Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80% • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by triyambakam » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:11 PM UTC

tassl wrote: post #246

triyambakam wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need to focus on just one. However people are passionate about advocating for eating a plant based diet because it is so easy, relatively speaking. Getting fracking to stop at even just one site is a lot of work, but getting more and more people to stop eating animal products, because it's directly within their own control, is simple. Many are also passionate about it because there are other benefits that…

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. what can be done in practice, not perfection.

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

#262

Post by triyambakam » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

mmm_grayons wrote: post #257

triyambakam wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need to focus on just one. However people are passionate about advocating for eating a plant based diet because it is so easy, relatively speaking. Getting fracking to stop at even just one site is a lot of work, but getting more and more people to stop eating animal products, because it's directly within their own control, is simple. Many are also passionate about it because there are other benefits that…

> you wouldn't eat your dog, so why eat a pig that is of equal awareness and intelligence? For what it's worth, I probably wouldn't eat my dog, but I'd eat a dog with no reservations.

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

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

#263

Post by mmm_grayons » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

triyambakam wrote: post #262

mmm_grayons wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you wouldn't eat your dog, so why eat a pig that is of equal awareness and intelligence? For what it's worth, I probably wouldn't eat my dog, but I'd eat a dog with no reservations.

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.

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

#264

Post by bamboozled » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

jamil7 wrote: post #207

bamboozled wrote: post #204

This is a small and positive win it seems, why do many disgruntled ? People get very passionate about our food source being the cause for climate change but really, what about the real ultimate more severe causes? Fracking, mining, burning coal and oil ? Nuclear and renewables makes these things obsolete, but we still need food. Edit: Want to add I’m fully onboard with the east less meat crowd and minimising deforest…

My guess is our food choices are something we can more immediately control. > but I can’t help feel we should focus on the bigger, more high value targets first? I don't buy this line of thinking as it makes the assumption that a society can't tackle or talk about multiple issues at once.

If I don’t eat at least some meat, what do I eat ?

I’ve tried living mostly off soybeans and I can tell you, it was a depressing and miserable existence, at least for me.

I legitimately has no energy and felt depressed for a long time.

Yes I also ate other legumes. It just didn’t really work well for me. Maybe I’ll try again someday.

Even when I was vegetarian, I was freaking out about all the food that was imported and the emissions from that.

You’re kind of screwed if you do and screwed if you don’t. Which is the inspiration for my original post I guess. I don’t truly feel I can stop climate change via my diet.

I decided not to own a car and be more flexible with my diet instead...I’m much happier now.

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

#265

Post by rewq4321 » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

slothtrop wrote: post #228

hexbinencoded wrote: post #130

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 diseas…

> - climate change This is the only relevant element, and it's largely contingent on Methane emissions. Therefore, drastically reducing emissions is not just "slightly better", particularly considering their impact on climate change.

By which definition of "relevant" are animal cruelty[0] and pandemic-level diseases not included? COVID-19 is very "tame" compared to what's possible. There's a sense in which we're lucky that we got this pandemic as a practice round for something which we know has the potential to be much, much worse. This isn't controversial at all.

[0] If you think it's not that bad, watch Dominion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko

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

#266

Post by redisman » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

dsirola wrote: post #165

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…

It's short term (12 years seems like before being reabsorbed) but this also means that we have this big static-ish chunk being renewed and absorbed in a cycle. If we reduce emissions then that static variable goes down and gives us more time on the other 100 things we need to figure out.

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

#267

Post by redisman » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

bagacrap wrote: post #190

dsirola wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

CO2 from fossil fuels can also be reabsorbed by plants. If you grow a forest, chop it down, bury the logs, then it's underground again. Although, not sure why you need it to be underground as long as it's not in the air.

If it's just sitting above the ground then bacteria will eat it and release the carbon as emissions. OR it burns and then turns into emissions.

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

#268

Post by redisman » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:26 PM UTC

hexbinencoded wrote: post #130

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 diseas…

All or nothing thinking has obviously not worked for addressing climate issues. Thus - you see all these more pragmatic solutions popping up.

You're not going to convince even 10% of the global population to convert to veganism in the next 10 years. I agree it would be great but the real world needs to be dealt with.

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

#269

Post by jxramos » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

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?

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

#270

Post by redisman » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #44

I still think that there is a simple explanation for the 'reduction in methane' effect, and that the plan has some severe loopholes Raising cattle in a regular diet of seaweed for its entire life and expecting it to grow correctly is still uncharted territory. Are we pushing cow metabolism to the brink of famine? Wild seaweeds are harvested and sold for several purposes: 1) To make agar-agar. A substance that is used…

> Raising cattle in a regular diet of seaweed for its entire life and expecting it to grow correctly is still uncharted territory. Are we pushing cow metabolism to the brink of famine?

This is funny FUD. Are you aware of the circumstances that most cows are raised in right now? Chaining them down to a concrete slab for their whole lives and pumping them full of antibiotics and hormones is all kosher but feeding them seaweed instead of corn? Hold on there.