5 ms·

I saw some math once... not sure how correct it is, but it was something like given the co2-equivalent emissions of methane, even if all cows simply disappeared

I saw some math once... not sure how correct it is, but it was something like given the co2-equivalent emissions of methane, even if all cows simply disappeared tomorrow, it would still only take care of about 5% of our global GHG emissions. So if that's true it wouldn't really be a gamechanger. Still worth doing though (the seaweed, not the mass slaughtering)! And if everyone plants 350 trees then maybe we'll get somewhere.

FeepingCreature 7y ago
5% of a global problem is huge.
darkerside 7y ago
Cows may account for a small amount of total emissions, but they are responsible for almost half the methane released on the planet. Methane is a potent but relatively shortlived GHG. So, removing all cows would be a sizable but short term fix.
- tunesmith 7y ago
  Well, that's what I meant by CO2-equivalents. They figure methane into the math that way. Removing that methane would account for 5% of the CO2-equivalent problem we have. As potent as Methane is, it's dwarfed by the amount of CO2 we've added.
  - darkerside 7y ago
    > sizable but short term fix
esotericn 7y ago
Some variant of this same comment is on every single thread about this here. We need to tackle all of the "only 5%" issues.
- nightski 7y ago
  Or transportation + electricity which is nearly 60% in the U.S.
  - baroffoos 7y ago
    And then on the thread where someone proposes reducing transport emissions in the US there will be a comment "But transport in the US is only x% of global emissions" There needs to be action taken on every single one of the sources all at once.
    - ssijak 7y ago
      US leadership (dont know how big percent of population is in denial) first needs to accept that there is a human caused global warming and ecological destruction problem. The biggest global polluter is leading in denial also.
  - sak5sk 7y ago
    It's pretty clear that the HN crowd wants to solve a mute problem with bioengineering and hacking. The ACTUAL problems, you know, the stuff that's so daunting that few startups will ever take on - well, we burry our heads in the sand. Any mention of this fact gets you downvoted. The same story with energy generation. HN has a big crush on nuclear. Nevermind that nuclear takes decades to approve and to build out - time that we just don't have. But hey, as long as we can feel good about it, right?
    - jaakl 7y ago
      The root problem is that we consume too much energy and other resources, increasingly. Both per capita and in total. Our biological instinct is to grow in numbers as much as we can, and economical incentive is to sell (and consume) more and more. What can you do about these?
    - solveit 7y ago
      > Nevermind that nuclear takes decades to approve and to build out - time that we just don't have. But hey, as long as we can feel good about it, right? A big part of this is bitterness over the way nuclear energy has been treated. We used to have decades, we spent billions upon billions on renewables while demonizing nuclear energy, and now we don't have decades. Hell, it's very likely that we'd have fusion by now if all that money and effort was redirected to fusion research.
HillRat 7y ago
5% doesn’t solve the problem, but it makes it more tractable. Enough 5% (or 4%, 3%, 2%…) solutions that integrate well into the existing economy, and you get GHG emissions into a range where the complex, expensive, and disruptive (in the traditional sense of the term) game-changing technologies become reasonable. At some point we will end up diverting a sizable percentage of global productivity to either scrubbing CO2 or dealing with the effects of our failure to prevent or capture source emissions, so those small reductions, implemented as quickly as possible, can add up to significant downline savings.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  ...or you could leave the cows alone and impose some regulatory controls on oil/gas production and yield that reduction in a few months. Big money is hoping to disrupt agriculture by shifting to fake meat substitutes. Shifting to some sort of soy/pea/coconut mix isn’t much better for the earth or human health.
  - ssijak 7y ago
    How not? Done some math to share? If all the soy fed to beef is just fed to humans (or convertes back to rainforests in Brazil) we would be in much better shape.
- dcolkitt 7y ago
  > At some point we will end up diverting a sizable percentage of global productivity to either scrubbing CO2 or dealing with the effects of our failure Not necessarily. Current research indicates that stratospheric aerosol injections could lower global temperatures enough to offset greenhouse gas at a price tag of $3 billion per year. That's only 0.002% of world GDP. The technology's well-understood and the effects are already well-tested as it basically mimics the global cooling seen after major volcanic eruptions. I'm not saying it's a sure shot. But it's a very very promising technology that could potentially sidestep the need to reduce carbon emissions whatsoever. At the very least we should at least be funding more research and doing small-scale deployments to test it in production. [1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d
jerrysievert 7y ago
> it would still only take care of about 5% of our global GHG emissions have you never been "nickel and dimed"?
triceratops 7y ago
You just need 5 of these 5% solutions to cut the problem by a quarter. Many mickles make a muckle, as George Washington was fond of saying. It's also good because a wide variety of experts from different fields can attack the problem from different angles. We won't be talent-constrained.
bacon_waffle 7y ago
The EPA says [1] 9% of the US's GHG emissions are from agriculture, so there's an upper limit. However, the more relevant consideration is how much more GHG comes from ruminants compared to other protein sources [2]. [1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-top-10-foods-with-the-biggest-environmental-footprint-2015-9 https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-top-10-foods-with-the...
dclowd9901 7y ago
Did that include the carbon used to grow their feed, harvest their water and maintain their lots, as well as all the carbon used by the people to service them?
Toine 7y ago
I'm not sure your number is correct. It's more like 20%.
- tunesmith 7y ago
  Do you remember a source? I'd be happy to update my own thinking to that number if I found an argument for it.

