Listen to this PodcastMore 60-Second Earth
Early inhabitants of what’s now Los Angeles called the region the Valley of Smoke. But it was the car that really made Los Angeles's smog get out of hand.
Or was it?
You might not think of Los Angeles as a cow town. But there are nearly 300,000 cattle in the region, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And now flights to measure local air pollution have revealed that the cows may be a bigger factor in dangerous air pollution than the cars are.
Ground-level ozone is bad enough, but smog gets really nasty when it also includes tiny particles of pollution. And the bacteria eating all that dairy cow waste turn out to be as big a source of this type of pollution as L.A.'s nearly 10 million cars and trucks.
The good news: it's a lot easier to control emissions from a few big dairy farms than 10 million vehicles. So an effort to reduce the pollution from cows and their bacteria could have a bigger impact on Los Angelenos air than further emission cuts from cars. So says a study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Let's mooo-ve on that, shall we?
—David Biello
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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21 Comments
Add CommentA new law would give citizens a choice:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this- turn vegetarian and drive a car or
- eat meat and use public transport.
That should halve pollution.
Or, this being a hi-tech state, build a car that is powered by the driver's own "meat waste" bio-gas. The more meat you eat, the more waste you produce, the further you can drive. Perfume at will.
We don't need more laws. The government is already too much in everyone's business.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyou qualify for the methane-powered car <g>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo all "laws" in and of themselves are bad?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGet rid all laws. By your logic, what could be better?
Typical reply of a political simpleton. Someone says there are to many laws already and some pedestrian replies "So all "laws" in and of themselves are bad? Get rid all laws. By your logic, what could be better?".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo, they simply said there are to many. No where did they say we should have none. I though SA would attract a more honest and intellectual audience. Go to the Huffington Post for those politically charged post.
The methane produced here in a single morning would already power a bus across LA.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut if you want to take this seriously, we already eat too much meat and we already use too much petrol.
If meat and petrol would cost what they really should we'd eat less meat (live healthier) and have more gas-efficient cars (pollute less).
If this was really the free market most of the US citizens believe it is (it is not by any stretch of the imagination) we wouldn't need as many _stupid_ laws. So, yes, there are too many laws, no, you can't do without laws.
Strangely enough, those clamouring for less laws are usually those who pollute most and are most likely to be obese. And there is a nice and nifty logic there. <g>
Humm, I buy my meat form a local farmer who charges me a small profit over the cost of raising the cow. Not sure how I am getting a break. Not sure how I am not paying what I should for gas either (please do not bring up subsides for the gas company, they are not subsides, they are tax breaks which all companies get).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf there was any complaint about "free market" and not paying what we should it would be all the green technology jammed down our throat and payed for by our tax dollars (borrowed from China). Let the free market bring other energy solutions on its own.
As far as "Strangely enough, those clamouring for less laws are usually those who pollute most and are most likely to be obese. And there is a nice and nifty logic there", ...I would like to see some evidence backing up that claim. Not some skewed report either. In my experience, the ones screaming for more laws pollute just as much as anyone else, often through unintended consequences i.e. massive manufacturing plants to make solar panels which produce enough electricity for a small trailer park.
As far as obese? Really? Absolutely zero connection. Zero. Observation shows me the opposite. I am near a city which has a massive group of entitled, tax payer supported citizens who are clearly voting for politicians who will pass more laws to take more of my money and give it to them. With little exception, they are a fat and have fat kids who couldn't do a pushup it their government check depended on it. They eat crap day in and day out (even though, with a little effort, it is just as easy to eat healthy....I think it is the effort part killing them). The farmers I know, who want less laws and less regulation are all amazingly fit and healthy because they work 18 hours a day.
Really? What has the government done to you recently?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmazing when SA lets articles like this out. I guess the Global Warmist priests in their editing department did not realize they published an article saying nature has more of an effect on air pollution than evil human industry is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou warmists need to toe your own line... only humans cause pollution, there is no other source of warming, CO2, methane or any other "pollutant". Repeat this sentence every morning until you are brainwashed back into only believing the warmist bible as written by your computer models.
The very idea that cows could cause air pollution, what will they come up with next...
You mean besides causing and keeping a recession going and the plethora of everything else they do?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe you should consider the fact that at any point of the day you are breaking a law. There are literally millions of pages of laws on the books and there is no possible way you could understand all of them and be certain you are not breaking one or a dozen. Just ask the little girls with shutdown lemonade stands what happens when you break the law.
There are too many. 75,000 pages of federal laws this year alone, not counting the state governments or local ones.
