White House Will Regulate Cow Flatulence

No, this is not a fart joke although it may sound like one.

White House looks to regulate cow flatulence as part of climate agenda

I have NO idea how they will handle this udderly daunting feat.

I know somewhat about cows and biology, a bit about methane, and some engineering. Personally I think its going to take something like cyborging cows to do this. Not that our modern dairy Holsteins aren't practically artificial life anyway.

Or maybe engineering gut microbes to utilize that methane.

I see what you did there.

The only way this would work, would to be putting a limit on the amount of cattle. Which is going to be tough since some of the more lucrative ranches have 20k+ head.

Yea this is so silly that I don't see anything of value. Carry on.

Methane can be captured (and subsequently sold) during the manure disposal process, and feeding requirements can be modified to reduce the animal's production. Regulation doesn't have to mean reducing numbers.

say what you want about cows, but they will not eat a hamburger no matter how long you try to get them to.

I was going to call this an April fool's joke - then I noticed the linked story is dated March 28th.

How to make cattle fart and belch less? Hmm...

How do you make yourself fart and belch less?

Digesting poo for methane has been done for decades. It does nothing for gaseous emissions straight from the cow.

As to diet... Cows eat grass. They can't digest it. Microbes do that for them. Therefore my thought about engineering microbes.

Who said emissions straight from the cow are the only regulatable source of methane? Not all cows are grass-fed.

Its worse for the ones who are fed the feedlot diet of corn and antibiotics.

Can anyone believe that, while we have a sluggish economy, a horrid unemployment rate, rampant waste in the government, and all the other major problems with this country, and the government is wasting resources on regulating cow farts?

whatever.

As far as potential scope and severity, addressing these types of issues are far more pressing than whatever partisan crap you would probably like to derail this thread into.

agreed. I don't want my children bombarded with coastal refugees. It's nice and quiet out here atm.

Hey, crazy idea: don't acknowledge the troll who turns every thread in this forum into a partisan stand-off. Or the other one. Or the other one, either.

Anyhow, serious question for those who know: how are cattle ranched these days? I presume we can't lock them in cube-shaped cages the size of a full-grown steer the way we do with chickens, but would it be feasible to, say, cover over at least some pasture and barn areas to collect the methane liberated prior to manure collection and processing?

This was a desperately needed regulatory move, at least assuming we want to see the day after tomorrow (I really do hate that I consistently cite a figurehead of conservatism and the point goes completely over the heads of the alleged, self-proclaimed conservatives here). I do suspect it could temporarily increase the costs of dairy and beef, though. In the long run, though... depending on efficacy of technology (which is a pretty safe bet), it will probably be a net gain for ranchers and, thus, should reduce costs a little bit for consumers. Landfills learned a long time ago what a mint they were sitting on by capturing their gases and processing them into electricity both for their own operations and to sell to the power grid. I can see a very similarly lucrative option arising for savvy ranchers.

nah we haven't grown that evil, yet.



while most the operations around here use too much grazing land for that to be feasible, the uber-corporate places cram em' in there fairly tight, & use grain feed, but even then the amount of land needed to be covered would be too large for a fabric structure to survive in the wind, & a rigid structure would be cost prohibitive due to size (I would think).

I don't think there's a simple way to dodge the issue, other than convince our fellow americans that they don't need that big mac every other day.

Is beef the issue, though, Mosin? For a variety of reasons, I don't eat all that much beef right now, but I go through cheese and milk quite readily and would not appreciate either taking any more of a price hike than is necessary.

Anyhow, I figured that covering all the grazing land would be impossible, but I wasn't sure if, say, there was a smaller pasture near the barn where the cattle spent a few hours of the day before being let out into larger fields. Unfortunately, I live in a part of the country where the few cows I encounter when I go out of the city are family milkers, not commercial producers, so I'm kinda out of my depth. I just do know that the farms I've been on tend to have a yard and a pasture when dealing with large four-footed beasties.

idk, probably.

the midwest consumes red meat like we'll never get another chance. it's weird growing up that way, only to notice it's not really the norm after traveling a bit.

I'd assume dairy uses less animals then when they're for slaughter?

(I didn't work a diary ranch, so idk)



something like this is plausible or using the barn itself, but it would almost have to be subsidized. most of the ranches I've run into out here have been on a fairly tight budget. I work in moving air, and the price to set up a capturing method would be stupidly expensive.

I'm sorry, but why is this "issue" a pressing matter that requires the attention of the federal government again?

People are out of jobs, the government is going broke, war is eminent on 3 fronts and all you care about is preventing cows from farting?

LMFAO

The logistics of actually regulating it is mind-boggling, but Methane is as much as 20 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than CO2. However, it does breakdown faster, so it's actual effects on climate are debatable.

Still, you can't really regulate plutonium and not enriched uranium, moving toward reducing ALL greenhouse gasses is the only move that makes any sense in the scope of climate science.

You might want to open a newspaper or go to a news website once in a while.

please, do elaborate.

Looks like you will be waiting a while.

Man, you know what makes it harder for people to get jobs? Paying them to retrofit money-producing, environmentally-sound equipment in a major industry. Actually creating job opportunities and markets is the worst possible way to assist the underemployment problem. Especially since everyone knows that construction and manufacturing are completely bloated with too many workers since they never experienced a massive downturn 5 years ago that resulted in industry-wide layoffs and business failures.

Sarcasm aside (no, I'm not putting a whole paragraph in italics), even if we pretend that "government going broke" isn't the base state of government -- yes, we can argue that it shouldn't be, but the fact is that it always is -- how does a regulation that obviously points at money-making opportunities fail to benefit the government? I'm sure ranches will resist, because businesses always resist, but that methane is an untapped goldmine.

And the word you are looking for is "imminent." Big difference. Which are these three fronts, though?

And, being cynical as all hell, the United States are a bunch of opportunistic *** and another European "world war" would be a chance for us to make big bucks just like we did in WWI and WWII. It's rarely mentioned that we were making a fortune by aiding both sides (though not to equal extents) of WWII until Japan got irked at us and learned the hard way.

Finally, as I said above: what do you do about the day after tomorrow? Bovine waste gas is a bigger contributor to greenhouse gas volume than internal combustion engines. Or were you not aware? It's insane that it has taken this long to move towards coping with it, really, but considering the environmental attitudes of the Bush administration and the Clinton Congress...

More than you probably ever wanted to know about methane's relationship with global warming concerns:
http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/methane-hydrates-and-contemporary-climate-change-24314790

That would only be true if either people and cows were the same thing (and not merely the same weight; thank you, obesity epidemic) or if beef were the only reliable source of human flatulence. So fear not.

I call ***.