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If you had to make the choice, which of your consumables would you choose to have decreased by half - fossil fuels or meats? Explain in a proper paragraph format, using details. Use evidence from the article and your own ideas to support your answer. Proofread your work before submission and write your name to get credit for your work.

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How do beef and dairy cows contribute to climate change? Livestock agriculture is a source of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

Over the last couple of centuries, Earth has become warmer. That's because of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.

One of the most commonly known greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide (CO 2). Carbon dioxide is a colourless, odourless gas. It is released when fossil fuels are burned. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The carbon in the carbon dioxide was stored for millions of years under the ground in the form of hydrocarbons.

After carbon dioxide, the next most abundant greenhouse gas is methane (CH ₄). Although carbon dioxide is much more abundant in the atmosphere than methane, methane traps roughly 30 times more heat than carbon dioxide. This makes methane an important gas to keep an eye on.

Graph - Text version

CO ₂ accounts for about 76 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. Methane, primarily from agriculture, contributes 16 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and nitrous oxide, mostly from industry and agriculture, contributes 6 percent to global emissions. All figures here are expressed in CO2-equivalents.

Let's look more closely at where methane comes from. In particular, let's look at a source of methane that might surprise you: livestock.

What are the sources of methane emissions?

Methane comes from both natural sources and anthropogenic (human-related) sources. Natural sources include:

Wetlands

bodies of water

Plant-eating animals (such as elephants, kangaroos, and termites!)

Human-related sources fall into four main categories:

Natural gas-based

Petroleum-based

Agriculture-based

Other sources

Agriculture-based sources include rice production, livestock, and manure management. Other sources include the burning of biomass, coal mining, and the treatment of waste in landfills and wastewater.

Graphic - Text version

30% of methane comes from natural sources, 40% from agricultural sources and 30% from other human-made sources.

How do livestock produce methane?

The beef and dairy cattle industry is one of the main contributors to global greenhouse gases. Methane makes up about half of the total greenhouse gases this sector emits. Cows generate methane in two main ways: through their digestion and through their waste.

Cows are part of a group of animals called ruminants. Ruminants have stomachs with four distinct chambers. Sheep, goats, and giraffes are also ruminants.

Image labels

In order, from beginning to end, food moves through the A: rumen; B: reticulum; C: omasum and D: abomasum.

The first chamber is called the rumen. The rumen is home to a complex ecosystem of microorganisms. These include bacteria, fungi, and protozoa. Some bacteria and protozoa break down the sugar and starch from plants. Others break down the cellulose that makes up plant cell walls.

The second chamber is the reticulum. This is where tough-to-digest plants, like grass, are stored. The plants are regurgitated and chewed again and again. This repeated chewing helps physically break the food down.

The third chamber is the omasum. It mechanically breaks the food down further.

The fourth chamber is the abomasum, or true stomach. Here, nutrients are extracted from the food. The food then proceeds through the digestive process.

Did you know?

The rumen contains about 200 species of microorganisms. But only about 10% of these play an important role in digestion.

An important process called enteric fermentation takes place in the rumen. That's when bacteria break down complex carbohydrates into simple sugars. The end products of enteric fermentation by bacteria include volatile fatty acids (VFAs) as well as gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane. VFAs are absorbed through the walls of the rumen and transported to the liver where the animals use them for energy.

Did you know?

Cows release methane mainly through their belches (burps). The rest comes out as flatulence (farts).

Can we make cows produce less methane?

What cows eat has a big effect on how much methane they produce. Digesting certain types of food produces more methane than digesting other foods. For example, digesting hay and grass produces more methane than corn. Scientists are studying alternatives to cow feed that may produce less methane.

For example, scientists are trying adding seaweed to the cows' food. They hope that seaweed can inhibit a specific enzyme. That enzyme is involved in the production of methane while the cow digests its food. A 2018 experiment showed that adding seaweed to a cow's diet may reduce their methane production by as much as half! But researchers have found one problem with this solution: cows don't seem to like the salty taste of seaweed very much!

Other scientists are taking a genetic approach. A study published in 2019 found that the type and amount of methane-producing bacteria found in a cow's stomach is related to its genetic makeup. Knowing this, scientists can breed cows that have less of these bacteria in their stomachs. This will eventually create a type of genetically-modified cow that produces less methane!

Did you know?

We share our planet with 1.4 billion cows. Each of these animals produces 250 to 500 litres of methane every day!

What can you do to help fight climate change?

Many people like you and me are always looking for ways to keep greenhouse gas emissions down. For example, many of us choose to walk or bike instead of driving.

But as you have just learned, methane gas emissions from livestock are a huge problem. So driving less may not be the most important thing we can do to help mitigate climate change. Many experts now believe that eating less meat would actually have a bigger impact.

