Just equip the livestock with ostomy pouches and collect their waste in vats, then use chemistry to break down the methane into more friendly and usable compounds for agriculture etc. There you go. I’ve solved climate change in one paragraph.

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That'd still be quite high in emissions. Land deforestation and the massive amounts of feed are large portions of emissions for meat and dairy products. It takes far more feed than it does to eat crops directly due to the energy loss from creatures using that energy to move around, on their body functions, etc.

The practices somewhat similar to what's suggested there work out too well in practice. Manure lagoons, where waste is stored in huge pools to break down, have several environmental problems

Rates of asthma in children living near a CAFO are consistently elevated.[4] The process of anaerobic digestion has been shown to release over 400 volatile compounds from lagoons.[13] The most prevalent of these are: ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, methane, and carbon dioxide

[...]

Contaminants that are water-soluble can escape from anaerobic lagoons and enter the environment through leakage from badly constructed or poorly maintained manure lagoons as well as during excess rain or high winds, resulting in an overflow of lagoons.[2] These leaks and overflows can contaminate surrounding surface and ground water with some hazardous materials which are contained in the lagoon.[2] The most serious of these contaminants are pathogens, antibiotics, heavy metals and hormones. For example, runoff from farms in Maryland and North Carolina are a leading candidate for Pfiesteria piscicida. This contaminant has the ability to kill fish, and it can also cause skin irritation and short term memory loss in humans[20]

[...]

Antibiotics are fed to livestock to prevent disease and to increase weight and development, so that there is a shortened time from birth to slaughter. However, because these antibiotics are administered at sub-therapeutic levels, bacterial colonies can build up resistance to the drugs through the natural selection of bacteria resistant to these antibiotics. These antibiotic-resistant bacteria are then excreted and transferred to the lagoons, where they can infect humans and other animals.[13]

Each year, 24.6 million pounds of antimicrobials are administered to livestock for non-therapeutic purposes.[23] Seventy percent of all antibiotics and related drugs are given to animals as feed additives.[4] Nearly half of the antibiotics used are nearly identical to ones given to humans. There is strong evidence that the use of antibiotics in animal feed is contributing to an increase in antibiotic-resistant microbes and causing antibiotics to be less effective for humans.[4] Due to concerns over antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the American Medical Association passed a resolution stating its opposition to the use of sub-therapeutic levels of antimicrobials in livestock.[13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_lagoon#Environmental_and_health_impacts

[–] porkins@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I hate to provide such a short answer to such a well written response, but perhaps shit lagoons aren’t the only way to process manure cleanly. Also, I’m not convinced that we can’t use high rise facilities for these animals and give them a matrix type experience. Each animal gets a cell, treadmill, VR screen/googles, and feed. Something along those lines.

[–] ltxrtquq@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If that plan worked perfectly, you'd solve the land use and, giving you an extremely generous benefit of the doubt, the emissions from manure problems.

All you have to now is figure out how to build and maintain these high-rises cost effectively, and how to generate enough power for a matrix-like experience and all the VR headsets and treadmills for the cows. And even then you'd still be wasting a lot of food by feeding it to animals rather than just eating it directly.

[–] porkins@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

Use the methane and solar to fuel the facility. Capture the emission and reuse them in fertilizer as well. Have the facility be a one-stop-shop, which produces the feed from hydroponics. The VR for a cow is not going to be that difficult. Just project fields in front of them. The treadmill can just have bearings and not require power. If anything they can be used to generate it.

[–] Dkarma@lemmy.world -1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Or you can just feed them seaweed...🤷‍♂️🤔

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

The stats touted around seaweed and other feed adatives are highly misleading. Even looking at the highest touted claims you only get an 8% reduction of overall emissions. The high numbers you see are only reporting the feedlot reductions which aren't where the majority of the missions come from

What’s more, feeding cattle algae is really only practical where it’s least needed: on feedlots. This is where most cattle are crowded in the final months of their 1.5- to 2-year lives to rapidly put on weight before slaughter. There, algae feed additives can be churned into the cows’ grain and soy feed. But on feedlots, cattle already belch less methane—only 11 percent of their lifetime output

[...]

Unfortunately, adding the algae to diets on the pasture, where it’s most needed, isn’t a feasible option either. Out on grazing lands, it’s difficult to get cows to eat additives because they don’t like the taste of red algae unless it’s diluted into feed. And even if we did find ways to sneak algae in somehow, there’s a good chance their gut microbes would adapt and adjust, bringing their belches’ methane right back to high levels.

[...] All told, if we accept the most promising claims of the algae boosters, we’re talking about an 80 percent reduction of methane among only 11 percent of all burps—roughly an 8.8 percent reduction total

https://www.wired.com/story/carbon-neutral-cows-algae/

[–] porkins@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 months ago

Upon further research, it seems we should simply stop most cow production and move to ostriches for red meat.

[–] porkins@sh.itjust.works -2 points 11 months ago

OR, genetically modify them to have human stomaches instead of being ruminants.