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Want To Fight Climate Change? Stop Cows From Burping
sciencehabit writes: A simple supplement to a cow's feed could substantially decrease a major source of methane, a planet-warming greenhouse gas, a new study suggests. Each year worldwide, the methane produced by cud-chewing livestock warms Earth's climate by the same amount as 2.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide, a little more than 4% of the greenhouse gas emissions related to human activity. That makes cows tempting targets for methane reduction efforts. In a new study, researchers added the chemical 3-nitrooxypropanol, also known as 3NOP, to the corn-and-alfalfa-based feed of 84 milk-producing Holsteins and monitored their methane production for 12 weeks—the largest and longest such trial of its type in lactating cows, the scientists say. For cows whose feed included 3NOP, methane emissions dropped, on average, by 30%.
You are all cows! Cows burp. BUUUUUUUURP! BUUUUUUURP! Buurp cows BUUUUURP! Burp say the cows. YOU BURPING COWS!!
I'll go for late seeing as this information is at least 30 years old if not older.
And if you take into account the problems of implementing this, then this becomes one of the most stupid ideas to reduce greenhouse emissions...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
There is no runaway global warming so why do we care about any of this?
If we all went vegetarian and killed off the domesticated cattle, then we'd make a huge difference! Kill a cow today!
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Except that cows give milk from their *udders*. Otherwise, nice job.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
If our war on any other imaginary enemy is any indicator, by eliminating freedom.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I for one am eating them as fast as I can, but think going after power stations, industry and transportation fuels is gonna be more effective.
As far as mitigation goes, increasing forest biomass is good. As far as managing what we've already got, the key factor is chaos theory, which I strongly recommend reading up on: it's fascinating.
Basically we're gonna get progressively more insane weather events because climate's a chaotic system. It's never just 'everything smoothly gets five degrees hotter', instead you get killing frosts in June and droughts that wipe out entire crops for the year or turn states into dust bowls, heat waves akin to the surface of Mars etc. More than that, you get increased chaos and violence of the system, so you want to watch for not average behaviors, but the rapidity and unpredictability of change.
Chaotic systems being what they are, and the climate being a chaotic system quite literally, what we see is the range of possible event opening up. The maximum observable behavior on a number of fronts goes way past expectation. Tornadoes, hurricanes, possibly even earthquakes as the whole thing ramps up, and of course insane brief torrential rains and such. This is what chaos looks like, and it will continue to increase faster than expected.
coal power, Chinese dirty industry, heavy metal mining, wars... but no, the cows are the real problem.
... this measure doesn't involve:
So how is that any fun, I ask you?!?
For cows whose feed included 3NOP, methane emissions dropped, on average, by 30%.
And what will that reduction mean in terms of temperature reduction? Is the answer zero?
Not just burping...
But seriously, this "story" looks like an ad for 3NOP.
This global warming stuff has been mainly bullshit.
Uh, sure. The thing is that we're actually talking about Bovineogenic Climate Change.
I would try making my point in more sensible terms, except you are either:
a) Denying the existence of greenhouse gasses. We know that there are greenhouse gasses since the Earth would be much colder otherwise. This is basic math that can be performed by a high school student.
or
b) Denying that human activity produces these gasses. Since we know that human activity produces greenhouse gasses, it is hard to deny.
The only real debate is the magnitude of this problem. To that end, I'd much rather trust the findings of researchers who devote their life to studying climate to the opinion of a person who denies that something doesn't exist when it verifiably does exist.
You sir are outstanding in your field.
Global warming is a complex issue, with many factors and no easy answer. Because of this complexity it makes it easy for someone to just not believe it is true, because the complexity it too much for any one person to handle. It is more complex than switching to solar panels, and electric cars, and stopping cows from having gas.
Fixing these issues requires changing culture, which is hard, and will create a lot of people resistant to changes, they will hire a lot of people to make their point across, to convince others.
