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Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

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Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#161

Post by badwolf »

sethammons wrote: post #128
chii wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recent observations of HN is that many here take their own experience, and extrapolate that they are common and therefore anybody else could've also done it, and would be willing to. But there's empirical evidence that not many people want to stop eating meat. Look at how few vegetarians there are, compared to non-vegetarians. Do you really think those people don't know it's possible to live healthily as vegetaria…

> heathly as vegetarians Worth noting that being vegetarian does not necessarily equal healthy. There are plenty of vegetarians who are just eating mac and cheese. My sister, when in high school, became iron anemic due to poor food choices while being vegetarian.

If you're consisting of a diet of mac & cheese, or other poor food choices... Being a vegetarian isn't the problem. Poor food choices are the problem.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#163

Post by chrisweekly »

seanwilson wrote: post #11

How much could this reduce the total environmental food print of cattle? I.e. including all the energy used to grow the crops they eat, the deforestation to make room for the crops + cattle, the waste the cows produce. Animal farming creates vast damage because of how inefficient it is and seaweed won't address how much feed cows need or that the world is eating more and more meat as countries get richer: > The energ…

Good questions. As someone who's enjoyed eating beef for most of my life, I feel compelled to recommend Impossible Burger "meat" as a legitimate alternative. No, it's not exactly the same, but it is delicious (unlike, say, Beyond Burgers, which taste to me like a failed experiment).

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#164

Post by sampo »

jonplackett wrote: post #25

Where does the methane go then? Is it never formed in the first place or does it get 'locked in' somehow?

You have a very good question, and I wish this was covered better.

In their FAQ they explain that the actual fibrolytic microbes that digest cellulose in the rumen, produce CO2, H2 and other compounds but not methane. And then later the methanogenic microbes consume these and produce methane. I get the impression that the methanogenic bacteria are not needed in digesting cellulose, that they just "steal" part of the products from the earlier fibrolytic steps. And the chemical, bromoform, from seaweed only blocks this methanogenic metabolic pathway.

"How do cow stomachs digest feed, and why might they emit so much methane?" https://research.csiro.au/futurefeed/faq/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrolytic_bacterium

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#165

Post by dsirola »

headmelted wrote: post #3

Worth noting that methane is up to 84 times as damaging as CO2 in the atmosphere upon release. ( https://www.edf.org/climate/methane-other-important-greenhou... ) That means that (ironically I guess) this has the potential to be just about the biggest bang-for-buck weapon we have against climate change in the next decade. I don't envy the researchers having to explain it to their kids later though. "What'd you do in…

It's true that methane has a much greater impact, but only in the short term. Long term, CO2 is much more dangerous. The methane that cow produces is recycled as it circulates through the atmosphere -> plants -> cows -> atmosphere cycle. Fossil fuel burning on the other hand is not. It's released from the ground and there's no way for it to get back there. Nothing is ever black and white and to think that eliminating the animals as the food source would solve the problem is naive.

https://onezero.medium.com/cow-farts-are-not-the-problem-f57...

https://youtu.be/vpTHi7O66pI

https://medium.com/@caroline.stocks/debunking-the-methane-my...

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#166

Post by belorn »

fit2rule wrote: post #101
cesnja wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the "classic" option, discovered some 200 years before synthetic fertilizers - crop rotation that includes some form of legumes. IMO with the current state of agriculture and food production we went into a local maximum that is very unsustainable and bad for the environment.

Absolutely true. We can definitely be treating the land better. The only reason we need industrial fertilisers, is because its packaged so well and easy to distribute. But if we weren't raping the soil in the first place, we wouldn't have this problem. Industrialized farming needs to be revolutionised by the same technique that computing went through: a DIY revolution. If you don't have a garden, now is the time to s…

A garden and a few chickens. Getting 4-6 eggs per day is simply fantastic, and the hens are great at eating up harmful insects and weeds that would otherwise harm the output of the garden. They also fertilize the land in a very natural way.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#167

Post by phaemon »

gerdesj wrote: post #20
headmelted wrote: post #3

Worth noting that methane is up to 84 times as damaging as CO2 in the atmosphere upon release. ( https://www.edf.org/climate/methane-other-important-greenhou... ) That means that (ironically I guess) this has the potential to be just about the biggest bang-for-buck weapon we have against climate change in the next decade. I don't envy the researchers having to explain it to their kids later though. "What'd you do in…

"this has the potential to be just about the biggest bang-for-buck weapon we have against climate change in the next decade." Now we only need to get cars 'n' lorries etc, ships and aeroplanes to eat the stuff and it's job done. Obviously, coal and gas fired power stations are already changing their diet and farting and belching less methane already. The Great Barrier Reef is already de-bleaching and the Greenland ic…

The Greenland icesheet has not stopped melting. It's currently losing around 200 billion tons a year:

https://files.springernature.com/getResource/Shepherd%204158...

