried following those diets saying they were constantly hungry. This is the inherent problem of journalism - they need sensational results, otherwise the majority of folks wouldn't be bothered to read their journalism. My 2 cents on this topic: I'm 10+ years vegan and everything is good, it's just no clickbait-worthy story...
I 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…
Cows may account for a small amount of total emissions, but they are responsible for almost half the methane released on the planet. Methane is a potent but relatively shortlived GHG. So, removing all cows would be a sizable but short term fix.
I 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…
I'm not sure your number is correct. It's more like 20%.
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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…
If you are making a budget, be it for CO2 emissions or network bandwidth or CPU seconds, it doesn't really matter what percent of your current spending each line item represents. It matters what percent of your goal it represents.
For instance, if you have a car that's too expensive for you, or you're eating out too much, it's great that you identified those problems and are addressing them, but at the end of the day no % of gain in those areas is going to make up for the fact that your house is 60% of your income.
So if we have to cut our emissions by 50% to sustain our existence, those cow burps are 16% of the budget, not 8%. For steaks and cheeseburgers, that's way too big.
If you go in trying to claim you don't have a budget, the same math ends up happening, with different words, and in slow motion. Reducing one element increases the fraction of everything that remains. 1% now may be 3% later, and harder to get to because you've already done work in that area and who wants to go in again for a 1% improvement?
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Doesn't this seaweed grow in the sea? As far as I understand, the main water concerns as relate to cows, are about freshwater for growing fodder.
If you grow it in the sea, you're creating the transportation problem the poster was complaining about.
A bigger problem may be where AT can be farmed, since it is not native to US waters (except Hawaii) and permitting agencies are understandably strict about introductions.