Can We Reduce Cow Methane Emissions By Breeding Low-Emission Cattle? (popsci.com) 224
An anonymous reader quotes Popular Science:
Raising cattle contributes to global warming in a big way. The animals expel large amounts of methane when they burp and fart, a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide. U.S. beef production, in fact, roughly equals the annual emissions of 24 million cars, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. That's a lot of methane... Researchers think there may be a better way. Rather than ask people to give up beef, they are trying to design more climate-friendly cattle.
The goal is to breed animals with digestive systems that can create less methane. One approach is to tinker with the microbes that live in the rumen, the main organ in the animals' digestive tract... Scientists in the United Kingdom last year found that a cow's genes influence the makeup of these microbial communities, which include bacteria and also Archaea, the primary producers of methane. This discovery means cattle farmers potentially could selectively breed animals that end up with a lower ratio of Archaea-to-bacteria, thus leading to less methane... "The selection to reduce methane emissions would be permanent, cumulative and sustainable over generations as with any other trait, such as growth rate, milk yield, etc. used in animal breeding." This, over time, "would have a substantial impact on methane emissions from livestock," Roehe said.
Breeding low-emission cattle would also make it cheaper to raise cattle -- and improve the quality of meat.
The goal is to breed animals with digestive systems that can create less methane. One approach is to tinker with the microbes that live in the rumen, the main organ in the animals' digestive tract... Scientists in the United Kingdom last year found that a cow's genes influence the makeup of these microbial communities, which include bacteria and also Archaea, the primary producers of methane. This discovery means cattle farmers potentially could selectively breed animals that end up with a lower ratio of Archaea-to-bacteria, thus leading to less methane... "The selection to reduce methane emissions would be permanent, cumulative and sustainable over generations as with any other trait, such as growth rate, milk yield, etc. used in animal breeding." This, over time, "would have a substantial impact on methane emissions from livestock," Roehe said.
Breeding low-emission cattle would also make it cheaper to raise cattle -- and improve the quality of meat.
Be at peace instead (Score:3, Funny)
If you’re not a religious environmentalist, your cows' methane emissions are not a sin.
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If you’re not a religious environmentalist, your cows' methane emissions are not a sin.
And if you ARE a religious environmentalist, you're not going to eat designer cows.
it's what's for dinner (Score:4, Insightful)
There are about 270 million cars in the US. Better to switch to electric and continue enjoying your ribeye steak.
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Don't be so ignorant and isolationist, solving this issue will be of huge benefit worldwide.
Take NZ for instance, half our greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture (thanks to 85% of our power coming from renewables), would be fantastic to reduce methane in cow farts.
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As an American, I'm not even convinced New Zealand is a real place. Sure, I watched that show with the little people living the Shire and the wizard and all, but it was mostly CGI.
No, there is no such thing as a "New Zealand". Unlike Nambia, which is totally a real place, but the mainstream media doesn't want you to know that. It's why they lost the election.
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To be perfectly honest, I'm more than happy for most of the world not to think NZ is a real place, or if they do, to think it's somewhere in Europe.
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Unlike Nambia, which is totally a real place, but the mainstream media doesn't want you to know that.
HAH! Now I know you are joking. Nambia is that place in those books where some British kids walked into a cupboard and met a talking lion. What was that lion's name? Aztec?
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Apart from one tiny problem cows do not produce methane, that is kind of silly. What produces methane, why the micro-organisms living in the cows gut breaking down cell wall membranes. So smarter would be to replace those micro-organisms with new more efficient micro-organisms that would break down cell walls more efficiently, producing more actual cow digestible content from the same amount of feed that do not produce methane but also do not kill the cow. Note the methane does not just come from 'cow farts
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Such a good reply, however I never said cows produce methane. ;-)
I accept your apology in advance
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Is this really necessary? My local natural gas company buys cow produced methane and then sells it as natural gas. It doesn't really matter if the methane I burn to heat my house comes from an oil well or from cow dung, and apparently according to the gas companies brochure, the cow dung is cheap enough to be price competitive with mined methane.
Why don't we just use the cows we already have as both a source of food as well as
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There are people starving but feeding cattle is much more important. Why? Because red meat is the best health food? It is not. So we are starving people to produce less healthy foods to satisfy our taste buds. Watch the movie "Forks over knives". If one still eats a lot of red meat than their empathy toward the cattle, other people, and themselves should be increased.
