It seems that seaweed cultivation should be much more actively researched and invested in.
Seaweed produces omega 3 so could become a far more common vegetarian diet supplement or food. It is a potential carbon sink at larger scales. And also the benefit described in this article of course.
I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons to cultivate seaweed en masse but those are the first ones that came to mind.
I really want this to be real and rolled out, but I feel like even though we've been reading about this for years there is a (or a few) big show stoppers which no one is talking about. I hope that's not the case but I get the feeling that there are major issues which might make it implausible to do this.
It just seems like if it was that simple then governments would be pouring billions - no TRILLIONS - of research dollars into this. Cattle are such a big part of greenhouse emissions that if this really had legs without some underlying problem it would be funded like a war effort.
> Cattle are such a big part of greenhouse emissions that if this really had legs without some underlying problem it would be funded like a war effort.
According to a brief search, cattle represent about 3.3% of greenhouse gas emissions. Transportation is 29%, electricity is 25%.
Seems to me better logistics (not transporting stuff that needn't be transported) and better electricity generation is worth more trillions than cows burping.
Random thought experiment - how much should the global 'fund' be to attack greenhouse gas emissions. Not that it should be spent in proportion to % of total emissions, but I wonder what 3.3% of that number would be.
Say you spent 1T on cows, and spent it proportionally. That's a 30T fund overall. So around half from memory of what the US spent on the post 9/11 wars.
3.3% of greenhouse emissions seems too low. Global livestock overall may contribute to about 14% of greenhouse gas emissions[1]. There are also other forms of pollution including farm runoff (ocean dead zones , zoonotic disease), land use (forest destruction), soil degradation, etc.
My source only looked at the US so numbers differ from global[0]. Your source also says 14.5% is all livestock, of which 9.4% is cattle (so about 3x globally compared to the US).
There are of course other forms of pollution, a big one we could easily tackle I think is water pollution by the textile industry [1]. So much clothing today is of garbage quality and completely unmendable (the fabric is too thin to be repaired ):, I tried).
It would also not supplant grain, which is really what causes cows to emmit so many greenhouses gases. If you ate the grain that cows eat you would have terrible gas too. Grain is intended as a supplement to grass as it is loaded with different nutrients, salt, etc., but it also makes cows grow faster and produce more milk and so it is a competitive advantage for a farmer to feed more than is really required for the cows to be healthy.
Seaweed may be better than grass in regards to gas emissions, but probably not 99 percent better. However, grass or seaweed alone won’t let cows get fat enough fast enough. Time is money and it is a commodity market unless you specifically target the organic, non-GMO, grass-fed crowd, which, while growing, is still a niche market that adds a bunch of complications.
On some farms, grain only supplements the grass diet, but on many beef cattle farms a larger portion of their diet is grain so they grow and fatten up more quickly. Dairy cows often fair a bit better in this regard, although the calorically rich diet of grain is also good for increasing milk production, so they are fed a good bit of grain also.
The grain does serve a health purpose for cattle, it is just often probably given in excess of what would be required for optimal cow health.
I saw this story when, I believe, it hit the HN frontpage the last time; it buries the important part of this whole thing, because that doesn't make for good clickbait: not feeding cows diets mainly made from corn byproducts makes them fart less.
The most destructive thing, farming wise, we do... is the corn industry. Ruining soil faster than any other crop? Corn. Using so much water in the midwest that it makes California's water shortage look competent? Corn. Polluting the waterways with commercial fertilizers, resulting in, but not limited to, the dead zone of the Gulf of Mexico? Corn.
Does corn have any nutritional value to humans or our livestock? Nope! Does it produce anything valuable for industrial purposes? Nope! Would it continue to exist without the trillions in subsidies we've paid over the past decade? Nope! Is it one of the primary drivers behind the obesity crisis? Yup!
Can't print that headline though, rich people get angry when the truth collides with their Scrooge McDuck-esque money vaults. So, "feeding them seaweed" as a "think positive" headline workaround continues to get the word out, albeit in a strange way.
I'm generally against corn subsidies, but grass-fed vs grain-fed beef is actually fairly complicated when it comes to greenhouse gases. Depending on the region, finishing on grain may be better from a greenhouse gas perspective: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/13/746576239/is...
The issue is generally that grass-finishing is slower, so cows (may) end up producing more methane overall.
However, grass-fed is definitely better from an animal welfare perspective.
Some of your other claims seem difficult to support; for example, I'm not sure it's well-understood what is driving obesity, and so claiming that it's corn seems like a bit of a stretch. Similarly, corn does actually have nutritional value, which is why people have grown it for a very long time, even before subsidies.
