This just in from our agri-ecology desk: Stonyfield Farm, that yogurt maker run by a bunch of Vermont hippies, is experimenting with the diets of its dairy cows after French dairy farmers have established that feeding them flaxseed and grass rather than corn and soybeans lowers the threat of global warming.
How? Well, it seems that cows are walking, mooing compost heaps. As a third- or fourth-grader we learn that cows have a stomach with four distinct chambers. In the process of digestion, they regurgitate their food and chew on it awhile, the so-called chewing of the cud. (Whenever I regurgitate my food, I do my best not to chew it. Then again, I have only a one-chamber stomach.) Apparently, cows also belch a lot. What they belch is methane gas. In other words, cows have mouth farts, especially if what they eat is mostly corn and soybeans.
The Anatomy of a Cow’s Stomach
A California scientist (why does this not surprise me?) has put cows in airtight tents to measure just how much methane gas their mouth farts produce. I suppose the scientist’s job is to light a match and see what happens. Through this careful adherence to the Scientific Method, he has determined that cows annually produce 200-400 pounds of methane, an even worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So the thought is that reducing this methane will help ease global warming.
French dairy farmers, being a very cheesy people, were the first on the case. An article in the New York Times detailing all of this quotes one of the Frenchies in Vermont as saying his cows' breath smells sweet because of the diet of grass and flaxseed that are higher in fatty acids than corn and soybeans, improving the cows’ digestion. Ironic that the French appear to worry about how their cows’ breath smells when they don’t give a hang sometimes about their own hygiene. I’m just saying.
Hey, buddy, can you spare a Tic-Tac?
I once dated a girl whose belches could kill a house plant. My disapproving best friend called her a fat cow. Hmmmm. That makes sense to me now.
At this writing the Obama administration has not articulated a position concerning cows’ mouth farts. But, based on the President’s record so far with advocating higher-mileage cars and non-carbon-based fuels and generally not being a booster of global warming, I suspect that he will soon announce an initiative to establish guidelines for how many mouth farts a cow can have. Having not heard much from Al Gore since he won the Nobel Prize, I think Mr. Inconvenient Truth would be an excellent director for a new agency, the BMFA (Bovine Mouth Fart Authority).
A young Al Gore with a mouth-farting Black Angus.
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But I'm with Walter. Seems like they're paying attention to the wrong end of things, but what do I know? Though I do live in the midst of dairy country. In California. I'll have to check with the neighbors and report back.
You obviously attended a better school than I. Probably in France. Very funny post!
Gwool: After your colonoscopy, I thought you needed a good laugh.
Walter: Rest assured, cows have butt farts as well; but apparently it's easier to relieve pressure orally.
LNL: I'm not sure a car that runs on cow farts would be progress. Who has room in the garage for a cow?
Steve: No, not France. When you grow up in Texas you learn about cows, trust me. They're the state mammal.
Pablo: My understanding is that you can really get the mouth farting going after a meal of Rumen Noodles.
Damn cows are going to ruminant for everyone!
A bofine piece of ingesticative journalism.
P.J.: I personally think the only solution is to eat lots more fish and lay off the dairy. Three billion Chinese can't be wrong! Besides, fish fart under water so less damage to the atmosphere.
Also, cows may have been around for a long time but never in the quantities that exist today.
Accumulation of methane in the Earth’s atmosphere has nearly doubled around the globe over the past 200 years. Scientists believe that rising concentrations of this “greenhouse gas,” which absorbs and sends infrared radiation to the Earth, are causing changes in the climate and contributing to global warming.
Livestock animals naturally produce methane as part of their digestive process, belching it while chewing cud and excreting it in their waste. According to the Worldwatch Institute, about 15 to 20 percent of global methane emissions come from livestock. John Robbins, author of The Food Revolution and Diet for a New America, says that methane is 24 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the culprit normally at the center of global warming discussions.
And there are plenty of sources of it: The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that animals in the U.S. meat industry produce 61 million tons of waste each year, which is 130 times the volume of human waste produced, or five tons for every U.S. citizen. In addition to its impact on climate, hog, chicken and cow waste has polluted some 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association, says that a food chain with meat at its top is unsustainable not only as a major contributor of greenhouse gases, but also with regard to inefficient dedication of large amounts of acreage to livestock grazing. The USDA, for example, says that growing the crops necessary to feed farmed animals requires nearly 80 percent of America’s agricultural land and half of its water supply.