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So you're saying I should sell my car and ride a cow to work?
Bonus that after a couple years I can get a new model and eat the old one. Not so sure my neighbors would appreciate it when the exhaust starts leaking sludge though...
Re: it's what's for dinner (Score:5, Insightful)
We should tackle the worst offenders first.
No, we should not. There is no rational reason to sequentially solve independent problems. There is no reason that dealing with methane emissions from cattle should be delayed until we are "done" with transportation. That is idiotic.
Re: it's what's for dinner (Score:5, Insightful)
The usual heuristic is "low hanging fruit". You start with easy stuff and work your way up.
However the usual heuristic goes out the window when people feel there's a crisis. For example war: you don't ignore easy targets, but you don't confine yourself to them. You're much more focused on maximum value targets.
Neither of these heuristics is wrong, they're just for different situations.
Re: it's what's for dinner (Score:4, Insightful)
You start with easy stuff and work your way up.
What is easy for a biologist is not the same as what is easy for an electrochemist. How about we let the biologists work on the cow farts, while the electrochemists work on better batteries?
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Okay, start with the low hanging fruit and work your way up. So, tell me which is easier. First option is to engineer, breed, or whatever cattle and their gut biome to produce less methane. Second option is to realize that this is all bullshit since that methane is from plant matter that the cattle ate and is already part of the carbon cycle. If the cattle didn't eat the plants then it would rot in a field, get eaten by wild ruminant megafauna, or otherwise get turned to methane anyway.
I suppose we coul
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otherwise get turned to methane anyway.
No. This is wrong. If it decays or is eaten by most other animals, it will be converted to CO2, not CH4.
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There is no reason people need to eat 3.7 pounds (1.6Kg) of meat per week....
I'd consider that near starvation. But then I'm in the upper 1% by height and upper 25% by weight of males in the USA. I just chuckle to myself about "suggested serving size" on food packages, I take that number and multiply by two for an estimate on what I'll eat.
So, "no reason" to eat that much meat? How about needing 3000 calories per day if I just sit on my ass and still have enough calories to keep my brain warm?
(I'm sure that there's a joke about sitting on my brains in there. Go ahead, make my da
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Reading this comment consumes energy, some of which is contributing to global warming.
That pales in comparison to the hot air /. generates ;-)
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Except, of course, that transportation isn't "the worst offender"; globally it's about 14% of total GHG emissions, and only a fraction of that can reasonably be switched to "zero emission". The "worst offenders" are industry, heating, electricity, and agriculture.
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Except, of course, that transportation isn't "the worst offender"; globally it's about 14% of total GHG emissions, and only a fraction of that can reasonably be switched to "zero emission". The "worst offenders" are industry, heating, electricity, and agriculture.
True, (but or and,) guess what contributes to that agriculture section? Cattle have to eat, and they eat a lot, compared to to all our other protein sources. They contribute double all the other animals combined.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/... [fao.org]
So, besides just the farts (aka eructation), here's some sources of greenhouse gasses produced through the creation of food used to feed livestock:
Feed production:
Direct and indirect N2O from:
Application of synthetic N
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Yes, because there have only been herds of animals grazing this planet ever since humans came along. Not!
Damned environmentalist stupidity about CO2.
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Tackle the smokers too in that case - but that's heresy since that's a personal space intrusion to tackle.
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furthermore. methane is unstable and oxidizes itself in the atmosphere (apart from being processed by certain bacteria) fo much less "greengouse-toxic" gases, if i remember correctly halflife expectation is below 10 years. So it is continuously is removed from atmosphere (unlike CO2 accumulation) and CO2 seems by far much bigger problem
Not saying you're wrong, but another way of looking at the same data is that this is a low-hanging fruit we can make a difference in immediately. If this is an issue of just cutting down on beef, I'd say there's more upside than consequences. I reduced my beef intake by around 90%. I've benefitted by slightly better health and a slightly fatter wallet, which is usually the end of a decision if we're being honest. I'm not saying I don't absolutely love eating beef, but chicken and fish taste good too, an
Re: it's what's for dinner (Score:5, Insightful)
How is the electricity for these electric cars generated? From coal. From oil.
A power plant can burn oil in a more efficient way, with processes that make the exhaust drastically cleaner than anything a car can do. Obviously, you still want to get rid of oil, but in the meantime we want to burn it cleanly. And coal, well, needs to die immediately.
