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Feeding Seaweed To Cows Eliminates Methane Emissions (www.cbc.ca)
Dave Knott writes:
A Canadian farmer has "helped lead to a researcher's discovery of an unlikely weapon in the battle against global warming: a seaweed that nearly eliminates the destructive methane content of cow burps and farts," reports the CBC. "Joe Dorgan began feeding his cattle seaweed from nearby beaches more than a decade ago as a way to cut costs... Then researcher Rob Kinley of Dalhousie University caught wind of it." He tested Dorgan's seaweed mix, discovering that it reduced the methane in the cows' burps and farts by about 20 per cent. "Kinley knew he was on to something, so he did further testing with 30 to 40 other seaweeds. That led him to a red seaweed Asparagopsis taxiformis he says reduces methane in cows burps and farts to almost nothing."
"Ruminant animals are responsible for roughly 20% of greenhouse gas emissions globally, so it's not a small number," said Kinley, an agricultural research scientist now working at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Queensland, Australia. "We're talking numbers equivalent to hundreds of millions of cars."
The researcher predicts a seaweed-based cow feed could be on the market within three to five years, according to the article. "He says the biggest challenge will be growing enough seaweed."
"Ruminant animals are responsible for roughly 20% of greenhouse gas emissions globally, so it's not a small number," said Kinley, an agricultural research scientist now working at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Queensland, Australia. "We're talking numbers equivalent to hundreds of millions of cars."
The researcher predicts a seaweed-based cow feed could be on the market within three to five years, according to the article. "He says the biggest challenge will be growing enough seaweed."
Seaweed tastes so bad that it makes them puke when the farmer is not looking. That's why they're no longer farting. The guy will come back in 6 months saying all his cows died of hunger and he doesn't understand why.
lucm, indeed.
Someone please forward this article to Elon Musk.
No. Ruminants are responsible for 20%. Cows are not the only ruminants on the planet.
Can we at least feed the seaweed to our elderly uncles at Thanksgiving to cut down on their burps and farts?
"Then researcher Rob Kinley of Dalhousie University caught wind of it."
Shouldn't that be "noticed the absence of wind?"
I couldn't resist. I've been waiting years for this opportunity (note my account name)...
The real question is if this new feed costs the same or less than the current feed given to cows.
Eating less meat would help GHG reductions.
We like meat. People like you are such killjoys. Please, just go away, you whiny little bitch!
What incentive does big ag have to do anything to reduce their environmental footprint? They have a get-out-of-jail-free card for emissions, fresh water usage and water system pollution, food poisoning, antibiotics abuse, employee and animal abuse, and land degradation. They're richly subsidized to be the world's greatest pollution offenders.
Fucking cows are polluting the planet. Acid rain and global warming and turning forests into wasteland. I say we kill and eat those fuckers!
I can finally eat surf-and-turf while only harming one animal. Take that, vegetarians!
The current system where it's not just subsidies, but we're actually required to burn food, is screwed up enough that it causes noticeable problems. If farmers can grow seaweed in ponds, and we can eat corn, many people would prefer that. I could definitely see that happening IF we can grow it in the US.
"Please pay no attention to all the extra emissions from growing, harvesting, processing, and transporting!"
...weed cures farts?
The ENIAC Demo Competition
too ?
The seaweed contain Bromoform, which like it sounds is related to chloroform. No bacteria = no methane. Bromoform is a confirmed animal carcinogen and lingers in the environment. The seaweed needs to be banned as an animal feed additive before this gets out of hand.
Am I going to pay a bunch of money for fancy seaweed and force my cows to eat it, or will I continue to let them graze my land that costs me nothing?
Decisions, decisions...
Not feeding the cows also does that, because they die. Can I have a research grant?
"Ruminant animals are responsible for roughly 20% of greenhouse gas emissions globally". Not really. The *responsibility* is on the humans who are growing cows for food (and other industrial uses). Eating less meat would help GHG reductions.
The problem is not growing cows for food, the problem is how it's done. If people stop eating meat, whatever they eat instead will be grown as irresponsibly because it's human nature to chase profit and cut corners.
You may have this romantic vision of a few hippies tending to a garden with rain water (greener pastures and all that), but look at where the GMO started - it's the people who invented that who will feed you if meat is gone.
lucm, indeed.
There are ~100 million cows in the US.
They each eat about 24lbs of food a day.