What would be your first response if a friend told you that they wanted to become a vegetarian or vegan?

If you had to make the choice, which of your consumables would you choose to have decreased by half - fossil fuels or meats? Explain.

Would you consider starting or joining a Meatless Monday campaign in your school? http://www.meatlessmonday.com/ Why/why not?

Do you think governments should set methane (CH₄) limits for agriculture? Explain.

Should there be a carbon tax placed on beef and dairy products purchased by consumers? Why/why not?

How should funds and resources be allocated to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions?

Describe the economic and social issues surrounding bovine agriculture.

What are the main sources of methane globally?

What is the difference between natural-source methane and anthropogenic methane? List examples of each.

What is a ruminant? What is the function of the rumen?

Describe the process of enteric fermentation. What role does methane play in this process?

In terms of climate change, why are methane gas levels a concern?

How much CH₄ is produced per edible kilogram of cow agriculture compared to pig or chicken agriculture? (Note: This question will require additional research.)

The scientific study of meat as a protein composed of amino acid building blocks has led to some success at growing cultured meat in a lab. How would you feel about switching your diet to lab-cultured meat? Explain.

Should scientists continue to work on developing meat proteins in the lab as a way of reducing our dependence on farmed meat? Why/why not?

Scientists are working on different approaches to collect the methane produced by cows so it can be burned as a cleaner fuel supply. One method involves using a tube permanently inserted into the cow's rumen to transfer the gas directly from the stomach into external collection chambers. Do you think this is an acceptable solution to reducing CH₄ emissions into the atmosphere? Explain.

Should popular media play a greater role in promoting programs like Meatless Monday campaigns? Why/why not?

Climate change campaigns generally suggest individuals take such actions as changing their light bulbs, taking shorter showers and carpooling to reduce personal CO₂ emissions. Why do you suppose there has been so little media coverage about the climate change effects of agriculture, especially cow agriculture, in the media, despite it being a major greenhouse gas emitter?

This article can be used to support teaching and learning of Environmental Science, Climate Change and Chemistry related to beef and dairy cows, greenhouse gases, agriculture, climate change and sustainable living. Concepts introduced include greenhouse gases, fossil fuels, methane (CH₄), anthropogenic, livestock, ruminants, rumen, microorganisms and enteric fermentation.

To consolidate learning after reading this article, teachers could have students complete a Concept Definition Web learning strategy for the concept: enteric fermentation. Ready-to-use Concept Definition Web reproducibles are available in [Google doc] or [PDF] formats.

To further explore the issue of reducing greenhouse gases, teachers could have students use a Pros & Cons Organizer learning strategy to consider the positive and negative aspects of reducing meat consumption in order to reduce methane emissions. Ready to use Pros & Cons Organizer reproducibles for this article are available in [Google doc] and [PDF] formats.

Connecting and Relating

What would be your first response if a friend told you that they wanted to become a vegetarian or vegan?

If you had to make the choice, which of your consumables would you choose to have decreased by half - fossil fuels or meats? Explain.

Would you consider starting or joining a Meatless Monday campaign in your school? http://www.meatlessmonday.com/ Why/why not?

Relating Science and Technology to Society and the Environment

Do you think governments should set methane (CH₄) limits for agriculture? Explain.

Should there be a carbon tax placed on beef and dairy products purchased by consumers? Why/why not?

How should funds and resources be allocated to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions?

Describe the economic and social issues surrounding bovine agriculture.

Exploring Concepts

What are the main sources of methane globally?

What is the difference between natural-source methane and anthropogenic methane? List examples of each.

What is a ruminant? What is the function of the rumen?

Describe the process of enteric fermentation. What role does methane play in this process?

In terms of climate change, why are methane gas levels a concern?

How much CH₄ is produced per edible kilogram of cow agriculture compared to pig or chicken agriculture? (Note: This question will require additional research.)

Nature of Science/Nature of Technology

The scientific study of meat as a protein composed of amino acid building blocks has led to some success at growing cultured meat in a lab. How would you feel about switching your diet to lab-cultured meat? Explain.

Should scientists continue to work on developing meat proteins in the lab as a way of reducing our dependence on farmed meat? Why/why not?

Scientists are working on different approaches to collect the methane produced by cows so it can be burned as a cleaner fuel supply. One method involves using a tube permanently inserted into the cow's rumen to transfer the gas directly from the stomach into external collection chambers. Do you think this is an acceptable solution to reducing CH₄ emissions into the atmosphere? Explain.

Media Literacy

Should popular media play a greater role in promoting programs like Meatless Monday campaigns? Why/why not?

Climate change campaigns generally suggest individuals take such actions as changing their light bulbs, taking shorter showers and carpooling to reduce personal CO₂ emissions. Why do you suppose there has been so little media coverage about the climate change effects of agriculture, especially cow agriculture, in the media, despite it being a major greenhouse gas emitter?

