Crazy California Is Drawing Up Regulations Enact Anti-Cow Fart Law

If anything proves that the global warming/climate change nonsense has gone too far, this is it. During his first stint as governor of California in the late 1970s Jerry Brown was known by the nickname of “Governor Moonbeam.” Perhaps this go round he should be called “Governor Methane,” as his obsession with the climate change hypothesis is now leading California to regulate cow “emissions.”

In September Brown became the first governor ever to sign a bill that  regulates supposed greenhouse gases from livestock operations and landfills. But no one asked the bovine methane moo-ers whether or not they agree. Cattle and other farm animals are major a major source of methane, a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide as a heat-trapping gas as well as being more potent as an aroma. The methane is released when they belch, fart,  and release the raw material for cow chips.

“If we can reduce emissions of methane, we can really help to slow global warming,” said Ryan McCarthy, a science adviser for the California Air Resources Board, which is drawing up rules to implement the new law.

Livestock are responsible for 14.5 percent of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, with beef and dairy production accounting for the bulk of it, according to a 2013 United Nations report.

(..) In the nation’s largest milk-producing state, the new law aims to reduce methane emissions from dairies and livestock operations to 40 percent below 2013 levels by 2030, McCarthy said. State officials are developing the regulations, which take effect in 2024.

What are they going to do, create bovine but plugs? Or perhaps they are going to teach Elsie the cow to hold it in by squeezing her gluteus maximus.  I can vouch for the fact holding it in only works for the first date (much to my wife’s chagrin) . And  the belches are bad also (and they don’t even moo “excuse me”). Cows are what’s known as ruminant animals–meaning they have four compartments in their stomach. When they eat grass, bacteria in the first compartment, the rumen, softens it. The cow can then bring it all back up into its mouth and chew it again (chewing the cud-that and spit hooves makes them Kosher). Because the process of food breakdown is anaerobic (without air) it produces methane, a greenhouse gas.

Dairy farmers say the new regulations will drive up costs when they’re already struggling with five years of drought, low milk prices and rising labor costs. They’re also concerned about a newly signed law that will boost overtime pay for farmworkers.

“It just makes it more challenging. We’re continuing to lose dairies. Dairies are moving out of state to places where these costs don’t exist,” said Paul Sousa, director of environmental services for Western United Dairymen.

The dairy industry could be forced to move production to states and countries with fewer regulations, leading to higher emissions globally, Sousa said.

Looks like California may lose a lot of it’s dairy industries, so far it’s the only state where the methane has gone to its head.

Apparently the  biggest target is the bovine BMs, which accounts for about a quarter of the state’s methane emissions.

State regulators want more farmers to reduce emissions with methane digesters, which capture methane from manure in large storage tanks and convert the gas into electricity.

Perhaps they can teach the cows to fart right into the electric plants, or better yet into the governor’s mansion.

The state has set aside $50 million to help dairies set up digesters, but farmers say that’s not nearly enough to equip the state’s roughly 1,500 dairies.

New Hope Dairy, which has 1,500 cows in Sacramento County, installed a $4 million methane digester in 2013, thanks to state grants and a partnership with California Biogas LLC, which operates the system to generate renewable power for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

Co-owner Arlin Van Groningen, a third-generation farmer, says he couldn’t afford one if he had to buy and run it himself.

“The bottom line is it’s going to negatively impact the economics of the California dairy industry,” Van Groningen said of the new law. “In the dairy business, the margins are so slim that something like this will force us out of state.”

Of course it will force them out-of-state, California will lose the jobs and the tax revenue and any methane from the cows will eventually float over to California. The real question is between their flatulence, belches, and BM’s who knew that cows were such pigs?

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