Doesn't say what proportion of that has to be seaweed, but even if it's just a pound a day, that's 100 million pounds of seaweed every day. 36.5 billion pounds a year.
Annual global seaweed harvest was 28,000 metric tons (61,729,433lbs) in '88 according to Wikipedia.
And there are lots more cows around the rest of the world (upwards of 1.5 billion).
People think *I'm* crazy as a vegan. But take note, according to this pro-meat article, livestock accounts for 20% of greenhouse emissions. Should be worrisome to anyone consuming cows or dairy...that's a lot we could cut out very quickly if the will existed.
biggest challenge I would have thought would be ensuring cost effectiveness, a key part of producing Cattle feed is getting the cost right. processing seaweed surely can't be cheap?
Grass.
What does it do to the fatty acids in the beef?
Mammals are unable to relocate the double bond in fatty acids that we eat. (If you aren't up on this stuff, that is the omega number.) To make a long story short, the essential fatty acids in our bodies are the essential fatty acids in the feed that we raise our food with. Switching most of our beef and milk from grass to corn changed the balance that they eat and thus the balance that we eat. And it was probably unwise to do that without any understanding of what that would do (is doing) to us.
I don't care about methane one way or the other, but the long running chemistry experiment that is our food supply bothers me a little bit.
See that "Preview" button?
Yeah, another of those 'great scientific achievements'.
We eat cows. Cows are supposed to eat grass in order to produce the amounts of vitamin K2 that their calves and we need to deposit the calcium that's in our bodies into our bones, and not in our arteries and brains.
Thanks to the fact that cows and chickens are fed factory food on a large scale has already reduced our vitamin K2 intake by an order of a magnitude, which makes us effectively vitamin K2 deficient on a large scale.
Now let's feed them seaweed, so the vitamin K2 we get will reduce even further.
This will only increase the rate of cardiovascular and cognitive diseases even more.
Climate models that are calibrated to accurately 'predict' weather conditions in the past are not proven to be as accurate in predicting conditions for which they haven't been calibrated, so knowing very well that this will attract a lot of flak from the usual AGW-zealots, and acknowledging that my karma will be reduced based on their disagreeing with me--which means that slashdot effectively already does have the 'fake news' filter that facebook is only still talking about--I will not be compelled to hold back my opinion.
So there you have it: I'm not prepared to give up even more of my health in order to prevent some minuscule production of CO2.
Now can we please put those cows and chickens back on the pasture and yard? Thanks.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Here in the UK,it used to be common practice for farmers on islands or coastal regions to feed stock seaweed and/or allow stock to graze on beaches etc.
There were a couple of premium meats obtained from seaweed Fed animals,one was lamb from an area of Wales,if I remember correctly and another was beef from some whete in Scotland I believe..
I think they still do feed seaweed on the Hebrides and faroe islands..
Another one place that fed seaweed was Tristan da cunha,down in the south atlantic,when the islands were evacuated in the 1960's,many of them settled around the new forest area and I can remember playing and talking with some of the kids who complained that our meats didn't taste right to them,but they soon discovered a farm on the local coast where cattle grazed on beaches and tidal marshes and got some of their meat from there..
It's usually done out of necessity because of a shortage of other forage and grass..
The world turns and turns and we discover that some of the old ways had other unknown advantages,just like some of the old breeds of farm stock had advantages over our current cloned,small gene-pool mass production breeds..
We still have an awful lot to learn or sometimes re-learn..
The only way to solve man-made climate change is to tax average people an exorbitant amount.
And give it to the already exorbitantly rich, because that's the whole scheme behind this AGW-hype.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Can't we turn the problem around and just grow sea cows?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
What's the vitamin K2 or precursors of the seaweed in question? What's the typical route for materials in cow food to K2 in cows?
The problem is indeed growing cows for food, no matter how it's done. If people stop eating meat and instead ate the vegetables fed to the animals, the efficiency of the food supply increases 10 to 40 fold (depending on who's number you use). A pound of beef takes 10 to 40 pounds of feed, an absurd amount of fresh water, a huge expanse of land, countless antibiotics, and the transportation of elements within the system (feed to cows, cows to processing plants, etc). Why not just skip the middlemen and give humans the vastly-more-efficient feed?
No. Ruminants are responsible for 20%. Cows are not the only ruminants on the planet.
