Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Wired, a new bovine burp mask fitted with a catalytic converter catches methane expelled from cattle and converts it to CO2 and water. Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.
This burp-catching mask for cows could slow down climate change
Methane from cattle accounts for a significant amount of global warming – startup Zelp has a comfortable and stylish solution
By ANNA MARKS
Friday 1 January 2021There are 1.6 billion cattle on Earth, and their burps and farts are becoming a big problem. Cows expel methane, a colourless and odourless gas which is approximately 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to warming the planet.
…
Zelp, a UK-based company, has developed a potential solution in the form of a burp-catching face mask for cows, designed to reduce methane emissions from cattle by 60 per cent. The firm was founded by brothers Francisco and Patricio Norris, whose family run a livestock farming business in Argentina. “We were aware that in every country, methane is one of the biggest contributions to global warming and we found that methane mitigation tools in agriculture are under-researched,” says Francisco. “There isn’t a lot of innovation occurring within the field.”
…
The mask fits comfortably on a cow’s head with a zip-tie-like mechanism allowing it to be adjusted to various cattle’s head sizes depending on the breed. It is applied to cattle after they are weaned, usually at 6-8 months of age, and sits next to the nostrils, allowing the tool to capture methane from their breathing, belches and burps. “Around 95 per cent of the cattle’s methane emissions come from their nostrils and mouths,” Norris explains. “The technology detects, captures and oxidises methane when it is exhaled by the animals.”
…
Read more: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/cows-climate-change-methane-stop
From what I’ve seen of cattle a lot of methane seems to come out the other end, so the mask at best would seem to be a half solution.
I’m also wondering how long the masks would last in real world conditions. Cows are pretty good at destroying stuff which bothers them. I suspect a lot of them would scratch against a tree or rock until the strap breaks, or get other members of the herd to chew on it.
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There are over 7 billion humans on earth as well… and we all give off between 14 and 28 tons of CO2 each, over our lifetime. Have human farts ever been tested for methane? How about sheep, goats, yaks, reindeer, pigs, and the primates? The African plains must be a major source of Methane as well. How asinine the “greens” have become!
“Have human farts ever been tested for methane?”
Hold a lighted match near your anus when you feel a fart coming on.
But not too close.
And make sure your anus isn’t pointed towards the drapes, or anything else flammable.
I wuz gonna say that!
P.S. Do not try this wearing nylon underpants! One bloke wouldn’t believe us, so he upended himself undies and all, and had a ring of molten plastic around his fartport!
An alarmist would say
1) A doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere causes a 4 degree rise in temperature (allowing for a 3 fold positive feedback
2) Methane is 84 times stronger therefore
3) A doubling of methane concentration will produce a 4 X 84 degree c warming = 336 deg C
Be very scared because “This is what ‘The Science’ says” and ‘The science’ as we all know is settled.
But it gets worse . I have manufactured a potent molecule called Grenhousegassium which is 1000 times more stronger than CO2 as a greenhouse gas and I have already slipped surreptitiously 100 molecules into the atmosphere which caused a temperature rise of 0.00000001 degrees which even Phil Jones and Mikey Man did not notice. If I release a further gaslighter sized charge of this into the atmosphere then due to all the doublings in concentration and huge greenhouse warming all water and rocks will instantantly vaporize TEE HEE HEE and evil cackles all round We’re DOOOMED!
This is -pardon the term – bullshit. Methane oxidation by catalyst requires elevated temperatures on the order of 200-500 C. The most effective catalysts are very expensive platinum, palladium and other rather exotic materials. The catalytic converter in your car operates at temperatures over 650 C to 900 C. CH4 concentration is also important to efficient conversion as low concentrations don’t release enough heat to sustain efficient reactions. I doubt that concentrations in cow’s emissions diluted with air before capture would be sufficient, Without an external source of energy to heat the catalyst, this is an obvious scam product.
With their government research grant check in hand, those Argentinian brothers were laughing all the way to bank. I don’t blame them. I blame the stupid bureaucrats and politicians who have so little real science education to understand the massive climate scam and con-game being played on Western society.
I did find this patent for methane extraction via livestock nasal passage and oxidized by salts and/or beds containing methanotrophic bacteria. This article states that methane is 23x more powerful than CO2. Doesn’t seem as though the green blob really knows but the patent states methane contributes 18% of the global warming. I would bet a lot of their ‘estimates’ are overblown, from their noses.
https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2009001094A2/en
All CliSci estimates are pulled from a different part of the estimators’ anatomy.
