5 ms·

> None of those studies take this into account, they all just measure what comes into a cow and what comes out, but no one takes into account the amount of meth

by m000 6y ago

> None of those studies take this into account, they all just measure what comes into a cow and what comes out, but no one takes into account the amount of methane produced from the same feed even without cows involved. Nobody's missing anything. That feed wouldn't have been planted in the first place if it weren't for feeding the cows. And that would translate to less deforestation [1]. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53438680 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53438680

tengbretson 6y ago
Then just buy American beef, which is produced without any deforestation.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  It's not that simple. Not all American beef is raised on native grasses.
  - lazide 6y ago
    Why is native or not native important from a carbon balance perspective? Alfalfa still pulls carbon from the air when it grows.
    - DubiousPusher 6y ago
      What I should say is, not all American beef is fed from naturally occurring pasture land. In fact, a good deal of it is not.
      - lazide 6y ago
        At this point, nearly all agricultural land was converted a century ago. The trend now is more towards decreasing total agricultural acreage if anything? No one in America has slash and burned a forest to feed cattle for a very long time.
    - sdenton4 6y ago
      Corn, people... American cows prominently eat corn. It is extremely fertilizer and pesticide intensive, and entirely engineered. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the fertilizers are also fossil fuel based.
      - incrudible 6y ago
        > ...fertilizers are also fossil fuel based. True, but these only account for 1% of energy demand[1]. Fertilizer is all about the nitrogen, not the carbon. The carbon for the corn is taken from the atmosphere. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344905000819 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09213...
      - DubiousPusher 6y ago
        Yeah, this is a bit what I was getting at. But all I know about cattle comes from my family's cattle background in Eastern Montana and the high valleys of the SouthWest corner of the state. In both those regions, many cows are raised in naturally occurring pastures, eating native grasses, save oats which are sown as a cover crop. However, my impression this is very unique and produces much less pounds of beef per acre than most places. The cattle breeds there are leaner and half wild. I'm hesitant to speak more definitively because I don't know specific statistics on how ranches in other regions differ. My impression is that the difference are substantial.
- ddoeth 6y ago
  Except the beef that isn't from free roaming animals but from mass producing facilities.
- crishoj 6y ago
  Are you accounting for animal feed grown on deforested lands?
- titzer 6y ago
  Is that sarcasm? Pretty much the entire midwest was forest before colonization. Now take a look at Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri...they're basically one big farm criscrossed by roads, highways, sprinkled with small spinneys of trees, and dotted with cities. Just load up Google Earth, satellite mode, turn off all labels, and zoom out. It's astonishing.
  - bpodgursky 6y ago
    This just isn't true. The Eastern half the US was heavily deforested by colonization, but that's really not true in the midwest. It was prarie. There are actually a lot of researchers who believe that the Native peoples were keeping the forests back via controlled burns, since grassland is better for hunting and agriculture, and the forests have regrown substantially _since_ most of the indigenous people died via disease.
    - titzer 6y ago
      Go argue with historians, if you like: https://blog.history.in.gov/tag/forestry/ https://blog.history.in.gov/tag/forestry/
      - bpodgursky 6y ago
        Like, I'm not saying wikipedia is an infallible source of truth, but I'm not exactly arguing for ancient aliens here: > In the Eastern Deciduous Forest, frequent fires kept open areas which supported herds of bison. A substantial portion of this forest was extensively burned by agricultural Native Americans. Annual burning created many large oaks and white pines with little understory.[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_savannas_of_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_savannas_of_Nort...
      - pmayrgundter 6y ago
        Indiana is the beginning of the Eastern forests. Prairie starts in Illinois and extends over most of the Midwest and runs North/South along the Rockies well into Canada and down to Texas, New Mexico.. nice map: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallgrass_prairie#/media/File%3AUnited_States_Prairies.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallgrass_prairie#/media/Fil...
lazide 6y ago
That seems wildly misleading? The rainforests that were there before certainly produce methane and other gases as things rot. Total biomass in a rainforest is generally stable - it is not really a sink over any significant timeframes. Plants take sunlight, use the energy from it to rip the oxygen off co2 releasing oxygen as a byproduct, and carbon to build themselves with. Unless rainforests have an ever increasing layer of carbon (charcoal/coal) building up under them - which they do not - they stabilize with their total carbon intake being roughly the same as carbon released through other means. In most cases this happens (rate decreasing over time, though total carbon storage quantity slowly increases until a wildfire) in less than 100 years after a complete denudation event, most of it happening much sooner than that. If you want to lock up carbon, you need to take it from the plants and sequester it somewhere natural forces (rot, weathering) won’t break it back down again - like a house, or in a cave, or in a hypoxic environment. Methane is definitely a significantly more powerful forcing gas than co2, but also breaks down in the atmosphere in a short period of time into co2. Cow fart composition changes also only have a similar local, short term effect. Short term effects can be helpful, but this only changes some parts of the (closed) cycle. You only really change the math if you change how things are getting into or out of the overall cycle, which requires long term bonding of carbon to things such as rocks, or burial. Converting atmospheric co2 (or methane) into plastic that gets buried in a landfill is net negative carbon balance for instance. Making the plastic out of oil products and then putting it in a landfill - net neutral (minus processing energy costs). Burning it for fuel? Contributes fossil carbon into the atmosphere.
- bob29 6y ago
  >The rainforests that were there before certainly produce methane Conditions on the forest floor typically facilitate aerobic decomposition which does not release methane. [1] >If you want to lock up carbon, you need to take it from the plants and sequester it somewhere natural forces (rot, weathering) won’t break it back down again - like a house, or in a cave, or in a hypoxic environment. Hypoxic environment is exactly the conditions methanogenic bacteria operate in to turn biomass into methane. [2] > Converting atmospheric co2 (or methane) into plastic that gets buried in a landfill is net negative carbon balance for instance. Except for the energy needed to convert the molecules, the energy needed to transport plastic to a landfill. Energy production and transportation both are powered by fossil fuels mostly. [1]http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/fundamentals/consideration_reclamation.htm http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/fundamentals/consideration... [2]http://solarcities.eu/faq http://solarcities.eu/faq
briandear 6y ago
So what would grow in that dirt instead? Nothing?

