It Wasn’t the Cows After All

Nah, it's still the cows. No citation of a livestock emissions figure is made by the author. They took an excellent study which didn't mention cows at all and repackaged it as clickbait for this company's blog...

29 gigagrams of methane per year from fertilizer plants, says the study. (The 28 gigagrams figure in the article is misquoted, Ctrl+F for "29 (±18) Gigagram per year" here https://www.elementascience.org/article/10.1525/elementa.358... )

6.2 teragrams of methane per year from livestock emissions, says this other study https://extension.psu.edu/livestock-methane-emissions-in-the...

Last I checked 6.2 teragrams is a lot more than 29 gigagrams.

On another note... I highly recommend looking at the original paper. Awesome visual of emissions data captured by Cornell University sensors onboard a Google Street View vehicle! Image here: https://www.elementascience.org/article/10.1525/elementa.358...

It's unfortunate that so much methane is released by fertilizer plants through incomplete chemical reactions, improper combustion, and leaks. 100x more than was previously estimated, in fact.

Also a bit curious - how did Cornell researchers get their sensors onboard a Google Street View car? Did Cornell approach Google for this study or vice versa?

Roger Gordon (http://www.greennh3.com/) has a design for a small-scale ammonia production system that individual farmers could drive from their own wind turbines. It produces no methane. He has not found investors yet.

Driving these big polluters out of business would be a great service to the world, and could be profitable besides. They don't just leak methane, they also release huge amounts of CO2. They have no reason to leak methane; it even costs them money. They are just sloppy.

> Once cattle—raised on grass without synthetic fertilizer—are accurately assessed

Except this does not cover the vast majority of cattle consumed. And it doesn't cover the effect of forested land being cleared for cattle production.

Gigagram? 10 thousand ton?