Not so insane given that they are far more numerous due to agriculture than they would be as wild animals. This ultimately is a human-caused problem not a natural one. And there is the issue that what we feed livestock affects how much gas they produce. It's a serious research topic
The us cattle inventory is like 80 million or so head, and the peak wild bison population was estimated to be between 30-60 million, so its more, but not a crazy amount more.
Thank you for raising this valid issue. Ruminant methane output has been reduced by 98.8% with the addition of a compound from seaweed to the animals food. You are a small bit behind the science but thanks to people like you raising awareness we solved the problem!
This is a potential solution, but the problem isn't solved until the market actually adopts it.
Without a financial incentive to follow through (for example, a carbon tax on gassy animals) to offset the added cost of feed supplements, then most farms won't see the business justification (carbon footprint is largely externalized).
Sorry to double post this but you can think of it as being similar to a human taking a cheap charcoal tablet with their food to reduce flatulance.
Only a small part of the animals feed needs to be seaweed and thankfully it is one of the easiest and fastest growing organisms on the planet. So it’s extremely cheap for the industry to adopt compared to losses related to carbon taxes and loss of market share.
A little difficult to parse your argument. It is the lack of implementation of the cheap solution that you are worried about and raising as a problem.
Do not worry.
When enough pressure is applied on the farmers thanks to people like you , the solution (seaweed) we have found will be implemented. We have already done the difficult part and found a solution to the problem.
It’s not a solved problem. This is a hyperbole less accurate than saying vehicle emissions are a solved problem because EV’s exist. Seaweed is not a widespread additive in cattle feed and global production of seaweed would need to drastically increase to handle demand. There is also a plethora of other factors to consider with the increased farming of seaweed and the dietary changes that make adding seaweed to a cows diet anything but a “solved problem”
You can think of it as similar to a human taking a cheap charcoal tablet with their food to reduce flatulance. They will not take such a tablet until they are aware they have gastritis. When enough pressure is applied the solution will be implemented.
Only a small part of the animals feed needs to be seaweed and thankfully it is one of the easiest and fastest growing organisms on the planet. So it’s extremely cheap for the industry to adopt the solution when compared to facing losses related to carbon taxes and loss of market share.
Your underestimating the amount of food cows need to eat a day and likely overestimating global seaweed production in relation to even supply only 1% of cattle feed.
89 millions cows in the US alone eating eating 20+ pounds of food a day is 890,000 tons or nearly 325 million tons per year. That’s per day. Global production of seaweed was 358,200 tons in 2019. Only about 11% of what would be needed to be included in 1% of feed of every cow in America. And that wouldn’t leave any seaweed to be used for any of its other uses or the millions of other cows around the world.
Seaweed grows very quickly. The historical production was much higher a hundred years ago, but there's been relatively little need for seaweed in recent decades. It would not be hard to farm more of it, if there were demand.
You sound like a shill from snopes.com with your “debunk” argument. If you have already proved this to be “debunked” (please use the correct word - false) then copy and paste your findings here and provide citations
We can phrase anything in a negative light. Food which fuels 100% of Denmark’s population causes only 33% of Denmark’s emissions. This is a wonderful achievement.
Wild-caught fish are likely not included in that statisic, but vegetables surely would be. Growing vegetables is the quintessential example of farming.
I'm not sure if farmed fish would be counted, since that is not traditional agriculture.
But fishing still burns a lot of diesel. If this statistics don't take in account Denmark emissions from activities in the sea or from commerce fleet out of Denmark, they are probably misleading to wrong results.
And if we take in account that Greenland acts as a buffer in this sense (they don't have probably a lot of cows, so the emissions effect should be diluted). This perfect "one third" statistical value seems just a raw assumption, or just invented for filling a report hiding the lack of data.
If we want to bet for a future, we have to be extra careful to not just repeat slogans, dogmas or cite incomplete studies, even if they say what we want to hear. This only will delay the necessary measures
https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/why-do-cattle-produce-m...