Did you hear the story about how cows were once the dominant and most intelligent creatures on earth? Then they devolved, and are now just a ruminant of their one time greatness.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Climate models that are calibrated to accurately 'predict' weather conditions in the past are not proven to be as accurate in predicting conditions for which they haven't been calibrated, so knowing very well that this will attract a lot of flak from the usual AGW-zealots, and acknowledging that my karma will be reduced based on their disagreeing with me--which means that slashdot effectively already does have the 'fake news' filter that facebook is only still talking about--I will not be compelled to hold back my opinion.
Run-on sentence much? Anyway, for about the bazillionth time, climate != weather.
The AGW people are not zealots, they're scientists, and those who understand how science works. What you seem to interpret as zealotry is actually a genuine concern for the future of the human race.
All models are a compromise, because they attempt to express in mathematics and algorithms the essential parts of a complex real world. They can make wrong predictions in both directions. But the practice of science works to correct this by observing discrepancies and producing better models. And guess what? Models keep improving, and they are becoming quite accurate:
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
https://www.theguardian.com/en...
https://www.theguardian.com/en...
http://www.ucsusa.org/publicat...
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/c...
http://phys.org/news/2015-02-g...
Whether you accept what the models say or not, the essential take-away is that CO2 and methane are greenhouse gasses, and humanity is responsible for adding a significant amount of them to the atmosphere since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Enough to cause a problem that we must face and solve, or risk significant global hardship. Temperature is trending upwards. Polar ice is melting. Sea levels are rising. These are observed facts.
And maybe, in fact perhaps quite likely, efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions will be a net benefit for economies, rather than a hardship.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Because
1. The fats and proteins in meat are needed for our health. The human body does its best when it consumes low carbs and high protein.
2. It tastes good.
Please stop offering to poison me with a bad tasting poison. I eat my fruits and vegetables thanks but meat is an essential part of our diet that we evolved to consume.
Hippies like to argue that but the facts are what they are, from the types of teeth we have to the way our body uses fat cholesterol to make its hormones, generate energy and repair cell damage.
Most seaweeds have no taste at all.
Many of them can be processed to create jelly like "agar" with even less taste.
If people stop eating meat and instead ate the vegetables fed to the animals,
There's nothing worse than being stuck in a confined area with a bunch of righteous vegetarians farting.
Have gnu, will travel.
You could be stuck in a confined area with self-righteous bacon-loving "bro" farts...
Sounds like junkie talk to me. Face it. You're addicted.
The problem is indeed growing cows for food, no matter how it's done. If people stop eating meat and instead ate the vegetables fed to the animals,
That's just it. Very few "vegetables" are eaten by cows. Most of their diet is grass while in pasture, hay over the winter, and grain when fattening them up for slaughter. Grass and corn grow very well with little help beyond planting and limited watering. I grew up on a vegetable farm. The corn rows took very little maintenance, but the juicy vegetables like tomatoes and cucumbers took a lot of time and water.
The studies that say beef needs 1000+ gallons of water per pound, while vegetables only need 100-500, don't take into consideration that the cows get most of that water from eating grass in their pasture and drinking from ponds in the pasture. Water for vegetables is mostly coming from a well or dammed river.
If you switched all acreage currently growing field corn for cows, and instead planted all the various vegetables, you would need to use a lot more water to irrigate them, and a lot more labor to tend to them.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
A pound of beef takes 10 to 40 pounds of feed, an absurd amount of fresh water, a huge expanse of land, countless antibiotics, and the transportation of elements within the system (feed to cows, cows to processing plants, etc). Why not just skip the middlemen and give humans the vastly-more-efficient feed?
The bulk of the food cows are eating is unfit for human consumption. You couldn't feed it to people even if you wanted to. Our digestive system is completely different and can't be "upgraded" to work like that of a cow.
Calories are not all equals, otherwise we could just feast on corn sugar all day and be healthy.
If you want to be a vegan because you feel sad thinking about animals being slaughtered or because you have a craving for foliage, knock yourself out, but stop peddling that bullshit that's been around since the hippies.
lucm, indeed.
And guess what? Models keep improving, and they are becoming quite accurate:
That is exactly totally beside the point.
Models are calibrated in a subset of their variable space, i.e. a subset of weather, oops, my bad, climate conditions from the past.
Stating that they are 'improving' inside that subspace is in no way any indication of their accuracy in a totally different part of the variable space, namely some apparently dramatically different subspace where the state of the system is supposed to reside in the future, including the dynamics with which the state of the system arrives in that region of the variables space.
