From the USDA, via Eurekalert. The goal was quantifying the moo. Next step, regulation. Hello $10/gallon milk.
In the first detailed study on emissions from large-scale dairies, ARS researchers found that a commercial dairy with 10,000 milk cows generated an average of 3,575 pounds of ammonia, 33,092 pounds of methane, and 409 pounds of nitrous oxide every day>
How Dairy Farms Contribute to Greenhouse Gas Emissions
By Ann Perry
July 19, 2011
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists have produced the first detailed data on how large-scale dairy facilities contribute to the emission of greenhouse gases. This research was conducted by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists at the ARS Northwest Irrigation and Soils Research Laboratory in Kimberly, Idaho.
ARS is USDA’s principal intramural scientific research agency, and these studies support the USDA priority of responding to climate change.
ARS soil scientist April Leytem led the year-long project, which involved monitoring the emissions of ammonia, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide from a commercial dairy with 10,000 milk cows in southern Idaho. The facility had 20 open-lot pens, two milking parlors, a hospital barn, a maternity barn, a manure solid separator, a 25-acre wastewater storage pond and a 25-acre compost yard.
Concentration data was collected continuously for two to three days each month, along with air temperature, barometric pressure, wind direction and wind speed. After this data was collected, Leytem’s team calculated the average daily emissions for each source area for each month.
The results indicated that, on average, the facility generated 3,575 pounds of ammonia, 33,092 pounds of methane and 409 pounds of nitrous oxide every day. The open lot areas generated 78 percent of the facility’s ammonia, 57 percent of its nitrous oxide and 74 percent of the facility’s methane emissions during the spring.
In general, the emission of ammonia and nitrous oxide from the open lots were lower during the late evening and early morning, and then increased throughout the day to peak late in the day. These daily fluctuations paralleled patterns in wind speed, air temperature and livestock activity, all of which generally increased during the day. Emissions of ammonia and methane from the wastewater pond and the compost were also lower in the late evening and early morning and increased during the day.
Results from the study were published in the Journal of Environmental Quality.
Read more about this work in the July 2011 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/onlcourse/chm110/outlines/nitrogencycle.html
“The results indicated that, on average, the facility generated 3,575 pounds of ammonia, 33,092 pounds of methane and 409 pounds of nitrous oxide every day. The open lot areas generated 78 percent of the facility’s ammonia, 57 percent of its nitrous oxide and 74 percent of the facility’s methane emissions during the spring.”
I was riding my bike in the country today long before sunrise and watched the soybeans that looked very fine after a recent rain and steady 100 degree temps.
The link shows the NO2 N and amonia cycle and the soil nitrogen fixation cycle of soybeans.
The dairy farm spreads liquids which may have concentration of ammonia. This a nature biocycle.
Mark Reau,
Thanks for your explanation. If it was up to me, I’d eliminate all taxpayer subsidies on everything; solar, gas, religion, rents, banks, non-profits, windmills, mass transit, etc., etc. The free market always provides what is necessary and/or in demand, at the lowest net price. Subsidies are just a hidden cost that special interests benefit from at the expense of the entire taxpaying public.
[/rant]
We should eliminate all meat and animal products. Beans produce hardly any… oh, wait!
Best,
Frank
This seems like quack science. How is the methane produced when vegetation is digested by bacteria in an animal’s gut any different from methane produced when vegetation dies and is digested by bacteria in rotting?
From Claude Harvey on July 19, 2011 at 9:29 am:
Hey now, you’re ripping off my intellectual property rights! I suggested “pilot lights” back here, also mentioned here. Converting it to “jaw-powered, piezoelectric igniters” does not make it “new and innovative”!
And “stern-mounted, turbo-expander/generators” just sounds silly. How can you get a tight-enough gas seal for the efficiency that accommodates the quick release of the “solid product” before it mucks up the works? You’d need a Stirling-type generator that allows for an open-air heat source. Really, you need to completely think such innovations through if you want that research grant money!
It is actually about no-bodies becoming relevant. They are lower down the food chain in the fame & funding hierachy. This increases their chances of a big cheque.
Besides, how cam Morrie Strong and gang get rid of 6 billion people without an invented calamity??
regards
Considering how much hay and fodder and other greenery that does not rot, decompose, and otherwise release methane, cows are just recycling to make meat and milk out of grass that would otherwise just release the methane as the grass pleased without due consideration for the rest of us, excepting hippies without weed.
Coldfinger says:
July 19, 2011 at 2:23 pm
This seems like quack science.
Soooo, quack science = quack tax. Sounds like a duck to me.
It seems that we can’t stop grass growing. If a ruminant eats it, methane is pretty much guaranteed to result. Certain camps would much prefer us all to become vegetarian, but we know what effect that kind of diet has on the human digestive system.
Well if they are going to tax cattle, I am going to lobby for a tax on termites, which globally are estimated to produce 20 million tonnes of methane per year. http://www.ghgonline.org/methanetermite.htm I wonder if WWF would care to pay it – after all termites are wildlife.
The other issue is that Methane levels in the atmosphere will soon stabilize.
Barrow Alaska which has more-or-less the highest numbers in the world and leads the trends over the rest of the planet – current numbers are below last year at this time but there was bump in the last few years.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/iadv/graph/brw/brw_ch4_ts_obs_00011.png
So, Cows did not cause the increase in global Methane levels and are contributing Zero to the roughly Zero change in Methane levels.