The existence of so many laws on the books seems to be a state of hypocrisy for a country that is supposed to protect the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
If you really dont believe there are too many laws, then you need to pull your head out of sand or step out of your ivory tower for a day or two and look around at reality.
stagarms:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I buy my meat form a local farmer."
So you're not living in LA unless you have a strange concept of short distance.
"Not sure how I am not paying what I should for gas either"
If you'd add up all the cost of producing gas you'd have to pay a lot more, not to mention the cost of pollution. Gas is a heavily subsidized industry by way of enormous tax breaks.
"If there was any complaint about "free market" and not paying what we should it would be all the green technology jammed down our throat and payed for by our tax dollars"
Brainless. What's green got to do with free market? Free market is a criminal bank going bankrupt and not saved by tax money. Free market is a car maker going bust if it produces the wrong cars instead of getting taxes to save itself. Free market is not giving the gas companies unnecessary tax breaks simply because they have an enormously influential lobby. Free market is not the pharmaceutical industry spending more on marketing than on research. You don't know what you're talking about.
"Let the free market bring other energy solutions on its own."
If it was a free market this is exactly what would happen: gas would cost twice as much. And since you don't seem to know how the free market works: if gas was twice as expensive the car makers would build cars that use half as much. That's how it always worked in the past. Only compare the price per gallon/gas guzzlers up to the mid-1970s to the price per gallon/gas-efficient cars post-70s.
"(less laws = often obese) I would like to see some evidence backing up that claim."
Look around you. Those generally in favour of less laws also have less discipline (about pollution, food, nature). Of course you could counter with the Ted Nugents of our world = no respect but not fat either. There you have the two types.
"I am near a city which has a massive group of entitled, tax payer supported citizens who are clearly voting for politicians who will pass more laws to take more of my money and give it to them."
Oh yeah? So you know s..t about LA but know a poor neighborhood which votes Republican? Remember Reagan: promised everybody tax breaks and when he left the taxes were at an all-time high. Bush jr promised less bureaucracy and when he left the US was one big bureaucracy indebted as never before and had more laws than ever. Mouth like a machine-gun, memory like a sieve.
"The farmers I know, who want less laws and less regulation are all amazingly fit and healthy because they work 18 hours a day."
Those who still make money you mean?
My initial comment about "a new law" was meant humourously. Read it again S-L-O-W-L-Y.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI should have known better than to attempt subtle humour about food and gas in the US. <sigh>
priddseren:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I guess the Global Warmist priests in their editing department did not realize they published an article saying nature has more of an effect on air pollution than evil human industry is."W
Completely idiotic comment. Volcanoes pollute for example. That does not mean that humans should pollute more than nature can handle. Pollution always existed, it's the human excess that has tipped the balance. Not to understand that disqualifies you from being taken seriously.
Some people have a small sense of humor and NO common sense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHuman excess has tipped the balance and understanding that is key to cleaning up the mess. Also, not being cheap helps.
Some people have a small sense of humor and NO common sense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHuman excess has tipped the balance and understanding that is key to cleaning up the mess. Also, not being cheap helps.
I think there is a law against doing that .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisright on
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisa law against what?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(One thing I believe we may agree on is that there should be a law against idiotic laws. In my book a good law is any law that can be understood by a working class citizen with a normal school education. If it does not fill that meaning it's an idiotic law.)
re a (hypothetical) law against idiotic laws:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't mean to say that a law is only good if the citizen agrees but that a citizen should understand the law, whether he agrees with the law or not. IOW the lawmakers may vote laws that some citizens may not agree on but the laws themselves should be clearly understandable. Everything else is garbage that only serves to make lawyers rich. Which is why they permanently push for more and more complicated laws. It's a self-serving strategy to make them rich. Did you ever notice that there are more rich lawyers than intelligent ones?
re idiotic laws and greedy lawyers:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswhich then leads to things like
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2012/04/man-sues-bmw-for-persistent-erection-after-bike-ride/1
The referenced report states:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Dairy ammonia emissions have larger impact on SoCAB ammonium nitrate formation."
However, it does not address (methane) co2 equivalence production. What are the issues involved with ammonium nitrate pollution?
At any rate, solving the dairy farm pollution issue will probably not stop any co2 related climate change, so automobile pollution should still be addressed. However, as the article points out, "it's a lot easier to control emissions from a few big dairy farms", dairy farm pollution should also be addressed. How many dairy farms are there in LA, anyway?
While I really hate what lawyers do, we'd probably need far fewer laws if we had not more than doubled the population of the U.S since 1950. Perhaps we should consider programs to reduce the lawyer population...