Legitimate question: how do they measure how much methane a cow produces?
It's not what you thinking. They use this https://www.c-lockinc.com/researchers/products/greenfeed-lar...
Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers
241–250 of 302 posts
Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers
#242A 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…
Let's not forget that all the grain those cattle are eating were grown in nitrogen fixed soil produced via fossil fuels. Nor that roughly 40% of the world's crops are used to feed cattle. Or the other detrimental environmental effects to the land such as feedlot runoff that pollute streams and rivers. The environmental impact of raising cattle is by no means something we should ignore.
I agree we should not ignore detrimental environmental effects. However we should strive for a nuanced view which attempts to determine root causes.
The root cause of artificial fertilizers is fossil fuels.
The root cause of feedlot runoff is... feedlots? I'm not sure if there's something more fundamental at play here. I'd like to see a fundamental analysis of this.
Cattle feed is generally not human edible, that's the beauty of ruminant animals. Even conventionally raised cattle usually grow up on grass, only to be finished on grain. Granted as cattle are slaughtered at younger and younger ages, the grain finishing portion is consuming a larger percentage of their overall lifetime feed stuff. But even so the grain they're eating wasn't going to just end up on your dinner plate. They eat the husk and all. And besides this is only bad insofar as growing food in general is bad, so that's the root cause.
You missed deforestation, which we discussed elsewhere in the comments. I recommend to check it out.
Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers
#243A 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…
Oil and coal also used to be organic matter, so it also is a cycle. Just a much longer one.
Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Going to chime in here - ice ages cause extinctions, not warm ages. We are in the knifes edge of too cold. A little extra green house gas to buffer out the ice age is a good thing.
The problem is the millions to billions of people who are living in areas that will become virtually uninhabitable due to temperature changes and sea level rise. The first way climate change will seriously negatively impact humanity is through geopolitical conflict and a massive refugee crisis.
Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers
#245Just wanted to point out: This is a study with 21 subjects, split into three groups. Those are very small numbers.
This "we can make cows climate friendly with seaweed" story pops up regularly. Call me skeptical as long as this is based on a few small studies and nobody ever tried this at scale.
Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Going to chime in here - ice ages cause extinctions, not warm ages. We are in the knifes edge of too cold. A little extra green house gas to buffer out the ice age is a good thing.
Change causes extinctions. If the temperature suddenly swings down, things die. If it subsequently swings back up, do they come back? No! More things die.
Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers
#247A 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…
The start of the carbon cycle is one which I have found to be very unpopular to discuss, and it has a direct connection to methane in the atmosphere. Artificial fertilizers is produce through a process which takes in natural gas as its primary ingredient. The process is also a major source for methane leaks, with a large variance in claimed contribution for the global methane pollution. For a large portion of the glo…
That fertilizer accounts for about 2% of global carbon output, but it does seem on track to be replaced with ammonia made from green hydrogen rather than steam reformed from fossil gas.
Probably won't help with runoff issues though, as it'll be chemically identical, just with a lower carbon footprint.
Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers
#248A 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…
> You may be surprised to learn that cattle herd size has remained relatively stable over time. Absolutely surprised. Do you have science to back up this claim? ... That goes back more more than a couple decades?
agurk found some nice charts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26542283
I suppose some people may consider stable to be overstating this situation. Nevertheless, when put into context of natural wild herd sizes as done by krrrh https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26543346 , I believe my overall point stands.
Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers
#249A 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…
> By contrast, when we dig up oil and burn it, there is no cycle. It's a one way street. It’s also a cycle, the period takes some million years though.
Yes this is correct, I'm guilty of oversimplifying.
Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers
#250A 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…
The start of the carbon cycle is one which I have found to be very unpopular to discuss, and it has a direct connection to methane in the atmosphere. Artificial fertilizers is produce through a process which takes in natural gas as its primary ingredient. The process is also a major source for methane leaks, with a large variance in claimed contribution for the global methane pollution. For a large portion of the glo…
It will be fairly straightforward to decarbonize fertilizer production, using electrolyzed hydrogen rather than natural gas. As the industry matures, it's likely to be even cheaper than naturals gas derived ammonia. Here's a pilot project in Spain, for example:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-28/spain-cou...
However, misapplication of fertilizer, and the resulting destruction of aquatic ecosystems, will take other fixes, and strong penalties on farmers that do this sort of damage.