
It Wasn’t the Cows After All - hispanic
https://agreenerworld.org/a-greener-world/it-wasnt-the-cows-after-all/
======
grody
Nah, it's still the cows. No citation of a livestock emissions figure is made
by the author. They took an excellent study which didn't mention cows at all
and repackaged it as clickbait for this company's blog...

29 gigagrams of methane per year from fertilizer plants, says the study. (The
28 gigagrams figure in the article is misquoted, Ctrl+F for "29 (±18) Gigagram
per year" here
[https://www.elementascience.org/article/10.1525/elementa.358...](https://www.elementascience.org/article/10.1525/elementa.358/)
)

6.2 teragrams of methane per year from livestock emissions, says this other
study [https://extension.psu.edu/livestock-methane-emissions-in-
the...](https://extension.psu.edu/livestock-methane-emissions-in-the-united-
states)

Last I checked 6.2 teragrams is a lot more than 29 gigagrams.

On another note... I highly recommend looking at the original paper. Awesome
visual of emissions data captured by Cornell University sensors onboard a
Google Street View vehicle! Image here:
[https://www.elementascience.org/article/10.1525/elementa.358...](https://www.elementascience.org/article/10.1525/elementa.358/elementa-7-358-g2.png)

It's unfortunate that so much methane is released by fertilizer plants through
incomplete chemical reactions, improper combustion, and leaks. 100x more than
was previously estimated, in fact.

Also a bit curious - how did Cornell researchers get their sensors onboard a
Google Street View car? Did Cornell approach Google for this study or vice
versa?

~~~
Terretta
> _It 's unfortunate that so much methane is released by fertilizer plants
> through incomplete chemical reactions, improper combustion, and leaks. 100x
> more than was previously estimated, in fact._

It’s not unfortunate. It’s not luck. It’s design.

And since it’s technology, not fortune, it can be redesigned and reworked.

------
ncmncm
Roger Gordon ([http://www.greennh3.com/](http://www.greennh3.com/)) has a
design for a small-scale ammonia production system that individual farmers
could drive from their own wind turbines. It produces no methane. He has not
found investors yet.

Driving these big polluters out of business would be a great service to the
world, and could be profitable besides. They don't just leak methane, they
also release huge amounts of CO2. They have no reason to leak methane; it even
costs them money. They are just sloppy.

------
ris
> Once cattle—raised on grass without synthetic fertilizer—are accurately
> assessed

Except this does not cover the vast majority of cattle consumed. And it
doesn't cover the effect of forested land being cleared for cattle production.

------
hamilyon2
Gigagram? 10 thousand ton?

~~~
ncmncm
One thousand tons.

So, 29,000 tons, equivalent to a million tons of CO2. Plus the actual CO2,
even more than that.