My hunch is that HFCS is more versatile and cheaper than other sugar products, and it can compensate for garbage food in the same way. Therefore passably good tasting food is cheaper and more readily available than anything else.
High Fructose Corn Syrup is about half the price of regular sugar.
It would be an interesting thought experiment about what would happen to obesity levels if prices were taxed to the point where the price difference would be eliminated.
In the UK we are fairly obese and we don't grow corn, we don't have HFCS subsidies, and we don't have have HFCS in everything either - eg coca cola is just plain old sugar here. So I doubt that the US getting rid of corn subsidies will make any difference to obesity - some other sugar would be used instead, sugar cane or sugar beet.
When you look at air pollutants like NOx, NH3, NMVOC, etc. excreta deposited by grazing livestock has a lower emission factor than those deposited in yards/housing, where corn-fed cattle are usually kept. [0]
> The more time grazing livestock are housed, the smaller the proportion of their excreta deposited on grazed pastures will be, and hence the smaller the emissions from those pastures.
I'm guessing the cows are healthier with grass fed since they're getting more nutrients and therefore a better end product as well, to balance into the equation?
> The word "corn" outside the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand refers to any cereal crop, its meaning understood to vary geographically to refer to the local staple. In the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, corn primarily means maize; this usage started as a shortening of "Indian corn".
I (from the US) learned about this when a botanist pointed out that the movie "Fellowship of the Rings" incorrectly depicted maize for what Tolkein described as 'corn' in the Shire. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Corn
> You can’t spread prions by feeding them seaweed.
No one said you could. I imagine that the concern is that some unforeseen effect might happen just as prion disease was unforeseen. Or indeed that some foreseen effect might be neglected or deliberately hidden from the consumer.
Vegans disagree. We live. We thrive. We have fun. And we do not inflict suffering on individuals of other species as far as reasonably possible (thus allowing for pest control and some animal testing of essential drugs).
That sounds quite aways away from "perfection" as stated by the other commentator as being "Perfection would be if there were no sentient beings to experience suffering at all."
(In case its not clear, i think this thread is silly)
Increasing the amount of seaweed in our diet would be a huge boon to the environment. As illustrated in the top story on HN right now which is about N2O, synthetic nitrogen fertiliser is a primary contributor to both climate change and eutrophication.
Personally I would prefer to see a major carbon tax on synthetic fertiliser and products that get produced from them (naturally this include corn feed meat). That way people would have an economic incentive to select the kind of food that has the lowest greenhouse gas emissions.
I'd say a carbon tax only works when applied fair and square to all product, regardless of who buys them. The market will fix the problem, only when given the right incentives.
Since synthetic fertiliser are mostly produced from fossil fuels it should be effected by a generalized carbon tax.
But I am not sold that one have to apply a carbon tax to everything at the same time. Eutrophication has turned a major portion of the baltic ocean into the dead sea and if left to continue we won't have anything left alive there for a very long time. On that environmental crisis alone synthetic fertiliser pollution need to be addressed. That it also is derived from fossil fuels and a major contributor to global warming is all more reasons to focus carbon taxes on synthetic fertiliser specifically.
>>Also, has anybody asked cows if they like to eat seaweed?
Some of the earlier articles about feeding cows seaweed is about how a farmer did observe that his cows did burp less when grassing close to the ocean, where the cows did eat seaweed without anyone telling them to. So observation has shown that at least some cows like to eat some seaweed.
It's a bit strange that an article discussing a radical change to the diet of an animal that only exists to be eaten or to produce a product to be eaten doesn't mention any possible effects on the qualities of the meat or milk.
In Norway as far as I can tell cattle are mostly fed on grass with the addition of feed produced from cereals (but not maize). Does this mean that cattle fed on maize produce a product that is meaningfully different (on whatever axis of meaningfulness matters to you)?
Not really, it's a simple pattern, pull people up, pull them down. Keep them confused. They buy products from your ads. They donate to mass corps like environment movements. They pay off politicians. Facts don't matter.
Some evidence it increases weight gain & milk production. No evidence it changes taste for consumers -
I don't understand why we care about cow greenhouse gas emissions.
The carbon in that methane and CO2 comes from plants, which extracted it from the atmosphere. If those plants were instead eaten by a different animal, or burned, or decomposed, that carbon would also be released. It's a closed cycle.
All this is a distraction from the real problem - the systematic extraction of sequestered carbon from deep underground. That's the only thing that matters. We need to deal with it by radically limiting hydrocarbon extraction.
But to a large extent the CO2 burped by cows comes from the sequestered carbon from deep underground in the form of fertilisers used to grow the food we feed to the cows.
