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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%

#271

Post by tassl »

rewq4321 wrote: post #258
tassl wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Livestock agriculture is the leading driver of climate change AND biodiversity loss. I am pretty sure that's not correct, not even close [1]. Transportation is the main driver of gas emissions (28%) followed by electricity production (27%) and industry (22%). Agriculture (livestock and crop) is In most countries, livestock can graze in areas where cultivations cannot happen (Australia is a good example iirc) and ca…

According to this[0] Our World In Data article, which is based on 2018 data, livestock (including fisheries) produces about 15% of all emissions, assuming that animal-based products account for about a third of the supply chain costs of the food industry: Total food emissions: 26% Direct livestock + fish: 31% of that 26% Due to livestock land use: 16% of that 26% Due to crops for animal feed: 6% of that 26% Due to su…

No, even if most of livestock feed was soy (I am pretty sure it was corn, but whatever), most of the food they are feed as dry matter is not edible by humans: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22119...

I would like to see where that 98% really comes from, the links you posted talk about 70% (and most of that being consumed by poultry, not cattle). And even that seems excessive [1]. I would love to see a clear separation between the soybean. meal (leftover from oil and soybean grinding) and explicit feed grade soybeans.

[1] https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/coexisten...

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

#273

Post by driverdan »

cik wrote: post #66
barry-cotter wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the end of the day this is signalling. We all know that the best thing we can do is eat a local, veg-friendly (vegetarian/vegan) diet. Local doesn’t belong in there. As a reductio ad absurdum would it be better to eat a diet of nothing but imported NZ lamb or to grow all food locally at McMurdo Base in Antarctica? Grass is next to free. Ocean shipping is the most efficient means of transport for bulk freight the…

That's not strictly true. Eating (extremely) locally has lower costs with regards to at least packaging and transportation. As an added benefit eating in-season foods means that industry, regardless of size will conform to a cheaper form of growth and cropping.

What you said isn't strictly true either. Transporting a train load of food across the country emits less CO2 per unit than a farmer driving a van load of their produce to a farmer's market. Scale drives down price and emissions.

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

#274

Post by MisterBastahrd »

lizknope wrote: post #181
nradov wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of us think it is possible to live healthily as vegetarians, but much more difficult. Meat from other mammals contains almost all the nutrients we need in a convenient and properly balanced format. In particular the protein quality and digestibility is higher than in most plant sources. For those of us who are active athletes, there are a lot of anecdotes about people who tried vegetarian or vegan diets…

There are around 300 million vegetarians in India. That is close to the population of the United States. Whatever health problems you think they may suffer from it isn't the ability to procreate. I gave up meat 6 years ago. All of my non subtle clinically diagnosed health problems went away. I did it because I couldn't think of killing animals anymore and the wonderful side effects of obesity, high blood sugar, and h…

The fun thing about restrictive diets is that you have to watch what you eat to stay on them.

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

#275

Post by triyambakam »

mmm_grayons wrote: post #263
triyambakam wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your moral framework is arbitrary? Or it is flimsily dependent on your emotional attachments?

No, I don't believe there's anything wrong with killing animals for food, I just like my dog more as a pet. I don't believe there's something morally wrong about killing one's pet for food, either.

I am not claiming you said so. But you've rather affirmed again, you have an emotional attachment to your dog, so you won't eat it, so your moral framework is emotional based and is logically inconsistent

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

#276

Post by throwaway0756 »

triyambakam wrote: post #261
tassl wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not as simple as you think, and there is quite a bit of people cannot be healthy with such diet. > Many are also passionate about it because there are other benefits that come with it - no longer needing to kill sentient beings (you probably wouldn't eat your dog, so why eat a pig who is of equal awareness and intelligence?) Plenty of "sentient beings" are killed for crop farming. I am not even sure meat eaters…

Crop deaths tho! Do you realize that /more/ animals die from crop harvesting for feeding animals? Because if you aren't raising animals for food, you don't need to harvest crops for them. The net amount of crop deaths goes down. Further, it's the fallacy of perfection - we can't stop all deaths, but we can do our best to get as many as possible unnecessary deaths to end. Veganism is about what is practicable - i.e. w…

I mean, if someone cares that much about real practical death reduction of sentient beings, they wouldn’t be vegetarian, they would eat grass fed beef.

