California leads nation in cow flatulence
May 4, 2010 | Agustin Armendariz
Caliornia Watch
We're number one! We're number one!
Mother Jones is highlighting the government's efforts to capture and control cow farts, which are part of a two-year study into the environmental load inflicted by the nation's cows.
The large number of dairies in California and the amount of noxious gases emitted by cattle into the atmosphere puts the Golden State at the top of the list of offenders.
The data used to produce the map
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/04/fart-chart-cow-emissions-state
is fairly old, but serves to highlight the growing concern in the environmental community about how to measure the impact of large "animal feeding operations" on air quality.
The issue is of enough concern that the Environmental Protection Agency in 2007 initiated a $14.6 million study to try to establish methods to estimate the amount of air pollution coming from "poultry, dairy and swine animal feeding operations," according to a press release announcing the effort.
Mother Jones crunched the national numbers.
Researchers in Argentina have experimented with ways to catch the gas that cows pass in a bottle. A report in National Geographic explored the idea that dairy cows are the "main source of smog-forming pollutants in the San Joaquin Valley," in a report from 2005.
californiawatch.org