So, for me, there is no scientific basis to believe the predictions of the IPCC et. al.
However, I do agree that it is better if we, humanity, clean up the mess that we create, i.e. the waste and other by-products from our oxidative processes.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
That still leaves the methane. Cows gotta go.
Get over it already.
You mean there's nothing we can do?
There is so much we can do. The minute we refuse en masse to buy the products of big business big business will go bankrupt.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Good scientific questions that should have been answered and have the answers compared before stating that seaweed is a solution for cow feeds.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Most of their diet is grass while in pasture, hay over the winter, and grain when fattening them up for slaughter. Grass and corn grow very well with little help beyond planting and limited watering...the cows get most of that water from eating grass in their pasture and drinking from ponds in the pasture.
This is a romantic view of how cows are reared. The cows in our food chains are in fact fed almost entirely on corn and soy, and they don't have any pasture or ponds to drink from. Animal agriculture is in fact an industrial commodity produced using factory farming methods. The water problem lies in the fact that it takes all the fresh water that a cow drinks, plus all the water used to irrigate the 10-40 pounds of feed (for each pound of meat), plus the loss of fresh water in the supply that is polluted with their sewage. The EPA themselves estimate that 2,500 head of cattle produce the same amount of raw sewage as 411,000 people.
Even better,
If you feed Marijuana to a cow the bovine just stops giving a shit.
Just lies there all week listening to Marley and getting the whole wheat munchies.
That's how it is in the USA but some other countries are different.
Our digestive system can't digest corn and soy? That's what cows are fed in industrial agriculture.
Again your are misleading people with your carefully crafted misinformation. For the record, here's what cow eat:
In the beef cattle diet, common roughages include hay, silage and grass. Silage is a crop that has been preserved in a moist, succulent condition by partial fermentation in a tight container (silo) above or below ground. The majority of the food cattle eat comes from this type of feedstuffs.
Much less grain is needed in the cattle’s diet than roughage is. This is because grains fill cattle energy needs more than it fills their stomachs. Cattle are fed more grain the older they get. They gain weight faster when they are on higher amounts of grain. This is how cattle are finished off before they go to market.
http://animalsmart.org/species...
Now why don't you go have a feast of those delicious roughages - that's the bulk of that "40 fold" figure you mentioned - with maybe a small side of grain that was for the most part rejected by beer brewers or left over in the process of cleaning grain destined for human consumption; then you can come back here and educate us about the marvels it did for your digestive system.
lucm, indeed.
A quick search nets me http://journals.plos.org/ploso... a 2013 submission. Quote: "The most effective species, Asparagopsis, offers the most promising alternative for mitigation of enteric CH4 emissions."
Most cited human ailments like heart disease, obesity, diabetes, etc are caused by eating too much sugar, which comes from plants, and not from eating meat.
Fucking cows are polluting the planet. Acid rain and global warming and turning forests into wasteland. I say we kill and eat those fuckers!
Way ahead of you... pass the steak sauce.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
I want you to go to your room and think about what you've done.
Seaweed is also being studied as a means of carbon sequestration.
So grow vast amounts of seaweed, feed some of it to cows, and you've got a "two for the price of one" effect on global warming.
Fucking cows are polluting the planet. Acid rain and global warming and turning forests into wasteland. I say we kill and eat those fuckers!
Way ahead of you... pass the steak sauce.
Let's wait for the seaweed feed. Then we can have discount surf-and-turf AND save the environment** all at the same time...
Gotta love science!
** it's a joke, just roll with it greenies...
If eating grass-fed beef is so important, then why are there so many healthy vegetarians?
There's nothing worse than being stuck in a confined area with a bunch of righteous vegetarians farting.
I am a vegetarian, and I have to admit this is true. There are benefits to being a vegetarian, but increased flatulence is a minor problem. Fortunately, I work in a private office with a window.
Not like shit, but like salty, slightly fishy beef. Somewhat limited market for that I'd guess.
Maybe because they eat natto (yuck) for the high vit K2 content?
Or sauerkraut. If you're lucky and it has been fermented with the right strains of bacteria then it also gives you more than enough K2.
The same goes for kimchi.
Also hard gouda cheese and french brie contain relatively high amounts K2, but not enough for your daily requirements of about 200 mg and up (if I got that number right).
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Totally untrue and a gross false equivalence fallacy.
