"vegetable-positive environmental groups"
God damned ridiculous that this is some sort of anomalous group of people.

Factoid: it would take several billion more cows in the world to supply organic fertilizer if agriculture abandoned chemical fertilizers.

wow, subby did this-google: cow articles..

cow headlines are done?

TheCableGuy: cow headlines are done?


I like my cow headlines to be rare.

Somebody needs to tell the EPA that the other end of the cow produces the most methane. Burps beat farts by far.

We'd save the planet if we just plugged all the hot-air coming out of D.C.

So when do we start capturing volcano spewage to save the planet from itself?

The stupidity is never-ending with these religious freaks... I mean, green freaks.

The trifectas change apparently. Wasn't it supposed to be accidental barbecues or some shiat?

They are green lighting some lame-ass stuff lately.

(W-hatever)

TheCableGuy: cow headlines are done?

Done, yes. Well done, no.

GaryPDX: You gotta be kidding me. Why? Natural Gas is methane. I wonder how much methane 7 billion people produce.

Internally? None. It's made by cattle breaking down vegetable matter via the bacteria in their stomachs, which we don't have. Cattle and sheep actually do produce a lot of methane...drive by a feed lot some time, it's almost intolerable; but that smell isn't just the piles of poop. It's the gas.

More like quad-fecta?

Fantine71: More like quad-fecta?

F*ck, it's a stampede by now....

i think i'm new here so i'll ask this question: what is the time span for a trifecta to become a true trifecta?

3 in a day, hour, what?

GaryPDX: You gotta be kidding me. Why? Natural Gas is methane. I wonder how much methane 7 billion people produce.

This is cool. I just invented the inflatable colostomy bag.

$$$$$

/Mandatory for everyone over 12 under Obamacare.

charkocu: So when do we start capturing volcano spewage to save the planet from itself?

The stupidity is never-ending with these religious freaks... I mean, green freaks.

Synonymous. But don't tell the Greenies.

Makes them cry.

There's a far simpler way to skip the pollution caused by farm animals: quit breeding and eating the darned things.

Regardless of the effects of cows on global warming, there's the very real and proven problems associated with their existence: overgrazing and topsoil loss; waste of scarce water resources; vast amounts of fossil fuel use (78 calories of fuel have to be burned to bring 1 calorie of beef to market, compared with 2 calories per calorie of soy); the separate chain of pollution associated with the production of chemicals to fertilize cattle feed and produce the antibiotics and growth hormones commonly used to fatten them; and, finally, what to do with all the crap and piss that the animals produce during their short lifespans.

No wonder the rest of the world laughs at the US when we talk about "saving the planet." We are arguably the most wasteful nation on earth, and use more energy per capita than any other country. While other, more "primitive" cultures have been practicing sustainable agriculture for centuries, we have adopted the worst diet possible: high in animal products and processed sugars, and low in just about anything nutritious. We wallow around like walruses, often throwing the food we don't finish away, while many people around the world are wondering whether to eat or do without to keep their children from dying from malnutrition. While other industrialized nations make advances in leaps and bounds with things like bullet trains and creative urban development, we continue to ticky-tack arable land with McHouses and roadways to clog with ever more single-passenger vehicles.

Obviously, there is still some work to be done with proving global warming. The facts are still vague, but common sense says that there have to be some long-term side effects from rapidly liberating trillions of tons of CO2 and other gases that have been stored away in the earth's crust over very long periods of time. Rush Wind-Bag and other right-wingers attacking global warming have every bit of the religious zeal and lack of real information that the militants protesting in Copenhagen do.

The recent resurgence in the green movement is a good thing, but there is still a lot to be done, and I dearly hope that some of our excesses can be reversed before it's too late. One way to start helping right away is to at least cut back on meat consumption, or, as I did back in the 90s during the wave of environmentalism surrounding the 20th anniversary of Earth Day, quit cold turkey (no pun intended.)

destrip: There's a far simpler way to skip the pollution caused by farm animals: quit breeding and eating the darned things.

Wow you're right that's real simple...all someone has to do is push a button and whala, everyone stops eating meat. Why didn't someone think of this before.

maxheck: It's funny watching the usual suspects jump in and WHARRGARBL about the GREENIES!!! (cue straightjacket pic)

Look, folks... The link in the first line of the article says that it's a program within the USDA to promote the use of bioreactors so that farms can capture the natural gas created by composting cow poop.

