A lot. Scientists have different estimates. Some say 100 to 200 litres a day. Others say 500 litres. (So that’s about 26 to 53 gallons, or as much as 132 gallons.)
Multiply that by the number of cows in the world – around 1.5 billion – and you get anything up to 200 billion gallons of methane. A day.
Cows produce 3% of Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions. But 25 to 30% of its methane. And methane is much worse than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas – about 23 times as bad.
Most of the methane comes out of a cow’s mouth by belching. But a fair bit comes from the other end as well.
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