Cattle and the green house effect?

You are right about the fate of the carbon in grass top growth. Whether a cow eats it or not it is returned to the air. Uneaten grass retains carbon up to 3 years for dry grasslands and a shorter time for wetter places. In the end it decomposes and returns to the air, mostly as CO2 but a little CH4 (not sure of the ratio) Root carbon is sequester for a longer time, but even the soil carbon slowly oxidizes, and works it way back to the air (again I couldn’t find the ratio). Above ground biomass does not contribute much to soil Carbon

When grass is eaten, about ½ of it is digested, the other half just passes through. On a dry land system the manure will slowly decompose and release carbon to the air as CO2 with a little methane (more uncertainty of the ratio). Under wetter condition more CH4 is produced due to anaerobic decomposition Part of the digested C produces CO2 and Methane at a ratio between 2.5 to 6.5:1 CO2:CH4 depending on the diet (http://jas.fass.org/cgi/content/abstract/30/2/257 6.5:1 to 2.3:1

http://jds.fass.org/cgi/reprint/42/7/1182.pdf 4.6:1

) and some C is sequester in cow tissue if she is still growing, lactating or pregnant. Tissue C is released when the cow dies, or when her calf dies.

So to get to the bottom of the impact of ruminant grazing on global warming we need to know if the ratio of CO2:CH4 is changed by passing the stuff through a rumen. Since the rumen is somewhat anaerobic it is likely that there is a change in the ratio, but to have a reasonable discussion about this issue we need to know the magnitude.

I get what your saying and it seems to be a very difficult task at hand. But not all cattle farms have grass, most of the farms I've seen look like a baron waste land and the cows feed from troughs. So maybe that's where to problem lies is that they are not recycling anything and if the cow farm does have grass I'm sure that the cow releases more methane than the grass can absorb considering a plant can only absorb so much. Not that it really matters b/c human CO2 release amount is 0.3% of the total combined CO2 release of man and nature. I would assume that cow's releasing methane would be considered as man releasing due to the fact that we stall the cattle and eat em. So this amount of methane/CO2 really doesn't matter on the grand scale of things. We cannot control the climate bottom line!!!

I have the same problem, a cow goes from an average of 30 lbs at birth to almost a thousand pounds in a little over a year. The vast majority of the carbon that the cow is made of comes from CO2 that was sequestered from the atmosphere by the plants and grain that the cow consumed. Until you calculate the amount of CO2 that the cow sequestered from the atmosphere, you can't really say for sure that cattle are not carbon neutral.

I said the same thing before. I think it's a bunch of Peta people who wants us to stop eating beef.

As for the grass not eaten, most of the grass would die and convert to Methan and CO2 with out the cows help. Grass store very little Carbon, because they don't live a long life. Trees are considered temporary storage as well. Eventually the tree would die and turn ino CO2.

I was told Shells and coral are permanent CO2 storage device. Of course according to the environmentalist, if we increase CO2, that would acidify the ocean and sea shells would start to dissolve. If that happens, the acidic water would start dissolving the sand and release even more CO2. I think according to the Environmentalist model, that won't start happening until the next century.

PS I don't believe everything Environmentalist say. They have an agenda and may over exagerate things.

I don't tell people to believe in greenhouse effect, but I do somewhat support there agenda. I do not want to see a continuation of relying on foreign oil and I live in LA, and see the other type of pollution growing here.

Cows have two stomachs and between the two stomachs a certain number of cows can produce an awful amount of methane, far more than you might imagine and far more methane than the C02 cycle can handle.

For example, if you have ever lived on a farm, not that I've ever done this myself, some kids stick a tube up a cows behind, light it and get a pretty amazing pyrotechnic results. I do happen to know one boy who tried this when he was eight. However this particular boy did not stop to think that this stunt would be a thing done better outside rather than inside his father's barn. The resulting flame was far more "enegetic" than the boy expected and the hay caught fire and burned down his father's barn. I heard, again I'm not sure who it was, couldn't sit down for fwo weeks afterwards.

Methane is 21 times more potent than CO2 over a 100 year time scale. Therefore cows converting Carbon in the grass into Methane is a net global warming potential of 20 times more warming than just leaving the grass uneaten so to speak.

It's a little silly to me. There were millions of buffalo roaming the country before the cattle were here. Cattle are primarily fed grass. They are usually supplemented with dried alfalfa, hay and grain in the winter. The normal practice is to raise them to about 2 years of age or about 1200 lbs. and feed them grain in a feed lot for the last 100 days to promote marbling of fat in the meat. Newer methods are totally grass fed, with no hormones and no antibiotics.

No one has yet been able to give me a reason how a stable population of human being can add to the greenhouse gas effecte (either) forget cattles. but ask some one who got the noble prize recently and living in some where country near Canada.

Environmental campaigners have been campaigning since the 1970's (if not longer) about how South American rainforest is being cleared to provide grazing land for beef cattle for American hamburgers.

Exactly what the scientific reality is, is not important. The destruction of rainforest creates a strong emotional response in a lot of people.

The problem is[ if there is one] Cows Volcano's and sun spots