> Far better for the environment to lock all that up in a cow.

This works for trees, which you can turn into, say, a house, where it might last hundreds of years.

I'm curious about how you think the physics of it work for a cow.

A pile of solid carbohydrates (grass) can rot and go largely to water and released gases OR it can be eaten by an animal and goto some water, some gases, some poo, and a reasonable amount of energy and some conversion to meat for growth.

Methane release varies by animal type: https://reporter.anu.edu.au/all-stories/kangaroos-the-soluti...

Understanding why is ongoing: https://www.uow.edu.au/media/2015/why-kangaroos-really-emit-...

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ceejayoz 40 minutes ago | parent [-]

> A pile of solid carbohydrates (grass) can rot and go largely to water and released gases OR it can be eaten by an animal and goto some water, some gases, some poo, and a reasonable amount of energy and some conversion to meat for growth.

That meat gets eaten and largely turned into poo and gas (as byproduct of using up that stored energy), yeah? You're sequestering it maybe for a few years; meat cows live about two years.

> “Kangaroos have a very different stomach from that of ruminants such as sheep and cows,” Professor Clauss said. “We think that the methane is low because of the way food moves through the kangaroo stomach, and not because of a unique gut fauna.”

> Dr Munn and Professor Clauss are critical of efforts to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ruminant livestock by replacing their gut fauna with that from kangaroos or other low-methane emitting animals, which they believe is unlikely to succeed.

You're not raising kangaroos in Scotland, right?

	▲	defrost 28 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		No one raise kangaroos here, they raise themselves: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YzzXsTF25Qk (black dots on ground are kangaroo poo) So yes, you're correct - I'm not raising roos in Scotland, but we do look into ruminants, biomes, etc here. These are complex chains that make up the surface level carbon cycle. Not every path leads to carbon dioxide / methane production, the gas creation ratios can be tweaked by the paths taken. The problematic carbons are those that are additional - those once buried across the course of millions of years, some millions of years ago and now being bought to the surface in an extremely short timescale (one century and half, roughly) This all goes to your question if you care to look into it.