FeepingCreature 7y ago

5% of a global problem is huge.

darkerside 7y ago

Cows may account for a small amount of total emissions, but they are responsible for almost half the methane released on the planet. Methane is a potent but relatively shortlived GHG. So, removing all cows would be a sizable but short term fix.

tunesmith 7y ago
Well, that's what I meant by CO2-equivalents. They figure methane into the math that way. Removing that methane would account for 5% of the CO2-equivalent problem we have. As potent as Methane is, it's dwarfed by the amount of CO2 we've added.
- darkerside 7y ago
  > sizable but short term fix

esotericn 7y ago

Some variant of this same comment is on every single thread about this here. We need to tackle all of the "only 5%" issues.

nightski 7y ago
Or transportation + electricity which is nearly 60% in the U.S.
- baroffoos 7y ago
  And then on the thread where someone proposes reducing transport emissions in the US there will be a comment "But transport in the US is only x% of global emissions" There needs to be action taken on every single one of the sources all at once.
  - ssijak 7y ago
    US leadership (dont know how big percent of population is in denial) first needs to accept that there is a human caused global warming and ecological destruction problem. The biggest global polluter is leading in denial also.
- sak5sk 7y ago
  It's pretty clear that the HN crowd wants to solve a mute problem with bioengineering and hacking. The ACTUAL problems, you know, the stuff that's so daunting that few startups will ever take on - well, we burry our heads in the sand. Any mention of this fact gets you downvoted. The same story with energy generation. HN has a big crush on nuclear. Nevermind that nuclear takes decades to approve and to build out - time that we just don't have. But hey, as long as we can feel good about it, right?
  - jaakl 7y ago
    The root problem is that we consume too much energy and other resources, increasingly. Both per capita and in total. Our biological instinct is to grow in numbers as much as we can, and economical incentive is to sell (and consume) more and more. What can you do about these?
  - solveit 7y ago
    > Nevermind that nuclear takes decades to approve and to build out - time that we just don't have. But hey, as long as we can feel good about it, right? A big part of this is bitterness over the way nuclear energy has been treated. We used to have decades, we spent billions upon billions on renewables while demonizing nuclear energy, and now we don't have decades. Hell, it's very likely that we'd have fusion by now if all that money and effort was redirected to fusion research.

HillRat 7y ago

5% doesn’t solve the problem, but it makes it more tractable. Enough 5% (or 4%, 3%, 2%…) solutions that integrate well into the existing economy, and you get GHG emissions into a range where the complex, expensive, and disruptive (in the traditional sense of the term) game-changing technologies become reasonable. At some point we will end up diverting a sizable percentage of global productivity to either scrubbing CO2 or dealing with the effects of our failure to prevent or capture source emissions, so those small reductions, implemented as quickly as possible, can add up to significant downline savings.

Spooky23 7y ago
...or you could leave the cows alone and impose some regulatory controls on oil/gas production and yield that reduction in a few months. Big money is hoping to disrupt agriculture by shifting to fake meat substitutes. Shifting to some sort of soy/pea/coconut mix isn’t much better for the earth or human health.
- ssijak 7y ago
  How not? Done some math to share? If all the soy fed to beef is just fed to humans (or convertes back to rainforests in Brazil) we would be in much better shape.
dcolkitt 7y ago
> At some point we will end up diverting a sizable percentage of global productivity to either scrubbing CO2 or dealing with the effects of our failure Not necessarily. Current research indicates that stratospheric aerosol injections could lower global temperatures enough to offset greenhouse gas at a price tag of $3 billion per year. That's only 0.002% of world GDP. The technology's well-understood and the effects are already well-tested as it basically mimics the global cooling seen after major volcanic eruptions. I'm not saying it's a sure shot. But it's a very very promising technology that could potentially sidestep the need to reduce carbon emissions whatsoever. At the very least we should at least be funding more research and doing small-scale deployments to test it in production. [1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d

jerrysievert 7y ago

> it would still only take care of about 5% of our global GHG emissions have you never been "nickel and dimed"?

triceratops 7y ago

You just need 5 of these 5% solutions to cut the problem by a quarter. Many mickles make a muckle, as George Washington was fond of saying. It's also good because a wide variety of experts from different fields can attack the problem from different angles. We won't be talent-constrained.

bacon_waffle 7y ago

The EPA says [1] 9% of the US's GHG emissions are from agriculture, so there's an upper limit. However, the more relevant consideration is how much more GHG comes from ruminants compared to other protein sources [2]. [1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-top-10-foods-with-the-biggest-environmental-footprint-2015-9 https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-top-10-foods-with-the...

dclowd9901 7y ago

Did that include the carbon used to grow their feed, harvest their water and maintain their lots, as well as all the carbon used by the people to service them?

Toine 7y ago

I'm not sure your number is correct. It's more like 20%.

tunesmith 7y ago
Do you remember a source? I'd be happy to update my own thinking to that number if I found an argument for it.