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Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

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Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#141

Post by greenshackle2 »

Doji wrote: post #125

A common misconception which I frequently see when this topic arises is the failure to distinguish carbon cycles and one-way carbon emission. You exhale carbon dioxide. However, this carbon dioxide comes from the carbon in the food you eat, and the food you eat obtained it from the atmosphere. Thus, it's a cycle. As a system (ignoring food transportation, deforestation, etc.) it's effectively carbon neutral. By contr…

> Additionally our planet was once host to wild ruminants like Buffalo

Not at anywhere near the density you find in modern agriculture. Domesticated cattle and pigs alone are 15x the biomass of all wild mammals combined. Wild ruminants are somewhat insignificant compared to that.

https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#143

Post by readflaggedcomm »

kleton wrote: post #2

The active ingredient is bromoform, which might even be cheaper to dose than the raw algae.

Which is fascinating, because I thought seaweeds only helped cattle by adding protease enzymes, which also works with humans: try cooking legumes with kombu/konbu.

But cooking up enzymes outside of seaweed seems a lot more costly than synthesizing solvents, assuming dosing cattle that way doesn't taint the end product.

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#144

Post by lazide »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #116
tengbretson wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then just buy American beef, which is produced without any deforestation.

It's not that simple. Not all American beef is raised on native grasses.

Why is native or not native important from a carbon balance perspective? Alfalfa still pulls carbon from the air when it grows.

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#145

Post by Doji »

mogadsheu wrote: post #132
Doji wrote: post #125

A common misconception which I frequently see when this topic arises is the failure to distinguish carbon cycles and one-way carbon emission. You exhale carbon dioxide. However, this carbon dioxide comes from the carbon in the food you eat, and the food you eat obtained it from the atmosphere. Thus, it's a cycle. As a system (ignoring food transportation, deforestation, etc.) it's effectively carbon neutral. By contr…

That’s a great start to understanding flows of carbon and other substances through the ecosystem! I’d like to add that much of the feed is grown using fertilizer, which is often/typically produced via fossil-fuel consuming processes (see Fischer Tropsch). Where carbon is stored in the system is another major consideration. Great post!

I wasn't aware that fertilizers are commonly produced from fossil fuels. That's definitely a problem!

I'll add some additional caveats myself. In certain areas of the world (South America comes to mind) cattle production is driving deforestation.

Food transportation and farming equipment generally consumes fossil fuels.

I'm sure we can think of more!

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#146

Post by titzer »

tengbretson wrote: post #108
m000 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of those studies take this into account, they all just measure what comes into a cow and what comes out, but no one takes into account the amount of methane produced from the same feed even without cows involved. Nobody's missing anything. That feed wouldn't have been planted in the first place if it weren't for feeding the cows. And that would translate to less deforestation [1]. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/…

Then just buy American beef, which is produced without any deforestation.

Is that sarcasm? Pretty much the entire midwest was forest before colonization. Now take a look at Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri...they're basically one big farm criscrossed by roads, highways, sprinkled with small spinneys of trees, and dotted with cities. Just load up Google Earth, satellite mode, turn off all labels, and zoom out. It's astonishing.

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#147

Post by xphilter »

unchocked wrote: post #123
xphilter wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That simply can’t be true in the wild. If that much carbon was released from plants in the wild, we’d never have coal or oil, right? Composting the grass might be the same as cows, but that process doesn’t happen everywhere there’s grass. In the wild, the grass would be trampled and new grass would sprout up to cover it, layers of soil would be generated. But honestly I’m just guessing, but your claim seems so far of…

I’m really glad you asked that! The reason we have coal and oil today is that earlier in Earth’s history microorganisms lacked the enzyme to metabolize cellulose (the most abundant bioorganic material). So until then, it was buried and accumulated as fossil fuels. Today’s ecosystem can metabolize cellulose, so no more fossil fuel production. Quite literally an unsustainable fuel!

No I understand how it works. But what I’m saying is that the enzymes/bacteria in the wild dont process grass like a cows gut. You need composting to happen vs trampling and burying the grass. But ty!

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#148

Post by xphilter »

jhayward wrote: post #122
xphilter wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That simply can’t be true in the wild. If that much carbon was released from plants in the wild, we’d never have coal or oil, right? Composting the grass might be the same as cows, but that process doesn’t happen everywhere there’s grass. In the wild, the grass would be trampled and new grass would sprout up to cover it, layers of soil would be generated. But honestly I’m just guessing, but your claim seems so far of…

Coal and oil come from carbon captured during the Carboniferous period, before the evolution of species of bacteria and fungi that could digest the lignin in plants. Coal and oil formation is not being fed by plant life today. The carbon in plants is recycled rather quickly in to the ecosphere.

Fair. So then I would augment my comment to focus just on soil production in the wild. Not all of the plant debris is being composted. It gets buried too.

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#149

Post by telchar »

gambiting wrote: post #100
matteuan wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, but still I don't think your comment is very relevant to this. Without cows we could have a forest instead of grass, instead of leaving it to rot. So if the number of cows remains constant you benefit from reducing methane emissions.

But that's an issue with where we feed the cows, isn't it? For instance - cows are raised on many parts of moorlands in the UK, where they eat only the grass growing there. But if you removed the cows, the moors would be exactly as they are now - they cannot support forests or any other kind of vegetation, because they are basically solid rock with an inch of soil on top. I understand that on the "intensive farming"…

I think you're underselling moorlands here. Trees can be planted on moors, and other even more carbon-sinking activity too: "It’s worth remembering that the peatlands of the UK store more carbon than the woodlands of the UK, France and Germany combined!" [0]

[0] https://www.moorsforthefuture.org.uk/our-purpose/habitats-fo...

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#150

Post by titzer »

graeme wrote: post #137
titzer wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since the methane released from cattle is continually degrading, it does not accumulate. That's like saying lakes are impossible because of rivers. If you look at historical methane concentrations in our atmosphere, they are already almost 3x of pre-industrial levels, and over 3x of mean historical levels over the past ~1 million years [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane

Is that from cow herd size increases or other causes? OP’s point was that with q fixed herd size the amount of methane accumulating in an atmosphere is stable. Lakes don’t grow and grow and consume the world.

> Lakes don’t grow and grow and consume the world.

No, they don't usually grow forever, that's true. But floods happen, and that's bad. Last time methane was this high it was millions of years ago, and Earth had no ice caps. We have already flooded the atmosphere with methane, and the consequences of this will take decades, if not centuries, to play out. Contrary to our current instant-gratification dopamine loops of today, the lag between cause and effect isn't two damn seconds or even one frickin year. So stay tuned.

Was it all from agriculture? We don't know. There's plenty of methane coming from fossil fuel production. Just go read the Wikipedia article I linked. We do know that we are getting close to setting off some very bad feedback loops, as arctic permafrost is starting to thaw, and it's going to produce gobs of methane.

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