I wonder what proportion of the carbon in a plant comes from fertilisers vs CO2 taken in while growing?
It looks like some fertilisers do contain carbon - but not all. Eg ammonium nitrate doesn't, urea does. The ammonia tends to be produced using methane - so right now the fertiliser production process does produce vast amounts of CO2 (but that isn't carbon which goes anywhere near the cow).
The CO2 from ammonia production seems solvable (assuming an abundant supply of non-fossil fuel energy) through the electrolysed hydrogen -> ammonia route. Would that be enough, or is the carbon locked up in minerals used in phosphate production also a major source of CO2?
Reducing methane emissions is a quick win (and "only" requires us to shift diets away from beef) which buys us more time to deal with fossil CO2 which I agree is the main problem.
Also, a lot of forest destruction is associated with beef production (often via soya) so again it's something we could get a short-term gain from and longer-term we need to reduce CO2 and forests are the only proven technology for doing that.
I think EVs are an easier sell than getting rid of beef in diets. The cars are faster, quieter, and need less maintenance. Charging is the only problem left.
In both cases the goal should be to reduce the amount. Less ICE engines and less consumption of beef. Impossible and Beyond plant based meat is very close to ground beef and largely satisfies. Electric cars will work for 90% of people in the near future. There will always be exceptions. Sometimes you need an ICE vehicle for a specific application and sometimes people will want a good steak or burger. That is okay. Reducing both by 50% would be a huge step in the right direction and would require little sacrifice.
A lot of people are excited about kelp cultivation as a way to reduce greenhouse emissions, however have we considered the impact of mass kelp farming at scale on the environment? We may be trading off one problem for another.
60 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] threadSeaweed produces omega 3 so could become a far more common vegetarian diet supplement or food. It is a potential carbon sink at larger scales. And also the benefit described in this article of course.
I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons to cultivate seaweed en masse but those are the first ones that came to mind.
It just seems like if it was that simple then governments would be pouring billions - no TRILLIONS - of research dollars into this. Cattle are such a big part of greenhouse emissions that if this really had legs without some underlying problem it would be funded like a war effort.
According to a brief search, cattle represent about 3.3% of greenhouse gas emissions. Transportation is 29%, electricity is 25%.
Seems to me better logistics (not transporting stuff that needn't be transported) and better electricity generation is worth more trillions than cows burping.
Random thought experiment - how much should the global 'fund' be to attack greenhouse gas emissions. Not that it should be spent in proportion to % of total emissions, but I wonder what 3.3% of that number would be.
Say you spent 1T on cows, and spent it proportionally. That's a 30T fund overall. So around half from memory of what the US spent on the post 9/11 wars.
[1] http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/
correction: removed N2O nitrous oxide is also a greenhouse gas which is included.
There are of course other forms of pollution, a big one we could easily tackle I think is water pollution by the textile industry [1]. So much clothing today is of garbage quality and completely unmendable (the fabric is too thin to be repaired ):, I tried).
[0] https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2019...
[1] https://www.textiletoday.com.bd/water-pollution-due-textile-...
Seaweed may be better than grass in regards to gas emissions, but probably not 99 percent better. However, grass or seaweed alone won’t let cows get fat enough fast enough. Time is money and it is a commodity market unless you specifically target the organic, non-GMO, grass-fed crowd, which, while growing, is still a niche market that adds a bunch of complications.
On some farms, grain only supplements the grass diet, but on many beef cattle farms a larger portion of their diet is grain so they grow and fatten up more quickly. Dairy cows often fair a bit better in this regard, although the calorically rich diet of grain is also good for increasing milk production, so they are fed a good bit of grain also.
The grain does serve a health purpose for cattle, it is just often probably given in excess of what would be required for optimal cow health.
The most destructive thing, farming wise, we do... is the corn industry. Ruining soil faster than any other crop? Corn. Using so much water in the midwest that it makes California's water shortage look competent? Corn. Polluting the waterways with commercial fertilizers, resulting in, but not limited to, the dead zone of the Gulf of Mexico? Corn.
Does corn have any nutritional value to humans or our livestock? Nope! Does it produce anything valuable for industrial purposes? Nope! Would it continue to exist without the trillions in subsidies we've paid over the past decade? Nope! Is it one of the primary drivers behind the obesity crisis? Yup!
Can't print that headline though, rich people get angry when the truth collides with their Scrooge McDuck-esque money vaults. So, "feeding them seaweed" as a "think positive" headline workaround continues to get the word out, albeit in a strange way.
The issue is generally that grass-finishing is slower, so cows (may) end up producing more methane overall.
However, grass-fed is definitely better from an animal welfare perspective.
