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Science

Seaweed Could Make Cows Burp Less Methane and Cut Their Carbon Hoofprint (technologyreview.com) 89

A diet supplemented with red algae could lessen the huge amounts of greenhouse gases emitted by cows and sheep, if we can just figure out how to grow enough. From a report: In a wooden barn on the edge of campus at the University of California, Davis, cattle line up at their assigned feed slots to snatch mouthfuls of alfalfa hay. This past spring, several of these Holstein dairy cows participated in a study to test a promising path to reducing methane emissions from livestock, a huge source of the greenhouse gases driving climate change. By adding a small amount of seaweed to the animals' feed, researchers found, they could cut the cows' methane production by nearly 60%. Each year, livestock production pumps out greenhouse gases with the equivalent warming effect of more than 7 gigatons of carbon dioxide, roughly the same global impact as the transportation industry. Nearly 40% of that is produced during digestion: cattle, goats, and sheep belch and pass methane, a highly potent, albeit relatively short-lived, greenhouse gas.

If the reductions achieved in the UC Davis study could be applied across the worldwide livestock industry, it would eliminate nearly 2 gigatons of those emissions annually -- about a quarter of United States' total climate pollution each year. Ermias Kebreab, an animal science professor at UC Davis who leads the work, is preparing to undertake a more ambitious study in the months ahead, evaluating whether smaller amounts of a more potent form of seaweed can cut methane emissions even further. Meanwhile, some businesses have begun to explore what could be the harder challenge: Growing it on a massive scale.

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Seaweed Could Make Cows Burp Less Methane and Cut Their Carbon Hoofprint

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  • Pretty big "if". (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Saturday November 24, 2018 @04:46PM (#57694080)

    If the reductions achieved in the UC Davis study could be applied across the worldwide livestock industry, ...

    Applied *worldwide"? That's a pretty big undertaking - and a LOT of seaweed routinely grown and, probably, shipped as a feed additive.

    • Applied *worldwide"? That's a pretty big undertaking

      Rest easy: that kind of thing's done in parallel.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Ironically, almost certainly due to the increase in fertiliser run off into the gulf of Mexico from widespread agriculture, many Caribbean nations have been struggling with tourism with increasing frequency due to sargassum seaweed blooms, so the extent that it's making some resorts unbearable with patches of seaweed sufficiently large that they're trivially visible from the air, and with it washing up into piles multiple metres high on shore.

      Given these nations that are dependent on tourism don't know what

    • This is old news - Australian research has shown it can nearly eliminate methane in the right concentration. Problem is they can't grow enough for it to scale and even if they could it's not economical.

  • Old! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Saturday November 24, 2018 @04:48PM (#57694086)

    We already went over this before on Slashdot. Even if you scraped all the seaweed from the sea floor, there still wouldn't be nearly enough for all the cows. The solution is to engineer something to feed the cattle or the people (that doesn't come from cattle).

    • by owlaf ( 5251737 )
      Reminds of the problem growing algae to make fuel out of it. Sounds great that it is mostly carbon neutral using the CO2 out of the air, and keep using the existing infrastructure. But it is highly unlikely to produce enough to matter
    • The solution is to engineer something to feed the cattle or the people (that doesn't come from cattle).

      How about using a different kind of cattle [wikipedia.org] for feed?

      • How about using a different kind of cattle for feed?

        How about not caring? Cattle-produced methane is doing absolutely nothing to AGW, which is all about releasing all that fossilized carbon from 100 or so megayears back into the atmosphere. Cows turning plants into methane (plants take carbon from atmosphere, cows put it back into atmosphere) is irrelevant.

        Now, it might be argued that cows are a special case, and they produce much more methane than other herbivores. Or not. If we dispense with cows, so

        • by mspohr ( 589790 )

          Methane from cow farts and burps is 30 times as potent as CO2 for AGW. The carbon in methane does come from plants but by turning it into methane, they create a potent greenhouse gas.
          Cows are ruminants and create copious methane. Other animals don't.

