Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown has just signed a law to require dairy farmers to reduce bovine methane emissions.
California targets dairy cows to combat global warming
GALT, Calif. – California is taking its fight against global warming to the farm.
The nation’s leading agricultural state is now targeting greenhouse gases produced by dairy cows and other livestock.
Despite strong opposition from farmers, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation in September that for the first time regulates heat-trapping gases from livestock operations and landfills.
Cattle and other farm animals are major sources of methane, a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide as a heat-trapping gas. Methane is released when they belch, pass gas and make manure.
“If we can reduce emissions of methane, we can really help to slow global warming,” said Ryan McCarthy, a science adviser for the California Air Resources Board, which is drawing up rules to implement the new law.
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In the nation’s largest milk-producing state, the new law aims to reduce methane emissions from dairies and livestock operations to 40 percent below 2013 levels by 2030, McCarthy said. State officials are developing the regulations, which take effect in 2024.
“We expect that this package … and everything we’re doing on climate, does show an effective model forward for others,” McCarthy said.
Dairy farmers say the new regulations will drive up costs when they’re already struggling with five years of drought, low milk prices and rising labor costs. They’re also concerned about a newly signed law that will boost overtime pay for farmworkers.
“It just makes it more challenging. We’re continuing to lose dairies. Dairies are moving out of state to places where these costs don’t exist,” said Paul Sousa, director of environmental services for Western United Dairymen.
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Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/29/california-targets-dairy-cows-to-combat-global-warming.html
The number of Californian people and businesses fleeing overregulation and high costs reached a record high last year. I doubt the new cow fart law will do anything to reassure people who haven’t yet joined the great Californian exodus.
Then when milk prices skyrocket they’ll say it’s unnatural for babies to be drinking cow milk anyway. http://laist.com/2007/05/10/vegan_parents_get_life_sentence_for_babys_death.php
Ooops! Here is the news link I meant to paste – http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/opinion/21planck.html
Farming is a legacy industry anyway and not in favor with the urban elite.
I propose a new nickname for Jerry Brown: Cow Fart.
Bovine emissions are NOTHING compared to termites. Give me a supertanker of Chlorodane and I will give you an ice age ;).
Yeah, with apologies to the late Dr John Martin aka Dr Iron Seed. And I know methane isn’t an issue.
Excellent news for my Wisconsin dairy farm. The reason that California produces more milk than any other state despitenthe fact thatnits 5.5 million acres of alfalfa fodder is the single largest agricultural water user during a drought is simple. Federal milk proce supports are a direct function of distance from Madison Wisconsin. California is the farthst away and gets the highest price supports.
Please do not tell me your run your dairy farm.
I actually like how the linked news article keeps referring to it as California’s fight against “global warming” rather than the meaningless “climate change.”
The sooner we eliminate this unscientific term the better. I’m tired of how with every use, the catch-all phrase “climate change” makes the science illiterate think that any change in the weather is man made.
Simple & cheap solution: shove politician heads up every cows ass! Methane problem gone, & no more extraneous CO2 emissions from Sacramento! Win, Win!
I can’t wait until we regulate emissions from Moonbeam’s mouth, forget about his own butt
Tiny electronic igniters attached to every cow tail is my suggestion. Sorta like this:
https://youtu.be/DcNVcRK4F4g
Reminded me of the Seinfeld episode of what happened after Kramer had been feeding Beefaroni to Rusty the carriage horse.
Was waiting for methane to get targeted. The real sacred cow they don’t want to debate is the methane from tobacco smoke which dwarfs cow facts by comparison. Wonder why they aren’t going after the tobacco industry?
Calif had better watch out. It’s usual political chess game plan of offloading regulatory economic burden onto the rest of the country is not working at present. It really is a separate country in that regard, a noncompetitive one at that.
It’s highly competitive, what are you talking about? Where do at least 50% of new companies in the tech sector originate? The Silicon Valley.
California, the Rickettsy State. Sheesh and I thought South Oz was bad.
I believe, as Anthony Watts said before, this about the persuit of money.
“In the nation’s largest milk-producing state, the new law aims to reduce methane emissions from dairies and livestock operations to 40 percent below 2013 levels by 2030”
Cows face into the wind to urinate. These people aren’t.
Horses and people fart. Cows and sheep don’t.
Give them enough rope and they will hang themselves
Not content with having the highest price for Gasoline, and Electricity, they now have to have the highest price for milk as well. Probably will not be a problem for the people left living there, they will be paying with other people’s money anyway (EBT)!
Wonder which farmer will be the first to try the “species fluid” method of re-defining what a cow is. Or is gender the only thing fluid about nature?
I made a mistake and owe Anthony an apology. The remark came from Martin Armstrong (Armstrong Economics).
With enough hormones applied to the problem, this law could be seen as an assault on transgender cows.
The Farts of Wrath is a good book don’t you know.
Another stab at the heart of the remains of the middle class in CA. Two bags of groceries cost us $138.00 the other day here in lala land. This kind of stupid over-regulation is driving food costs through the stratosphere. With the cost of food, real estate, gas and electricity, you can’t live here unless you’re rich or on the government’s tab.
And when they’ve destroyed this industry, they’ll move on to the next one.
It’s what they do. It’s ALL they do.
Make that the Grapes of RIF when all of the RIFed EPA and NASA Climate Division workers head to California for jobs after the layoffs.
Typical Californian arrogance of their politicians. Believing that one small state, in a huge country, but small compared to the world, can make any difference in the earth’s atmosphere. The hubris is disgusting.
If “California Dreamin” regulations were aimed more at eliminating BS than hot air, we’d all be better off.
“But the biggest target is dairy manure, which accounts for about a quarter of the state’s methane emissions.
Congrats to RovingBroker and Bruce C. Out of over 200 comments, two posters demonstrated they were not completely stupid.
There is a solution to animal waste. In nature, bacteria break down organic waste so plants can use the mineral form for fertilizer.
However, if you concentrate too many stupid animals in one place it is very dangerous and smells terrible. Cities are where you will find most of the stupid animals on the planet.
Not all people are stupid. Some of us are engineers and we learn about science and use it to solve the problems stupid create. With the help of indoor plumbing and sewer system, the human waste is collected so that bacteria can process poop into a safe to release to the environment form.
This is not an easy task. Everyone in the area know when the system fails. It smells really bad and your eyes water.
The same science can be applied dairy farms and other concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO). All CAFOs are required by federal law to have a manure management plan to account for all the nutrients in manure.
Polluting water is regulated but ‘odot’ is not. That really bad smell that causes your eyes to water is fertilizer blowing off dairy farms.
Put the manure in an Anaerobic Digester and 90% of the nitrogen and 100% of the phosphates are captured and converted to compost. Compost reduces wind and water erosions for farmers. It also reduces the amount of chemical fertilizer needed.
Biogas can be used to make electricity or flared. The bottom line is that there is a huge environmental improvement which has nothing to do with the climate issue.
and if you use aerobic digestion, there isn’t that pungent sewage smell the gender fluid find so erotic.
Biogas smells bad and is toxic until it is burned.
When a waste water treatment plant smells bad it is often caused an aerobic process being overloaded using using up all the oxygen. When it goes ‘anaerobic’, it smells bad.
A fundamental difference between ‘aerobic’ process ‘anaerobic’ is the electric power required to pump air into the sewage. This is why most waste water treatment facilities use both types of bacteria treatment.
Many dairy farms produce a aerobic compost using a tractor to turn the pile.
sorry, i missed the chance to make a pun on the effluent urban community…