Some of your other claims seem difficult to support; for example, I'm not sure it's well-understood what is driving obesity, and so claiming that it's corn seems like a bit of a stretch. Similarly, corn does actually have nutritional value, which is why people have grown it for a very long time, even before subsidies.
High Fructose Corn Syrup, no ?
It would be an interesting thought experiment about what would happen to obesity levels if prices were taxed to the point where the price difference would be eliminated.
> The more time grazing livestock are housed, the smaller the proportion of their excreta deposited on grazed pastures will be, and hence the smaller the emissions from those pastures.
[0]: https://www.eea.europa.eu/ds_resolveuid/8e90ca718fd34d5786c1...
This seems obviously false.
> The word "corn" outside the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand refers to any cereal crop, its meaning understood to vary geographically to refer to the local staple. In the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, corn primarily means maize; this usage started as a shortening of "Indian corn".
I (from the US) learned about this when a botanist pointed out that the movie "Fellowship of the Rings" incorrectly depicted maize for what Tolkein described as 'corn' in the Shire. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Corn
Regardless, according to google, you can still eat field corn if you want to and it still has nutritional value.
No one said you could. I imagine that the concern is that some unforeseen effect might happen just as prion disease was unforeseen. Or indeed that some foreseen effect might be neglected or deliberately hidden from the consumer.
What about feeding our species with plants instead of bovine meat and secretions?
(In case its not clear, i think this thread is silly)
Funny how easily pain can be ignored when you dont have to see the subjects suffering for you.
Personally I would prefer to see a major carbon tax on synthetic fertiliser and products that get produced from them (naturally this include corn feed meat). That way people would have an economic incentive to select the kind of food that has the lowest greenhouse gas emissions.
But I am not sold that one have to apply a carbon tax to everything at the same time. Eutrophication has turned a major portion of the baltic ocean into the dead sea and if left to continue we won't have anything left alive there for a very long time. On that environmental crisis alone synthetic fertiliser pollution need to be addressed. That it also is derived from fossil fuels and a major contributor to global warming is all more reasons to focus carbon taxes on synthetic fertiliser specifically.
3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17036221
2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20711498
11 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24574992
5 years and has not come to the feeding lot yet ?
I can tell a taste difference between grass-fed or grain-fed beef. I speculate that seaweed-fed beef would taste different.
Also, has anybody asked cows if they like to eat seaweed?
Some of the earlier articles about feeding cows seaweed is about how a farmer did observe that his cows did burp less when grassing close to the ocean, where the cows did eat seaweed without anyone telling them to. So observation has shown that at least some cows like to eat some seaweed.
In Norway as far as I can tell cattle are mostly fed on grass with the addition of feed produced from cereals (but not maize). Does this mean that cattle fed on maize produce a product that is meaningfully different (on whatever axis of meaningfulness matters to you)?
Not really, it's a simple pattern, pull people up, pull them down. Keep them confused. They buy products from your ads. They donate to mass corps like environment movements. They pay off politicians. Facts don't matter.
Some evidence it increases weight gain & milk production. No evidence it changes taste for consumers -
https://theconversation.com/feeding-cows-a-few-ounces-of-sea... (2021)
It's seems like a viable, self propagating idea.
The carbon in that methane and CO2 comes from plants, which extracted it from the atmosphere. If those plants were instead eaten by a different animal, or burned, or decomposed, that carbon would also be released. It's a closed cycle.
Methane currently takes about 9 years to break down into CO2 and H2O. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2829/greenhouse-gas-detergent-...
All this is a distraction from the real problem - the systematic extraction of sequestered carbon from deep underground. That's the only thing that matters. We need to deal with it by radically limiting hydrocarbon extraction.
It looks like some fertilisers do contain carbon - but not all. Eg ammonium nitrate doesn't, urea does. The ammonia tends to be produced using methane - so right now the fertiliser production process does produce vast amounts of CO2 (but that isn't carbon which goes anywhere near the cow).
The CO2 from ammonia production seems solvable (assuming an abundant supply of non-fossil fuel energy) through the electrolysed hydrogen -> ammonia route. Would that be enough, or is the carbon locked up in minerals used in phosphate production also a major source of CO2?
https://www.fertilizerseurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01...
Also you need to transport the fertiliser from the factory to the fields (diesel trucks) and spread it on the fields (diesel tractors)
Also, a lot of forest destruction is associated with beef production (often via soya) so again it's something we could get a short-term gain from and longer-term we need to reduce CO2 and forests are the only proven technology for doing that.
Perhaps farmers should have to pay 'methane credits' for their cows. I'm sure that would speed progress.