It is/was escaping natural gas (which is roughly 98% Methane) from the oil and gas industry. As natural gas become more valuable, more and more of the leaks were plugged and they didn’t just let it escape into the atmosphere and/or incompletely burn it. [The new natural gas sources from shale fracking will probably make natural gas so inexpensive again, the industry might just start letting “accidents” happen again but that is for another day]
This explanation fits the data better than ruminant numbers or rice paddies or permafrost etc.
@smokey : re oil subsidies
“For those seeking to sort out the definitions of the terms being used, the American Petroleum Institute has published a new paper doing just that.
Contrary to what some in politics and the media have said, the oil and natural gas industry currently enjoys no unique tax credits or deductions. Since its inception, the US tax code has allowed corporate tax payers the ability to recover costs and to be taxed only on net income. These cost recovery mechanisms, also known in policy circles as “tax expenditures”, should in no way be confused with “subsidies”, i.e., direct government spending.
Here are a few of the items which are being incorrectly identified as “subsidies” inside the beltway:
Intangible Drilling Costs – Companies which engage purely in energy exploration and discovery can recover their costs related to exploration at tax time at a rate of 100%. This lessens the burden on energy providers for the number of “dry holes” which may be found in the process. Integrated companies (i.e. “big oil”) can recover these exploration costs at 70%. Not a subsidy.
Domestic Manufacturer’s Deduction (Section 199) – A deduction (not a credit) equal to 9% of income earned from manufacturing, producing, growing or extracting in the United States, is available to every single taxpayer who qualifies in the U.S. The oil and gas industry, and only the oil and gas industry, is limited to a 6% deduction.
Percentage Depletion – The percentage depletion deduction is a cost recovery method that allows taxpayers to recover their lease investment in a mineral interest through a percentage of gross income from a well. This depletion method is not available to companies that produce oil as well as refine and market it (i.e. “Big Oil”.) This is available to all extractive industries (gold, iron, clay, etc) in the US and is in no way unique to the oil and gas industry.”
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/05/03/oil-company-subsidies-clarified/
Jim G says
These people all want to starve in the dark if they don’t freeze to death first.
No, they want YOU to starve and freeze. Killing people, or at least torturing them, is their real aim.
Stumpy says:
And mow much co2 do the cows and their food crop “sequest” during the cows lifetime? Probably the same amount making it neutral, as the cycle uses current co2, the cow farts are not fuelled by fossil fuels that are not part of the current co2 cycle.
Oh yes, they do come from fossil fuels, as CO2 causes grass to fluorish, which then feeds the cow. Similar results could be obtained for endangered beasties, given the right research. This is why it is MURDER to panic about CO2, and why I say these lunatic greens are the worst thing there is for the environment.
Gary Mount,
Thank you for making that distinction. I agree that normal business expenditures should be deductible against profits. It is the government’s subsidizing of favored businesses [GM, etc.], and the tax-free status of many overtly political “charitable” trusts and similar Watermelon organizations like the WWF, Media Matters and Greenpeace that I object to.
juanslayton says:
July 19, 2011 at 12:47 pm
Annecdotal evidence is insufficient. See:
http://www.cggc.duke.edu/environment/valuechainanalysis/CGGC_BeefDairyReport_2-16-09.pdf
“Dairy beef,” enters the U.S. beef industry value chain laterally, from the
dairy industry. A portion of the U.S. beef industry is made up of dairy beef that comes from
cows culled from dairy herds because, for age or other reasons, they are not productive for
dairy purposes. An estimated 18% of total beef and veal production originates from dairy
cattle (Mathews, 2008). The meat from culled dairy cows is primarily processed into ground
beef for fast food hamburgers or supermarket retail.
Dang I wish I could go back and edit that.
Where is the global warmers’ graph with the squiggly lines and a straight line sloping upwards?
Man feeds cow. Man drinks white cow product, eats cow meat product and drives to the grocery store to get it. It’s all man’s fault!
Hoser says: Dang I wish I could go back and edit that.
No need to. I stand corrected. But the Holstein went to the dogs.
These globocrat policy makers are going to force us to live the way they want by making things they disapprove of more expensive for us.
Environmentalists think they are so smart, but they named a golf cart a “Smart Car” how smart is that?
I already pay $10 a gallon for cow’s milk.
What I find ludicrous about these studies blaming Methane from cows (farts) for Global warming. or any other animal or human farts for that matter. Have they measured how for the methane gas goes once its been released from a cows behind? Its highy unlikely methane from a cow is going to get into the right up into the atmosphere to cause any alleged AGW/CC problem anyway?. I don’t see cows going around with large chimneys attached to their behinds. So I say again its ludicrous. And of course the grass carbon cycle is an offset anyway.
We have exactly the same problem with this rubbish here in NZ and dairy farming. Faux science at its worst IMHO!
What the bed wetters fail to realise is that we are all “big industry”. Where do they think all the stuff they consume comes from? Where do they think that most people work?
Paul Deacon;
And surely most male calves are raised for meat and slaughtered young (except for the studs)?>>>
Nope, they get their kahonies removed. That’s what a “steer” is.
As far as I can tell, pretty much every source of food there is produces GHG’s.
And GHG’s lead to a warmer planet.
Which will result in less food and mass starvation.
So obviously, the thing to do is stop producing food.
Wait a sec….
Let me go through this logic again, I’m missing something here….