Rick C
“This is -pardon the term – bullshit. Methane oxidation by catalyst requires elevated temperatures…”
You are exactly right! If they really had a catalyst that was 53% efficient at oxidizing methane at ambient temperature, the auto companies would be beating their door down to use it. So it’s either a joke or a scam.
The methane from that end of the cow comes from the stomach, not the lungs.
This mask will catch 0% of any methane emission from a cow.
Joking apart
Das ist Chinas Plan für die Eroberung der Arktisthe
(This is China’s plan for conquering the Arctic)
West is being fooled by China’s global warming promises, they are actively preparing for time if it ever comes to be challenger in the Arctic Ocean although they are about 10,000 km sailing distance from the North pole.
“Even more important than the diversification of trade routes Beijing is hungry for energy and invests heavily in Russia’s Arctic northern coast. Experts claim that there are billions of tons of oil and gas on that Russian territory. Additional inspiration for China are coal deposits of gigantic proportions as well as precious metals in large quantities. Beijing is interested in engaging in the Arctic to the extent that it plans construction of its own nuclear icebreaker.”
And what is the Biden’s program for the Arctic?
Covid Bucks and Climate Change
The Hey @GretaThunberg, where do you suppose this is? series
https://twitter.com/VarelaPete/status/1345453330387054594
Can anyone tell me what assumptions vis a vis temperature effect of increasing CO2 is implicit in computer modlling GCM s without invoking spurious and unquantifiable positive feedbacks. In the stuff that they publish it looks like a linear relationship but it should be logarithmic.
I deduce their relationship being linear as the shape of the modelled temperature sort of exponential like seems to mimic the similar rising CO2 trend. Its all bollocks anyway but if anyone knows teh shape of the bollocks- cubic or spherical – then please do tell
Well, actually the models generally assume that a degree of warming will put 7% more water vapor into the atmosphere which approximately triples the radiative greenhouse gas temperature anomaly of CO2 alone. The real effect of adding 7% more water vapor to the atmosphere would be to increase cloud cover, reflect more sunlight back into outer space, and randomly reduce the planet’s temperature here and there a day or a week later, back to its normal average. An extra square meter of Cloud can reflect more heat in 15 minutes than “all day” of CO2 forcing….
I know about the feedback and gut feeling is that it is fatuous but my question is apart from the feedback what sort of model of Co2 incresae vs temperature is implixt
I am uneasy about positive feedback generally. An amplifier works in negative feedback limiting absolute gain (Which is cheap to achieve ) for stability of gain which is a bit more difficult. Give an amplifier any degree of positive feedback and youve made an oscliallator- totally unstable – thing screechin mike feedback.So our 7% positive feedback of water vapour boosts temperature and so more water vapour etc. Dumb way to control a [planet is positive feedback Lovelock anmd Gaia invoked feedbacks but always negative and always designed for homeostasis. Smart guy Lovelock. Belongs more to us than to the loony fringe that want to claim him in the name of Our lady Greta Of Immaculate Misconceptions
Will they also be developing tiny masks for the uncountable number of methanogen bacteria living on Earth?
These bacteria were here well before we, or cows were. It’s conjectured that methanogenesis is one of the oldest types of metabolism in living things here. They’ll probably still be here long after we’re gone.
Oh, yeah. I’m going to apply these to all of those Angus and Black White-face range cows I once ran. Rodeo ensues.
When asked “what is the thought process that leads to such stuff?” I can only reply “the need to bilk others out of their money.”
That’s the best of UK technology in the climate agenda era.
In fact, CO2, water vapor, and methane are not greenhouse gases, which is a term cobbled up to support junk science; they do not exist as such. These gases are more accurately called “radiative gases” which convert heat energy in the atmosphere to IR radiation and vice versa. During the day, their rather meager absorption ranges, particularly regarding CO2 and methane, are saturated by incoming solar radiation, called insolation. This means that they are absorbing IR and heat both ways such that they have no effect; they are a wash. It is only during night-time, which is not in any of the climate models, that these gases rapidly convert heat to IR which is then lost to space. This explains why the air chills so quickly after sundown and small breezes kick up so quickly in the shadows of scudding clouds on a sunny day.