From nuclear.
Nuclear is so much safer and less polluting than any alternative, including those holiest-of-holy "renewables" that I'd call what so-called environmentalists do outright sabotage. Hydro shuts down variations in water level that are vital to many ecosystems, and is devastating when there's a dam failure. Wind kills millions of birds and bats, and produces noise that affects humans and wildlife in a large radius. Solar is only now becoming possible without downsides, and it produces unreliable power.
On the other hand, even 60s era nuclear is orders of magnitude safer than all of the above, and its byproducts come in small nice easy-to-store barrels. Modern nuclear has no real risk of a run-away reaction.
And if we'd care the slightest about environment (rather than just political gains from claiming we do), we'd research fusion a long time ago already.
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The safety factor of hydro is just as good as nuclear because it has been around long enough for the safety bugs to have been worked out after "meltdowns" like Banqiao and Fréjus. The real problem with hydro is that it has no future. The good places have already been taken.
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> Nuclear is so much safer and less polluting than any alternative, including those holiest-of-holy "renewables" that I'd call what so-called environmentalists do outright sabotage
Reducing consumption is safer, cheaper, easier, less polluting, and better in every meaningful way.
We're nowhere close to any lower limit on energy use that would affect anyone's quality of life. Lowering consumption would likely raise most people's quality of life for getting them to think about what they do more.
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"We're nowhere close to any lower limit on energy use that would affect anyone's quality of life. Lowering consumption would likely raise most people's quality of life for getting them to think about what they do more."
Even for third world people living in poverty?
Dropping first world people down in energy consumption won't make up for raising third worlders to it.
Ergo, we still need more energy production in cleaner ways.
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We're nowhere close to any lower limit on energy use that would affect anyone's quality of life.
Bullshit.
Look behind you, there's the line on where lowering energy use affects quality of life.
Those stupid compact fluorescent bulbs that take a half hour to come to full brightness, interfere with IR remote controls, and give off a terrible color of light affected my quality of life. A small thing? Absolutely. I'm just getting started. Low flush toilets that leave streaks. "Cash for Clunkers" that delayed my selling off my piece of shit car for something that could handle the winter snow. Seeing et
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Sounds more like you've bought the worst CFLs in existence. I've seen real differences by brand. Regardless, you should probably be buying quality LED bulbs these days.
For toilets, there were really sucky ones back when the standards were first introduced. These days, buy a high rated one and you'll need to flush multiple times less often than the old models. Considering I have one of each in the house, I know.
If you want a 100 watt infrared heater, buy one. They're still available. Hell, install a ra
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"easy to store barrels"
that have to be monitored and kept safe for the next 10000 years.
no thanks.
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Thank you for nicely demonstrating the level of debate that has become commonplace when discussing nuclear power: all hysterical emotion, no facts or logic.
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Citation needed.
Nuclear is the safest energy source we currently have. My citation: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/... [nextbigfuture.com]
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So your citation is weak, weak tea.
So you admit that we don't really know how many people died from utility solar. How can anyone call solar "safe" and nuclear "dangerous" if no one has data to work from? Seems pretty clear that nuclear is safe, we have lots of data on that. Compared to anything else we have data on nuclear is the safest energy we have.
Then there's calling nuclear "dirty" and "expensive". Compared to what? Is there data on that? Don't just say how much it takes to clean up a nuclear power plant because that's not enoug
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https://www.thebalance.com/che... [thebalance.com]
Belarus estimates total losses of $235 billion. (Source: Chernobylâ(TM)s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts, The Chernobyl Forum: 2003-2005)
Other source:
Economic damage of the Chernobyl accident is estimated at $235 billion for 30 years on after the explosion, making up 32 national budgets as of 1985. Chernobyl disaster vastly damaged the agricultural sector of the Belarusian economy, which is worth over $700 million annually.
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
Japanâ(TM)s government on Friday nearly doubled its projections for costs related to the Fukushima nuclear disaster to 21.5 trillion yen ($188 billion), increasing pressure on Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) (9501.T) to step up reform and improve its performance.
Other source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/n... [japantimes.co.jp]Â¥70-trillion-triple-governments-estimate-think-tank/
A private think tank says the total cost of the Fukushima disaster could reach Â¥70 trillion ($626 billion), or more than three times the governmentâ(TM)s latest estimate.