We have a lot of science, and we need more... However I think one thing is needed isn't finding a silver bullet, is to counter the destructive marketing with more counter marketing. Many of the colleges and universities who are doing a lot of science on the topic, also have business schools and programs. Get a handful of those MBA and Public relation majors onto your grant, to help spread the information to help change the culture.
I have seen major cultural changes happen due to effective marketing. From 2004 - 2015 where there was talk to make a constitutional amendment to ban Gay marriages, to it being legal in all states. The rise of smart phones and mobile connectivity...
Marking isn't always bad and trying to sell you products, it is also used to explain ideas. They are actually a lot of MBA students who are not about being money grubbing capitalists, but are about trying to make the world better. (MBA with considerations in not-for-profit is a popular track). These grant for science, should also be allocated to students who are trained to sell the ideas to the general population.
Showing a graph doesn't have impact on those who don't know how to read graphs.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
When you try to cut into a steak from these new cows, it explodes and the entire restaurant then smells of methane.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
But aren't the cows just returning carbon that the plants had recently sequestered back into the atmosphere? It's not as though the cows are digging up coal and eating it.
I would try making my point in more sensible terms, except you are either:
tsk tsk tsk name calling. I am also surprised that you didn't invent a statistic.
Stop eating cows and bovine dairy. Down side of that, no more steaks. Everyone gets pissed off until you bring up the possibility of Coldstone Creamery Human Breast Milk Shakes!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
30% of 4% is 1.2%. 1.2% is not worth writing a story about.
...In order to contribute to that, please go kill yourself Cow.
ftfy
rewriting history since 2109
1st. Cow burps are only relevant to the extent that cow burps are fueled by sequestered carbon... if you're feeding them with grain that is produced with petro chemical fertilizers then an argument can be made there. However, if the cattle are not getting their food from those sources then whatever the cattle are doing is not relevant.
2nd. Methane has a short life in the atmosphere... really CO2's life is over estimated but methane's is quite a bit shorter.
3rd. Which meat are we going to shift to instead? And I'll noted that cattle, pigs, chickens all eat different things and properly employed can be raised in very different environments. Look at Australian cattle. Try to raise chickens on that.
Frankly I smell the yeasty scent of the anti meat progressive lobby in this... take your hacky sacks... and fuck off.
Do you know what percentage of vegetarians admitted to eating meat in the last 24 hours in recent polls? Over 70 percent. And that's in 24 hours... and that's what they admitted to... lets just drop the pretenses here... humans eat meat.
Move on.
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Do cows fed on the diet they evolved over 1000s of years to eat, namely grasses and similar plant species, produce as much methane as cows fed on GMO cereal grains and such do?
Oh wait, if you fed cows what evolution designed them to eat, you couldn't sell $1 hamburgers at the golden arches...
Based on a range from 1.6 to 3.5 gigatons: 1.3b cows * [50|110kgCH4] * 25kg CO2 GHG effect (beef = 50kg, dairy = 110kg)
Luke, help me take this mask off
I think you missed the point, the industrial production of beef using unnatural feed appears to be teo of the central problems here. Cows exist in large numbers to feed an industrious man.
Actually it is relevant because it doesn't build up in the atmosphere.
Methane totally degrades in the atmosphere in under 12 years and half of it is gone in 7.
it is also a very very very very very very very very very very very minor trace gas in our atmosphere.
20 times 0 is 0. And that's basically how much methane we have in our atmosphere.
Don't just look at some biased numbered by the smelly dread lock crew... actually put the numbers into perspective.
20 times more powerful than CO2?... so what? there's basically none in the atmosphere. It breaks down entirely in about a decade... and the only relevance of it is if the chemicals it breaks down into build up in the atmosphere.... well... if you're not feeding the cows with sequestered carbon then what is going to build up?