Climate models are numerically imprecise and approximative computer models with parameters that have been tweaked with data sets from the past, representing a limited region in the multidimensional state space in which the climate variables can reside.
The predictions by those models are based on approximations, guesses--no matter how expertly estimated--and extrapolations by mathematical approximative functions.
I hope I don't need to explain what is the difference between that kind of models and real physical models, it's huge.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Methane, not CO2, if you were careful to read. Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 (30 times more potent) so the effects on reducing global warming would be much higher.
Ask a paleoanthropologist and they will tell you that you are full of shit about the lifespan of early humans.
One issue that may be of interest is fossil records show many examples of humans and neaderthals and analysis shows that many were likely to have died at an older age due the observation of common age related dental issues (such as ground-down and missing teeth) and arthritis. Unfortunately fossil records are rare so it isn't possible to determine the average age related issues, and even if there were many more fossil records, they cannot determine cancers or cardiovascular issues from fossil remains.
As mentioned by other posters, refined sugar and other refined carbs have been identified as a likely candidate (potentially more significant than saturated fats from meat) for many of these diseases, but the jury is current out on that topic.
The reason prehistoric man was attributed with short life-expectancy was because of high infant mortality and childhood deaths (disease and other mortality risks). If we factor those things out, prehistoric man is estimated to have lifetimes similar to those in the 16th century humans. These extrapolations were done by a few decades ago in scientific studies of isolated hunter-gatherer societies in Africa and South America before there was significant contact between these isolated groups and modern society (unfortunately that they are difficult if not impossible to repeat now because of widespread cultural contamination).
You can take these with a few grains of salt, but it tracks with estimates done over historical times (where they have better information) that factoring out infant/child mortality effects, the lifespan of humans has been pretty constant until the industrial revolution when people started living a bit longer. Post-childhood causes of deaths that limit life-expectancy have changed greatly over time. In the hunter-gatherer society external injuries dominated the deaths, in the agricultural society the prevalence of infectious diseases dominated, it wasn't until the industrial revolution that cardiovascular diseases dominated, but as we move to a "high-tech" society cancers now dominate over cardio-vascular disease.
Since our diets have changed since the earlier part of the industrial revolution, I don't think we are eating *less* meat than we were before during the industrial revolution (where we were collectively much poor-er and couldn't afford much meat) so I'm not so sure it is conclusive that meat is the cause of all this cardio-vascular disease during the industrial revolution, and I'm not sure it's a cause of the current cancer epidemic either. Personally, I suspect generally higher calorie diets and less exercise for cardio-vascular disease prevalence and prior-generational under-reporting combined with increased industrial pollution for the modern cancer prevalence. I have no evidence to support this, but I suspect many will agree with that assessment.
The US is a huge exporter of food. We grow far more food than we need. Efficiency of the process is a non-issue. Methane as a greenhouse gas has a half-life of 7 years, which means it doesn't build up like CO2. It'll increase, then plateau, creating a limited effect. The costs of the process is paid by meat eaters themselves, as part of the price. This includes water, land, antibiotics etc., all of which are paid for by the rancher, who in turn, gets paid by the consumers.
If you have problems with a particular aspect of it, then push for changes in those. Are they using too much water? Then charge them the cost of producing the extra water. Unnecessary use of antibiotics causing resistance? Regulate antibiotic use. Methane causing global warming? Implement a tax on greenhouse gasses.
Those are all great things to do, and they have far wider consequences than meat production. But if you bring up banning meat, you will immediately find a tremendous amount of resistance and nothing will ever get done.
Climate models contain plenty of physics. And those from 10-15 years ago have successfully predicted the increase observed over the last decade. Not only that but they also predicted the warming in individual locations, the increased weather extremes, etc.
Every model is an approximation of the real world with some degree of accuracy. These ones are useful and give insight into the most important physical mechanisms at work.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
There simply isn't incentive for the feed manufacturers to fix the methane problem
Maybe not, but there may be for fisheries. If used up fisheries can be used for growing seaweed, this could create a huge additional business for fish farmers.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President Elect of the United States of America
"Close, but no cigar." -- Bill Clinton, former President of The United States
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
be allowed to talk about this in the Canadian parliament, given the fuss the last time fart was said in parliament?
Except that there's a more fundamental problem which is that humans are nasty users of natural resources. The answer to the problem the world is facing isn't that humans stop eating beef, or turn off their lights, or do anything else that they won't do because ... well meat is delicious and why would you eat in the dark, but rather there are simply way too many of us.
