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Comment by 1970-01-01

1 day ago

Oxen are not zero emissions. If they were, we would still be using them.

They are circular though and with that should count as zero-emission:

1: steer calf is born from cow

2: calf gets his goolies cut off turning him into an ox

3: ox eats grass, burps and farts and shits it out on both ends. Some of his shit ends up as fertiliser for the grass he or one of his fellow bovines eat

4: eventually ox gets eaten

The input: grass -> cow -> oxen

The output: oxen -> shit -> grass

From grass they came, to grass they return. If someone were to be so kind as to shrink bovines down to, say, bumblebee-size it would be easy to do an experiment with that in one of those glass-sphere closed ecosystems. I'm pretty sure they'd thrive.

  • The methane they burp/fart (output) is a massive greenhouse gas and isn't returned until 100 years after their death.

    • Bovines of all sorts have been (mostly) burping and (sometimes) farting methane since they decided to become ruminants. Imagine the methane produced by the massive herds of bison roaming the plains before they were decimated. Earth abides, still.

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