In addition, animals raised for food in the U.S. consume 90 percent of the country’s soy crop, 80 percent of its corn crop, and 70 percent of its grain. “If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million,” says Cornell ecologist David Pimentel. He adds that irresponsible livestock farming is directly or indirectly responsible for much of the soil erosion in the U.S.
Unfortunately, environmental problems associated with livestock rearing are not limited to the United States. According to the international environmental journal, Earth Times, meat production grew more than fivefold worldwide during the latter half of the 20th century. And as intensive “factory” farming methods of raising livestock spread from the U.S. to other countries--many with regulatory monitoring and enforcement standards far worse than our own--this form of pollution is sure to play an increasingly larger role in environmental problems moving forward.
CONTACTS: Organic Consumers Association, (www.purefood.org); Worldwatch Institute, (www.worldwatch.org)
Reposted from http://www.foodreference.com/html/a-cows-methane-815.html
ScienceDaily (May 8, 2008) — Grass that may help tackle global warming by cutting the level of methane given off by cows is being developed by scientists reports the latest issue of the Society of Chemical Industry’s (SCI) magazine Chemistry & Industry.
Scientists at Gramina, a joint biotech venture by Australia’s Molecular Plant Breeding Cooperative Research Centre and New Zealand rural services group PGG Wrightson Genomics, are developing a grass that will not only cut the amount of methane cows burp up when chewing the cud but also grow in hotter climes.
This means that farmers should be able to maintain dairy herds’ productivity and profitability in the face of a changing climate, while cutting down their gaseous burps and reducing their contribution to global warming.
Combating greenhouse gas emissions produced by the agricultural industry is a priority. The UK’s DEFRA has just announced a roadmap aimed at helping the dairy industry reduce its potential impact on the environment in line with Britain’s target to cut its greenhouse emissions by 20% by 2010. By 2015 the roadmap plans to have 20-30% of milk producers trialling new technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calculates that methane makes up 14.3% of humanity’s contribution to global warming and data from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US shows that atmospheric methane levels may be rising again after a 10 year period of stability. A single dairy cow can produce between 550-700L of methane a day and it has been estimated that methane from cattle in the UK could account for as much as 3% of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
Cows’ production of methane is down to the microflora in their gut that helps them to digest their food. As these microbes break down the grass’ cellulose, methane is produced as a by-product, the majority of which is burped up.
David Beever, international nutrition director of Richard Keenan UK, said: ‘You don’t actually hear the cows burp, but they are permanently releasing methane.’
Gramina will use sense suppression technology to prevent the expression of the enzyme O-methyl transferase. Suppressing this enzyme leads to an increase in the digestibility of the grass without compromising its structural properties and therefore less burps and less methane.
Gramina has already tested this modification in temperate grasses in the lab and glasshouses and is now planning field trials.
However, some scientists suggest that a cow’s absolute methane emissions might go up.
Alistair Macrae, a lecturer in farm animal health and production at the University of Edinburgh, UK, says a diet too rich in highly digestible carbs can actually increase the amount of methane a cow belches out. This is because gut microflora convert more of these sugars into propionic acid, which creates a more acidic environment resulting in more methane.
Ian Givens, a professor of animal science, at the University of Reading, UK, says that more digestible forage could push up a cow’s absolute methane emissions but productivity gains would mean less methane per unit of milk.
Beever agrees and says, ‘It could increase methane emissions but it could also increase milk yields, effectively cutting the amount of methane produce per litre of milk.’
Reposted from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080506120859.htm
How Environmentalists are Overlooking Vegetarianism as the Most Effective Tool Against Climate Change in Our Lifetimes
by Noam Mohr
Summary
Global warming poses one of the most serious threats to the global environment ever faced in human history. Yet by focusing entirely on carbon dioxide emissions, major environmental organizations have failed to account for published data showing that other gases are the main culprits behind the global warming we see today. As a result, they are neglecting what might be the most effective strategy for reducing global warming in our lifetimes: advocating a vegetarian diet.
Global Warming and Carbon Dioxide
The environmental community rightly recognizes global warming as one of the gravest threats to the planet. Global temperatures are already higher than they’ve ever been in at least the past millennium, and the increase is accelerating even faster than scientists had predicted. The expected consequences include coastal flooding, increases in extreme weather, spreading disease, and mass extinctions.