You want to really save the environment? Don't turn vegan but instead make a conscious decision not to reproduce. That will have more effect on your influence on the environment than anything else you could do.
Not for nothing, but pretty sure the increase in cardiovascular and cognitive diseases have something to do with the Donuts, and the Dunkin' of them. I doubt the K2 deficiency from cattle-feed is the primary contributor. Or even secondary. Or tertiary.
"Those cows are going to taste like shit."
On the contrary. Due to their sea-weed diet, they are already pre-salted.
"my karma will be reduced based on"
That keeps happening to me as well. Bouncing up and down from 'Excellent' to 'Good' depending on if I've mentioned the CAGW farce recently. Let's see if it goes down after this one.
FWIW, eating Kelp / Dulce is a thing on the east coast of North America, probably elsewhere, too.
Maybe that's how it is where you live, but I'm looking at a field of cows out of my window right now. These ones are dairy; the ones on the other side of the hill are for meat. In a few months they'll be moved to a different field, and these fields will be tilled and sown. It's been that way for at least the last thousand years or so.
The sewage can be an issue... if you don't have good footwear. I don't doubt that there's some runoff, but here most of it will be taken up by next season's crops. The levels in the local river are monitored every few weeks, and are good enough to support excellent biodiversity and be considered safe for swimming.
I live in a modern, first-world country where it's perfectly possible to buy imported "factory" beef, or grass-fed local beef for 30% more in the same supermarket. If you don't like how your country deals with its livestock, vote with your wallet, push for proper regulation of farming, and don't expect to eat beef every day.
I wonder if Buffalo pollute as much as cows? I think we need a 5 year, 3.6 billion dollar study on this.
Sure. The color and flavor will be a bit weird to them, but who knows... they may like it.
Note, however, that this just reduces methane and doesn't eliminate the actual fart. The paper also doesn't say whether it has any effect on the amount of methyl mercaptan, which is what actually makes your elderly uncles' farts smell so bad, so the only benefit may be fewer uncles lighting their farts at the table.
Fucking humans keep breeding more and more cows, not to mention all the other ways they're polluting the environment. I say we kill and eat those fuckers instead!
I want you to go to your room and think about what you've done.
No dinner for me?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"The water problem lies in the fact that it takes all the fresh water that a cow drinks, plus all the water used to irrigate the 10-40 pounds of feed (for each pound of meat), plus the loss of fresh water in the supply that is polluted with their sewage."
Which is the reason why the water use per pound of beef is absurd. The water is double and triple counted. There really shouldn't be much water pollution from the living cows. The greatest water usage absurdity is including the amount of water used to grow grain for the cow feed. The vast majority of grain producing fields in the US are NOT irrigated. The water falls from the sky directly on the field. Counting rain as water use for beef leads to the absurdity where one can measure available water flow in an area and determine that the cows in that area are using more water than is actually available. Using rainfall upon grain fields as a number to add to the usage figures is an obvious and dishonest shock tactic. I believe that more reasonable methods would still give numbers that support the idea that animal food is inefficient. Having water use figures that are absurd undermines efforts to develop consensus about the inefficiency of animal food sources.
Actually, that was the first thing I wondered - do the cows like it? Or are they SOL since they have no way of telling their owners that it sucks?
Better idea for reducing AGW - just legislate that all animals - including human beings - should perform photosynthesis, so that the carbon footprint is heavily reduced
which means that slashdot effectively already does have the 'fake news' filter that facebook is only still talking about
I think you've smoked a bit too much seaweed.
No. No dinner. You go ruminant on your behavior.
Oh shit, now you've got me doing it.
If you eat plenty of green leafy vegetables you'll get your K1. As for K2, fermentation of that plant matter in your guy transforms some of that K1 into K2, and Bob's your uncle.
As for the anti-AGW argument, grass-fed beef as a smaller CO2 footprint than feedlot fattened beef, so your argument that the "AGW zealots" are trying to ruin your health. Grass fed beef is more expensive per pound of course, but another plus is more of the money goes to the farmer.
