Hacker News Reader

Comment by mgerdts | Hacker News Reader

I first thought “oh great more GMOs to maximize corporate profits while making animals miserable. Then my hopes rose with this:

> They were bred with climate change in mind

So they’ve found a way to have happy cows that burp less methane?

No? Shorter hair so their methane burb greenhouse doesn’t feel so hot? Oh. This probably just boils down to profits after all.

View on HN

I wonder which one effectfull to climate change, people's total farts vs the total farts of cows in the world?

36% of all mammals today are humans 60% are livestock

So I guess you have the answer

Cows by a wide margin, probably. And it's mainly their burps, actually.

Everyone forgets the missing methane output from the nearly extirpated bison population. Cattle in north america are only slightly more numerous than the peak bison population.

I wasn’t expecting to ask this when I woke up this morning but: how much methane did bison burp relative to the same biomass of modern cattle?

Probably less because we are feeding the cheapest source of feed to cows, not what they can digest the best. The food that your body fails to digest will be digested in the big intestine which can lead to bloating.

> A number of past studies have found lower greenhouse gas emissions associated with the feedlot system. One reason is that grass-fed cows gain weight more slowly, so they produce more methane (mostly in the form of belches) over their longer lifespans.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/13/746576239/is...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com