by m000 6y ago

tengbretson 6y ago

Then just buy American beef, which is produced without any deforestation.

DubiousPusher 6y ago
It's not that simple. Not all American beef is raised on native grasses.
- lazide 6y ago
  Why is native or not native important from a carbon balance perspective? Alfalfa still pulls carbon from the air when it grows.
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    What I should say is, not all American beef is fed from naturally occurring pasture land. In fact, a good deal of it is not.
    - lazide 6y ago
      At this point, nearly all agricultural land was converted a century ago. The trend now is more towards decreasing total agricultural acreage if anything? No one in America has slash and burned a forest to feed cattle for a very long time.
  - sdenton4 6y ago
    Corn, people... American cows prominently eat corn. It is extremely fertilizer and pesticide intensive, and entirely engineered. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the fertilizers are also fossil fuel based.
    - incrudible 6y ago
      > ...fertilizers are also fossil fuel based. True, but these only account for 1% of energy demand[1]. Fertilizer is all about the nitrogen, not the carbon. The carbon for the corn is taken from the atmosphere. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344905000819 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09213...
    - DubiousPusher 6y ago
      Yeah, this is a bit what I was getting at. But all I know about cattle comes from my family's cattle background in Eastern Montana and the high valleys of the SouthWest corner of the state. In both those regions, many cows are raised in naturally occurring pastures, eating native grasses, save oats which are sown as a cover crop. However, my impression this is very unique and produces much less pounds of beef per acre than most places. The cattle breeds there are leaner and half wild. I'm hesitant to speak more definitively because I don't know specific statistics on how ranches in other regions differ. My impression is that the difference are substantial.
ddoeth 6y ago
Except the beef that isn't from free roaming animals but from mass producing facilities.
crishoj 6y ago
Are you accounting for animal feed grown on deforested lands?
titzer 6y ago
Is that sarcasm? Pretty much the entire midwest was forest before colonization. Now take a look at Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri...they're basically one big farm criscrossed by roads, highways, sprinkled with small spinneys of trees, and dotted with cities. Just load up Google Earth, satellite mode, turn off all labels, and zoom out. It's astonishing.
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  This just isn't true. The Eastern half the US was heavily deforested by colonization, but that's really not true in the midwest. It was prarie. There are actually a lot of researchers who believe that the Native peoples were keeping the forests back via controlled burns, since grassland is better for hunting and agriculture, and the forests have regrown substantially _since_ most of the indigenous people died via disease.
  - titzer 6y ago
    Go argue with historians, if you like: https://blog.history.in.gov/tag/forestry/ https://blog.history.in.gov/tag/forestry/
    - bpodgursky 6y ago
      Like, I'm not saying wikipedia is an infallible source of truth, but I'm not exactly arguing for ancient aliens here: > In the Eastern Deciduous Forest, frequent fires kept open areas which supported herds of bison. A substantial portion of this forest was extensively burned by agricultural Native Americans. Annual burning created many large oaks and white pines with little understory.[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_savannas_of_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_savannas_of_Nort...
    - pmayrgundter 6y ago
      Indiana is the beginning of the Eastern forests. Prairie starts in Illinois and extends over most of the Midwest and runs North/South along the Rockies well into Canada and down to Texas, New Mexico.. nice map: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallgrass_prairie#/media/File%3AUnited_States_Prairies.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallgrass_prairie#/media/Fil...

