Cows vs. Cars: Greenhouse Gases

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(HiLaker @ Jun 30 2007, 02:09 PM) [snapback]470679[/snapback]</div>

Add planes, trains, ships, trucks, heavy construction equipment and factories. Just to even the playing field a bit. I don't think comparing one cow to one car means a lot.

I was watching dirty jobs were a farmer was 'recycling' cow byproducts to produce more methane and it was being used for power. This is one very large advantage a cow has over a car. Perhaps we should be looking at utilizing the cow more.

If all of our cows were fed what they were designed to digest I.E. grass instead of corn, how much would that help? As for cows, I guess you'd also have to add sheep, goats, deer, elk, caribou, moose, etc.

If all of the cars were hybrids how much would that help? Of course they'd never be all hybrids. Once a large number were hybrids, those that were hybrid early adopters would most likely have already moved on to EVs.

 

I think a gallon of gas weighs less than 11 lbs :mellow: . How could it produce 20 lbs of CO2?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(HiLaker @ Jun 30 2007, 03:14 PM) [snapback]470697[/snapback]</div>

Yes. He did.

"A gallon of gasoline turns into 20 pounds of CO2. Average car drives 15,000 miles a year and gets 30 mpg (my estimates, might be a little high on the mpg estimate) 15,000 miles /30mpg = 500 gallons of gasoline a year * 20 pounds = 10,000 lbs of CO2 a year

A cow produces up to 90kg of methane a year. Methane is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide
90 kg * 2.2 lb/kg = 200 lbs of methane * 20 = 4,000 lbs of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases

A car emits 2.5 times as much greenhouse gases as a cow. "

There's your one car to one cow.

"There are 1.5 billion cows and buffalos (I am assuming that buffalos have similar methane outputs) (source from Eco-Economy using Amazon's search in book feature) and 532 million cars (same source different page). Using the 2.5 factor, cows emit 112% as much as the cars. This means cows have just as big an impact as cars and maybe even slightly more in terms of global warming."

Now he's just extrapolated by multiplying the number of cows and the number of cars using his math.

I also question the validity of comparing methane to CO2.

 

Hi All,

So what is the point? Are people going to be asked to stop eating beef so that SUV makers wont have to improve their vehicles? They are already asking us to pay more for milk!

 

I laugh in the face of the people who try to use this comparison to shoot down hybrid technology or any other new tchnology that increases efficiency.

People need to stop using reductionist cartesien thinking and realize there is no such thing as a "single most important problem". There are mutliple problems and they all have to be solved. Hybrids are a step towards one solution but are a far cry from a viable solution to our transportation problem. Does that mean the idea should be trashed because there are other problems that they cannot solve? Hardly. Hybrids won't solve our CO2 and/or air pollution problems but bashing them and condeming them while continuing to drive inefficent vehicles is worse.

One, could also try to compare the amount of cattle (or other domesticated food animal) and compare those numbers to estimated historic numbers of similar animals. Might they have been similar and had similar methane outputs? One helpfel thing about methane is that is is useful in industry and local household uses AND has a much shorter dwell time in the atmosphere than CO2 does. IE, it is easier to recover from mistakes with methane output than it is with CO2.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Jun 30 2007, 12:32 PM) [snapback]470686[/snapback]</div>

Cows are fed corn as part of a national program to support the price of corn. If cows were fed grass instead, the price of corn would fall, and the government would have to deal with a lot of angry farmers.

We need to quit raising animals for meat. They are a dreadful waste of resources.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ron Dupuy @ Jun 30 2007, 01:14 PM) [snapback]470696[/snapback]</div>

When you burn gas you are combining the carbon in the gasoline with oxygen from the air. Oxygen weighs a third more than Carbon, and there are two atoms of oxygen to one atom of carbon in CO2.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Jun 30 2007, 05:49 PM) [snapback]470765[/snapback]</div>

My point is would they fart less if they ate grass, their natural diet or corn, which is a problem for them. I'm guessing grass.

And if they ate grass then it would pay to grow grass. And grass sequesters more carbon than corn does.

If the corn goes to make biodiesel (won't get into the politics of that) then maybe it would pay to grow grass and feed them grass. Maybe my milk and cheese would taste better then. I've yet to try a grass-fed steak but I'm going to just to see if there is a difference I can detect. Iowa Meat Farms stocks both grass fed beef and free range poultry.

I tried vegetarian for a while and couldn't stick with it. But my intake of meat, especially red meat is way below the average American.

 

The larger problem is where the carbon COMES from.

Cows eat grass. The carbon and other material in these grasses came from the soil. Once its belched out other plants and bacteria "fix" it and convert it back to a usable form. The next amount of greenhouse gases doesn't change all that much.

Burning oil, on the other hand, releases carbon that's been buried for hundreds of millions of years. There aren't enough carbon-fixers around to handle the extra carbon, so it sticks around in the atmosphere.