Methane breaks down into CO2 and H2O... so... which of those are we worried about here? Neither really... the contribution of either to the atmosphere by methane is irrelevant and the CO2 component is only relevant to the extent that we're getting sequestered carbon released... And even then... irrelevant quantities from this source.
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Not a great plan in long run. Chinese are also building the industrial base to put Terra watts of wind and solar on the grid. It's going to be a great amusing world, when solar and wind are multi trillion dollar industries, exceeding coal potentially matching oil and China lords thier green industrial might over the worl, and Crack pots in the #2 US maybe #3 will still prattle on about freedom and mankind's ,US ?, dominion while continue hastening US irrelevance. 20 to 30 years out.
and all those cargo ships china sends all over the world are so clean, i am not even going to read the article because just by the title i can tell it is a pile of shit, the bankers and industrialists that that run wallstreet and other financial centers around the world have conveniently hidden all their dirty factories in china and other third world nations where the citizens they hire have no human rights so they are basically slaves that work for just enough money to feed themselves
the global economy is slavery-2.0
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
You seem to be humor-impaired. Or maybe functionally illiterate. It is really implausible that you have missed the first half of that sentence.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Grass fed, gluten and cage free, non-GMO, etc, etc, etc.
Mesozoic: Average temperatures were also higher than today by about 10C.
Have gnu, will travel.
and Crack pots in the #2 US maybe #3 will still prattle on about freedom and mankind's ,US ?, dominion while continue hastening US irrelevance
So you're saying the triumph of totalitarian industrial states over freedom-loving states will please you?
Why cows matter: https://xkcd.com/1338/
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The whole idea that cow burps could produce enough carbon to destroy the planet is why so many people deny even the possibility that emitting industrial quantities of carbon can change the climate. It just makes the whole issue sound ridiculous. Methane may be 20 times as powerful a greenhouse gas as CO2, but because of its reactivity it does not persist in the atmosphere in the same way.
There's some insight in that comment-- compared to the 40 trillion kilograms of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by combustion of coal, the amount of warming by cows is small. However, although it is smaller effect, it is not negligible contributes. According to the original article:
Each year worldwide, the methane produced by cud-chewing livestock warms Earth’s climate by the same amount as 2.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide, a little more than 4% of the greenhouse gas emissions related to human activity.
So, here's a way to affect 4% of the problem (not solve, but affect), with no effect on standard of living whatsoever-- it's a small step, but with essentially no cost: cow methane production is of no economically value.
What bothers me, however, is that the article is talking about burps, while the problem is cow emissions. Not all cow methane emissions are burps.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Bison once roamed over vast stretches of the country now occupied by farms and cities. Make up your mind, people: is man killing off all the large animals or promoting too many animals?
Don't climate "scientists" have a personal bias invested in a certain outcome?
No. That's the argument made over and over again, but it isn't actually the way science works. In the long run, scientists gain kudos by getting the right answer. Despite the arguments of deniers, scientists aren't idiots.
And in the scientific community, the standard is: the more sensational the claim, the more evidence is required. And climate "science" has made some pretty sensational claims
Again, wrong. In some ways, the problem with actual climate science (not what's in the press, real science) is that the effect isn't sensational. The climate scientists are claiming that anthropogenic carbon dioxide has warmed the planet by on the order of one degree-- far too little for anybody to actually personally notice, although well measurable on a statistical basis. That's only a few percent of the natural greenhouse warming (which is well understood, and not at all controversial, even though it's exactly the same physics).
The reason that denial is so easy is that the effect is so small. Over the long term, of course, it does built up-- but that's brings in the argument "why should we do anything for posterity? What has posterity ever done for us?"
that have a history if not coming true.
Again, wrong. I've been tracking the predictions to data for several years now, and climate modelling still seems to be pretty good; tracking to well within statistical error. The only people who say it isn't are saying so by cherry-picking data that isn't statistically significant.
