The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Politics & RKBA => Topic started by: tombogan03884 on June 20, 2009, 11:17:11 AM
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090620/ap_on_go_co/us_climate_bill_cow_tax
WASHINGTON – One contributor to global warming — bigger than coal mines, landfills and sewage treatment plants — is being left out of efforts by the Obama administration and House Democrats to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Cow burps.
Belching from the nation's 170 million cattle, sheep and pigs produces about one-quarter of the methane released in the U.S. each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That makes the hoofed critters the largest source of the heat-trapping gas.
In part because of an adept farm lobby campaign that equates government regulation with a cow tax, the gas that farm animals pass is exempt from legislation being considered by Congress to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
The EPA under President Barack Obama has said it has no plans to regulate the gas, even though the agency recently included methane among six greenhouse gases it believes are endangering human health and welfare.
The message circulating in Internet chat rooms, the halls of Congress and farm co-ops had America's farms facing financial ruin if the EPA required them to purchase air-pollution permits like power plants and factories do. The cost of those permits amounted to a cow tax, farm groups argued.
"It really has taken on a life of its own," said Rick Krause, a lobbyist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, which coined the term cow tax and spread it to farmers across the country. "This is something that people understand. All that we have to say is that (cows) are the next step with these proposed permit fees. And people are still talking about it."
Administration officials and House Democratic leaders have tried to assure farm groups that they have no intention of regulating cows. That effort, however, has done little to ease the concern of farmers and their advocates in Congress about the toll that regulating greenhouse gases will have on agriculture.
Lawmakers and farm groups are now pressing for the climate legislation to guarantee that farmers will be compensated for taking steps to reduce greenhouse gases. That could lead to farmers getting paid if their cows pass less gas.
Research has shown that changing cattle diet and boosting efficiency — such as producing the same amount of milk and beef from a smaller herd — can result in less gas, according Frank M. Mitloehner, an associate professor at the University of California at Davis, who has studied livestock gas for 15 years.
"I don't think livestock should be ignored. Every industry has to play their role," Mitloehner said. But laws designed to reduce emissions from smokestacks and tailpipes won't work with cattle, which can't be fitted with pollution control devices, Mitloehner said.
"The belching is very hard to collect," he said. "You cannot capture these gases."
The climate bill specifically excludes enteric fermentation — the fancy term for the gas created by digestion and expelled largely by burping — from the limit it would place on greenhouse gas emissions. The legislation directs the EPA not to include it among the various sources that could be subject to new performance standards.
EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has called rumors of the cow tax "ridiculous notions" and a "distraction."
On Thursday, Rep. Todd Tihart, R-Kan., successfully added an amendment to the spending bill that covers the EPA to block the agency from including biological processes of livestock — including the release of methane — as part of regulating greenhouse gases.
House aides and EPA officials say that controlling such emissions is unworkable. Cow burps make up about 2 percent of all the climate-altering pollution in the U.S.
But allies of farmers in Congress say the reluctance to step in the cow tax debate has a lot to do with the outcry from the agriculture industry and moderate Democrats from rural states whose votes are needed to pass the bill.
"I think they realized that if you are a Democrat in an agricultural state, a red state, that this is radioactive and I think that is why they have tried scrupulously to reaffirm that they don't have any intention of doing this," said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. He is sponsoring a bill that would bar the EPA from requiring farmers to get permits for cattle burps.
Thune, whose state is home to a half-million cattle, first heard about the cow tax at a South Dakota Cattlemen Association's conference in early December. Within weeks he introduced his bill and recruited support from New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, whose state boasts three times more cows.
The origins of the cow tax can be traced to last July, when President George W. Bush's EPA released documents outlining how the Clean Air Act could regulate greenhouse gases.
Even though the Bush administration had no intention of using the law, farm groups seized on a single paragraph deep in the comments from various federal agencies. The Agriculture Department warned that if EPA decided to regulate agricultural sources of greenhouse gases, numerous farms would face costly and time-consuming process to acquire permits for barnyard burping.
The Farm Bureau quickly did the math and figured farms would have to pay about $175 for each dairy cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle and $20 for each hog to purchase permits for emissions.
The cow tax was born.
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The other end is even worse.... ;)
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1864/81/
In the study, the scientists were surprised to discover that a standard 550-kg cow produces between 800 to 1,000 liters of emissions, including methane, each day.
Further, methane - which is also released from landfills, coal mines and leaking gas pipes - is 23 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
http://www.physorg.com/news135003243.html
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The other end is even worse.... ;)
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1864/81/
In the study, the scientists were surprised to discover that a standard 550-kg cow produces between 800 to 1,000 liters of emissions, including methane, each day.
Further, methane - which is also released from landfills, coal mines and leaking gas pipes - is 23 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
This is major breaking wind news.
http://www.physorg.com/news135003243.html
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This is major breaking wind news.