Teaching Suggestions

This article can be used to support teaching and learning of Environmental Science, Climate Change and Chemistry related to beef and dairy cows, greenhouse gases, agriculture, climate change and sustainable living. Concepts introduced include greenhouse gases, fossil fuels, methane (CH₄), anthropogenic, livestock, ruminants, rumen, microorganisms and enteric fermentation.

To consolidate learning after reading this article, teachers could have students complete a Concept Definition Web learning strategy for the concept: enteric fermentation. Ready-to-use Concept Definition Web reproducibles are available in [Google doc] or [PDF] formats.

To further explore the issue of reducing greenhouse gases, teachers could have students use a Pros & Cons Organizer learning strategy to consider the positive and negative aspects of reducing meat consumption in order to reduce methane emissions. Ready to use Pros & Cons Organizer reproducibles for this article are available in [Google doc] and [PDF] formats.

References

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. (2016, November 8). Greenhouse gases. Government of Canada.

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How do beef and dairy cows contribute to climate change? Livestock agriculture is a source of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Over the last couple of centuries, Earth has become warmer. That's because of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. One of the most commonly known greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide (CO 2 ).

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Personally, I would cut off meat. Factories that produce meat fuel climate change. If we cut meat from our diet, or even just cut it in half, it will benefit the world and animals. By reducing the animals, we consume, we can cut down greenhouse gas emissions. “Many experts now believe that eating less meat would actually have a bigger impact.” Cutting your meat diet by half can save many animals lives and maybe even help save this world. When scientists come up with a way to create a genetically-modified cow, it will cut down the methane. If we continue to eat meat, factories will continue to produce gasses that contribute to climate change. Climate change can end this world and we don't want that to happen.

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I will pick meat because meat is the best and some facts about meat are Meat and poultry are great sources of protein. They also provide lots of other nutrients your body needs, like iodine, iron, zinc, vitamins (especially B12) and essential fatty acids. So it's a good idea to eat meat and poultry every week as part of your balanced diet according to meat and poiltry.

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Question- if you had to make a choice, which of your consumables would you choose to have decreased by half- fossil fuels or meats?

I would choose fossil fuels.
Although fossil fuels help us develop we can’t make fossil fuels to develop without energy.
Energy comes from proteins and other stuff that we get with eating and fossil fuels cause pollution which effects the animals to get illnesses or even die.
so I think decreasing fossil fuels would definitely be the choice.
In conclusion I would decrease fossil fuels by half.

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If I had to make the choice to pick which consumables would decrease fossil fuels and meats are humans because they eat lots of meats.  Besides,  they make a lot of fossil fuels that causes polution into the atmosphere.   Furthermore, humans use natural gas used in fertilizers, and coal tars used in skin treatment products. This is why humans decease half of fossil fuels and meat.

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Decrease the amount of meats? or decrease the amount of fossil fuels? Personally, I think that fossil fuels should be decreased rather than meats. I think this because fossil fuels produce around 65% of our pollution. But greenhouse gases only produce around 35% of our pollution. not only that, but if we lower the population of livestock (cows) than that means a lower food stock for humans, leading to more deaths from starvation. but if we lower fossil fuel use we will have less needs like: transportation and housing, but decreasing fossil fuels is a safer option because there is a higher chance that more people will live with less fossil fuels other than decreasing livestock, sadly. more people will become homeless and less fortunate but people will have a better chance from living from that instead of less food. In conclusion I believe that fossil fuel use should be reduced rather than livestock.

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If I had to make the choice to decrease either meats or fossil fuels by half, I would choose fossil fuels.   The reason I would choose this is because one person decreasing their meat consumption would have little impact on the environment it would need to be a global change. Since meat consumption is a smaller factor in climate change than many assume, we cannot save the environment only by eating less meat. Blaming meat for climate change is easy and distracts from the more significant climate change problems. The burning of fossil fuels versus the livestock production of methane gas is a bigger contributor to the greenhouse effect.

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If I had to make the choice of which consumable I would like to decrease half off, it would be both. This is because if I, for example want to decrease and make meat half off, so less cows can die, then there would be fossil fuels which are also dangerous for wildlife. I would also say both because both of these consumables, affect our wildlife. Actually, I would mainly go for and decrease meat. Not just because of cows and other animals dying, but also because meat produces the most greenhouse gases in our environment. If you don't know what a greenhouse gas is, it is a gas that absorbs radiant energy, carbon dioxide and more. Also, meat can have a major affect on wildlife and humans as well. Especially red meat, because it can cause many diseases and illnesses. Overall, I would my choice would be to decrease meat around the world because it has more cons on us and the environment.

