Why Did Bessie Die?

19 Replies to “Why Did Bessie Die?”

1. Will they also feed methane suppressants to vegetarians?

   All those beans have to go somewhere.

2. Farmers everywhere should just ignore stupid demands from their governments….and then starve out the capital cities of those countries.

   1. Our father worked for the Department of Public Works back in the 1970’s and have a very “low” opinion of government workers. He told us a short story entitled “Pink Ribbons on Cows’ Tails”. In his story to his family, government workers decreed that all cows in Canada should have pink ribbons on Cows’ Tails. Of course which department should administer this program – Agriculture, Tourism (it was beautifying the countryside) or Industry? So of course a department head and his secretary would be required; directives would have to be written and distributed throughout the country and then there would be inspectors to ensure that the directive was followed. There would be departmental wrangling as to the color of pink, how wide should the ribbons be, what material should be used, should they be tied in bows on the tails? It was all an exercise to increase the size of the silly service and the payroll.
      This directive is in the same category as our father’s fictional story.

   2. “Farmers everywhere should just ignore stupid demands from their governments…”

      My comment about why that isn’t likely to happen went down the black hole of moderation. It won’t happen again.

      1. “My comment about why that isn’t likely to happen went down the black hole of moderation. It won’t happen again.”

         I lost my first one yesterday…I had posted three links (from Reuters, the New York Times and CNN) on Russia announcing a 500,000 BPD oil cutback. No idea what was supposedly wrong with it.

3. I’m going to bet it’s pseudo science. Something that messes up the bovine micro biome.

   Big Locust really wants us to eat bugs.

4. Wait till we get to electric airplanes, we’ll see how many private jets go electric:-)))))

5. The ones desperately in need of methane suppressants are the NGOs and bureaucrats pushing this nonsense.

   1. What they NEED is to have the methane stored in their bodies released through decomposition.

6. We are screwed if farmers go along with this.
   Where is the resisitence?

7. Well, I’m not sure who that that “government source” is in that article, but obviously she’ll be taking these supplements soon.

8. So, stop the cows from actually digesting their food, then? Because that belching and flatulence is a normal, natural consequence of the digestion of plant matter (especially the kind that cows eat). That won’t end well.

9. Husbands across the country look nervously behind them.

10. I’m sure glad the article cleared up that “urban myth” that cow farts are the culprit, when it fact it was cow belching all along. I feel so much better now knowing that the science behind this is all settled.

11. Beano. Just give the cows Beano.

    1. Better yet, just get rid of the politicians.

12. Putin is like Mother Theresa compared to the leadership of the west.

13. While travelling along the Arkansas River in May of 1871, Colonel Richard Irving Dodge rode through an unbroken herd of bison for more than 25 miles. A keen observer and self taught naturalist, Dodge noted the density of the herd averaged 15 – 20 bison / acre. And after consulting with local travelers and hunters, he concluded that the herd was at least 50 miles long. Based on his observations, that single immense herd covered ~1,250 square miles and contained 12 to 16 million animals.

    Approximately thirty years earlier, (1839), Thomas Farnham travelled through a large herd of bison along the Santa Fe Trail for 3 days, and over an estimated distance of 45 to 50 miles. Farnham reported that he could see bison for ~15 miles in all directions, suggesting this herd covered up to ~1,350 square miles. At 15 to 20 bison / acre, it would have contained 13 to 17.25 million bison.

    The most widely-cited estimate for the number of bison in North America (west of the Mississippi) when Columbus arrived is 60 million animals. However, this number comes from a paper written in 1929, after bison were nearly extinct. It was written by a researcher named Ernest Thompson Seton who relied on a previous estimate made by a researcher named William Hornaday. In his 1889 paper, Hornaday (a thoughtful scientist who preferred to err on the side of caution) arbitrarily reduced the size of Colonel Dodge’s herd (12 to 16 million animals) to only 4 million. Based on absolutely nothing, he felt ‘almost certain’ that the herd Colonel Dodge observed must have been wedge-shaped rather than rectangular, and he therefore slashed Colonel Dodge’s estimate by more than two-thirds. Later, when Seton wrote his paper, he not only used Hornaday’s arbitrarily conservative estimate, but he also presumed that a herd like the one Colonel Dodge observed would range over an area of ~200,000 square miles. By dividing the total area of the plains and prairies of North America (the area between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, and from Great Slave Lake in Canada to the Rio Grande) by 200,000, he calculated this region could support 15 such herds. And multiplying 15 herds x 4 million animals per herd gave him his pre-columbian bison population guesstimate of ~60 million. In reality, this number has no scientific basis whatsoever. And because both Hornaday and Seton simply pulled conservative numbers from their rear ends, this guesstimate is likely low. A much more reasonable number is obtained by simply multiplying Colonel Dodge’s estimated herd size of 12 to 16 million animals by Seton’s 15 herds, yielding a of pre-Columbian bison population of 180 to 240 million animals. And this more reasonable number may still be low.

14. Although an atmosphere of pure methane can act to absorb heat, its concentration in the earths atmosphere has about as much effect as a fart in the wind. Its contribution to heating the atmosphere is overwhelmed by that of water vapour which is orders of magnitude greater in concentration.

    This is ignored by proponents of controlling methane emissions from cattle. It’s a non issue.