I would not call that: cheap.
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That would be relevant if anyone intended to build a nuclear power plant like we did in the 1970s.
No one is going to tip SCRAM control rods with carbon like at Chernobyl. No new nuclear reactor is going to rely on uninterrupted electrical service to power cooling pumps like Fukushima.
Every nuclear power plant has had a seismic risk evaluation and people are taking that into account on deciding upgrades or decommissioning. You want to see more old nuclear power plants decommissioned before they self destru
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No one is replacing old nuclear power plants with coal.
Arguments like that make no sense :D
No new nuclear reactor is going to rely on uninterrupted electrical service to power cooling pumps like Fukushima.
Why do you write such nonsense? Fukushima Daishi had ordinary emergency power generators, like every plant. They did not rely on external power. However, perhaps that escaped you, the emergency power generators got flooded. And for some dumb reason no one came to the idea to helicopter a few military units
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No one is replacing old nuclear power plants with coal.
Germany has done just that.
https://carboncounter.wordpres... [wordpress.com]
France too.
http://instituteforenergyresea... [institutef...search.org]
Sadly, so is the USA.
https://instituteforenergyrese... [institutef...search.org]
https://www.vox.com/energy-and... [vox.com]
Or maybe the USA is replacing nuclear with natural gas.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]
Japan is almost famous for replacing nuclear with coal
https://www.equaltimes.org/jap... [equaltimes.org]
In the UK natural gas is replacing coal and nuclear.
https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]
I just realized I covered 5 of the "Group of Seven" so let's
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I really like how you turn lack of evidence into proof of your predetermined outcome.
Is that what you got from my comments? We get a claim that nuclear is "dangerous". I provide a citation that says nuclear is the safest energy source we have good data on, and safer by a wide margin. You want to say we should avoid nuclear anyway because... why? Because we have no good data on wind and solar, so therefore... we just throw out the provably safe history of nuclear power?
Tell me more about utility scale solar then. Is it cheaper than nuclear? Lower greenhouse gas emissions? What data do
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Economy of scale is a thing.
Every one of the power source you mention can afford to install far more effective scrubbers/pollution filtration systems then cars can. Furthermore, combustion engines are fundamentally limited on how efficient they can be (Otto Cycle), and we can't even reach that because there is no economic material to reach said limit. Last I checked, a combustion engine practically can't get above 50% efficiency. Whereas most power plants easily reach into the 85%+ efficiency.
Centralizing t
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Last I checked, a combustion engine practically can't get above 50% efficiency.
The limit is actually 42%, Carnot Principle. In reality they are around 19%
Whereas most power plants easily reach into the 85%+ efficiency.
No, also only 42%, same principle. However, there are two tricks: combined turbine and boiler gas plants, they reach up to ~60% efficiency and bookkeeping tricks: you sell the excess heat and call that "more efficient". However you still only used 40% of the heat to produce electricity.
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Last I checked, a combustion engine practically can't get above 50% efficiency.
The limit is actually 42%, Carnot Principle. In reality they are around 19%
I guess turbochargers don't follow that principle. Mercedes recently broke 50% efficiency for their F1 engine, albeit not in race-like conditions.
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/131772/mercedes-engine-hits-remarkable-dyno-target [autosport.com]
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I don't know if it has anything to do with turbocharging.
Bottom line efficiency means, how much of the heat energy you "create" is converted into useful power (traction).
However I'm astonished about the significantly "above Carnot" efficiency. I wonder how they actually calculate and how they achieve that.
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How is the electricity for these electric cars generated? From coal. From oil. From natural gas.
It's a two-step process. If you want to reduce CO2 emissions, you need to replace cars, and you need to replace power plants. Replacing either of them by itself will still cut emissions, though.
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The investment needed to supply sufficient electricity for vehicles would be enormous.
We already have sufficient generating capacity. The capacity is designed for peak demand, but cars can recharge anytime, and there is plenty of power capacity available non-peak. My wife has an electric car, and it is pre-programmed to start charging at 2am. In the future, cars can be designed to query the grid, and only draw power when excess is available. This flexible demand can mesh very well with intermittent power sources such as solar and wind.
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Changing the American diet likely is the easier and faster option
Bwahahaha! /me wipes tear from eye.
Thanks! That's the funniest thing I've heard all day!
with the price of beef being what it is... that's coming anyways
No, high beef prices won't change the American diet. And in any case, they're not going to stay high.
