Posted on 07/31/2007 9:14:29 AM PDT by rface
Maybe I can get a Nobel Prize
I predict fart bags on cows.
We should harness this source of energy. We already use the material waste in fertilizer. Maybe we should find a way to trap and use cow farts to produce electricity. This should help the environment, right?
That is a strangely worded headline.
I’m eating those darn cows as fast as I can!
I wonder how much methane is produced by wetlands? (swamp gas) I’ll bet it’s a bunch more than produced by livestock.
Around the time the bison were being killed off the Northeast was beingdeforested and the cleared land used for sheep farming; rivers were dammed for water power for textile mills. Lots of stone walls in New England, out in the woods now but they were once open fields full of methane producing sheep.
Youre right, there should have been a massive ecological effect from the bison, and later, the sheep and deforestation.
What makes you think they had no effect?
This issue at any given time is the total concentration of GHGs from all sources, the output from (for example) such animals is being being added to that from all other sources.
its all hot air
the first explorers in America reported seeing OCEANS of buffalo
I dont recall them reporting methane fogs
anyways,its just more hot air conversation
but the Bison population went from ~100 mill to almost zero.
My point is that while the source of methane might have changed from Bison toward domestic cattle - the raw numbers of animals that produced the methane hasn't changed .... so where's the beef?
Bison population falls from 100 mil to almost zero, while domestic cattle herd goes to 100 mill.
Eastern US forested area is greatly lessened durring the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries --- but now, the area of forest land in the eastern US is greater than it was in 1776.
95% of green house gases are water vapor. This is not surprising since the oceans cover 60% of the Earth’s surface. Any change in the other gases, such as methane and carbon dioxide, would be merely window dressing.
Probably, the methane production varied from some sort of "free range bison period baseline" as roaming bison were replaced with domesticated cattle.
Probably, this was not a one-to-one substitution at any particular point in time.
Probably, this had some (very small) effect on terrestrial temperature.
But what has this got to do with current conditions?
If AGW is happening, it's happening because we now have a substantial human contribution to the total concentrations of GHGs, which includes animal methane production was well as all other sources - we now have the "bison/cattle" contribution (and many other "natural" inputs) plus the release from human burning of fossil fuels.
I thought the cow farting was from feeding them stuff they’re not really built to eat — corn, newspaper, stuff like that. Do buffalo (or cows, FTM) fart or burp when they eat all grass?
I don’t know.
Funny pic. Those guys are brave to be trying
to heard those bison, one of those bad boys can
jump a 6` fence and are faster than you would believe.
Not to mention a generally bad disposition
Gotta go feed the cattle now, **** this drought.
A ruminant fed a high quality, easily digested diet burps less than the same animal fed a rougher, less digestible diet. (although overfeeding an animal at any stage of its life also causing excessive gas). A cow, or buffalo, out on the range eats a lot less digestible food than one more intensely managed. Yuppie tree huggers acts as if this were rocket science; it's not.
Okay I went googling. Never really thought about it before — I’d heard vaguely that cows were supposed to eat grass not corn. While that’s true, it’s not because of methane but for other reasons (cow health, antibiotic use, fat, etc). I guess they say the best thing for cows to eat to reduce.. emissions.. is alfalfa. Funny — that’s a legume — I would have expected beans to make cows fart more. Oh sweet mystery of life.
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