Sometimes, you really don’t need to make up an April Fools joke. Truth can indeed be stranger than fiction, except for the part about “four gallons” which is part of the original Telegraph article 😉 – Anthony
From the Telegraph UK, by Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Fish oils reduce greenhouse emissions from ‘flatulent cows’
Cows which are fed omega 3 fatty acids belch out less greenhouse gases that cause climate change, according to scientists.
Cattle produce large amounts of methane as they digest their food and then belch out most of it through their mouths.
A herd of 200 cows can produce annual emissions of methane roughly equivalent in energy terms to driving a family car more than 100,000 miles (180,000km) on more than four gallons (21,400 litres) of petrol.
The omega 3 fatty acids found in fish oils can also help the heart and circulatory system and improve meat quality.
Speaking at the Society for General Microbiology meeting in Harrogate, Dr Lorraine Lillis, one of the researchers, said the study could help the agriculture industry cut emissions.
She said: “The fish oil affects the methane-producing bacteria in the rumen part of the cow’s gut, leading to reduced emissions.
“Understanding which microbial species are particularly influenced by changes in diet and relating them to methane production could bring about a more targeted approach to reducing methane emissions in animals.”
The UK is committed to cutting greenhouse gases by 80 per cent by 2050.
More than a third of all methane emissions in the UK is produced by farm animals. By volume, methane is 20 times more powerful at trapping solar energy than carbon dioxide making it a potent greenhouse gas.
Jonathan Scurlock, an adviser at the National Farmers Union, said farmers were willing to modify feed in order to reduce emissions but at the moment there are few affordable options on the market and he encouraged more research into the area.
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“A herd of 200 cows can produce annual emissions of methane roughly equivalent in energy terms to driving a family car more than 100,000 miles (180,000km) on more than four gallons (21,400 litres) of petrol.”
Talk about cow power economy. But at 25,000 miles per gallon !!!… I want one of those cars.
Here’s a real April Fool: http://www.planningresource.co.uk/bulletins/Planning-Resource-Daily-Bulletin/News/895152/Plans-submitted-Parliament-wind-turbine/?DCMP=EMC-DailyBulletin . Or is it?
It’s a set-up.
Now we’re saved from global warming, we’re all going to die from new, new variant Creutzveldt Jakob disease from fish !!
Hell, if methane gives you that kind of fuel economy, lets stuff hoses up their butts and collect the stuff!!!
There are almost 4 liters per gallon, so that’s probably where the “four gallons” comes from (mistakenly). It works out to around 5500 gallons for 21,400 litres (Brit spell).
But, since that works out to only about 18 mpg (Brits have much smaller cars than we do – 1/2 the size of my Camry which gets 30), it still doesn’t make sense.
April Fools?
Typical of the Telegraph, when it comes to maths they are absolutely useless. Conversion from centigrade to Fahrenheit makes something freezing cold into something scolding hot. Now 4 gallons is equivalent to 21,400 liters. These people are supposed to educate us. No wonder I have this feeling of loosing the will to live.
Ok so we are talking about adding two per cent of fish oil to the animal’s feed.
2 per cent of 700 million metric tons totat global feed = 14 million metric tons of fish oil?
http://english.chinafeed.org.cn/main_itemdetail_en.php?column_id=152&item_id=5349
(yes i know that number is for total feed… not just for cows but everything farts)
The global production of fish oil is estimate is about 570 000 tonnes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_oil
Sounds to me like sombody is in the fish oil buisness…. mandating fish oil use would drive up cost quite a bit.
Why don’t they use those instead;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UyTKue8qD0
Watch for the commercial (subsidized) fishing industry to step up to the plate on this one. Subsidies or transfer payments drive most government action. Transfer payments and rent seekers (see Gordon Tullock’s work) are part of a self organizing system. Feeding fish meal to cows would involve 3 sets of rent seekers- the subsidized dairy industry, the subsidized commercial fishing industry and the increasingly subsidized green power.
This research makes “perfect sense” once one understands the incentives- global warming initiatives are driving new sources of transfer payments- every other subsidized interest that understands how this system works will organize to benefit from this new flow of money by adapting to the “sensitive conditions” of the global warming crisis. A GW Univ. prof (forgot his name) summarized it simply “If you are not at the table you are on the menu”
Economics has failed to incorporate many of the advances in science (especially psychology) but it is also true that science fails to appreciate the advances in economic understanding. Science as a result often fails to understand its own workings.
Fish oil it is already contained in cattles´feed (in fishmeal used in it). These kind of research, papers or whatever are frankly preposterous. Let me tell you, for a foreigner like me, this seems like worries the king of France´s cortesans had.