          • Much more methane comes from spills and leaks in the oil & gas industry, though.

            • Well no, it's about the same amount.
              Besides natural sources such as peatland, wetlands and termites, methane from human activity â" approximately two-thirds of the total â" is produced in two ways: the odourless and colourless gas leaks during the production and transport of coal, oil and especially natural gas; and, in roughly equal measure, from the flatulence of ruminants such as cattle and sheep, as well as the decay of organic waste, notably in landfills.

    • by mspohr ( 589790 )

      Or just stop raising cattle for food. They are horribly inefficient, the meat causes cancer, the fat causes heart disease, their farts and burps cause global warming and their waste pollutes groundwater. Bad for your health, bad for the environment.

      • meat causes cancer, the fat causes heart disease

        Both are based on extremely sloppy science. I challenge you to come with a single good causal study that shows a direct link from meat to either cancer or heart disease.

        They are horribly inefficient

        Not when you take into account they produce excellent nutrition, in good ratios, in good bioavailable forms, and the fact that you can let cattle graze on land that's unsuitable for growing crops.

        • ...and the fact that you can let cattle graze on land that's unsuitable for growing crops.

          Sure, you can, but the major issue is that most people don't. The beef industry is dominated by feedlots which are doubly inefficient and bad for the environment. Nothing like using good fertile land to grow food for cows and then using fossil fuels to transport it to them.

    • The solution is to engineer something to feed the cattle or the people (that doesn't come from cattle)./quote>

      Cows are just particularly bad. If the people who currently eat cows mostly switched to the world's most popular meats (namely either goats (#1) or chickens (#2)) we could lick this methane problem.

  • This was studied by a Canadian researcher, who later moved to Australia? See 2016 blog post here: https://blog.csiro.au/seaweed-hold-key-cutting-methane-emissions-cow-burps/ [csiro.au] Maybe fully synthetic beef is a better idea - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWtEVbrNdI8&t=158s [youtube.com]?
  • by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Saturday November 24, 2018 @05:04PM (#57694154)
    • In addition, there isn't enough seaweed to feed all the cows and the cost is a big factor. This would have to be mandated in a big way to even make a dent.... Sure they can isolate the specifics to bring down costs and create something cheaper but without mandating it there is a snowball's chance in hell.

      The reality is that we will just have to TAX meat by warming impact and only the people who can afford it will eat a lot of it. This wouldn't be different than truffles etc.

      BTW, global warming is going to

  • Cows do not eat coal. Because the carbon that cows are belching now was pulled out of the atmosphere last year,â(TM)the cattle methane issue is, well, bullshit.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Not all hydrocarbons are the same bro.

      Methane has a larger greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide.

      • by ghoul ( 157158 )

        CO2 is not a hydrocarbon. Also while CH4 is a more potent greenhouse gas it also breaks down pretty soon. CO2 is dangerous as it accumulates and doesnt break down. However there is something which uses CO2 - plants. Plant more crops instead of forests. Crops use a lot more CO2 than trees. Converting the rainforest to cropland will pretty much solve Global Warming.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          "Crops use a lot more CO2 than trees" CITATION REQUIRED REPUBLICAN

        • Crops use a lot more CO2 than trees.

          Pretty much all the CO2 that is taken up by crops is released again when you (or animals) eat them.

          • by ghoul ( 157158 )

            So? Everything dies and the carbon comes back to atmosphere. What matters is how long the carbon is trapped out of the air.
            In tropical regions there are 3 to 4 crops a year so there is always carbon in crop form. During winter northern climates may not have standing crops but most trees also lose most leaves so forests are not doing any carbon uptake. So that just leaves the bodies of the trees. That is a small increase in heat during winter for decrease in heat during the entire year. I dont see a problem?

  • So they can get their own seaweed.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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