Seaweed Found to Reduce Cow Methane

For those of us concerned about global warming, it's a fact that around 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions globally are due to methane released from cattle and other ruminant animals. 

Scientist in Canada have now discovered a particular seaweed that when fed to cattle reduces methane to nearly zero in their burps and their other, smelly and noxious, gaseous emissions. In the U.S. alone there are some 40 million cows, and all of them are contributing methane to our breathable air. 

Joe Dorgan, a farmer in Seacow Pond, Canada, began feeding his cattle seaweed he carried from the beaches nearby as a way to cut costs. He was so impressed with the lack of odors coming from his herd that he decided to turn the seaweed into a retail product.

Scientists from Dalhousie University tested Dorgan's seaweed mix and found it reduced the methane in the cows' emissions by about 20 per cent. They tried 30 to 40 other seaweeds and discovered that a red seaweed named Asparagopsis taxiformis reduces methane emissions in cows to almost nothing.

According to Rob Kinley, the lead scientist, "Agriculture stands to be one of the first to make major changes in the greenhouse gas inventory and so it's really a game changer if we can get this out into the market."

Kinley says it could take around three to five years to get commercial animal feed made from the seaweed to market. "Agriculture stands to be one of the first to make major changes in the greenhouse gas inventory and so it's really a game changer if we can get this out into the market. We're talking numbers equivalent to hundreds of millions of cars."

Although President-Elect Trump appears not to believe that global warming is a genuine threat and might even be a Chinese hoax, his argument that it might not be as bad as scientists fear. 

In a new study just published by Nature Communications, it appears that Earth's plant life loves more carbon dioxide being pumped into the air and is absorbing it at a faster rate than ever before.  

In 2014 when the latest measurements are available, about 35.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide was pumped into the air. The figure has continued to climb every year since the mid 20th century, when there was only about 6 billion tons emitted. As a consequence, according to the report, the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere has also been rising, from around 311 parts per million in 1950 to a little over 400 in 2015. 

However, the rate it is rising appears to have slowed down since the turn of the new century. According to researchers, between 1959 and 1989 the rate that CO2 levels grew rose from about 0.75 ppm per year to 1.86 ppm. However, since 2002, it has stayed almost the same. In other words, even though we are pumping out more CO2 than ever before, less of it appears to be lingering in the air we breathe. 

The study also reports that between 1982 and 2009, around 18 million square kilometers of new vegetation had sprouted on the Earth's surface, which is an area about twice the size of the U.S. Around the end of the 20th century, about 50% of the CO2 emitted by humans was removed from the atmosphere by plants. Now, however, that number appears closer to 60%. So, plants and other processes that convert CO2 seem to have become more effective.

The conclusion seems to be that faster-growing land plants have adapted to the higher amounts of CO2 and their photosynthesis has sped up and become more effective. So, maybe President-Elect Trump's argument may have some merit after all.