But we knew that: if the greenhouse effect didn't exist, the Earth would be a frozen snowball.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I have been lately very concerned that, even between all the pesticides, hormones and antibiotics, I am not getting enough foreign chemicals in my burgers. Maybe this one will finally do the trick and help me mutate into green and 2-headed superior species!
Hmph. Not worth discussing anything anymore on this site.
Posts are politically loaded and mods seem the same. Anyone want to buy a 4 digit UID?
Excellent video.
My posts are no more loaded than yours... and as to the mods... who gives a flying fuck what they think? I'm always baffled by the people that care about mod points.
I tell people to go fuck themselves with a rake in one post and get modded down because the special snowflakes don't like it when people are meanies. And then I get modded up in another post where I talk about something no one finds controversial.
Net result... excellent karma rating.
I don't care. Its so fucking easy to get an excellent rating. Anyone that has a low rating either is only participating in controversial discussions or is a troll.
Who cares either way. All I ask of people is that they login. If you log in so I at least know who I'm talking to then I'm good.
If you don't want to have a discussion with someone that disagrees with you... m'kay... go back to your hug box. I don't see where I'm supposed to care.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
170+ comments about cows burping.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Hydrogen, carbon dioxide and methane are all produced in the gut and contribute 74% of the volume of flatus in normal subjects.[17]
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
"My posts are no more loaded than yours"
That was my first post on the site in weeks and it contained nothing but facts and links to reputable sources.
You're the one who referred to the EPA as a "dread lock crew." It's an argument which would give you an F in grade 9 science class. Mods like it though.
Methane may be a powerful greenhouse gas, but it doesn't last very long in the atmosphere. Within 10 years most of the methane emitted is gone (typically due to chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere). Carbon dioxide emissions, on the other hand, elevate atmospheric CO2 concentrations for hundreds of years.
So reduce the methane emissions permanently and you reduce the total greenhouse gas levels by a tiny amount: in 30 years, the effect will be the same as it will be in 5-10 years. Reduce CO2 emissions permanently, on the other hand, and the impact is cumulative: in 30 years the impact of the reduction will still be growing. In the long run, CO2 always wins out over methane as a greenhouse gas. The only way around this would be if there was a sudden large increase in methane emissions that triggered a positive feedback loop (this may occur from methane outgassing as the permafrost thaws in Siberia, but it won't occur due to cattle).
To add: there is a large CO2 impact for all animal production, and cattle is worse than poultry. So there is a significant GHG impact, but it's not from burps (or farts).
The EPA is a political organization every bit as much as the US State Department. Every branch and department of the US government is subject to politics. Suggesting otherwise is naive.
What is more, I wasn't referring to the EPA specifically as the dread lock crew but rather the people attempting to gin up alarmism on the issue of methane.
To conflate a given position an organization might make with anything the organization might say is not valid.
A reputable newspaper can have a writer that is an idiot post a stupid article. And a government entity subject to politics is going to have elements in its nature that service the interests of various lobbying groups.
Can you possibly be so naive as to not know that?
As to insulting a government agency meaning I fail at science... actually you fail at science. Having an unfavorable position of a government entity is not scientific either way. To suggest it is means you don't know what science means.
From wikipedia:
""
Science[nb 1] is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.[nb 2] In an older and closely related meaning, "science" also refers to this body of knowledge itself, of the type that can be rationally explained and reliably applied. Ever since classical antiquity, science as a type of knowledge has been closely linked to philosophy. In the West during the early modern period the words "science" and "philosophy of nature" were sometimes used interchangeably,[2]:p.3 and until the 19th century natural philosophy (which is today called "natural science") was considered a branch of philosophy.[3]
In modern usage "science" most often refers to a way of pursuing knowledge, not only the knowledge itself. In the 17th and 18th centuries scientists increasingly sought to formulate knowledge in terms of laws of nature. Over the course of the 19th century, the word "science" became increasingly associated with the scientific method itself, as a disciplined way to study the natural world, including physics, chemistry, geology and biology. It is in the 19th century also that the term scientist began to be applied to those who sought knowledge and understanding of nature.[4]
Modern science is typically subdivided into the natural sciences which study the material world, the social sciences which study people and societies, and the formal sciences like mathematics. The formal sciences are often excluded as they do not depend on empirical observations.[5] Disciplines which use science like engineering and medicine may also be considered to be applied sciences.[6]
""
Please show where my statement got an F for science.