Unfortunately, the environmental community has focused its efforts almost exclusively on abating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Domestic legislative efforts concentrate on raising fuel economy standards, capping CO2 emissions from power plants, and investing in alternative energy sources. Recommendations to consumers also focus on CO2: buy fuel-efficient cars and appliances, and minimize their use. ,
This is a serious miscalculation. Data published by Dr. James Hansen and others show that CO2 emissions are not the main cause of observed atmospheric warming. Though this may sound like the work of global warming skeptics, it isn’t: Hansen is Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies who has been called “a grandfather of the global warming theory.” He is a longtime supporter of action against global warming, cited by Al Gore and often quoted by environmental organizations, who has argued against skeptics for subverting the scientific process. His results are generally accepted by global warming experts, including bigwigs like Dr. James McCarthy, co-chair of the International Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group II.
The focus solely on CO2 is fueled in part by misconceptions. It’s true that human activity produces vastly more CO2 than all other greenhouse gases put together. However, this does not mean it is responsible for most of the earth’s warming. Many other greenhouse gases trap heat far more powerfully than CO2, some of them tens of thousands of times more powerfully. When taking into account various gases’ global warming potential—defined as the amount of actual warming a gas will produce over the next one hundred years—it turns out that gases other than CO2 make up most of the global warming problem.
Even this overstates the effect of CO2, because the primary sources of these emissions—cars and power plants—also produce aerosols. Aerosols actually have a cooling effect on global temperatures, and the magnitude of this cooling approximately cancels out the warming effect of CO2. The surprising result is that sources of CO2 emissions are having roughly zero effect on global temperatures in the near-term!
This result is not widely known in the environmental community, due to a fear that polluting industries will use it to excuse their greenhouse gas emissions. For example, the Union of Concerned Scientists had the data reviewed by other climate experts, who affirmed Hansen’s conclusions. However, the organization also cited climate contrarians’ misuse of the data to argue against curbs in CO2. This contrarian spin cannot be justified.
While CO2 may have little influence in the near-term, reductions remains critical for containing climate change in the long run. Aerosols are short-lived, settling out of the air after a few months, while CO2 continues to heat the atmosphere for decades to centuries. Moreover, we cannot assume that aerosol emissions will keep pace with increases in CO2 emissions. If we fail start dealing with CO2 today, it will be too late down the road when the emissions catch up with us.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that sources of non-CO2 greenhouse gases are responsible for virtually all the global warming we’re seeing, and all the global warming we are going to see for the next fifty years. If we wish to curb global warming over the coming half century, we must look at strategies to address non-CO2 emissions. The strategy with the most impact is vegetarianism.
Methane and Vegetarianism
By far the most important non-CO2 greenhouse gas is methane, and the number one source of methane worldwide is animal agriculture.
Methane is responsible for nearly as much global warming as all other non-CO2 greenhouse gases put together. Methane is 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2. While atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen by about 31% since pre-industrial times, methane concentrations have more than doubled. Whereas human sources of CO2 amount to just 3% of natural emissions, human sources produce one and a half times as much methane as all natural sources. In fact, the effect of our methane emissions may be compounded as methane-induced warming in turn stimulates microbial decay of organic matter in wetlands—the primary natural source of methane.
With methane emissions causing nearly half of the planet’s human-induced warming, methane reduction must be a priority. Methane is produced by a number of sources, including coal mining and landfills—but the number one source worldwide is animal agriculture. Animal agriculture produces more than 100 million tons of methane a year. And this source is on the rise: global meat consumption has increased fivefold in the past fifty years, and shows little sign of abating. About 85% of this methane is produced in the digestive processes of livestock, and while a single cow releases a relatively small amount of methane, the collective effect on the environment of the hundreds of millions of livestock animals worldwide is enormous. An additional 15% of animal agricultural methane emissions are released from the massive “lagoons” used to store untreated farm animal waste, and already a target of environmentalists’ for their role as the number one source of water pollution in the U.S.
The conclusion is simple: arguably the best way to reduce global warming in our lifetimes is to reduce or eliminate our consumption of animal products. Simply by going vegetarian (or, strictly speaking, vegan), , , we can eliminate one of the major sources of emissions of methane, the greenhouse gas responsible for almost half of the global warming impacting the planet today.
