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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

#261

Post by 8note »

titzer wrote: post #150
graeme wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Floods tend to come from melt or tonnes of heavy rain.

That's much more akin to digging carbon out of the ground to run processes than steady state cow methane production/degradation

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

#262

Post by heavyset_go »

belorn wrote: post #198
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…

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…

Fertilizer runoff has absolutely decimated the fresh and brackish water systems that I'm familiar with, even in protected areas.

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

#263

Post by barbazoo »

I wish we could collectively accept that meat consumption is a huge ecological and environmental problem our planet is facing and simply transition to a more sustainable, vegetarian diet.

Reducing the effect that industrial meat production has on the environment is great and it's something we as humans do, improve the negative effects of our behavior when instead it would have far greater effect to change our behavior instead.

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

#264

Post by aaron695 »

The only direction we should be wasting time with is lab grown meat.

If you are in high school or above you should also ask, how does reducing methane, which seems like a big chemical reaction change, effect growth.

If growth is reduced by 1%, then you better start cutting down forests to grow more cattle. If it is better then you get to save forests and ecosystems.

Stop cargo culting Global Warming. What you should care about is the environment and people, not reducing CO2 and methane. We need to make growing meat more efficient. (And Jevons paradox's isn't real is just another scripture from the environmental cult)

CSIRO has a good FAQ on seaweed for cattle which they own IP for - https://www.future-feed.com/faqs

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

#265

Post by 8note »

samatman wrote: post #258
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…

This is the wrong way to look at it. Atmospheric forcing doesn't distinguish between "natural" and "unnatural" causes. Let's grant that methanogenesis from ruminant bellies has been a constant throughout history (unlikely, but as we'll see, irrelevant): that methane contributes a certain amount to the greenhouse effect. That amount is non-trivial, because methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and there are a lot of cat…

Being steady state is what matters about the boivne methane production, rather than if it's natural.

Our problem isn't the steady state processes, it's the growth ones, and we won't be able to solve our growth problems by reducing the steady state ones.

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

#266

Post by 8note »

oivey wrote: post #161
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…

It’s kind of irrelevant whether or not a cow is carbon neutral by some definition. The point is that greenhouse gas emissions are effectively reduced using this feed. Sure, it isn’t as great as getting rid of all fossil fuels, but it’s something relatively easy we could do.

As long as it doesnt add another carbon producing supply chain along the way...

Certainly the neutrality matters - that makes it a O(1) process, where as we have somewhere between O(n) to O(e^n) emissions.

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

#267

Post by 8note »

samuelbalogh wrote: post #151
Doji wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I don't think it's fair to treat deforestation as a local issue. Cattle production drives deforestation - whether it's in Brazil or the USA or China, doesn't matter, because we share the atmosphere. Three-quarters [of global deforestation] is driven by agriculture. Beef production is responsible for 41% of deforestation [...] https://ourworldindata.org/what-are-drivers-deforestation

How relevant is deforestation to our shared atmosphere though?

Forests are largely steady state. They're carbon sinks when you go from no forest to forest, but not just keeping the forest around

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

#268

Post by samuelbalogh »

8note wrote: post #267
samuelbalogh wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's fair to treat deforestation as a local issue. Cattle production drives deforestation - whether it's in Brazil or the USA or China, doesn't matter, because we share the atmosphere. Three-quarters [of global deforestation] is driven by agriculture. Beef production is responsible for 41% of deforestation [...] https://ourworldindata.org/what-are-drivers-deforestation

How relevant is deforestation to our shared atmosphere though? Forests are largely steady state. They're carbon sinks when you go from no forest to forest, but not just keeping the forest around

I think that in the systemic terminology, a mature forest is a carbon "stock". Deforestation means getting rid of that stock and putting all of its CO2 into the atmostphere by burning it. Unless you use all that wood for something else (buildings or whatever) which is possible but I think it's unlikely. I might be wrong though!

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

#269

Post by samuelbalogh »

airhead969 wrote: post #164
samuelbalogh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use the soy we are feeding cattle to feed humans directly. Cut out the middleman - lots of resources freed up all of a sudden. Keep subsidies to beef low and increase subsidies for plant protein (peas, beans, soy). Encourage healthy plant-based diets all over the world. Profit from the vast areas saved to start reforestation projects.

Why not tax meat into oblivion?

That would possibly be a solution, but alas I don't think it's going to happen anywhere soon.

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

#270

Post by analog31 »

fred_is_fred wrote: post #222
hinkley wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. All of modern agriculture and food science has been about turning inedible calories into edible ones (think: cooking meat with wood, baking bread).…

The Haber process which you mentioned is really key here. It uses a lot of natural gas - more interesting than cow methane might be using nitrogen fixing bacteria or crop rotation (legumes) to reduce it's usage.

From what I've read, you can't grow enough legumes to fix the needed amount of nitrogen for high intensity agriculture. The Haber process sustains a sizable fraction of the world's animal population.
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