Adding a macroalgae to cattle feed is an interesting proposition from a carbon standpoint. Macroalgae are often quite easy to cultivate; it's done in aquaculture to provide feed in shellfish hatcheries. I've seen it done, you basically need the culture, water, and fiberglass tanks. It's something that could conceivably be done by small scale farmers, or on an industrial scale and used in feedlots, if the numbers can be made to work out. From a AGW standpoint replacing Methane with CO2 is a very good thing.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I wonder if Buffalo pollute as much as cows? I think we need a 5 year, 3.6 billion dollar study on this.
Eat them too; their wings are delicious.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
I was stationed in the UK in the early 80's. The British farmers providing our chicken were feeding their chickens fish meal. This gave the chicken a decidedly fishy taste. The Brits couldn't taste it, but us Americans could. It actually caused a revolt amongst the military wives and because we could not find a British supplier that could reliably provide non-fish flavored chicken, we were able to go around the Status of Forces Agreement's local suppliers clause and import American chicken. Can you imagine what will happen if American beef or pork starts to taste like it came from the sea?
But but but but but .. I don't LIKE seaweed!
Only the Wild ones.
Seaweed grows faster with more CO2 - just one of those facts that interferes with the dominate narrative.
That being said - Instead, they should feed seaweed to chickens instead of corn - chicken meat is super high in LA(the most common O-6) - I think LA is the likely cause of the obesity pandemic and the great increase in depression after the 1960's when it was introduced on the market. Concentrated veg oils are obviously not human food.
The increase in CO2 has slowed - in part due to the great increase of plant mass:
http://www.nature.com/articles...
"Over the past 50 years, the amount of CO2 absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial biosphere annually has more than doubled"
Not sure how this can be happening - as everyone says the science is settled...
So what happens if it doubles again over the next 50 years?
Good luck with that new diet. Call us in a year about the marvels of eating grass. One of the reasons we eat herbivores, they can eat the plants we can't.
That 10-40 is not all grain.
Nice aspersion - cite it.
Bacon farts - pfffft! Nothing. I raise you one vegan broccoli fart. The glow of self-righteousness hangs in the air along with it.
No, it's the observational view. Cattle are not raised through their first couple of years on grain in a large building. I live surrounded by cattle farmers and their cattle spend the bulk of their time standing out in the pasture chewing grass and mustard and drinking from a standing pool with the occasional stroll to the trough for some of the dietary supplementals. All anyone has to do to see this is get in their car and drive the Midwest. You're being disingenuous, treating the last 4-6 months of their lives in a feed lot as if it describes their entire life 2-3 year life.
Whiny little AC bitch complains when reality rears its head; film at 11.
... of seaweed? Just something to consider as every action in the environment has consequences.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
If you eat plenty of green leafy vegetables you'll get your K1. As for K2, fermentation of that plant matter in your guy transforms some of that K1 into K2, and Bob's your uncle.
The K2 you get via this route is a small fraction of your real daily requirement.
As for the anti-AGW argument, grass-fed beef as a smaller CO2 footprint than feedlot fattened beef, so your argument that the "AGW zealots" are trying to ruin your health.
I can only advice you to learn to properly quote people.
Grass fed beef is more expensive per pound of course, but another plus is more of the money goes to the farmer.
Right.
Adding a macroalgae to cattle feed is an interesting proposition from a carbon standpoint. Macroalgae are often quite easy to cultivate; it's done in aquaculture to provide feed in shellfish hatcheries.
From a carbon standpoint--ignoring all other aspects--maybe yes.
I've seen it done, you basically need the culture, water, and fiberglass tanks. It's something that could conceivably be done by small scale farmers, or on an industrial scale and used in feedlots, if the numbers can be made to work out. From a AGW standpoint replacing Methane with CO2 is a very good thing.
Before using it in feedlots I really would advice to first thoroughly investigate how this affects all metabolic aspects.
And you don't even need to replace the methane with CO2. You can feed the CO2 straight through the water in which the algae are grown, as food for the algae.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Animals add value to the food chain. Meat and fat are far more complex than a bucket of corn and a bucket of water. There's countless more nutrients; vitamins such as B12 or D3, calcium, selenium, many more.
So if you run again some kind of comparison remember to include all the extra stuff that you lose when you switch from growing meat to growing corn. Those things have to be provided using supplements or additional sources of food.
lucm, indeed.
Climate models contain plenty of physics.
I can only repeat what I said and you seem to ignore. I won't.
And those from 10-15 years ago have successfully predicted the increase observed over the last decade. Not only that but they also predicted the warming in individual locations, the increased weather extremes, etc.