Advantages of Vegetarianism over CO2 Reduction
In addition to having the advantage of immediately reducing global warming, a shift away from methane-emitting food sources is much easier than cutting carbon dioxide.
First, there is no limit to reductions in this source of greenhouse gas that can be achieved through vegetarian diet. In principle, even 100% reduction could be achieved with little negative impact. In contrast, similar cuts in carbon dioxide are impossible without devastating effects on the economy. Even the most ambitious carbon dioxide reduction strategies fall short of cutting emissions by half.
Second, shifts in diet lower greenhouse gas emissions much more quickly than shifts away from the fossil fuel burning technologies that emit carbon dioxide. The turnover rate for most ruminant farm animals is one or two years, so that decreases in meat consumption would result in almost immediate drops in methane emissions. The turnover rate for cars and power plants, on the other hand, can be decades. Even if cheap, zero-emission fuel sources were available today, they would take many years to build and slowly replace the massive infrastructure our economy depends upon today.
Similarly, unlike carbon dioxide which can remain in the air for more than a century, methane cycles out of the atmosphere in just eight years, so that lower methane emissions quickly translate to cooling of the earth.
Third, efforts to cut carbon dioxide involve fighting powerful and wealthy business interests like the auto and oil industries. Environmental groups have been lobbying for years to make fuel-efficient SUVs available or phase out power plants that don’t meet modern environmental standards without success. At the same time, vegetarian foods are readily available, and cuts in agricultural methane emissions are achievable at every meal.
Also, polls show that concern about global warming is widespread, and environmental activists often feel helpless to do anything about it. Unless they happen to be buying a car or major appliance, most people wanting to make a difference are given little to do aside from writing their legislators and turning off their lights. Reducing or eliminating meat consumption is something concerned citizens can do every day to help the planet.
Finally, it is worth noting that reductions in this source of greenhouse gas have many beneficial side effects for the environment. Less methane results in less tropospheric ozone, a pollutant damaging to human health and agriculture. Moreover, the same factory farms responsible for these methane emissions also use up most of the country’s water supply, and denude most of its wilderness for rangeland and growing feed. Creating rangeland to feed western nations’ growing appetite for meat has been a major source of deforestation and desertification in third world countries. Factory farm waste lagoons are a leading source of water pollution in the U.S. Indeed, because of animal agriculture’s high demand for fossil fuels, the average American diet is far more CO2-polluting than a plant-based one.
Recommendations
# Organizations should consider making advocating vegetarianism a major part of their global warming campaigns. At a minimum, environmental advocates should mention vegetarianism in any information about actions individuals can take to address global warming.
# Government policy should encourage vegetarian diets. Possible mechanisms include an environmental tax on meat similar to one already recommended on gasoline, a shift in farm subsidies to encourage plant agriculture over animal agriculture, or an increased emphasis on vegetarian foods in government-run programs like the school lunch program or food stamps.
Reposted from: http://www.earthsave.org/globalwarming.htm
Disclaimer: I am not a vegetarian and ate a rib eye for dinner last night.
It is belches, not farts, that contribute the bulk of methane. We have more Cowschwitzes now than ever before (California cows are NOT happy), and we feed them differently than ever before. We can feed them in ways that reduce methane emissions. Methane contributes about 25% of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, and that figure can be reduced by making some changes. That may mean your next rib eye may not be exactly what you expect, but there will probably be a habitable planet for your grandchildren.
Leslie: Damn, girl, my goofing around clearly hit you where you live. Thanks for all the interesting, thought-provoking data. I hope everyone reads it.
Madison, was the other place we would often go, as She was there getting Her Masters in psychology (good choice, her part, as I am a tad daffy, to say the least).
The thought of tofu would never even to be considered, even during the first years after we arrived here, to mind after Hr elderly and ailing parents, but little by little I would give it a taste.
Now deep fried cubes about 1 1/2" square, and especially home/hand made tofu crumpled into a friend pan of sauteed vegetables (bok choy, cabbage chopped thinly, with some tofu crumbled atop, a couple scrambled eggs dripped thinly in, then turn the heat to high and fry for about 5 minutes, and finally the finishing touches two spoons soy, and one spoon of sesame oil.
Voila - tofu champuru - delicious and healthy.
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