Surely there is a commerical incentive. Environment- or image-minded companies that want to buy carbon offsets can do so by paying cattle producers to use this tech.

No they aren't the biggest part of the problem, but the difficulty is that we have to solve the whole thing. Carbon emissions need to get to zero and then go negative. That means ideally we need solutions for every contributor, no matter how small.

I agree that cows are an issue that should be looked into, but ultimately cows themselves aren't causing more carbon to be taken from the ground and left in the atmosphere indefinitely (the issue is that methane is a greater contributor to the greenhouse effect over carbon dioxide, per unit carbon), so presumably in this case it's a matter of keeping methane levels below a certain amount rather than reversing carbon emissions.

Cows are carbon to methane convertors.

AFAIK, although methane dissipates more quickly (good in the longer term) it has a more powerful effect in the shorter term.

So the rationale while we are stick deep in the shit is not too think so much of the long term, but just to survive the short term - i.e reduce the methane.

> although methane dissipates more quickly

Dissipates more quickly than what? Optimally, the cows would simply release carbon in the form of carbon dioxide rather than methane, since then you simply have a sustainable cycle:

Carbon dioxide is in the air. The carbon dioxide turns into grass. Some of the grass is used as an energy source by the cow, releasing the carbon dioxide back into the air. Some of the grass is used to make up the body mass of the cow, which is then used as an energy source by humans, releasing the carbon dioxide back into the air.

The point is that the carbon dioxide always ends up back where it started, so there's nothing inherently unsustainable. It's equivalent to growing a tree and then burning it (releasing carbon dioxide) to make use of the stored energy captured from the Sun. Humans and cows breathe out the carbon dioxide after the chemical energy is used.

And this is one of the ideal solutions where we can make things much much better without giving up anything at all.

regulation can't change reality.

It's about as realistic as having congress declare the world flat.

We can measure methane emissions per farm from space. If there were fines for emissions, it would get fixed quickly. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meet-the-satellit...

I'm more of the opinion that rewarding the reduction of emissions would work better than punishing the production of emissions.

> regulation can't change reality

Sure it can.

Regulation changed the reality of passenger planes regularly falling out of the sky and being hijacked. Regulation made drastic reductions in road deaths via seat belts, crumple zones, air bags, and the like.

I’m as anti-regulation as anyone but your comment is just silly. Regulation changes reality all the time.

In fact if regulation didn't change anything there would be no reason to be against regulation.