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Methane-Eating Bacteria Could Combat Global Warming
realwx writes "New Zealand scientists have found a bacterium, named 'Methylokorus infernorum,' that eats a key global warming chemical. Found in a hot spring, the bug lives off of methane emissions from geothermically active areas. A scientist quoted in the article stated that a cubic meter of liquid containing the bacterium would consume about 11kg of methane each year. 'But Dr Stott cautioned that such an application was probably some years into the future. He said it was unlikely the micro-organism, which prefers acidic conditions of about 60C, could ever be added to sheep or cows' food to stop the animals releasing methane.'"
my wife would appreciate some methane reducing lifeforms to combat my post-Thanksgiving gas venting. I've literally been a musical instrument all day long.
From TFS: "He said it was unlikely the micro-organism, which prefers acidic conditions of about 60C, could ever be added to sheep or cows' food to stop the animals releasing methane."
No, that's what this is for!
Wouldn't it be better to just collect the methane and burn it to displace coal/oil? Sure, you still get CO2 , but methane has the highest energy yield per CO2 yield of all the hydrocarbons, and it is orders of magnitude cleaner than Coal.
If this substance found its way into the food supply, it could be the end of ancient tradition of fart-lighting. The cultural loss would be incalculable.
...but it's still going to be producing some sort of waste. The article didn't mention at all what the bacteria produced as a byproduct of it's methane consumption. It doesn't do us a whole of good if it pops out radioactive sludge now does it. I don't think it should be written off as "vaporware" but this is obviously still very much in it's infancy. The article was very sparse on specifics other than putting out the sensational headline about curing global warming. Check back in a few years.
I got a catholic block.
"Which prefers acidic conditions of about 60C"
So, im not Biologist, but wouldn't the inside of a cows stomach have lots of acid? And the internal body temperature of a cow is probably similar to a humans. So we have the acid, and we are off by about 20 degrees. I'm sure some geneticist somewhere can figure out how to adapt it to these conditions.
Another idea may be to put these bacteria into the pools where the manurer is left to decompose?
-EL
i though that was common sense in the scientific class that the early earth atmosphere composed essentially by metane and other greenhouse-effect gases was modified by these bugs who fixated the gases from the air. maybe one day when the ocean water become 60C these bugs could come to the surface and to the trick again.
How many liters would have to be put into Capitol Hill each year to offset the methane there.... the mind boggles!
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Great idea - just change human behavior and it'll work great! Hey, it worked for the communists.
Ooooor, you could try to use technology to improve the situation. But don't let me interrupt your Quixotian quest to change people by admonishing them. Get them to stop eating beef while you are at it.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It's not the scientist's job to simply encourage gardens. It's also not the scientist's fault that citizens are not willing to cut back on carbon-emissions. So what does a scientist do? He (or she) tries to find an alternative solution to a problem that has an answer nobody is willing to comply with.
In other news, scientists also discover a way of combatting another major greenhouse gas - carbon dioxide. This newly discovered group of organisms, tentatively called "plants", not only absorbs the carbon dioxide gas, but also produces oxygen AND SOME can be quite tasty in a stir-fry. Further research is continuing, with the hopes these so-called "plants" becoming commercially viable by 2010.
So, 1 cubic meter will take care of 11 kg. How much to take care of our 330 teragram annual emission? A couple dozen cubic kilometers?
I don't know. I think building all those country acreages helps combat global warming. After all, it doesn't take many city drivers who are unused to the country running over stray cows to make a measurable difference in methane output.
Because other experiments in the past to release some kind of life form to combat something we deem as inconvenient has worked soooooo well: * introducing rabbits in Australia * introducing foxes to eat said rabbits * crossing European and African honey bees to get the best of both worlds... * snakeheads in Eastern USA * american frogs in europe And about another 1000 examples of introducing animals outside their natural habitat have all worked out so well. So, yeah, let's release those bugs!
Anyone ever get the feeling that we are going to really muck things up by trying to "fix" things? We introduce new species of animal or bacteria to an environment to control naturally occurring beings, then these predators completely take over and become a problem in and of themselves. So and on so forth.
I have to believe sometimes that we as humans are simply not smart enough, or perhaps do not see enough of the big picture, to understand the intricacies of the world or the universe to implement such grand scale processes.