As to mods liking it... mods are awarded based on popularity mostly... they are political in nature. They always have been and always will be. Its funny how so many people don't understand what is and is not politics. Why is this confusing? I suspect you'd be perfectly happy with things being judged politically so long as they were judged according to YOUR politics. Which really just means you're whining because you can't gin up a hate mob against anyone that says stuff you find threatening to your world view.
Suck it. Why should I care?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Don't climate "scientists" have a personal bias invested in a certain outcome?
Even if there weren't anthropogenic global warming there would still be a climate to study. It would still be a subject of considerable interest to us so climate scientists would have plenty of work to do understanding it.
As Geoffry Landis point out the effects of AGW are small on the time scales most humans are aware of. It's a slow motion disaster that's easy to ignore until the effect build up and you wake up one day and ask "Wha' happened?" By then it's too late to fix it except on the slow motion time scale that it happened in the first place.
Here's the link.
So I switched to a vegan diet, not for myself but to save the world. With no meat in my diet I started eating a lot more beans. Now there is just as much methane as the cows would have made, and I've lost friends. And it isn't coming out as burps.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Ik think there already has been a lot of marketing, in the sense that activism got ahead of science. The countermovement may be associated with ruthless businesses that put financial gains above all else, but there has also been a backlash from overselling, which reduced the credibility. And a backlash from discrediting skepticism in general, which is also not very good. We need less marketing and less partisan attitudes.
While I agree with you about the permafrost cows really do burp more methane than they fart. The reason for that is when cows are out grazing they are doing minimal chewing and just passing it to the first of their four stomachs, the rumen. In there the grass is microbialy fermented which is what produces the methane. When the cows upchuck the fermented grass to chew their cud they burp the methane.
If you're wondering why the cows need the fermentation it's a process that breaks down the cellulose in the grass they eat into more nutritional things like sugars that the cows can digest.
Beano for cows.
Bill Gates is a communist -- he's just more equal than the rest of us.
"...you're whining because you can't gin up a hate mob against anyone that says..."
Get a grip man. Try reading what I wrote rather than inferring stuff.
Or just ignore the AGW conspiracy machine and accept that CO2 is plant food and the sun controls the climate. Which was what 400 years of evidence makes you conclude when you realise that you cant afford $78 trillion dollars to 'fix' the climate. And maybe the weather right now, on average, over time, is the new average - ie be ready for man made global cooling. Time for this theory to go the way of the Ecosystem Theory and Man made global cooling.
we'll just run out of fresh water source instead from everything going to almonds and stuff.
Unless we all stick to a small subset of vegan food...a small subset of a small subset...may as well shoot ourselves at that point. But then we'll need billions of bullets...ugh.
That argument would have a lot more weight if we didn't see how Professor Peter L. Hagelstein has been treated by M.I.T. for even taking an interest in the process called "cold fusion" (also called low-energy nuclear reactions) and trying to determine where the excess heat was coming from.
As I said.
Scientists get kudos from getting the right answer.
In 25 years of trying, cold fusion researchers haven't managed to have demonstrate a reproducible phenomenon.
You don't get kudos merely because you're working on something that isn't popular. You also have to be right.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
What is the mechanism at work? TFA just says 3NOP increase digestibility. How?
I mean how did they measure the methane output.
I'm imagining a bunch of confused cow wearing expandable latext nappies.
Just sayin...
How do the methane emissions compare between cows who are given corn to eat vs eating grass like they should?
