Silence the Cows and Save the Planet

Time ^ | 20 mar 2011 | Jeffrey Kluger

[mandaladon]

Flatulent cows are not a laughing matter. (Pause.) OK, they are a laughing matter. And flatulent sheep and goats are almost as funny — though not to the chickens and pigs in the pen next door. But pull-my-hoof livestock are a problem too.

The emissions produced by nature's woodwind section contain a nasty mix of many gasses, among them methane. Though carbon dioxide is the first gas that comes to mind when we think of greenhouse emissions, pound for pound, methane is more than 20 times more powerful in terms of its global warming potential. Methane doesn't linger in the atmosphere quite as long as CO2, and it's not produced industrially in anywhere near the same quantity, but it does its damage all the same — and livestock toots out a surprisingly large share of it.

According to one Danish study, the average cow produces enough methane per year to do the same greenhouse damage as four tons of CO2. The average car, by contrast, produces just 2.7 tons. Multiply that by the planet's 1.5 billion cattle and buffalo and 1.8 billion smaller ruminants and you have the methane equivalent of two billion tons of CO2 per year. According to the U.K. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), livestock account for about 4.5% of all of the country's annual greenhouse gas emissions. Globally the figure is thought to be higher — about six percent.

[mandaladon]

We're going bankrupt and liberals are worried about farting cows?

[ArmstedFragg]

Do they make Beano in cow size?

[Russ]

I worry more about farting liberals. How much methane do they produce in a day??

[mandaladon]

Since nobody is going to re-engineer the ruminant digestive tract anytime soon, the solutions are limited: stop eating meat or at least eat other kinds. (A 2010 study from the Science and Environment section of the Library of the U.K.'s House of Commons reported that a pair of Australian biologists have recommended eating marsupials instead of livestock, since kangaroos and their kin produce almost no methane when they digest.) But there's one more answer too: reformulate the diet of the animals themselves. If you change what goes in, you should be able to change what comes out....libs will soon propose a tax on cow fart emissions or something similarly insane.

[Peter from Rutland]

I really want to swear loudly and profusely right now.

STOP FEEDING THEM CORN! COWS WERE NOT MEANT TO EAT CORN!

Cows eat grass whether its alive or dead. If they do that they will not fart.

THIS IS SO SIMPLE EVEN A TWO YEAR OLD CAN FIGURE IT OUT!

Thank you, I feel better now.

[Jack Hammer]

If the worst thing in the world these morons had to worry about were farting cows, they could consider themselves very, very lucky.

[GeronL]

These people are truly insane.

[Army Air Corps]

Ping.

[The Great RJ]

Imagine the size of dinosaur farts...now we have the answer why they died out. The dinosaurs were victims of their own flatulence which caused fatal climate change.

w To save the planet from a similar fate, we need a massive new government program to subsidize Beano for livestock herds and fund it with a flatulence tax on beans, sauerkraut, cauliflower, cabbage and other gas producing foods.

[Daveinyork]

So, we all stop eating meat, and so that we can get all the protein we need, we start eating beans and rice. Then, instead of livestock creating greenhouse gases.......

[therightliveswithus]

Where is this going to end?

[Brad from Tennessee]

Let’s not put all the blame on the Animal Kingdom. The human digestive process puts a variety of gases into the environment.

http://www.heptune.com/farts.html

[Nepeta]

This is irrational.

I wonder if the author wears leather shoes?

Or considered that the silage making process generates gasses?

Or reflected upon the population of wild herbivores on earth?

[Marty62]

In 2010, the U.N. proposed a global levy on livestock’s methane emissions, a measure that was promptly — and unavoidably — dubbed a fart tax in the press. A similar surcharge was proposed in the U.K. three years earlier, and farmers howled — though it’s arguable that this is one case in which the tax collector would dread an audit even more than the taxpayer.

Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/03/30/silence-the-cows-and-save-the-planet/#ixzz1IfiuNQSg

All insanity starts at the U.N.

All those third world cattle raisers are in for a shock.
But the obvious answer is that the British no longer want to be taken serious on ANY issue.

[mandaladon]

...Leave cows alone!

[McKayopectate]

But...corn is a form of grass.

[Bed_Zeppelin]

“These people are truly insane.”

Exactly!

[mandaladon]

....I bet these cows are very damaging to our environment!!!

[mandaladon]

All insanity starts at the U.N....I would say it starts in the liberals mind.

[unixfox]

Where is this going to end?

This too will be resolved during the next revolution.