Come on! These things seem plainly nightmarish!. Wake up to reality and send all those mads to the asylum.
This is April Fools right?
REPLY: Sadly, no. – Anthony
That one is even better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4gK3RRtCHw&feature=related
A herd of 200 cows can produce annual emissions of methane roughly equivalent in energy terms to driving a family car more than 100,000 miles (180,000km) on more than four gallons (21,400 litres) of petrol
What exactly does that mean? What is the energy equivalent of 25,000 mpg? The units don’t make any sense for one and secondly what does an energy equivalent have to do with methane production? At best, mpg is an efficiency measure.
Maybe the whole article is a tongue-in-cheek APR 01 Joke?
More than a third of all methane emissions in the UK is produced by farm animals. By volume, methane is 20 times more powerful at trapping solar energy than carbon dioxide making it a potent greenhouse gas.
Must have been why there was a MWP. It was caused by the methane produced by the agri-economy of the middle ages.
It would be interesting to see the ratio of carbon stored vs carbon emissions from cows.
But also, the source of the carbon (from methane burps) is organic. It has an almost zero addition since it was first stored in the cow food in the first place, from plants that grew by capturing and storing CO2 from the atmosphere. So what is all the big fuss about? It’s not like we are fueling our cows with petrolium or coal! Is Hansen behind this?
I’d have to wonder about the economics of this. 2% of a cow’s daily ration is still an awful lot of fish oil, which is not that cheap. It would probably cost more than the other 98% of the food. Also, to do it across the entire agricultural industry would mean vastly increasing fish oil supplies, which given the perilous state of most fish populations would probably raise many reasonable objections. All in all, i’d say, another case of AGW grant money down the rat hole.
How funny. A couple of years ago our previous Government here in NZ attempted to introduce an animal fart tax. How it was going to be implemented and how the tax collectors were going to ensure compliance was never clearly identified.
The farmers naturally revolted and gradually the odorous idea dispersed and disappeared.
Per Dave Wendt (14:34:32) :
Gordon Tullock’s Rent Seeking model describes quite well how these “rat holes” are formed
We’ll never know what that cow tastes like ’cause it’s too fast to catch.
Someone must have stolen my idea for a cow-alytic converter to convert the methane CH4 to less troublesome CO2 and H20. My first designs were quite simple and involved a small flame source and……
100,000 miles = 160,950 km
4 UK Gallons = 18.18 l
4 US Gallons = 15.14 l
Why not put the cow on your pick up trucks bed and run a hose directly to the carburettor.
And here I thought, from all the stories, that it was Americans who were significantly ‘math challenged.’
The whole AGW delusional fantasy is an overwrought April Fools joke that has long outworn its welcome.
There are several deficiencies in this story, as pointed out already, but the most serious is the absence of comment on the effects on the bovine digestive system.
How, exactly, does the fish oil “affect” the methane-producing bacteria in the rumen, “leading to reduced emissions,” and, especially, what other effects does it have?
Does it reduce the nutrition to the cattle beast and if so by how much? It may be that, to produce the accustomed quantities of milk or meat, more feed must be supplied, leading to emissions being restored to the same level as before, or higher. Does it lead to some deficiency?
The reason the bacteria are even present in the rumen is to complete the digestive process — hardly a minor matter. There will be consequences of interference.
The future is here: click
How many more years will it be when you say ‘where’s the beef?’ and people ask ‘what’s beef’?
Seriously, the zealots want to take away our red meat. They don’t want us to have the freedom to decide for ourselves what is good for us. They are coming up with every excuse under the sun in order to ban meat.
Do you know people who eat a moderate meat diet get less colon cancer than vegetarian? Meat is part of a balance diet. Why do we have incisors and canines (teeth) if not to eat meat? If man were made to live on vegetables alone, he’d have teeth like a cow.
Do you know what really produces a lot of methane? Wetlands. We’ve been working to restore wetlands in this country for decades. Maybe we should be draining them instead? Save the planet, drain the wetlands.
I think it should have been 4000 gallons instead of 4. And Imperial gallons at that.
European dairy farming uses a lot of extra grain in the cows diet.
“Grass only” feeding is known to produce less methane (CH4) so feeding fish oil to pasture fed animals may not have the same result in reducing methane production.
Also you should note the caculations take no account of the fact that the carbon in the methane originally came from the CO2 in the atmosphere. For every molecule of CH4 produced, a molecole of CO2 needs to have been removed from the atmosphere.
Given that in any given time period (if livestock numbers remain constant) the amount of CH4 entering the atmosphere from livestock must necessarily equal the amount that breaks down to CO2. Livestock therefore have no net effect on either CH4 or CO2 in the atmosphere.