lazide 6y ago

That seems wildly misleading? The rainforests that were there before certainly produce methane and other gases as things rot. Total biomass in a rainforest is generally stable - it is not really a sink over any significant timeframes. Plants take sunlight, use the energy from it to rip the oxygen off co2 releasing oxygen as a byproduct, and carbon to build themselves with. Unless rainforests have an ever increasing layer of carbon (charcoal/coal) building up under them - which they do not - they stabilize with their total carbon intake being roughly the same as carbon released through other means. In most cases this happens (rate decreasing over time, though total carbon storage quantity slowly increases until a wildfire) in less than 100 years after a complete denudation event, most of it happening much sooner than that. If you want to lock up carbon, you need to take it from the plants and sequester it somewhere natural forces (rot, weathering) won’t break it back down again - like a house, or in a cave, or in a hypoxic environment. Methane is definitely a significantly more powerful forcing gas than co2, but also breaks down in the atmosphere in a short period of time into co2. Cow fart composition changes also only have a similar local, short term effect. Short term effects can be helpful, but this only changes some parts of the (closed) cycle. You only really change the math if you change how things are getting into or out of the overall cycle, which requires long term bonding of carbon to things such as rocks, or burial. Converting atmospheric co2 (or methane) into plastic that gets buried in a landfill is net negative carbon balance for instance. Making the plastic out of oil products and then putting it in a landfill - net neutral (minus processing energy costs). Burning it for fuel? Contributes fossil carbon into the atmosphere.

bob29 6y ago
>The rainforests that were there before certainly produce methane Conditions on the forest floor typically facilitate aerobic decomposition which does not release methane. [1] >If you want to lock up carbon, you need to take it from the plants and sequester it somewhere natural forces (rot, weathering) won’t break it back down again - like a house, or in a cave, or in a hypoxic environment. Hypoxic environment is exactly the conditions methanogenic bacteria operate in to turn biomass into methane. [2] > Converting atmospheric co2 (or methane) into plastic that gets buried in a landfill is net negative carbon balance for instance. Except for the energy needed to convert the molecules, the energy needed to transport plastic to a landfill. Energy production and transportation both are powered by fossil fuels mostly. [1]http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/fundamentals/consideration_reclamation.htm http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/fundamentals/consideration... [2]http://solarcities.eu/faq http://solarcities.eu/faq

briandear 6y ago

So what would grow in that dirt instead? Nothing?