Funny right there. ;D ;D ;D
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Next thing you know they'll outlaw livestock and we'll all be down to eating salads. Sorry, but salad isn't food........it's what food eats.
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Next thing you know they'll outlaw livestock and we'll all be down to eating salads. Sorry, but salad isn't food........it's what food eats.
The other end is even worse.... ;)
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1864/81/
In the study, the scientists were surprised to discover that a standard 550-kg cow produces between 800 to 1,000 liters of emissions, including methane, each day.
Further, methane - which is also released from landfills, coal mines and leaking gas pipes - is 23 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
http://www.physorg.com/news135003243.html
I wander how much methane Congress and the MSM produce, we know they are the leading sources of bullshit.
Next thing you know they'll outlaw livestock and we'll all be down to eating salads. Sorry, but salad isn't food........it's what food eats.
That's what PETA want's, although they are getting flack from the vegetable rights activists.
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How do you put a meter on the cow?
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How do you put a meter on the cow?
I don't know and I don't WANT to know, I don't care WHAT it pays !
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We haven't heard of this.... could Al Gore own a cattle ranch?
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Oh Wait!!!! Cattle....stockyards....CHICAGO!!!...ILLINOIS!!!! Obama....
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Oh Wait!!!! Cattle....stockyards....CHICAGO!!!...ILLINOIS!!!! Obama....
City of the broad shoulders, hog buchter to the world....
Sorry, I studied American political history, and can't resist a good Walt Whitman quote.
FQ13 who is a geek and will be quiet
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Sounds more like Eng/ Lit, Poli. Sci would be more along the lines of Capone's "Vote early and vote often".
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Me thinks they have truly missed the major cause of green house gas. Washington, when ever one of them speaks. ;D
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Sounds more like Eng/ Lit, Poli. Sci would be more along the lines of Capone's "Vote early and vote often".
Tom
I'm going to give you a trade secret, no BS, you want the cliff notes of American politics? Read a good biography of Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt (Teddy) and Washington . Then read Whitman, Thoreau, Baldwin and Thompson(Hunter S.) Leaven that with the Federalist and Anti-Federailst papers, Aristotle's Politics, Lockes Second Treatise On Civil Government,Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. You do that, and you're half way to a grad degree for less than three hundred bucks, and no, I'm not kidding. You understand these guys, you understand America.
FQ13
PS De Touquville is worth while as well
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FQ, I'm disappointed, I learned far more reading about James J. Curly,Big Bill Thompson, and William M. Tweed. Herodotus, Tuchmann and Keegan helped. ;D As may be apparent I'm more a student of Machiavelli, than the more Utopian thinkers.
Actually I was surprised to see Hunter S Thompson on your list, Never could figure out if he was a genius who occasionally, (OK frequently ) did acid, or just a nut case who was occasionally right ::) but his style is much easier to read than most of those other guys.
Style is why I could never get through Shakespeare but enjoyed Virgil and Homer.
Thank God you didn't include any Russians, those guys ALL take 200 pages to say "it was a pretty sunset over the little craphole village, so we beat up some Jews"
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Bullshit and hot air sounds like Obama.
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Great Tom. Now I am going to get fined for the amount of 'pollutants' I put into the atmosphere.
Pretty sure I account for the other ¾ of the methane out there (between the beer, chili and tacos I consume).
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Great Tom. Now I am going to get fined for the amount of 'pollutants' I put into the atmosphere.
Pretty sure I account for the other ¾ of the methane out there (between the beer, chili and tacos I consume).
With a combination like that you should be more concerned with UN weapons Inspectors than the EPA. ;D
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Great Tom. Now I am going to get fined for the amount of 'pollutants' I put into the atmosphere.
Pretty sure I account for the other ¾ of the methane out there (between the beer, chili and tacos I consume).
You just accounted for 3 of the 4 major food groups. IE: Beer, chili, tacos and pizza.
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I am trying to figure out why the 100 million + buffalo that used to inhabit North America didn't cause Global Warming, but our modern cattle do......
Grizzle Bear
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I am trying to figure out why the 100 million + buffalo that used to inhabit North America didn't cause Global Warming, but our modern cattle do......
Grizzle Bear
+1
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I am trying to figure out why the 100 million + buffalo that used to inhabit North America didn't cause Global Warming, but our modern cattle do......
Grizzle Bear
Simple, in the minds of the eco-nuts the Buff was more eco friendly/aware and would never fart!
;D
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I am trying to figure out why the 100 million + buffalo that used to inhabit North America didn't cause Global Warming, but our modern cattle do......
Grizzle Bear
'Cause way back then, they didn't have all the gubmint-funded folks hanging around to tell them they were farting up the environment......
;)