Helping The Environment
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Or we could all become vegesaurs …
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Why does your comment not surprise me???!?
Keep preachin’, brother! Keep preachin’!
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For someone who respects spiders you would hardly expect anything less from me regarding cows, now would you?
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Reading the article did put me in mind of modifying cigarettes to make them only half as likely to cause cancer. Yes, it would be beneficial if we could do it, but there’s no substitute for quitting smoking.
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and human nature being what it is, most folks would just smoke twice as much…
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Hello Ark. I got a notice on my phone while I was getting my allergy shots that vegetarian alternatives for meat were maybe not healthy for humans. I did not get a chance to read it yet. Have you seen anything like this lately? Have you tried this “impossible burger” meat alternative? I have heard good things about it and I am thinking of ordering some off Amazon. Here where I live you can not get decent alternatives, you have to order them and have the shipped. Hugs
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Nope. Was it sent from a franchise of butchers by any chance?
I usually eat Fry’s or quorn.
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Hello Ark. Not sure, I have not had a chance yet to go back through my notices and look it up. I get so many news notices I can only read about a 3rd of them a day. Normally if it is something real / important then other news agencies pick it up and I get multiple notices, which I did not with this one. Hugs
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or, as some scientists have realized, trees are possibly the answer, since they take in CO2 and exhale Oxygen. If we could stop deforesting everything in sight, it would go a long way to help, and be a lot quicker than breeding sweeter cows. and yeah, vegetarians help too.
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Oh my, Judy! Doncha’ know? We have to cut down the trees to build houses for the increasing population!
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I have a huge problem with this. No one knows what the effect on the environment will be one hundred years from now, or 1000. Humans love playing god, changing nature at every turn. It is much easier to change humans than it is to change nature. We may think we understand the forces of nature, but we are kidding ourselves. Look at all the problems we have already caused. Where are all the bees? What is going to happen to all the plants bees pollinate?Scientists are not gods, they cannot predict all the outcomes of the changes they want to make. I will make one prediction, and I know it will come true. One change is going to affect our planet in ways we will regret as long as we survive. We can make all the good changes we want. It will only take one bad one to destroy our world.
Chances are we already made it!
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It isn’t just bees that pollinate plants, any small insect rooting around in a flower will pick up pollen and transfer it. Butterflies, carpenter bees, even ants and hummingbirds…
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True, Judy, but I was using the bees as an exsmple or symbol of all those little guys. This is July, and I have seen but one bee in the yard I am responsible for this year, and no butterflies or wasps. Hardly even any mosquitoes, and they are generally ubiquitous. The yard Is but a small bit of the land around me, but it is representative of the world. Insects are disappearing, which should be impossible.
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no, they will never cease. instead of addressing our own consumption and resource exploitation, we want to change cows
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Cows and other livestock have already been changed by humans over millennia of selective breeding. When, as in the case of Aotearoa New Zealand, the entire economy is based around agricultural exports, especially meat wool and dairy, we have no option but to drastically reduce the production of methane per animal. Changing a nation’s source of income and its associated commercial and social infrastructure, cannot be completed overnight without major social upheaval and draconian intervention by government, so in the short term we’re stuck with an economy based on livestock production.
If we’re to meet our commitments on reducing the emission of greenhouse gases, we must either cull our livestock population by tens of millions of animals (can you imagine the uproar animal rights activist would create over that) or find ways of reducing their methane and nitrous oxide emissions. About 43 per cent of New Zealand’s greenhouse gases are caused by methane and 11 per cent by nitrous oxide.
I’m sure we will be able to develop alternative forms of income other than livestock production if the need arises, but given our geographic isolation, and the distance from potential markets, we need to produce products for which customers are prepared to pay a significant premium over the normal price. That type of market takes decades to develop even if we know what might be viable alternatives to livestock.
Short term (I’m thinking 25 – 50 years) reducing the methane emissions each animal produces is more achievable. Whether it will be through selective breeding, change of livestock diet, change in the gut flora, a vaccination, or something else is yet to be determined, but a number of research projects appear promising. Unless we change our attitude towards genetic modification technology, that option that will remain off the table.