I did... you're complaining about mod points.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Should we start with the problems of equating wild bison with domesticated cattle?
Or maybe the disparity in population (~25million bison over entire continent vs 90million cows in the US alone*)?
Perhaps the difference in their feeding habits (enough to live vs enough to be fattened for consumption)?
Maybe the type of feed (wild grasses vs grains also agriculturally produced)?
Difference of lifestyle (nomadic vs sedentary/penned)?
So tell me.
Just which ignorant part of your ignorant statement should we start with?
*BTW, that's just the number of cows raised for meat, and ignores those from dairies
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Sadly, I have no mod points to move this back up. This post should not have been modded down.
There has been a spate of cow posts here on Slashdot recently, usually as part of a first comment attempt. But this one is different for two reasons: it's not the canonical MOOOOO post, and the OP is ACTUALLY ABOUT COWS. So it should have been modded up as a comment on the cow meme, not modded down.
its 40% of all food in the us, not just produce.
and there are lots of sources of methane.
just because source A exists is not a reason to not work to reduce B, especially when B is one of the biggest sources in existence.
rather, it's best to work to reduce all of it, and in truth, there is also work being done to reduce methane from landfills too.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
the carbon in plants doesn't come from fertilizers.
it comes largely out of the air.
the plant matter then, when ingested by a cow, ferments in its gut, reconverting the carbon back into Methane and CO2.
Methane is shorter lived, but the thing is it when decomposes it turns into CO2. so its not like it goes away and you get to ignore it.
why switch to any meat? the best way to reduce the emissions from livestock (14% of all human activity) is to reduce the amount of livestock.
yes humans eat meat, but does it have to as much as we do?
theres little health benefits and quite a few drawbacks to the large amounts of it we do eat
you essentially turned your post into an anti-vegetarian and anti-progressive screed...for some reason.
even though vegetarians come from all sides.
you picked an apt topic name. only its not so much an accusation, as a description of the content of your post.
oblig XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1338/
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
1.Your point about fertilizers not contributing to CO2 in plants means that the methane from cows is not a net increase in atmospheric green house gases.
2. As to methane turning into CO2 after it breaks down... yes... but then we're talking about CO2 again and not methane... and the contribution of to atmospheric CO2 from human live stock methane emissions breaking down into CO2 is so tiny as to not be worth talking about.
3. I eat meat. If you don't like that, then populate the world with a different species of sapients. This species... mine... eats meat.
4. As to vegetarians coming from all sides... not in the west. The vegi lobby is progressive hacks in the west. Your defense of them is frankly an amusing bit of evidence in that vein since you don't comment to anything I say unless I poke progressives... then there you are.
Hello there. I see you. ;-)
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This has been known for many years. But doing away with them or their 'high fiber' diet isn't practical either.
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."
Actually if you really want to reduce emissions lets star with the real problem. Lets say oil companies or soda, or even the DOW best of all coal let go to prime factor the banking industry. This are the ones that cause most problems, But no this is so called progress, the shaker the mover of all lies. Or better known ass the greaser of political society. You get your daily dosage of BS 3 times a day. It Starts at 6 to 7 morning then 5 to 7 afternoon and latter night 10 to 11 just for the hell of it. Ho yes the programing is pounded in, just for there message to be reinforced every day every where. Till you are 71 of age and then have nothing to say. Ho you have screwed up, I listen to all of there lies. i was wrong all the way. They are the cause of all that is wrong!! But no it was in the news, you will always justify there actions. who pays for all the wars and industries and then who makes it legal. What a bunch, https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If we would stop feeding the cows rich, for them, grain, and give them the grass they were designed to eat, they would not have this problem.
The mods, not the mod points.
... and the distinction in this context is zero.
Look... you can either get on topic and have a point... or whine... or run away.
I don't really care. But whatever you do... make up your mind.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I mean, everybody loves steak. Maybe we should have Steak Week - like shark week, but more delicious.