A post on EVs' role in mitigating global warming.

[WetEV]

"Lamb has the greatest impact, generating 39.3 kg (86.4 lbs) of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) for each kilo eaten – about 50 percent more than beef. While beef and lamb generate comparable amounts of methane and require similar quantities of feed, lamb generates more emissions per kilo in part because it produces less edible meat relative to the sheep’s live weight. Since just one percent of the meat consumed by Americans is lamb, however, it contributes very little to overall U.S. greenhouse gas emissions."

As someone that enjoys pasture raised lamb and goat as well, I was shocked. I'm slightly dubious that cattle and sheep are that similar. I remember reading the reverse in a journal many years ago. I'm under the impression that not all ruminates are the same, and that diets the animals eat can make more than a factor of two difference in methane production. A bit of poking around in journals show that overgrazing increases methane production:

http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11284-006-0191-9" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00288233.2005.9513671#.U-EqiPJ0ysE" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The source below gives the range for the USA as range cattle seem to be near 54 kg/head/year. Sheep are near 8 kg/head/year for the USA as an average. Note that older animals are much higher methane producers.
http://rd.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10584-008-9506-x.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

For a rough calculation, a 500 kg on the hoof steer seems to dress out to yield approx. 250 kg of meat, and a 60 kg lamb dresses out to about 30 kg. So a naive calculation might be: 4.5 kg of meat per kg/head/year of methane per calf, and 3.75 kg of meat per kg/head/year for lamb. Slightly worse.

That simplistic calculation doesn't everything into account. As lambs per ewe is about 1.5 or more, and as calves per cow is about one or less, the ratio of lambs to total sheep is higher than for calves to total cattle. Also, calves are usually slaughtered at older ages, so they have more time to release more methane. Taking this into account, it looks to me like the correct ratio is more like 6 kg of lamb per kg of methane, rather better.

Taking all this into account, grass feed beef seems to be higher in methane per kg of meat than grass feed lamb, but I'm not an expert on this. Have I missed anything important?

 

[Alric]

This is the current situation for comparison

http://xkcd.com/1338/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[GRA]

<snip>
Yes, quitting meat can reduce your carbon footprint significantly more than quitting driving.

Following the link in the bolded section sbove of the article you linked to, and then clicking on "next section" at the bottom of the page, brings up a page titled "Meat and your Health". In the section titled "Red and Processed Meats linked to Chronic Disease" can be found the following sentence:

"The study authors concluded that “11 percent of deaths in men and 16 percent of deaths in women could be prevented [Emphasis added] if people decreased their red meat consumption to the level of intake” of the group who ate the least. (Sinha 2009)."

Amazing - here I thought the probability of death was 100% for all groups, regardless of diet or any other factor. Apparently all I have to do to become immortal is reduce my intake of Red and Processed meats! :roll: One hopes the original paper didn't word it in precisely that fashion. :lol:

 

[AndyH]

Taking all this into account, grass feed beef seems to be higher in methane per kg of meat than grass feed lamb, but I'm not an expert on this. Have I missed anything important?

I'd expect naturally-fed/grass fed ruminants to release more enteric methane than corn-fed animals. Pasturing the animals is still better for emissions as growing grain emits more GHGs than the cattle.

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/Do...-GHG-Inventory-2014-Chapter-6-Agriculture.pdf

 

[tmac]

Taking all this into account, grass feed beef seems to be higher in methane per kg of meat than grass feed lamb, but I'm not an expert on this. Have I missed anything important?

I'd expect naturally-fed/grass fed ruminants to release more enteric methane than corn-fed animals. Pasturing the animals is still better for emissions as growing grain emits more GHGs than the cattle.

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/Do...-GHG-Inventory-2014-Chapter-6-Agriculture.pdf

AndyH
Agreed 100% EV are the way to go but play small role in GHG emissions

http://cowspiracy.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Cowsporacy love the name shows in many many ways why 7.5 billion cannot continue to eat meat especially beef and hope not to cook the planet.
The whole grass fed vs factory farmed is a smokescreen both are non sustainable

Factory farmed is disgusting in humane, fouls water, feeds ruminants soybeans and corn to cows we could be feeding starving humans, while "grass fed " beef proponents ignore the vast amount of pasture a single cow needs . Simply put we a few earths if even half of the 7.5 billion eat meat like Americans.

The calculation of feed and transport of the beef and the emissions from the cows are important but destruction of land is what you and myself and others are not taking into account.
The habitat and forest destruction to make room for all those cattle significantly increase GHG emissions , those are permanent destruction of rain forest that would act as a carbon sink but are gone.

In short, beef it's Not for dinner ( assuming we want breakfast too!)
http://cowspiracy.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Tom

 

[DATsunONE]

Lockheed Martin is receiving a lot of criticism for announcing (in a 188 page public release) their latest progress in fusion reactor technology on 10-15-2014.

The reactor would be small enough to fit in a truck and generate enough energy to light 80,000 homes, the Bethesda, Maryland-based company said today. The reactor would burn less than 20 kilograms of fuel in a year, producing waste that’s “orders of magnitudes less” than the ash and sludge spewed from coal plants.

If these fusion reactors are deployed, in 10 years, it would certainly drive the cost of charging and recharging an EV down. Solar array recharging stations wouldn't be necessary.

Nissan has already brought the up front cost of EVs down to a respectable level, with it's Leaf. With the cost of charging and recharging, down to practically nothing, I don't see why most people, of average or below average means, would buy an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle.