When you realise that, per capita, we export twice as much as America, and most of that is based on agriculture, you’ll understand that bovine burping is a serious topic in this part of the world.
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Hello Barry, nice to see you.
You make a great point.
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I wondered if anyone had noticed my absence 🙂
I’ve had a continuous low level (pain wise) migraine for weeks that has kept me in in a dense brain fog. Not conducive to anything other than very basic dialog consisting of single word grunts.
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Yes, your absence is very easily noticeable.
You are always getting punches from both sides- theists and atheists alike😀😀
I hope you are feeling much better now
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I’m on the mend 🙂
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Get better my friend
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Cows and other livestock have already been changed by humans over millennia of selective breeding.
True. Most domesticated animals have been changed dramatically from their natural ancestors — especially the most popular one, the dog. Domesticated animals are already more human artifacts than products of nature. Most of them could hardly survive outside the systems humans have built to exploit them. So it doesn’t make much sense to object to yet further modifications of things which are already the product of massive human modification over millennia.
More broadly, the option of “just leaving nature alone” expired a long time ago. We’ve already changed the world far too much for that. We are controlling this planet now. We can control it wisely or stupidly or negligently, but we can’t stop controlling it. The very concept doesn’t meaningfully exist any more.
We can’t feed eight billion people by going back to nature, much less accommodate the aspirations of people in underdeveloped countries for a decent material standard of living. Doing that sustainably is going to take more technology and innovation, not less.
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Snort.
Can we genetically engineer fundies to halve their output of bullshit?
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Just like human beings, blame the cows. Hey, we all exhale CO2, which is an enormous amount on a yearly basis. Why not breed people to exhale less CO2 (plus our farts contain methane and hydrogen, which makes them quite flammable, ask any proctologist).
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Or ask any beer swilling teen with a Bic lighter and penchant for showmanship to demonstrate 😉
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=blue%20flame
As a young teen growing up in the seventies, I was at a friends house one night, there was weed in the air, and some beer in the cooler, and one of the guys decided to demonstrate, it was freaking hilarious but I suppose you had to be there…
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This should be done with some caution.
All those cows must be potential organic flamethrowers. The defense department should be researching their military potential.
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Hello Infidel. Wow that poor cat. I hope he got up and quickly put out the fire. Some people do not have the brains evolution gave to gophers. Hugs
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I’m sorry, I laughed at that wayyy more than I should have. For the record I love cats and have served many.
Umm, having actually seen farts lit up in person, they don’t look anything like that 😉 I’m pretty sure it was a manufactured video. They don’t call it a “blue flame” for nuttin.
Of course I don’t know what that guy may have had for lunch…
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For the record I love cats and have served many.
“To Serve Cat”?
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You know, the moment I hit send on that I just knew it could be interpreted in that way 😜
Anyone who has ever been owned by a cat knows what I meant😎
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I agree. One of the loveliest symbiotic relationships is between man/animals and vegetation. The more trees, the more plants we have around us, the happier we all are. We exhale Co2, plants need it to grow and flourish, and they give back Oxygen. so…green is good. Breathe deeply when you pass a tree.
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I wonder if the solution will work on flatulent humans? Possibly only on vegetarian ones.
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While methane is a more powerful greenhouse gases and having methane build up in the atmosphere is a concern, cows are only a small contributor of methane overall. My understand that most of the greenhouse effect enhancement from livestock has more to do with transportation over the methane release by cows.
In general, I’m all for any measure could help, but as mak says there are bigger steps we can take to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and we did those, we won’t need to further engineer the cow.
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Hello Nan. The idea to breed cattle that are less harmful to the environment is less cringe inducing than this alternative. Warning not for the faint of heart. I seen this several years ago and they say that once the cow heals it is painless. Not sure I would want one on my stomach. Hugs
https://www.quora.com/How-come-cannulating-a-cow-doesnt-hurt-the-cow
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Ahhhh … the wonders of science. (Ick!)
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