Beef hit an all time high last year, but has been declining, and will continue to decline because the high prices of the last few years have motivated a lot of investment. What pushed prices up was primarily Chinese demand for beef, not that much beef is shipped to China, but a tremendous amount of feed has been going
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What's your solution?
Crickets. Not 'crickets' as in there's no alternative, but crickets as in actual crickets. They can be ranched with almost no water and a much better feed-to-meat ratio than the nine-to one from cattle.
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Are you eating these on a full time basis or just suggesting it?
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Both, though hardly "on a full time basis" since I get them at Whole Foods, so you can imagine what they cost. They're a great high-protein snack for hiking.
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What does that matter? I got blood all over my hands earlier while eating a cow's liver. I washed it off.
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Here's a "novel" concept... When cattle eat food they are biologically suited to eat (grass, not corn) they produce a lot less methane.
Yes, thank you. Some of us in flyover country understand that. We raise sheep ourselves, and our hardy primitive breed (Shetlands) neither need nor get much grain at all. The problem is not the design of cattle but the design of the feed lots cattle are raised in which also require large amounts of fossil fuels to supply. Grazing animals, grazed properly, are a fairly efficient autonomous device to gather solar power off the land.
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Lamb chops are also delicious. And if you know how to cook them, lamb ribs are awesome.
Thank you for your service.
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I'd love to see a herd of cattle blinking like fireflies at twilight.
Answer is in the question! What's going on? (Score:2)
Can We Reduce Cow Methane Emissions By Breeding Low-Emission Cattle?
The answer is in the question, isn't it? Bold mime. How did this make it to Slashdot?
Easy - fit them with a Cattle-Itic converter (Score:2, Funny)
Mooooooo!
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Lol.. Bad jokes are the best!
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PBR, hardboiled eggs and garlic for dinner. Cut out the 'middle cow'.
Raise more deer (Score:4, Interesting)
Tastier, makes better jerky, leaner, can be raised faster/reproduces quicker, requires less space, requires less food, requires less energy.
Pretty much a full-out win.
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No way is venison tastier than beef. More flavorful you can have.
Goats taste just as good as deer, and they don't jump as high, so they're easier to raise. And they can eat practically anything. And hey, they're already the world's most popular meat as a result.
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Goat is much closer to lamb/mutton than venison.
Re:Raise more deer (Score:5, Interesting)
I was just reading yesterday on how Staten Island has a deer problem so they are culling the deer. Now usually one would think this means trapping or shooting the deer but no, that would make sense. What the New York City government is doing is giving the bucks they catch a vasectomy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0... [nytimes.com]
Not even a castration, which would not only be easier but also avoid the rut behavior that puts them at risk of automobile collisions as they travel around the island. They are giving the bucks a vasectomy.
Don't deer fart too? What of their methane production? Not only that but the reason they want to get rid of the deer on the island is that they are effectively an invasive species spreading disease, causing property damage, and putting people's lives at risk from automobile collisions.
The inmates are running the asylum in New York City. Those deer should be hunted for their tasty meat and to remove the risks to life and property they cause. But no one wants to vote to kill Bambi, so they spend millions of taxpayer dollars to catch the deer, give them a vasectomy, and then... let them go. That way the deer can die naturally, by getting hit by a truck.
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Castrating them (since you won't get all the male deer) wouldn't actually much reduce the rate of deer breeding precisely because the castrated males won't rut. Thus the few with intact parts would simply mate with more hinds. If they are castrated then it is entirely possible for the dominant buck to be one firing blanks, with pretty much none of the hinds getting pregnant (some hinds are naughty).
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But don't let facts get in your way. Hunters never do.
Right, facts. Let's look at the facts. So they have lower disease rates? Not zero though, right? Can a deer that's been killed and taken for meat spread disease? Properly cooked it cannot.
Fewer auto collisions you say? Not zero. Can a butchered deer cause a collision? I suppose it can fall out of the back of a refrigerated truck and onto the road, but generally a dead buck doesn't bust up any cars.
Yawn. You just want them to spend millions so you can have a hunting party instead.
No, I want them to spend thousands, not millions, and just shoot the deer. Properly managed it can bec
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Raise more? In Texas we had management tags to shoot all the extra ones tearing up the land that didn't get shot during hunting season. Hundreds of them. Every year. They breed like rabbits on oil field land where hunting is restricted.
