e360.yale.edu/digest/romania-bison-carbon
How a Small Herd of Romanian Bison Is Locking Away Thousands of Tons of Carbon
The woolly mammoth de-extinction team cite this as a reason to bring back woolly mammoths to Siberia.
Oh fascinating! We actually got to hear a member of Colossal speak during a luncheon at EarthX in Dallas a few weeks ago. Fascinating technology with a lot more uses than just de-extinction.
Storing roughly 20kton CO2/yr .. and were emitting 38Gton CO2/yr .. so wed need a couple million of these.
For comparison the new Iceland direct carbon capture plant stores 36kton CO2/yr .. about double the rate of this Bison ranch ..
Both are completely negligible compared to the scale of the problem .. literally a millionth of what is needed.
To be fair I should mention, from the article :
Oswald Schmitz, lead author of the new study, previously estimated that protecting and restoring just nine types of animals — marine fish, whales, sharks, gray wolves, wildebeest, sea otters, musk oxen, African forest elephants, and American bison — could lead to the capture of an addition 6.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually, an amount roughly equal to the yearly emissions of the U.S.
So, there is potential for government to regulate .. But we just dont see anyone doing any of this - probably because you don't get paid to do it, in fact it takes money / land / jobs away from fishermen / farmers etc.
we do have a couple b/million of these - they're called cattle and they are all over the world doing exactly the same thing as these bison. except because meat is good and solves manyt human dietary diseaeses, the insane green ideologues want them culled...
eg https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/29/irish-farmers-cull-cows-meet-climate-targets
so to anyone out there - why do bison 'lock away' carbon, whereas cattle apparently dont. do bison not burp?
edit - huh - apparently the skeptics know that cattle are good for the environment, why dont the alarmists?
so to anyone out there - why do bison 'lock away' carbon, whereas cattle apparently dont. do bison not burp?
Have you tried to answer this question yourself? Does a herd of bison require intense monocropping? Do they live sequestered in a small area causing soil compaction and erosion? Concentrated run off? Are bison or modern selectively bred cattle more symbiotic with an environment?
If you have questions where answers exist and are easily found, you don't actually have questions.
"Bison fertilize grasses and spread seeds, spurring growth. With their enormous girth, they also compact soil, helping to keep carbon locked in the ground."
vs
"the thinking on reducing emissions at the source is missing a bigger picture on cattles’ relationship with the land, and possibly, by removing grazing from pastures, emissions will actually go up."
"researchers found that 19%-30% of methane emissions were from the cattle, but the rest was from the wetland soils. If the cows are removed, their research shows, it actually increases the amount of methane the wetland ecosystems give off."
"When cattle graze on land, the plants prioritize root growth over the plant matter above the surface. The deeper the roots, the more plants sequester carbon in the soil through the photosynthesis process. Grazing also removes grasses from a pasture, which reduces the dead plant matter that falls to the soil and decomposes, which also produces greenhouse gasses."
"At the Buck Island Ranch, Boughton and her team measured the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted on a pasture that had no grazing and compared it to pasture that had grazing. What they found is that cattle grazing ends up as a carbon sink, meaning there’s a net reduction in the amount of emissions from that pasture compared to pastures with no cows."
"There are also other impacts cows have on the ecosystem, including manure production and trampling, which may have impacts on emissions. "
do you know farming? cattle dont require intense monocropping. Monocropping comes as a cost of chasing the almighty dollar. To meet certain carcase weights or fat or muscle scores the farmers dump tonnes of grains in the cattle to 'fatten them up' so the farmer gets optimal pricing. Hence in big business farms we see massive feedlots, resulting in massive nitrogen runoff. I'm sure you've eaten a lauded 'grain-fed' steak.
A far healthier, tastier steak comes from a happier healthier pasture raised grass fed only co2. ie just like the bison in the article.
yes i knew the answer - hence why i asked it on this sub.
Just doesn’t fit the climate change narrative.
Should we use nature or technology to fix it or do we need both?
I look forward to seeing the peer-reviewed article when it comes out! Ecosystems are such incredibly complex systems; it’s fascinating to watch how simple changes can have such cascading effects.
I’d never heard about how the soil compaction caused by bison has an effect on the soil’s ability to retain carbon.