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A diet supplemented with red algae could reduce greenhouse gases emitted by cows
- mrfusion 8y agoI was going to patent this idea but it’s so simple I think I’ll let you guys have it. Did you know methane is lighter than air and rises? So we simply house cows in a building where the ceiling is a conical shape and we periodically collect the methane from the top. Or if it’s too hard to collect we simply pass it through a flame as it leaves the top of the cone and convert it to co2, way less of a warming gas compared to methane. I suggest this under the assumption most cattle are factory farmed meaning raised indoors? But you could arrange for them to at least be in this building during peak methane production. Timing their food intake and such.
- thrower123 8y agoMaster-Blaster from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome I believe already has this patent, although at this point the terms have probably expired. Maybe using cows rather than pigs would be novel enough to squeak through the patent office at this point...
- 2_listerine_pls 8y agoAlready being done to prevent explosions and to generate electricity in larger farms.
- kmm 8y agoA cow release on the order of 100 kg of methane per year. Natural gas costs about 1 dollar per 2 kg of methane. I don't know how hard methane extraction is from air with ppm concentrations of it, but could it be done for less than about 50 dollars per year per head of cattle?
- adetrest 8y agoOr we could re-evaluate how we eat and drastically reduce the amount of meat produced and consumed.
- tjoff 8y agoOr we could do both.
- ams6110 8y agoCarbon emissions from cows are made up of carbon from the current environment. Not fossilized carbon. Even as methane, it's not a big deal, it's short-lived, and ultimately carbon-neutral.
- the8472 8y agoMethane is a stronger greenhouse gas in the short and medium term, which is non-negligible due to feedback effects. Additionally cows are not carbon-neutral if you take opportunity costs into account. The land used to make feed could be forest sequestering carbon instead since eating vegetarian or poultry based diet requires less primary production to yield the same calorie intake for humans.
- kmm 8y agoIt's not zero-sum, the carbon taken out of the atmosphere in the form of CO2 to make the feed is partly put back in the form of methane, which is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. This means a cow is a net greenhouse gas producer. The half-life is not that long but not very short either, 10 years, but the lifetime is completely irrelevant: as long as we keep emitting the gas, the levels will stay the same or rise.
- yholio 8y agoIt's interesting that very effective technical solutions exist to the global warming. Yet, we are rejecting for political reasons the regulatory solutions that would see them deployed on an industrial scale. A 10% levy on beef produced with strong methanogensis would make producers scramble for solutions such as these, while having an almost negligible effect on consumer prices - if sufficient time is allowed before the tax comes into effect. The results, absolutely massive, displacing trillions of equivalent investments in energy generation and transportation.
- NikolaeVarius 8y agoWhen I hear ideas like this, I keep wondering what the backlash would be if there was a 10% levy on all internet based services/software to tax the energy use of data centers, laptops trying to run electron apps and compile react projects.
- Ensorceled 8y agoIf the levy was on data centres not consuming green energy sources, the backlash would be nil.
- jonas21 8y agoAgreed! In fact, many tech companies with large datacenters already use 100% renewable energy (or will soon). For example: [1] https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/environment/100-percent-renewable-energy/ https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/environment/100-per... [2] https://www.apple.com/environment/climate-change/ https://www.apple.com/environment/climate-change/ [3] https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/08/renewable-energy/ https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/08/renewable-energy/
- rakoo 8y agoA huge majority of the world's electricity emits tons of CO2 to be produced. Unless I'm mistaken, it seems datacenters would follow the same distribution
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- aceon48 8y agoSo instead of taxing carbons... just mandate that cows have to eat these
- pvarangot 8y agoAnd if any cow disobeys the mandate the punishment is dismemberment and being eaten.
- sctb 8y agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17036221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17036221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12998395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12998395