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we can stop is by containing the gases. how we can contain these gases. By put it in a facility that is well monitored. I think this will stop global warming.

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In a perfect world I do both but to choose one I would reduce meat consumption by 50%. In the article Cows, Methane, and Climate Change by lets talk science states, "Although carbon dioxide is much more abundant in the atmosphere than methane, methane traps roughly 30 times more heat than carbon dioxide. This makes methane an important gas to keep an eye on. /.../ 40% of methane is from agriculture." This shows that we should lower meats by 50% because cows traps more heat in the earths atmosphere then carbon dioxide. The more the earth heats up the more chance of the earths ecosystems get destroyed and the species in them get extinct which can lead to the world getting extinct. As you can see we should reduce 50% in meat consumption.

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In the article it said 30% of methane comes from other sources such as human activity and factory's. If we reduce the amount of coal and gases we use we can lower that percentage and have less methane in the world. Methane also comes from cows and scientists are figuring pout how to fed cows differently so they wont produce as much methane. If I had to chose I would chose to reduce the amount of stuff I use in my house like paper, pencils, and water.

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This is a pi chart and as you can see there is 75% fossil fuels.

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K.B    If you had to make the choice, which of your consumables would you choose to have decreased by half - fossil fuels or meats?

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K.B    If you had to make the choice, which of your consumables would you choose to have decreased by half - fossil fuels or meats?

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If I had to make a choose it would be fossil fuels but it would also be good to lower meats because cows pollute a lot too threw burps and a little threw farts. But I would choose fossil fuels because It affects winter a lot more and pollutes a lot more. Also fossil fuels can warm the planet to create a lot wild fires for really hot areas and country's like Australia.

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I would pick the meat because first off, meats are great for protein and great for nutrition and much more. Second fossil fumes can hurt animals and can be very dangerous, as well when fossil fules are burned it releases toxins and carbon dioxide into the air, this causes polution and can damage the air and world. I know this because in the text it explains how carbon dioxide is bad and fossil fules are mainly that.

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If i had a choice, i would chose meats. Why? because meat comes from all sorts of animals and i know we have to eat but at least decrease the times we do kill animals for no reason. it isn't helping them and i want to help them they do not deserve being killed for being used for something not important.

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question of the day: which of your consumables would you choose to have decreased by half - fossil fuels or meats?

I think that i would prefer fossil fuels to get decreased by half. Fossil fuels are having a big part in why global warming is so bad and why its destroying our planet slowly so if we keep burning fossil fuels global warming isn't going to get better. Reducing our cows/meat down by half would be a very bad mistake. first it would make our food recourse's very limited very quickly. secondly the impact on the enviroment is very little with cows/ farm animals. That's why i think that we should cut down fossil fuels instead of our meat.

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I would choose fossil fuels because at the bottom of the article it said that eating less meat might have a bigger impact on climate change. I don't really know if that's is a good or bad thing in the text but for this I'm going to assume that its a bad thing. They said that the greenhouse gases that are causing climate change are carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide and some other greenhouse gases. This is where my answer of cutting fossil fuels come in . It also says in the article that when fossil fuels are burned the carbon dioxide and other GhG's are released into the atmosphere. Which makes our earth warmer. I got all my information from the article.

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I would decrease fossil fuels by half. They cause numerous amounts of problems like pollution, in our waters and air. By cutting down the amount of fossil fuels produced, less people will develop deseases and cancers, and our plants and trees will livbe longer. Banning stuff such as coal mining and oil drilling, will decreas the amount of pollution we have now. This is why I think we should decrese the amount of fossil fuels and help our planet.

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I would cut the amount of dairy I eat in half.  This would help because then my parents would not be buying as much dairy foods.  By people not eating as much dairy then farmers will not need as many dairy cows.   Dairy cow are plant eaters that procedure methane. Methane traps 30% more heat then carbon dioxide.
Andy B

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If I had to make a choice which of the consumables to have decreased in half I would choose fossil fuels. The fossil fuels do help us with are electricity but we can have other ways to get light and power for are house. Like sunlight and candles is other way to get light. I would choose to decrease fossil fuels instead of meat because fossil fuels has been putting carbon dioxide into the fresh air ruining all the wild life and making it harder for us to breath. So decreasing it would be way more better for us. If we decided to decrease meats more animals would be alive but we would have less food and there would be less ways to get protein. This is why I would decrease fossil fuels instead of meat.

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Ether cut off the amount of meats or decrease the fossil fuels? personally i would decrease the fossil fuels because it causes pollution that affects animals to die. And if we decreased the meats of the cows we would have a lower food stock and we need the food to live. It would be a better option because there is a more likley higher chance of people surviving if we decrease fossil fuels, in conclusion i would decrease fossil fuels by half.