Preferred technology (Score:2)
Premise of Okja was a low-emission "super pig" (Score:2)
This was the premise of the movie Okja [imdb.com].
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problem is the feed... (Score:3)
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Given that about half the arable land in the US is already devoted to livestock and the crops that feed them, and that corn and soy pack a LOT more calories than grass, how much more land are you willing to give up to grow grass to feed livestock? (And what will the damage of that be? Even more forests cut down to grow grass for cows?) I think this war is lost, and people just need to eat less (or no) animal products.
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feed them proper grass and neither corn nor soy beans... problem solved
Unfortunately that doesn't solve the problem.
This [nationalgeographic.com], however, might...
The underlying problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of these sub-debates on cleanup miss the underlying point:
We're digging up carbon/methane to get our fuels currently, and that's the net cause of the overall warming.
Yes, cows produce CO2/Methane from their gut bacteria. Those same bacteria would still produce those same gasses without cows, just with rotting vegetation. Getting rid of cows wouldn't fix the underlying biological systems, from too much carbon in general floating around, and 'fixing' cows doesn't do much about the whole system that cattle is emblematic of.
The real (environmental) issue with cattle is that we transport everything they eat, and basically everything about them, with vehicles burning fuel dug up from previously sequestered hydrocarbons.
At every stage, we're pushing the planet VERY QUICKLY back in atmospheric time to a more carbon-heavy atmosphere, trapping more energy over time, and essentially recreating several kinds of mass extinction scenarios, like this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It's cool that we're finding some ways to staunch the flow of some greehouse effects - but unless we're sequestering the carbon in some way, it's still going to cycle back around and have mostly the same effect over time - and we're going to have to work harder to 'fight' those net effects. In other words, we're fighting the symptoms, not the underlying at-large causes.
Ryan Fenton
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Yes, cows produce CO2/Methane from their gut bacteria. Those same bacteria would still produce those same gasses without cows, just with rotting vegetation.
No, the bacteria produce far more CO2 and far less methane.
Breed the BACTERIA (Score:3)
It's not the cow that is the problem, it's the bacteria.
Cows are big and take a long time to reproduce - 9 months to give birth, then 7 months to become fertile.
Bacteria are small, easier to fiddle with their genetics, and can reproduce in minutes.
Doesn't take a genius to figure out that we should be genetically engineering the Archaea DNA, not the cows. Change the Archaea so that it loves the current cow environment but does not produce methane.
Makes more sense than changing the cow and hoping the Archaea does not evolve to like the new cows.
Watch out for Anti-Meat Propaganda (Score:3, Insightful)
Realize that a great deal of this sort of 'news' is propaganda from the Anti-Meat nuts. The UN retracted it's report that falsely blamed agriculture for global warming gasses be it is filled with inaccuracies. Other anti-meat propaganda has come tumbling down on closer inspection.
Reality: humans produce more methane than cows, human drilling produces far more methane than cows, human transportation is a far larger culprit than cows, the wild ruminants historically produced more methane than cows and engineering cows isn't going to make a lot of difference but it makes good profits and propaganda.
If you really care about global warming, local and all that then buy from your local pasture based farmers which increases CO2 sequestering and keeps your money in the local economy.
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Err - where did you see the UN retract their report? Their report, Livestock's Long Shadow is still totally relevant and hasn't been "retracted": http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/... [fao.org]
And did you even look at the article? The big chart clearly shows that in the US methane from cows is the second biggest source (25%) after natural gas and petroleum (31%). (And since when is Popular Science 'anti-meat'?)
It's literally right there in the article, yet you're spouting this nonsense..come on.
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Reducing emissions of any kind is a good thing... How to implement it in a good way is a different story..
Stop feeding cows corn and soy-based feed to start with and that will reduce their emissions a crap-load. (yea, i had to go there :)
Providing economic incentives for companies that produce goods at lower emission-levels will result in lower emissions and will start a race to produce the most amount of goods with the smallest environmental impact. How to do this on a global market can definitely be tric
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I love how these conversations go.. (Score:2)
"Cows emit a LOT of methane, so we need to stop eating them."
(Rationale that it's not that bad, there are bigger sources of methane, etc, etc..)
"Cows emit a LOT of methane, so we need to genetically engineer them."
