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There are many planet saving discoveries like these. There's also a catch, which is why the planet hasn't been saved yet. > “If we’re able to work out how to s
by alphakappa 7y ago
There are many planet saving discoveries like these. There's also a catch, which is why the planet hasn't been saved yet.
> “If we’re able to work out how to scale up the seaweed to such a level to that can feed all of the cows and the sheep and the goats around the world, then it’s going to have a huge impact on the climate;
And there you go. That's the hard part that you cannot just hand-wave away.
You also have to wonder what the impact of growing all this seaweed (or harvesting it) to feed the planet's bovine population will be. In the end, the problem is due to the massive scale of human consumption on this planet. The mitigation might be just as bad when you consider the scale at which you have to produce the 'better' solution.
- whatshisface 7y ago>In the end, the problem is due to the massive scale of human consumption on this planet. The technology required to alter human nature to consume less or alternatively the technology required to win the deadliest war ever fought is going to be a lot harder to develop than it would be to grow a lot of seaweed.
- briandear 7y ago> the deadliest genocidal war ever fought Really? How many people have died thus far? Seems like Stalin is still in the lead by a huge margin. This sort of hyperbole is not helpful. Climate change isn’t genocide.
- mc32 7y agoIt’s a big of cosmic irony that cows will be eating what so called sea-cows evolved to eat by way of their natural environment. The obviously this messes with cows’ gut bacteria. Wonder if it has any significant effects on cows or is it better all around?
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoFrom an environmental perspective, it's easier to directly consume fruits, vegetables and nuts yourself, rather than have an animal do the same, then eat the animal. That doesn't address the human appetite for animal proteins, but there is beyond meat.
- kibibu 7y agoCows are much better at extracting nutrients from, say, grass than humans are. In places where nuts, vegetables, fruits aren't available, meat may be a more environmentally friendly choice.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoBut almost nobody is eating pasture-raised meat, though the industrial meat complex loves that you think that or are pointing it out as if that's how beef is made.
- mikedilger 7y agoThe US farming methods (grainfed, feed lots, etc) are very different from what we do in New Zealand. In New Zealand every farmer I've ever met (and I've met many) let their cattle feed on fresh pasture almost entirely. We are blessed with lots of land per person, and lots of rainfall, perfect for growing grass. In the dry part of summer or the cold part of winter when fresh pasture isn't growing fast enough, they supplement with hay and silage (both produced from fresh pasture that is typically harvested at the beginning of summer). But I know that outside of my own experience, other things are occasionally fed such as waste products from food processing, brewing, etc. And I know that when you sell animals you can legally tick "grass fed" as long as the animal has had access to pasture, regardless of what percentage of their diet actually came from that pasture. So it is possible that some cattle from NZ have eaten mainly non-grass foods, but in practice I've never actually seen that happen. As for seaweed, we have a lot of coastline so we could utilize this strategy more effectively than the US could.
- Kaibeezy 7y agoI asked a small town butcher in Scotland if his beef was grass-fed and got seriously laughed at. Then he sold me some damn good steaks.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoBecause it was, or because it wasn't? I mean, I'd guess it was, but equally it could be "why do you care, it tastes good", so ...?
- tempestn 7y agoTrue that that's a non-trivial problem, but seaweed farming is actually something that we could massively scale up. With vertical farms, a ton (metaphorically speaking; more than that literally) of food can be grown in a small surface area of ocean. Would be much more efficient for feeding livestock than relying on farmland that could be growing human food. (Although as an aside I'm personally in favour of a decent amount of natural grazing space and time for farmed animals, so I'd like to see a balance.)
- Fjolsvith 7y agoWhy not have the herd on a surface barge and have an automated system pull seaweed up a conveyor belt to feed them? This would free up the land acreage for human use!
- stephenr 7y agoIt’s simple really. After global warming causes sea levels to rise, the cows will be underwater anyway, they can just find their own seaweed to eat. Problem solved!
- saagarjha 7y agoThey’ll just become sea cows, obviously.
- anonytrary 7y agoHopefully we'll be beyond meat at that point /s. But yeah most panaceas are too good to be true, and are usually thought of by people forgetting to take into account all of the necessary terms in their equation.
- stephenr 7y agoREALLY? Someone flagged this? Fucking hell HN, you need to chill.
- vtrips 7y agoI would rather we focus on cutting down the rest of the 90% of emissions than the natural emissions which have been occurring since before the industrial revolution messed it up. There is a fine balance in nature and maybe cows are the wrong place to experiment.
- benj111 7y agoHow many cows were there pre industrial revolution compared to today? I would guess at at least 2 orders of magnitude increase, is that all 'natural'?
- vtrips 7y agoLook I'm not putting up an argument where neither of us have the data to look at this factually, but I don't think we had any problems in the pre industrial revolution era. My point is - The focus should be on optimizing the sources that contribute the most to these emissions.
- benj111 7y agoThe article mentions this could reduce Australias ghg emissions by 10%, figures I've found for the UK suggest 3%. That's a massive cut no matter how you cut it, and shouldn't be ignored. You cant just say cows were domesticated before the industrial revolution, ergo cows are ok, and shouldn't be part of the solution. Animal husbandry has changed massively in the past 2/300 years, you are comparing apples and oranges. My 2 orders of magnitude guess is conservative. Population has increased by well over one order of magnitude since the industrial revolution. Per capita meat/dairy consumption accounts for the rest.
- belorn 7y agoScaling is a pretty common objection in this kind of articles but I have a hard time understanding the reasoning for it. Scaling is always an issue regardless of what the new technology is so the question is then if there is specific reasons to doubt that scaling can not be solved. To compare two different tactics to reduce global warming, electric cars and seaweed for cows. It sound as a much easier job to grow seaweed compared to the electrification of the transport sector by scaling up electric engines and battery production, and we (as a human species) are pretty sure the later will happen regardless because we can't continue to burn fossil fuels.
- joatmon-snoo 7y agoIt's not that scaling is an objection, it's that scaling is a barrier. Supply chains today tend to depend on things we already know how to and are actively mass producing. To add a new paradigm-shifting stage in the chain, it needs to grow to sufficient scale, which requires funding and R&D, and the path there isn't always clear. In other words, it's not so much that we can't get there, so much as we don't know how.
- bvinc 7y agoIf there was a profit motive, and it wasn't free to emit greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, I bet we would figure it out.