Name: _____________________________________
Greenhouse Gas Investigation HO# _____
Do Now:
1. What is the greenhouse effect? ________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Circle all examples of greenhouse gases from the list below:
nitrous oxide
carbon dioxide
water vapor
methane
carbon monoxide
helium
oxygen
nitrogen
3. Rank the words you circled in order from most abundant (common) in the atmosphere to least
abundant (uncommon).
(most abundant - common)
1. _____________________________
2. _____________________________
3. _____________________________
(least abundant - uncommon) 4. _____________________________
*The Greenhouse Effect is necessary for life on earth to exist, without
them Earth would be too cold. However, human actions are
increasing the amount of greenhouse gases being released into the
atmosphere. The result is rising global temperatures that may one
day make Earth too hot to be inhabited.
Classwork:
Directions: View the stomach diagrams below.
Diagram A: whale Stomach
Diagram B: Cow Stomach
Diagram C: Human Stomach
Chambered stomach: A stomach with multiple sections. Some animals can have up to four
chambers in their stomach while humans only have one.
BIG Question
Which animal creates the most greenhouse gases, therefore creating a negative impact on
our environment?
4. Make a claim: The cow/human/whale (circle one) creates the most greenhouse gases
and therefore has the largest negative impact on our environment.
Evidence: View the following evidence to help revise your claim and provide evidence and
reasoning.
Evidence #1 - Article: Putting an End to Gassy Cows by Elisabeth Braw, 6/5/14. Adapted
from:http://www.newsweek.com/2014/06/13/putting-end-gassy-cows-253463.html
Evidence 2: Video: How Whales Change Climate (4:51). View the video and answer the
questions below. The video can be found at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M18HxXve3CM&feature=youtu.be
Revised Claim:
5. The cow/human/whale (circle one) creates the most greenhouse gases and therefore has
the largest negative impact on our environment.
6. Evidence and Reasoning: ______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
7. Why does the other animal have a such a positive impact on its environment? Provide evidence
and reasoning. ________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
8. Closure: If both whales and cows have multiple chambered stomachs, what causes the difference
in their environmental impacts?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Evidence #1 - Article: Putting an End to Gassy Cows
by Elisabeth Braw, 6/5/14
Adapted from: http://www.newsweek.com/2014/06/13/putting-end-gassy-cows-253463.html
In the fight against climate change, cleaner cows might arrive before cleaner cars
Karen Beauchemin spends every day in her lab at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
(AAFC) in Alberta, Canada, working on cow feed. Boring, you say? Far from it.
Beauchemin is part of an international task force of scientists working on a multimilliondollar project for Dutch life-sciences giant DSM that may be the world’s best bet to avert
climate disaster.
It’s all about cows. Our favorite milk producer belongs to the animal group called
ruminants, which also includes other livestock such as sheep and goats. Ruminants are
having serious effects on global climate change. To put it bluntly, these beasts are
emitting tons of methane through their burps and farts. (And those burps actually
account for around 95 percent of animal methane production).
Ruminants all have lots of microscopic organisms living in their digestive tract that help
them digest cellulose—a component of the cell wall of green plants. It’s a huge boon for
these animals, giving them the ability to get energy from pretty much any plant that
grows on Earth. Cows can’t digest grass without these microorganisms. The catch is that
when the organisms digest the cellulose, they create carbon dioxide and methane gas,
which the host animal has to get rid of. All ruminants excrete methane, but cows by far,
emit the most.
“A cow emits as much carbon dioxide-equivalent as a family car,” says Rasmus Helveg
Petersen, minister of climate, energy and building in Denmark.
Manure adds further greenhouse gas emissions, as does the deforestation required to
create the grazing space for more cattle. “Agriculture and related land use change
activities account for 20 to 24 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions,” explains
Francesco Tubiello, of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
“That makes it second only to the energy sector.”
For some time, think tanks and environmental groups have been promoting Meatless
Mondays, which would reduce emissions from cows simply because we’d be eating
fewer of them, and therefore raising fewer of them. Governments have imposed stricter
rules on manure storage. Even so, global production of both beef and dairy are on the
rise. The world’s population is increasing, and in developing countries many are moving
up into the middle class and starting to adopt Western-style eating habits. Between 1980
and 2005, per person milk consumption in developing countries almost doubled, and
meat consumption more than tripled. In China, where the population is 1.351 billion
strong, the average citizen ate about 8.8 pounds of beef a year in 2010; in 2020 the figure
is expected to reach 12 pounds, according to government statistics.
In Western countries, any politician knows that asking voters to stop drinking milk and
eating beef would risk not just ridicule but fury—particularly in the U.S. But at the same
time, no area of climate change is as untapped, or as intriguing, as livestock flatulence.
According to FAO statistics, methane released by cows’ accounts for about 4 percent of
the globe’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Consider this: We tend to point fingers at our
reliance on gas-guzzling cars, but FAO estimates peg transportation (including cars but
also buses, planes, ships and more) as responsible for 14 percent of all greenhouse gas
emissions—or just about three times as much as cow flatulence.
All of which is why Beauchemin and her fellow DSM-funded scientists at the AAFC are
working on a greenhouse gas-slashing compound that cows can eat with their daily feed.
This isn’t the first time scientists have explored ways to change a cow’s diet. French
company Valorex has created a menu featuring flaxseed and alfalfa, which it says
reduces methane emissions by one-fifth. Others suggest more grains or soybeans, which
would have a similar effect. According to an article in the Journal of Dairy Science,
however, such diet changes reduce cows’ methane emissions by only up to 15 percent.
And as Carlos Gonzalez Fischer, at the animal welfare group Compassion in World
Farming, points out, feeding grains (instead of plain old grass and hay) to animals is
unsustainable.
“Cows are pretty inefficient in transforming feed into food. For every 100 calories a cow
eats, we only get 40 back as milk and just three as beef,” he says. There’s another
complication: The additional land needed for grain feed would result in even more
emissions.