One death for hundreds if not thousands of meals. That or seafood if you don’t consider shrimp sentient.

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

#277

Post by tassl »

nicoburns wrote: post #243
tassl wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As unethical as eating soy from a deforested area. Or eating mostly anything with sugar, canola oil or palm oil. But people don't ask those to be in non deforested areas, and they don't ask to increase the price to make sure soil is not destroyed by monocrop cultivation.

That's not entirely true. There is a whole movement around boycotting palm oil for example, just as there is with beef. It certainly could be more widely supported. It's worth noting that a lot of the soy from deforested areas also goes towards feeding livestock. The soy that humans eat (or drink) tends to be more more ethical on average.

Not because of deforestation, but because threats to orangutans.

Most of the food animals eat is not human-grade, and a big part of it are by products of food for human consumption it would not be used anyways.

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

#278

Post by MiroF »

bad_user wrote: post #220
MiroF wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but it doesn't export that food to western countries. I don't understand why that matters? Brazil doesn't export to the US because of its FMD problem among its cattle. > CO2 and methane emissions for growing meat has been pretty steady, and is a moderate slice of the carbon emissions' pie. Beef production accounts for 1/3 of all agricultural emissions in the US. Obviously it's not the primary or even a huge sh…

> " I don't understand why that matters? " It matters because convincing people to eat soy in the western world does absolutely nothing for the Amazon forest. It's a false narrative. It's also untrue that the Amazon forest is deforested because of meat production, and that stopping meat production will prevent deforestation, but that's an argument for another day. > " Good thing beef and milk production are not subsi…

> It matters because convincing people to eat soy in the western world does absolutely nothing for the Amazon forest. It's a false narrative.

First, I think the reason to stop eating as much beef is because of the GHG impact of doing so. That occurs regardless of whether the beef is raised in Brazil or otherwise.

There is a global meat market, so convincing people in the Western world shifts the demand.

> That won't do much either, but at least we'll get that off the table.

Are you kidding? Removing the subsidies would have an absolutely massive impact on the affordability of meat and dairy, at least in the US. For every 30 cents of milk sold, the US govt pays dairy farmer the equivalent of 70 cents - ie. 70% of the earnings dairy farmers make are from subsidy.

If animal feed were not subsidized to the extent it was, meat would be significantly more expensive.

I strongly favor removing agricultural subsidies. Renewables are actually competitive enough now that they cost essentially the same, the problem is the switching cost requires up front capital.

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

#279

Post by samatman »

jxramos wrote: post #269

Does methane have any known biological function out in the wild, perhaps with microbes putting it to use? It's hard to imagine such a large quantity of energy going unused by some organism out there. Is it pretty stable at room temperature and would just sit around forever? What became of all the methane all the various livestock have produced through the millennia?

Yes, microbes break methane down for energy.

The process is slow; a quick search says that methane persists in the atmosphere for approximately 9 years, at which time it becomes CO2. I'm not sure how many half-lives that is intended to represent.

Averaged over 100 years, it is 28 times more effective at retaining heat than CO2.

https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/education/info_activities/pdfs...

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

#280

Post by tassl »

ac29 wrote: post #247
tassl wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As unethical as eating soy from a deforested area. Or eating mostly anything with sugar, canola oil or palm oil. But people don't ask those to be in non deforested areas, and they don't ask to increase the price to make sure soil is not destroyed by monocrop cultivation.

> As unethical as eating soy from a deforested area. Not really, though - the GP link says it takes 50 calories of feed to make 1 calorie of Beef, so eating the feed directly would require 50 times less land.

Let me doubt that assessment. That would be true if (1) the 50-to-1 was true (doubt it); (2) what we feed the cattle is human-grade food and (3) 1 calorie of a plant was as nutritious as 1 calorie of meat.
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