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#168

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

giantg2 wrote: post #143
kickling wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, it depends on the lifestyle of the person. The richest 10% are responsible for 52% of carbon emissions[1]. If the only way to have a good life is to live like the richest 10% (or 50%) one could say we are too many people, but that does not have to be true, especially not in the future. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-r...

As societies become developed the resource consumption will increase. That metric of richest 10% includes the global population making over $35k - generally people living a modern lifestyle. Other countries are moving toward this modern lifestyle too. Look at India's and China's development over the past few decades - electronics, vehicles, air conditioning, etc. I don't see people willingly giving up those things. T…

>As societies become developed the resource consumption will increase.

That was true for a long time, but not anymore, because resource consumption turned into over-consumption. We've been hitting limits pretty hard for quite some time (cf https://ipbes.net/global-assessment)

Development can't be becoming more unsustainable in an increasingly unsustainable world (like drug use does not extend beyond overdose).

Either societies will find ways to develop themselves differently, or they'll stop developing at all.

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#169

Post by zucked »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #129
chii wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> continuing to demand products the demand will always be there. Humans like to eat meat. I doubt very many will give up the privilege, esp. when others are not. So any solution that improves the production of meat should be a good outcome. Ideally, lab grown meat (of the same quality and taste as from a cow) with low emissions is the best, but we aren't anywhere near that level of tech yet.

> the demand will always be there. Humans like to eat meat. I doubt very many will give up the privilege, esp. when others are not. I guess that's why we're all doomed to a broken planet. As long as we keep using "well, no one else is going to change" as an excuse we'll inherit the world we deserve.

You at least see how hypocritical that is, right? The Western world got to fulfill our gluttonous desires -- now, when it comes time for the developing world to get their turn at the table, we wag our fingers and say "Sorry, that's bad for the planet!"

Re: Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%

#170

Post by floren »

jamil7 wrote: post #135
wil421 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cows do not eat 100% packaged food if they eat any at all. In fact, 80% of what cows eat cannot be eaten by humans.[1] If you could add seaweed to drastically reduce emissions not would be a win for everyone. > They learned that most cow diets contain the following: Grass: More than 50 percent of cow feed is actually grass (farmers call it hay and silage). While people often think dairy cows are fed a high-grain diet…

Source doesn't look especially reliable coming from a US Dairy website, it mentions a survey from 2008 but doesn't provide a reference.

How about this: I was on a dairy feedlot a week ago, watching them make rations. The ingredients going in included:

- Alfalfa hay (a legume crop which improves the soil)

- Corn & triticale silage (chop up the ENTIRE field, stalk, cob, and all, then ferment it a bit to improve digestibility)

- Corn cannery waste (all the leftovers after they make canned corn for people)

- Waste onions (cattle love these, they'll root through the whole ration to find them)

- Apple waste (pulp left over after squeezing apple juice)

- Potato waste (leftovers from processing potatoes for, that's right, people)

- Pea meal (broken bits of dried peas left over from processing for humans)

- Hop pellets (after breweries have used them for beer)

- Canola meal (leftover from making canola oil)

- They may have been feeding brewery waste grain, but I don't remember for sure

The first two are the only ones specifically produced for cattle. One of them improves the soil in a crop rotation, and the other is a pretty damn efficient use of plant matter vs. anything humans consume. They constitute a pretty good chunk of the ration, to be sure, but I do think HN tends to assume cattle are just fed big buckets of corn seed & wheat.

btw, I was visiting the feedlot, but they weren't just blowing smoke for the city slicker... I had worked there a decade ago, making the rations, and I fed all the same stuff then.

edit: there are effective software tools for building rations based on your particular nutrition goals, so there are dozens of different rations being made any given day. If the cannery doesn't ship any corn waste for a while, you just adjust the other ingredients until you hit your same target nutrition without it. It's impressive stuff.

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