Like a portion of the topic under discussion in the above article, the article itself is equivalent to a load of bovine excrement.
1) If the proposed “catalytic apparatus” covers only the cow’s nostrils and not its mouth, it will be largely ineffective agains burps of air from the digestive system (source of some the expelled methane). Respiration of air (i.e., normal breathing) cycles air through the cow’s lungs, not through one or more if its stomachs and therefore does contain any significant methane. If the mask is designed to cover the cow’s mouth also, how is the cow then supposed to eat?
2) I strongly suspect—but can’t find quantified facts to prove—that the preponderance of methane generated by a cow comes from digestive (and other) bacteria feeding on “cow pies” in the open air in the days and weeks following the cow excreting them. I grew up on a dairy farm and I know for a fact that a cow pie has a lot of undigested cellulose. In fact, some large dairy farms specifically collect cow manure in large pits for the express purpose of harvesting the methane that it continues to produce. As but one example, see “Harnessing The Hidden Power of Cow Manure” at https://www.kqed.org/quest/57854/harnessing-the-hidden-power-of-cow-manure .
BTW, I never look to Wired magazine/website to be a source of science-based information.
I would love to see someone try to sell this to my cattle-rancher neighbor.
The article cites the oft-quoted statement that “methane is approximately 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to warming the planet.”
This is a half truth. While it is theoretically true, based on a CH4 molecule-to-CO2 molecule LWIR energy absorption capability comparison, it conveniently neglects the fact than the current methane concentration in Earth’s atmosphere is 1.9 ppmv as compared the CO2’s current atmospheric concentration of about 415 ppmv.
Factoring in both ratios, one finds that on a global basis methane has only (84*1.9)/415 = 38% the total global warming potential of CO2 (assuming, of course, that CO2’s LWIR absorption capability has not yet become fully saturated at its current atmospheric concentration).
What about interference with H2O’s LWIR absorption capability? Greenhouse gas “effectiveness” needs to be done on a multicomponent basis. Leaving out H2O that has higher concentration and overlapping absorption with both CO2 and CH4 is a big mistake for calculating individual component effectiveness.
I can’t help but wonder if these people will design a methane capture system for termite mounds, which also produce tremendous amounts of methane. And put methane capture on all the wild buffalo and other ruminant animals around the world. Or, is methane some magical gas that will only do bad things if there is a benefit to people. (Just like COVID is smart and knows if you are a leftist politician or not, and thus will only attack non-leftist politicians.)
What a scamtastic, as well as barking mad idea.
They must be trying to get revenge for the Falklands war.
Seriously???
As I understand it (and I may be wrong) most of the methane from raising cattle comes from their excrement after it leaves their bodies.
Cows are pretty good at destroying stuff which bothers them.
Well, the solution to that is simple. Any cow caught removing their mask, will be escorted to the nearest steak house and served for supper.
Think of the jobs that can be created. Cow mask police, traveling from pasteur to pasteur checking compliance, writing tickets, arresting ranchers. All paid for by the taxpayers.
It doesn’t look to me like it is well-placed for catching belches! I wonder how much CO2 was produced in manufacturing the masks?
Answer: an insignificant amount of CO2, becuase they were prototypes for demonstration purposes only.
There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the proposed “catalytic converter masks for cows” are so impractical and useless that they will NEVER be produced, let alone used, except for seeking investment funds from suckers.
!!!!LIVE!!!
Illegal demonstration in Nuernberg Germany
Few had their nappies on their face.
I saw huge banners/flags with “Trump 2020”.
All ended peacefully, with the police asking people to go home shortly before eight o’clock in the evening local time.
Considering the poor weather, there was a good turnout, with peopple coming all the way from Berlin.
It was the first time the police behaved calm and cultivated, almost like they were on the side of the freedom fighters.
Complete the outfit with a fart diaper. It makes for new jobs too. Someone needs to change the diapers. Great way to solve unemployment
And I thought this was a ridiculous idea
https://www.good.is/articles/backpack-collects-cow-farts
Before man came along and destroyed the massive herds on the North American planes and the African Serengeti, there were far more ruminants than now. If the plant survived then, it can now with less ruminants. However, all this is irrelevant as the effect of Methane and CO2 is insignificant. What a waste of money!
But now the GND is out to destroy the planes on the “planes”. 😎
(Sorry. I make lots of typos but I couldn’t pass this one up.)
We need more cowbell.