If god wanted us to cut back on cow consumption, they wouldn't be made of tasty meat. Who are you to argue with god's intelligent design?
-karmaburn
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
Methylokorus infernorum. What consumes it when it gets out of control. I am being corny and soy-ey. (sorry)
Still, the globe on which we currently reside is going through changes. I am sure we play a part, but let us not get an ego. This planet has known this for some time longer than us.
Reducing our negative impacts and increasing our positive cannot be wrong by definition in my book. We can only do positive together.
We win together or suffer without.
Should not critique others' vocabulary, those who use 'LOL'.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
Really? A friend had that once. Penicillin did the trick.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Yes, solutions that start with "force everyone to" are not very helpful.
How we know is more important than what we know.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Here's another shocker. Planting trees isn't always a good solution, and it can sometimes contribute to the problem. Not all forests release more O2 than they store CO2, plus they decrease the Earth's surface albedo. Fortunately most tropical forests do release more O2, except new forests (young trees release more CO2 it seems).
You just got troll'd!
We can't all afford to be vegan. After all, we need all those crops for biodiesel.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Quixotian? LOL
There's nothing wrong with this neologism, as it conveys perfectly accurately the message that the author intended to emit, by making a reference to something that everyone knows about...
You just got troll'd!
More efficent and easier to mix monensin into cattle feed, as has been done since the early '60s. An antibiotic sold under the tradename "rumensin", it is available as a component of supplemental vitamin/mineral feed mix; available by the bag or by the truckload at your local farm supply outlet. In a cow's stomach, it blocks the digestive microbes from breaking down corn sugar molecules into molecules of acetic acid, cardon dioxide and methane, instead keeping it all as one bigger acid molecule so the body can use all the carbon to bulk up. Otherwise, the gaseous CO2 and CH4 released would just be farted away and wasted. Young cattle can gain more weight with less forage, less greenhouse gases emitted, and as a bonus the antibiotic protects the animal against a few diseases.
wrong. populations in many western countries have actually dropped. if it wasn't for migration many would be in decline.
the earths population is commonly estimated to peak at 20 billion with current trends.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
"Beef production is horribly wasteful"
fuck off it is. you clearly have never seen or know fuck all about the slaughter production line.
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The red meat seems to have clogged your brain arteries.
NOTHING is wasted. the skin is used for leather, the head, hoofs, bones and other products not used for human consumption are turned into pet food. fuck even a cows gal stones are ground up and sold.
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That's the harvesting you are talking of, not the production.
in comparision growing vegetables is VERY wasteful because a large portion of the crop is wasted due to pests and spoilage. it also requires MORE LAND then beef.
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Do you really think any beef you eat nowadays ate grass only for a couple of years? Those days are long over.
Beef requires 25 kilocalories fodder input for 1 calorie meat output, _that's_ wasteful. Instead of producing beef fodder, you could feed 25 times more people with vegetables and they would live decades longer on top.
Trees only absorb CO2 to build more tree - they don't destroy it or use it as fuel or some other nonsense that people seem to believe.
Grow a tree and you have removed carbon from the atmosphere. Burn it down and you have put it back again
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
The real problem is when they decompose and turn carbon dioxide (which they sequestered) into methane.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Better check your facts. A pure corn will kill a cow in less than a year. The typical cow spends less than a fraction one season on a feedlot. It costs way more to feedlot a cow than to let it eat grass for most of it's life. Only in the final stages of fattening up is it productive. No sane person would grain feed anything over most of it's life. So if you base your conclusions on what you believed was a fact you need to reassess them. Beef requires 25 kilocalories fodder input for 1 calorie meat output, _that's_ wasteful. Instead of producing beef fodder, you could feed 25 times more people with vegetables and they would live decades longer on top.
I'd like to see your facts. It takes prodigious amounts of water and energy to raise a vegetable and deliver it to you. Moreover, cows eat grass on rangelands where the land can't support growing crops and if it could there's no water. So every calorie you get from that is one you never could get from a vegetable. None of the cow is wasted, while most of the vegetable is. Moreover, where do you think they get the fertilizer to grow the crops? It's not the slightest bit wasteful.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Did my comment turn you on to the point you had to perform that sort of intellectual masturbation that was strictly irrelevant to the topic at hand anyways?
You just got troll'd!