Cows and Global Warming?

Question

If we slaughtered all the cows on earth and outlawed cattle breeding permanently, what would the effect on global warming be? I think significant but my girlfriend is unconvinced. Anyone out there have some hard facts?

Answer 1

Environmentalists. Please clear this up for me.

Were we wrong to kill millions of bison, or are we wrong for not killing millions of much smaller cattle??

Answer 2

Contrasting a meat eating human and an SUV, the human's individual support of the meat industry has more of an environmental effect than the SUV's greenhouse gases produced.

visit http://www.goveg.com/environment-globalw...

the breeding and harvesting of cattle has a devastating effect on the environment. A more feasible way of making a difference is by eating two vegetarian meals a week.

Answer 3

Same effect if you did this to all the environmentalist in the world.But your way we would not be able to get a double meat double cheese, And large Milk shake

Answer 4

You tell me? LOL

Answer 5

none at all i have a degree in cows and global wwarming

Answer 6

How do you feel about buffalo?

There were as many buffalo as there are cows now before humans got here.

No difference.

Answer 7

It wouldn't have that much effect on global warming but it would be disastrous for the dairy industry. Landfill produces more methane than cows.

Answer 8

First, no person has ANY hard facts, merely hypothesis, because it would be politically incorrect to go slaughter the sacred cows in India.  Also, the slaughtering process in itself would also create some warmth, unless they were mass stampeded into already boiling hot thermal pools, as in Yellowstone....or merely frozen  and stored like giant cow blocks for refrigeration.

Answer 9

ya if we did not have any cows it would make a diffrence on global warming because there is somthing in their poo that that makes the atmosphere thicker. sorry about not having any sources but i did read it in a book last year. try looking it up on the web.

Answer 10

Watch Futurama and you'll see the way to combat global warming is to have a nuclear winter

Answer 11

Don't worry about it since most of the buffaloes have been slaughtered we now have a balance.

Answer 12

yes!!!! leave the cows alone they`re cute and don`t deserve no trouble . there`s enough sheep about to feed the human race LEAVE COWS ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 13

It would be significant.  When you take everything into account (methane emissions from burps/dung, land used for cow pasture, etc.), livestock account for 18% of anthropogenic (human-caused) greenhouse gas emissions.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Of course, we would have to replace our beef and dairy consumption with other foods, so it wouldn't be an 18% reduction, but it would be a significant one.

A less radical solution would simply be to consume less beef, as I discussed here:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Answer 14

lets shoot all the cows. then sheep, then the rest of the food we live on.

Al Gore should be the that we should start with.

Answer 15

It wouldn't make any difference. How can you make a difference on something that doesn't exist?

Answer 16

well if we're gonna be brutal with anyone lets cull humans, what have cows done? nothing, they're history has more violence in it than the jews, and nobody cares.

Answer 17

I grew up during the cold war where we were all supposed to be worried about "fallout".

Now we are all supposed to be worried about "emissions".

What about six billion human beings breathing out - how much C02 is that?  Of course we don't all breathe out at once, but millions of cows don't all belch and f**t at once.

I like milk in my tea so I say no to bovineicide.

Answer 18

A single dairy cow belches and farts 114 kilos of methane a year. It is a methane machine. The methane produced by a single cow is equivalent to 2,622 kilos of carbon dioxide. It has been seriously been suggested that farmers should look at changing cattle diets (not all feedstuffs produce so much methane) and a pill has been developed that reduces cow farts.

http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/j...

Methane is often missed in the GHG / AGW debate, so here’s a 101.

One point I will make is that if temperatures rise and substantial quantities of Methane are released from natural sinks – frozen permafrost for example - then it is likely to overtake CO2’s role from emissions.

Methane (CH4) is an organic chemical and is very simple molecule consisting of one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms.  Methane, the most rapidly increasing greenhouse gas, has increased 145% since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Methane's chemical lifetime in the atmosphere is approximately 12 years,  (CO2 is approx. 100 years.) It absorbs infrared at a different absorption band frequency to CO2.  There is a natural Methane cycle of emission and absorption; anything in addition to that unbalances the cycle.

Methane is produced by any situation where organic matter decays in an environment where there is no oxygen. That’s why is present in fossil fuels (formed underground) as well as in the digestive tracts of animals as they digest organic matter. Hence farts contain methane; a level of 5% of Methane in air is explosive.

Natural Gas is mostly methane and one of the cleanest fossil fuels. Methane is also part of other fuels such as coal and oil, is produced by burning, but is also produced by any situation where organic matter decays in an environment where there is no oxygen. Methane is produced by swamps (swamp gas) wetlands, rice paddy fields, and by animal manure, etc. Methane is generated in landfills and dumps as waste decomposes under conditions starved of oxygen. A compost heap produces methane. Oddly termites also produce a significant quantity, simply because there are so many of the insects. Burn organic material and methane is one of the by-products.

Methane in the atmosphere is a significant greenhouse gas — it absorbs some frequencies of infrared radiation (emitted from the Earth's surface) that would otherwise go straight out to space, in combination with other greenhouse gases (CO2, N2O and water vapour). It normally accounts for around 15% of the greenhouse effect. It’s judged to be around 20 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2.

A massive release of methane hydrates is thought to have played substantial part in the rapid temperature rise that caused the Permian-Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago.

Permian-Triassic extinction event

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian-Tri...

Role of Methane

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian-Tri...

And

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian-Tri...

In cool periods Methane is stored as a Clathrate (also known as a hydrate), a chemical compound that consist of a ‘cage’ of molecules (usually frozen water) that can trap a gas. This Clathrate chemical formula is : CH4.6H2O

These are known as ice that burns, for when set alight on the surface they burn away leaving nothing but a pool of water.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...

Methane Clathrate’s are very stable at high pressure and low temperature. This is why a vast amount are locked up in frozen Tundra within the arctic circle and in ocean sediments. And why they can be released when the temperature rises. A warmer atmosphere helps release the methane from the Clathrates. E.g. When frozen permafrost thaws.

The worldwide amounts of carbon bound in gas (usually methane) hydrates is conservatively estimated to total twice the amount of carbon to be found in all known fossil fuels on Earth. There’s a lot of it, that’s one thing to bear in mind.

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Washington State University has shown that in previous periods of global warming the levels of atmospheric methane rapidly increased in a warming climate with a small lag behind temperature. Once warming begins more methane is released into the atmosphere, this adds to the amount normally present (a positive feedback) which adds to the warming effect.

Methane basic chemistry

http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/met...

NASA : Methane’s role in the atmosphere

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/featur...

History of discovery of Methane’s role as a Greenhouse Gas

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/other...

Answer 19

i think the human population farts more than all the cows put together and yes the women f**t just as much as the blokes do