Courtesy Akron Beacon Journal
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A new study, and I wonder what the grant title was?
Indolent cows languidly chewing their cud while befuddled motorists honk and maneuver their vehicles around them are images as stereotypically Indian as saffron-clad holy men and the Taj Mahal. Now, however, India’s ubiquitous cows — of which there are 283 million, more than anywhere else in the world — have assumed a more menacing role as they become part of the climate change debate.
By burping, belching and excreting copious amounts of methane — a greenhouse gas that traps 20 times more heat than carbon dioxide — India’s livestock of roughly 485 million (including sheep and goats) contribute more to global warming than the vehicles they obstruct.
With new research suggesting that emission of methane by Indian livestock is higher than previously estimated, scientists are furiously working at designing diets to help bovines and other ruminants eat better, stay more energetic and secrete lesser amounts of the offensive gas.
So the emphasis for Indian scientists is on indigenous solutions. “We know we cannot count on high quality feed and fodder,” says Singhal, “No one will be able to afford it. What we have done instead is develop cheaper technologies and products.”
One example is urea-molasses-mineral blocks that are cheap, reduce methane emission by 20%, and also provide more nutrition so they’re easier to sell to illiterate farmers who don’t know a thing about global warming but want higher milk yields.
More greenhouse gas than the cars that wait on the cows? Good grief!
We’ve already got a bit of discussion going about this on cagematch. I’ll post my first comment from there here as well.
Whatever works … methane is a huge problem. Reducing it at the source is a good idea.
Some farmers have taken to collecting and burning it as fuel. They get free energy and the CO2 is less damaging as a greenhouse gas than the methane.
Note that this does not mean that digging methane out of the ground is a good idea. However, burning methane from land fills, sewage treatment plants, and cattle, all of which is emitted regardless, would help.
If they could just eat them the problem would be greatly reduced.
My fave:
http://tinyurl.com/cet3ud
[Ed. Thanks Eideard, I should have linked to that!]
I wonder how it compares to the NUMBER of humans and their OWN excrement and POLLUTION..
1000/1??
Every night the planet cools.
A new corporation is being formed in Wisconsin called “Derriere” to collect and distribute this resource.
Kill all the cows.
this stuff is ridiculous.
i cant believe scienstist actually
give stuff like the time of day.
if they’re so worried about GHG’s,
they should get rid of all the politicians.
they produce more noxious fumes than any other entity on the planet…
-s
Going after the animal that Hindus consider holy?
This is the country that actually burned down the mosque Muslims built on their holy place.
I guess we can shut down all the global warming conferences now.
Key sentence: “…so they’re easier to sell to illiterate farmers who don’t know a thing about global warming …”
Well in the battle against climate change we’re gonna have to be willing to sacrifice some sacred cows!
And nobody got the irony, that India’s sacred cows were threatening one of the West’s sacred cows. This whole scam of a notion that mankind greatly effects, and can therefor fix, the earth’s atmosphere. Except… there seem to be a planet fully of plants and animals screwing things up, just as much.
Some time ago, I remember reading how the world’s termites, generated large amounts of methane gas, from digesting dead plants. So what are we going to do to stop that, now? Call Terminix? And I’m sure cows aren’t the only large animals giving off methane. But horses are the sacred cows of the West. So we’re not about to reduce their numbers. Just as we’re not about to eliminate the “sport” of Auto Racing, to reduce carbon emissions. What hypocrites the media is for always protecting its own sacred cows, while condemning other’s.
Start enriching cow food with baking soda, problem solved.
Where’s the report about global warming caused by Vegan farts?
There must have been a terrible global warming problem before 1850. All those millions of bison roaming the American plain.
Buffalo Bill: Environmental Hero
This kind of stuff makes me laugh so hard I fart….
Fish oil in their diet
http://www.physorg.com/news157615993.html
Just tell convince them that the
dinosaur was the sacred animal;and chow up!
2nd try:
Just tell and convince them
that the dinosaur was the sacred animal;
and chow down.