(Agreement methane from cows is a problem, we can change the cows, which all funnels into something that makes a lot more money, unlike people eating fewer or no cow products.)
More stickers?! (Score:2)
Isn't it bad enough that half the packaging of stuff I buy is full of "no-gmo" "100% organic" "100% real ingredients" "blahblahblah"? Now I need a "Cut from LEB (Low Emission Breed) Cattle"?
Sheesh!
Reducing greenhouse gasses, by the numbers (Score:2)
Construction Costs:
Nuclear: $14 billion (Vogtle units 3 & 4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Solar: $2.2 billion (Ivanpah Solar Power Facility) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Wind: $1.5 million (typical 1 megawatt windmill in USA) https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/all/... [lbl.gov]
Power produced:
Nuclear: 2 GW (2 units x 1.2 gigawatts each x 0.85 expected capacity factor)
Solar: 80 MW (400 MW capacity x 0.2 measured capacity factor)
Wind: 0.33 MW (1 MW x 0.33 typical measured capacity factor)
Expected Operational Lifespan
go directly to electric cattle (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Excellent idea! All we need now are some electric horsemen to herd them to market. Someone call Robert Redford!
cheaper to raise cattle, and improve the quality?? (Score:2)
FTFS: "Breeding low-emission cattle would also make it cheaper to raise cattle -- and improve the quality of meat."
What the hell does the cost or quality have to do with how much methane they emit?
Re: (Score:2)
Less methane means they're utilizing more of the energy from the feed. Less feed = cheaper. Improved meat quality is harder to assess, but might amount to paying more attention to those factors while reducing methane.
Feed cattle some seaweed for 99% less methane (Score:2)
This Australian study: https://researchonline.jcu.edu... [jcu.edu.au] found that adding seaweed to the diet of cattle reduced their methane emissions by up to 99%. That seems a lot simpler and faster than breeding for reduced methane; in any case the special breeds probably wouldn't have 99% reduction. Let's do both.
I thought we had a solution... (Score:2)
Can we reduce workforce demands (Score:2)
Will this be a long term solution? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Okay, that's cool ... (Score:2)
Electric of Hybrid Cow (Score:2)
Do androids dream of electric sheep?
That was a thought that was rather deep
But now we want some eco-friendly cattle
Can we bio-engineer our favorite chattel?
A high methanogen count will the climate force
Farting our way to global warming remorse
But if we can't electrify our grade-A chow
How now do we get a hybrid cow?
Details? (Score:2)
Breeding low-emission cattle would also make it cheaper to raise cattle -- and improve the quality of meat.
Exactly how does cow flatulence make it more expensive to raise cattle, such that low-emission cows would be "cheaper to raise"?
Exactly how do low-emission cows beef "improve the quality of meat"?
Re: Why TF is this on Slashdot? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is news for nerds, stuff that matters... why are *you* on Slashdot? Fox News might satisfy more your limited interests!
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it's more a site for mocking people like that, but I take your meaning. But no, science stories have been a staple of the site for the past ten years; maybe less so in the early days.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
... The fact is that the only reason we keep cows around is that we eat them/use their milk. If we stopped doing that, which again, we don't have to do, cow emissions go away.
Um. Sure. To be replaced by fossil-fuel-driven irrigation, pesticide, and erosion-heavy agriculture alone? And are you going to shoot all of the other methane-producing grazing animals on the planet too, or just cows? How much methane will decomposing deer release in the first few years?
Feed lots are a problem and they produce a lot of methane. Grazing animals, per se, are not the problem. Nor do most grazers produce that much methane on an appropriate forage-heavy diet.
Re: (Score:2)
Since eating cows is entirely unnecessary, stop raising cows for food and cow emissions will eventually be entirely eliminated as there won't be any reason to keep cows.
We need to all switch to pork.
Re: (Score:2)
BACON!
Re: (Score:2)
Can we get people to stop putting growth hormone and constant antibiotics into cows, and feed them properly as well?
No.
Is growth hormones in cattle even a thing? I grew up on a farm where we had dairy cattle, pigs, and some beef cattle. I know that the government inspectors would throw a fit if they saw hormones used. Antibiotics we used when dehorning cattle, castrating calves, and when bringing in a new batch of pigs. Unless an animal got really sick they'd get one, maybe two, shots of antibiotics in their life. Far from "constant", since the government requires milk and meat getting tested for antibiotics it's no