A number of farms already do this, and it pays for itself very quickly since they use the gas to heat their barns in the winter. The poop would be creating the gas anyway, but this way it can be put to use and the farmer doesn't have to buy NG pumped out of the ground.

Plus the compost produced is a much richer fertilizer and therefore more useful.

I don't see why this hasn't been pushed for the last 40 years. It's a win-win technology.

But the author and the usual "OMG! IT SOUNDS LIKE GREENIE STUFF!!" crew are against it because it sounds commie or something. Real clever, that.

Actually, you can generate electricity from it with something like a Capstone Microturbine (look it up! they're neat!). Or even a piston engine. Then the warm combustion exhaust can heat water or heat your barn, same as if you just burned it with external combustion. Capstone actually has a water heat exchanger so it can heat water inside the unit itself, but the water is not necessary to cool the device like it is in a car.

Johnnyflash: What? No Futurama pic? I'd post it but I am incompetent when it comes to making a hot link appear on Fark.

Of the buggalo or the lion taught to eat tofu? Seems both would be applicable in their own ways.

Gives me mental pictures of cows with catalytic converters up their rectums (recti?)

Why not just stop feeding them corn?

destrip: Regardless of the effects of cows on global warming, there's the very real and proven problems associated with their existence: overgrazing and topsoil loss

Like how from from 200kya until the 1800's; millions upon millions of bison, deer, camelids, horses, pronghorn, toxodons, woodland muskox, and litopterns, churned and farted up grasslands in unimaginably large herds throughout the Americas?
Or the wisent, aurochs, gaur, kouprey, yak, anoa, and various caprids that trampled across Eurasia?
Or how the wildebeest, antelope, giraffids, various hippopotamids, buffalos, and myriad other ruminants infested the African plains, some in herds numbering over one million animals?

That does sound like a problem.

GaryPDX: You gotta be kidding me. Why? Natural Gas is methane. I wonder how much methane 7 billion people produce.

Counting me? I'd say one fark of a lot.

SwiftFox: Factoid: it would take several billion more cows in the world to supply organic fertilizer if agriculture abandoned chemical fertilizers.

You mean the few small farmers left would have to change away from the mono-culture cash crops they do now(including raising their own beef), and corporate farms would just go away because their business model can't sustain itself that way, opening up for normal people to abandon their dead inner city cubicle existences and do something satisfying? The corporate dairy's that mistreat their animals that have taken over would be supplanted by lots of little ones if only to meet the demand for cow manure?

I am all for this idea, but not because of manbearpig. We're swimming in hydrocarbons in North America and yet our energy prices continue to climb. Supplies and suppliers are being artificially controlled.

Jarhead_h: SwiftFox: Factoid: it would take several billion more cows in the world to supply organic fertilizer if agriculture abandoned chemical fertilizers.

You mean the few small farmers left would have to change away from the mono-culture cash crops they do now(including raising their own beef), and corporate farms would just go away because their business model can't sustain itself that way, opening up for normal people to abandon their dead inner city cubicle existences and do something satisfying? The corporate dairy's that mistreat their animals that have taken over would be supplanted by lots of little ones if only to meet the demand for cow manure?

Pretty much, plus a few billion people starving to death.

...and so the twilight-zone laws begin. I've been saying it for a long time, and now we're finally starting to see that we're going to have to reduce our quality of life to chase a farcical monster. fark Al Gore.

GaryPDX: destrip: There's a far simpler way to skip the pollution caused by farm animals: quit breeding and eating the darned things.

You sound like a vegetarian PETA wank.


Vegetarianism is THE thorn in the foot for most moderate environmentalists. At work, every time we're supposed to come up with suggestions for sustainability/carbon footprint reduction, I cheerfully pipe up with "no more meat products for any company function". It's like I'm speaking in Pashto, and you have about three "environmentally conscious" people tripping over each other to move to the next suggestion. Most environmentalists realize that meat consumption (at least on the scale we have it now), is massively destructive. Yet, that's one of the facets of their lives they just don't want to change.

Also, the other way to really annoy environmentalists is to suggest that their wanting to get buried rather than cremated is a massive waste of natural resources. Give them pictures of crowded cemetaries using up valuable land that we could be growing food on. I have several if anyone needs some.

trifecta trifecta complete