After watching an episode of Top Gear, where Mr. Clarkson proclaimed that cows produced more greenhouse gases than cars and that carbon should be banned or taxed, I decided to do some research to find out the “truth” about the car against car. Battle of the Methane Gas. The first strange fact was that the problem was not the farting cows, but their bad breath. The cows produced 80% of their methane output from their breath rather than their farts.

The Math and Statistics Bit:

I located some facts and figures. The average gasoline car produces about 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon, say at a very good 40 mpg and an average of 10,000 miles per year, each car produces 10,000/40×20 = 4100 pounds of carbon dioxide.

The average cow is said to produce 100 kilograms of methane per year, although the figures vary widely depending on the studies I went to for a mid-range estimate. So, converting kilos to pounds, 100 x 2.2 = 220 pounds of methane is produced by an average cow.

So how do we equate methane as a pollutant with carbon dioxide, are these apples and oranges? After much more research, it appears that studies indicate that methane is 20 times more damaging as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Thus, the average car produces 4,100 pounds of greenhouse gas pollutants per year and the average cow produces 4,400 pounds of greenhouse gas pollutants per year.

Conclusion:

Cows and cars probably produce similar amounts of greenhouse gas pollutants per year. However, estimates of the number of cars in the world range from 5 to 600m and the number of cows is estimated at 1.5 billion, so the conclusion must be that cows are more harmful to the environment than cars.

Serious investigations are underway to try to address the problem. At the University of Wales they are looking for garlic to neutralize the gas in the stomach of cows, they have 4. In New Zealand they were going to introduce a tax on flatulence. Recent research from an Irish university is trying to identify the causes and modify the cows’ diet to reduce harmful emissions.

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