The Climate Change Show: #3 Cow Burps

[Please note that information included in this article may not be relevant by the time you’re reading it.]

It’s been quite a while since we released the second edition of this show. But by the end, you’ll find new information in your head that’s also quite interesting because today, we’re talking about cow burps and how they impact our climate.

According to an article by Nick Perry of the Associated Press, an urgency has arisen in New Zealand targeting cow burps. Farming is essential to the New Zealand economy, but coming with it is a considerable climate cost. Half of the nation’s greenhouse emissions are a result of farming! And one of the contributors is those cows grazing in the fields.

To clarify, it’s not just cows but also other farm animals. Cows are just a reference. The problem isn’t the grass they’re grazing on but what happens after they’ve eaten. Because cows can’t directly digest the grass, they store it in multiple stomachs to slowly decompose with the help of acids. That process produces gas, the most harmful being methane (chemical formula: CH4). Cows burp out this gas, releasing methane into the atmosphere.

Now another factor, which you may have heard of before, comes into the picture. It’s the greenhouse effect. Greenhouses are transparent glass houses that trap heat and moisture inside to help plants grow. The greenhouse effect works quite similarly to that. The gasses, like methane and carbon dioxide (chemical formula: CO2), trap the sun’s heat (transmitted through sunlight) inside Earth’s atmosphere. In the natural balance of our planet, some form of the greenhouse effect is good, allowing the right temperature for life to exist.

However, after the Industrial Revolution, we industrialized things, automating many processes previously done by hand. It caused a shift in the balance of greenhouse gases, with more added yearly, because of factories burning fossil fuels, cars burning gasoline, farms raising livestock, etc. And livestock emissions, you may have guessed, include the methane released by cow burps.

Methane is also a greenhouse gas, and every burp from cows slightly worsens the greenhouse effect, shifting the natural balance of gases in the atmosphere. However, it’s not just methane and carbon dioxide that contribute to a changing climate. Other harmful greenhouse gases include nitrous oxide, ozone, and, surprisingly, water vapor. Even though carbon dioxide is the first thing that comes to mind as a greenhouse gas, water vapor is the worst. Carbon dioxide only gets to be second, and the following CO2 is methane.

So if cow burps are so harmful to our climate, what could we do to try and fix it? The most straightforward approach would be to eliminate livestock. However, that’s not considerable for non-vegetarians. Are there other ideas? Maybe things like giving a vaccine to livestock could help. However, a proven approach could be the potential game-changer: Adding red seaweed to cow feed.

This approach started when some farmers started feeding their cows seaweed, especially a red tropical species. It turns out that this method of feeding livestock was quite effective, lowering livestock emissions substantially. According to Karen Beauchemin, a scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, red seaweed reduces emissions “by 32 per cent all the way to 98 per cent, depending on the dose, and the type of animal, and the type of diet.”

That is an incredible feat regarding reducing livestock emissions. But is it enough? And what are the effects of a warming climate in the long run? Tune in next time in the fourth edition of The Climate Change Show to find out. As always, thank you for reading, and please share this article to let more people know.