[jhbadger]

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

https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/why-do-cattle-produce-m...

[tengbretson]

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.

[jacobgorm]

Denmark produces around 29mio pigs per annum on a tiny k look and area inhabited by less than 6mio humans.

[hulitu]

> And there is the issue that what we feed livestock affects how much gas they produce.

So maybe that is the problem. /s

But, hey, why not fix anorher problem and blame the first one. /s

[atlasy1]

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!

[ygjb]

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).

[atlasy1]

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.

[ygjb]

That means absolutely nothing until the majority of cattle farms incorporate the supplement into their operations.

Knowing a potential solution is not the same as solving a problem, unless you are performing an academic exercise.

[atlasy1]

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.

[ygjb]

And I am sure that all of the fat people (myself included) are thrilled that a thermodynamic approach to weight loss is a proven solution, despite the fact that I have not had much success applying it.

I am also strongly reassured that XSS is a solved problem when using content security, and climate change has been solved by mass reforestation efforts.

The difficult part of a technical solution is not inventing it (although those are rightfully hard problems); the real challenge is in driving adoption of the solution.

The industry will push back on this solution for a broad range of reasons:

1. Cost - what is the cost of both the supplement and the labour required to administer it, or the differential on unfortified vs. fortified feeds.

2. Marketing - how will you communicate to folks that they should do this?

3. Customer Satisfication - does the supplement meaningfully affect any of the metrics for customer satisfaction (flavour, texture, etc of the meat).

4. Availability - retooling and spinning up the aquaculture required to produce the supplements

5. Viability - what is the ecological impact of the proposed seaweed solution, and is it a net positive.

I spent a chunk of my career as a researcher, developing protoypes and proof of concept stuff. One of the greatest things of that time in my career was developing something to 80% and throwing it over the fence, which let me ignore all of that hard work and call my project a win. One of the worst things is that out of that multi-year period of experimentation almost none of the work I did actually yielded unique products or improvements (although the tools I built did drive improvements to address issues and flaws found).

Assuming that you did the research, your work was definitely successful in finding a solution. You have not solved the problem, and the hard work is very much ahead.

[Pet_Ant]

A citation for those who (as I) didn't know about this:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26388081.2022.2...

Don't know how widely adopted this is.

[wyre]

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”

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/veterinary-science/arti...

[atlasy1]

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.

[wyre]

Sorry, edited my post while you were replying.

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.

https://worldanimalfoundation.org/advocate/how-many-cows-in-...

https://beef.unl.edu/cattleproduction/forageconsumed-day

https://fppn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s43014-022-0...

https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/0990814231045205...

[slavik81]

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.

[pvaldes]

> Seaweed grows very quickly

This is like saying that trees grow quickly.

"Seaweed" means thousands of different species. When we see a cluster of seaweeds in a rock some of them are not even in the same kingdom than their neighbors. Its life cycles and chemical properties are totally different.

The truth is that some species are really picky and some take decades to regrow after harvested. Just because brown seaweeds are fast growers does not mean that red seaweeds are.

> there's been relatively little need for seaweed in recent decades

You may not be aware of how much of our everyday stuff includes algae. The demand of toothpaste has not fell. I would dare to speculate that the demand of laboratory stuff is probably higher than ever since Covid.

[pvaldes]

> Ruminant methane output has been reduced by 98.8% with the addition of a compound from seaweed to the animals food

I had debunked this yet a lot of times. This is a dead road and will fail. With the current data available is obvious that is a false solution.

I would strongly suggest to read the article with a critical mind

[atlasy1]

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