That's very heart warming, but not proof of the success in predicting even more extreme outcomes. Before I jump on the panic and tax band wagon I'd like to see some real proof, not expectations.
Every model is an approximation of the real world with some degree of accuracy. These ones are useful and give insight into the most important physical mechanisms at work.
Everyday climate 'scientists' are saying that 'the science is in' and the results 'accurate', and then the next day there appear messages in the news that some new yet unknown climatic effect has been discovered that change the outcome of the expectations of those same scientists.
If you look at the real physics, those messages seldom appear.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
If you'd look at the whole transformation from local small scale mostly-organic production to large scale post-green-revolution industrially pesticide-laden food production, I think you'd find your first order effect causing so many of our 'modern life style' diseases. Dunkin' Donuts only contributes a small part in this process.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
FWIW, eating Kelp / Dulce is a thing on the east coast of North America, probably elsewhere, too.
Yes, and a good thing to do, unless you do it on the west coast (Fukushima).
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
I think you've smoked a bit too much seaweed.
I think I've experienced it in real life.
If one dares to vent his opinion on a controversial matter and contrary to the majority opinion, one risks getting a lot of down votes and karma reduction based on this (political) 'peer review', as they call it.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
because cows are friends to me.
They live beneath the ocean and that's where I will be, beneath the waves, the waves. That's where I'll be. I'm goin' to see the cows beneath the sea.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I'd prefer a 5 dollar, 3.6 billion year sturdy.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Can we at least feed the seaweed to our elderly uncles at Thanksgiving to cut down on their burps and farts?
That won't do. They'll fart in excitement when you give them seaweed.
"Feeding Seaweed To Cows Eliminates Methane Emissions"
The summary and article says:
"it reduced the methane in the cows' burps and farts by about 20 per cent"
And those from 10-15 years ago have successfully predicted the increase observed over the last decade. Not only that but they also predicted the warming in individual locations, the increased weather extremes, etc.
That's very heart warming, but not proof of the success in predicting even more extreme outcomes. Before I jump on the panic and tax band wagon I'd like to see some real proof, not expectations.
That these models have correctly predicted the future is the proof that they work. Why is that not "real proof"? Not sure if you are hung up on last-Thursdayism or a nirvana fallacy here. Fine, there may be another model or different parameters which are the true ones. So what? The used parameters gave the correct predictions, so we can't be way off. And climate scientist do study and worry about such systematic errors. Do you honestly expect that another parameter will suddenly give a sine curve in temperatures, saving us in 2020 without any action?
Sure scientists discover new effects and you see them in the news, but they are usually minor modifications. The main message and outcome has not changed in decades, i.e. accelerated warming, increasing sea levels, more extreme weather.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
"What are you doing to protect the environment?"
"I'm eating the cow."
"The water problem lies in the fact that it takes all the fresh water that a cow drinks, plus all the water used to irrigate the 10-40 pounds of feed (for each pound of meat), plus the loss of fresh water in the supply that is polluted with their sewage."
Which is the reason why the water use per pound of beef is absurd. The water is double and triple counted. There really shouldn't be much water pollution from the living cows. The greatest water usage absurdity is including the amount of water used to grow grain for the cow feed. The vast majority of grain producing fields in the US are NOT irrigated. The water falls from the sky directly on the field. Counting rain as water use for beef leads to the absurdity where one can measure available water flow in an area and determine that the cows in that area are using more water than is actually available. Using rainfall upon grain fields as a number to add to the usage figures is an obvious and dishonest shock tactic. I believe that more reasonable methods would still give numbers that support the idea that animal food is inefficient. Having water use figures that are absurd undermines efforts to develop consensus about the inefficiency of animal food sources.
This is the best argument on this topic. I'm fine with eating meat every day, but I would also be fine with going meatless a few days a week. But lying about water usage to make it seem catastrophic is not going to make me change my ways.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
If you think "down votes" equates to "fake news" then well... we're back to smoking seaweed.
I've been feeding my cows chili-dogs and onion-rings!
Sorry, that is complete bogus as the future isn't here yet to prove that they did.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
10-15 years ago, when these models where created, they predicted the future. Now that future is here, so we are checking their predictions against real observables.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
That's still not proof that they will correctly predict the 'following' future.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
So you are hung up on reverse last-Thursdayism or a nirvana fallacy. Gravity could stop working any minute, we do not have proof it will work tomorrow. Science can not bring the type of proof you are looking for.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.