I suspect that Nissan is planning for this probable transition.

Dan

 

[smkettner]

What about the wool? Is that kitchy moose sweater you donned when you turned the heat down killing the planet too?

If you eat the lamb it produces no wool. Probably counting this against you

 

[mbender]

Lockheed Martin is receiving a lot of criticism for announcing (in a 188 page public release) their latest progress in fusion reactor technology on 10-15-2014.

The reactor would be small enough to fit in a truck and generate enough energy to light 80,000 homes, the Bethesda, Maryland-based company said today. The reactor would burn less than 20 kilograms of fuel in a year, producing waste that’s “orders of magnitudes less” than the ash and sludge spewed from coal plants.

If these fusion reactors are deployed, in 10 years, it would certainly drive the cost of charging and recharging an EV down. Solar array recharging stations wouldn't be necessary.

Nissan has already brought the up front cost of EVs down to a respectable level, with it's Leaf. With the cost of charging and recharging, down to practically nothing, I don't see why most people, of average or below average means, would buy an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle.

I suspect that Nissan is planning for this probable transition.

Dan

It's great news if true, but the costs of charging an EV are low enough already to make it unnecessary! We need fusion of one kind or another (I'm partial to LPP) for everything else though, but it has been elusive. I think it will "happen" within a decade though, now that there is more incentive/mandate than ever (i.e., the generation just graduating from college has essentially grown up and lived their entire lives with "climate chaos concerns" in the back of their minds).

Even now, and without cheap/clean/limitless electricity, I don't see why most people buy new ICEs (actually, I do, but that's another story). And in 10 years, I suspect (and hope) that most new cars manufactured and sold will be electric, come fusion or not.

Nissan made a good start, but isn't moving fast enough, imho. Why might that be?

 

[dgpcolorado]

^I've been reading about fusion "breakthroughs" for fifty years. To say that I've become "skeptical" of such announcements would be putting it mildly. It is something like the incessant announcements of battery breakthroughs, of which we then never hear anything again. Except that I'm inclined to believe that a better battery is an easier problem and that a better technology is likely to appear in the reasonably near future.

But fusion for electricity generation? I'll wait until the demo plant is up and running before I believe it. In the meantime, I already use fusion power to fuel my LEAF. Not terribly efficient but certainly practical and relatively affordable.

 

[NeilBlanchard]

Yep, we need to use The Great Fusion Reactor In The Sky.

All fueled up and running at a (relatively) safe distance, and the transmission grid working perfectly.

 

[AndyH]

AndyH
Agreed 100% EV are the way to go but play small role in GHG emissions

http://cowspiracy.com

Cowsporacy love the name shows in many many ways why 7.5 billion cannot continue to eat meat especially beef and hope not to cook the planet.
The whole grass fed vs factory farmed is a smokescreen both are non sustainable

Factory farmed is disgusting in humane, fouls water, feeds ruminants soybeans and corn to cows we could be feeding starving humans, while "grass fed " beef proponents ignore the vast amount of pasture a single cow needs . Simply put we a few earths if even half of the 7.5 billion eat meat like Americans.

The calculation of feed and transport of the beef and the emissions from the cows are important but destruction of land is what you and myself and others are not taking into account.
The habitat and forest destruction to make room for all those cattle significantly increase GHG emissions , those are permanent destruction of rain forest that would act as a carbon sink but are gone.

In short, beef it's Not for dinner ( assuming we want breakfast too!)
http://cowspiracy.com

Tom

Tom - Thank You for the heads-up on this documentary. Finally watched it today. It's one thing to hear people like Jeremy Rifkin remind his audiences that animal ag is the number two direct greenhouse gas emitter, but it's a shock when all the other problems are fit into the puzzle. :shock:

Folks - if you haven't seen this, please add it to your list.

Andy

 

[AndyH]

Then I suppose climate change would be even worse if we hadn't killed off so many animals the last couple hundred years. Or, do wild animals not fart? :lol:

The methane emissions from cows and their ilk come from their burps, not farts, as it's bacterial fermentation in their stomachs making the gas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_fermentation
http://www.epa.gov/rlep/faq.html

Globally, ruminant livestock produce about 80 million metric tons of methane annually, accounting for about 28% of global methane emissions from human-related activities. An adult cow may be a very small source by itself, emitting only 80-110 kgs of methane, but with about 100 million cattle in the U.S. and 1.2 billion large ruminants in the world, ruminants are one of the largest methane sources. In the U.S., cattle emit about 5.5 million metric tons of methane per year into the atmosphere, accounting for 20% of U.S. methane emissions.

As abasile covered, there are significant additional emissions from the 'western Ag' feed production process on top of this.

In particular I was thinking about American Bison (ruminants), which once numbered upwards of 60 million before they were nearly hunted to extinction.

The good news is that while bison do burp from time to time, their grazing and fertilizing services dramatically increase the ability of soil to sequester carbon. Healthy soil also sequesters other GHGs that are emitted by soil as it dies. The net result of properly-managed grazing herds appears to be very, very positive for the climate.

The ginormous problem with beef today isn't the methane in their burps, but the industrial systems that use oil-based chemical ag to grow corn and soy to feed to cattle confined in concentrated pens, GHG emissions and damage from their untreated wastes, and the resulting river/lake/ocean dead zones.

Unfortunately, global warming and the subsequent disruption of the water cycle (drought) is reducing the ability of soil processes to sequester greenhouse gasses. This is likely to reduce the benefit of well-managed grazing...