Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

thecattlesite.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 322 posts

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

#121

Post by kortex »

fiblye wrote: post #12
leipert wrote: post #8

Discussed last year hacker news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20711498 I was very skeptical whether this is scalable as up to two percent of the cows feed needs to be replaced with the sea weed and we simply do not produce sea weed at scale yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20713552 The TL;DR was: in order to supply 1.5 billion cows with the seaweed we might need up to 291.000 metric tons of algae per…

Seems like if we can manufacture the active chemical (bromoform) without seaweed, it'll be much more scalable. Then there's also an even crazier idea: create a massive sea in the middle of Australia and use that for seaweed farming.

Bromoform & co. is rather volatile and toxic. The nice feature about seaweed in this case is it has bromoperoxidase pathways, so the halomethanes are produced in low concentrations and bound in (I presume) cell membranes until digested, releasing it right where it's needed, in the fermenting stomach.

You'd have to engineer a digestible slow release halomethane source. Or just...grow it.

How hard can it be to scale seaweed farming?

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

#122

Post by sampo »

leipert wrote: post #16
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I eat kangaroo, it tastes great and is all wild harvested. Has anyone tried farming roo outside of Australia? Often wondered about the viability.

There are also deers and stuff here in Europe. ;) But I assume that wild animals are just available at a fraction of what people (want to) consume every year.

> There are also deers

Deer are ruminants, too. There is no a priori reason to assume that their digestive system should produce any less methane than that of cows, when they break down cellulose.

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

#123

Post by Ensorceled »

chii wrote: post #120
dannyw wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been cooking with and eating plant based meat every once in a while for a year now. I don’t even think about it. It’s meat to me now.

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…

I routinely encounter people who believe it is not possible to live healthily as vegetarians. I hired a developer who was a Hindu a couple of years back and half my team could not believe that he had never eaten meat, in part because he was very active and healthy.

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

#126

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

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…

Including carbon emissions due to transporting the feed.

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

#127

Post by ajmurmann »

jazzabeanie wrote: post #91
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…

In Australia a significant amount (can't remember the specifics) of cattle is raised on land that is unsuitable for crop production. My own experience confirms this. I've seen many cattle farms around Queensland - some with low stocking density and no deforestation, others very poorly managed with no trees at all or full of invasive species. It's not as simple as eating meat = bad, but that's the message most people…

> In Australia a significant amount (can't remember the specifics) of cattle is raised on land that is unsuitable for crop production.

I'm not sure how that makes anything better. It will still require more carbon emissions than growing elsewhere. In fact raising cattle in a spot like you describe still well require growing the feed elsewhere. Wouldn't it be much better to just eat the soup or other crop directly, save the carbon emissions and give the land the cattle are on back to mother nature and turn it into a wildlife refuge?

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

#128

Post by sethammons »

chii wrote: post #120
dannyw wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been cooking with and eating plant based meat every once in a while for a year now. I don’t even think about it. It’s meat to me now.

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.

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

#129

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

chii wrote: post #72
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…

> 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.

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

#130

Post by hexbinencoded »

How is this any different from hybrid vehicles still burning FF? Yes, it makes it slightly better, but eating certain protein sources is a choice, whereas transportation infrastructure is an economically-limited choice.

Animal ag still causes:

- climate change

- inefficient allocation of calories and fresh water

- water, air, and ground pollution (lakes of poo, runoff into rivers)

- pandemic and other zoonotic disease accelerated evolution (many animals in close proximity, including humans and occasionally wild animals)

- increased food prices

- usual also including animal welfare and cruelty

It seems like putting a happy face on coal, smoking, asbestos, or DDT

Post reply on HN