Cow farts collected in plastic tanks for global warming study.
Video.
The numbers:
-Cows and similar ruminants are responsible for around 18% of global greenhouse gases, mainly methane.
-A single (dairy) cow, fed intensively, can produce between 500 and 700 liters of methane per day by burping and farting.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 120859.htm
-An ordinary grazing cow produces around 350 liters per day.
-Let's take an average of 400 liters per day for all ruminants on the planet.
-Times 365: that is between 146,000 liters per year per cow, or 146 cubic meters of CH4 (5,156 cubic ft).
-Times number of cows on the planet: 1.5 billion times 146 (5,156) = 219 trillion cubic meters (7,734 trillion cubic ft)!!!
Let's slash that in two, just because we can, also because bulls are not that productive, and because PO doomers might not like the fact that cows produce more methane than there is natural gas in Russia.
Ok, so lets keep the cow farts at a comfortable 100 trillion cubic meters per year (4000 trillion cubic feet).
Russia has proved natural gas reserves worth 47,5 trillion cubic meters.
Now we need to calculate the costs of plastic bags, tubes and suction pumps that have to be attached to all the cows of the planet. But I can imagine that the yearly methane harvest from a cow outstrips these costs.
There are probably a few practical problems that first need to be overcome to make direct cow gas harvesting possible.
