81–90 of 143 posts
Excerpt from a book I'm writing: --- Life is experiencing an abrupt, widespread global species extinction event. Humans are destroying intricate webs of animals, plants, and microorganisms. These networks supply our food chain and sustain life on Earth; their annihilation from rapid deforestation and climate change is causing grave consequences: droughts, increased heat waves and wildfires, more frequent severe weath…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's definitely not ad hominem, nor am I dismissing him. He is absolutely and indisputably a cognitive psychologist. And I would say that Enlightenment Now is clearly a popular science piece. Nothing is wrong with that. But he is just not a primary source on this data . So there is no refutation to be made in this context. Go to the bibliography, find the citation for the statistics that he used, and those can be dis…
This is social media, not a peer-reviewed journal. I don't think primary sources are necessary to justify basic numbers. Pointing out that Pinker isn't a primary source isn't ad hominem. Bringing up that he's a psychologist and popular writer, repeatedly , is very much ad hominem. It's trying to discredit the messenger in order to dismiss the message. Don't do that, it's bad rhetoric. Popular science writers serve an…
I know this isnt going to be a popular opinion here, but I'm going to say it anyways -- we are simply not going eat our away out of this climate change problem, and we shouldnt even try, we should focus the efforts in other places Here is the current breakdown of the world's emissions as of 2018: 1. heavy industry (29 percent) 2. buildings (18 percent) 3. transport (15 percent) 4. land-use change (15 percent) 5. the…
Going from the average diet to becoming a vegan would save about 1 ton per person annually: http://www.greeneatz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/foods-ca... . The carbon footprint in the U.S. is about 20 tons per capita annually, so going from an average diet to full vegan would save just 5%. (Just cutting out beef would capture most of those gains, reducing CO2 footprint by 0.6 tons, or 3%.) Just eating less meat, or…
If I were a more careless person, I would have half a mind to increase my waste in response -- something I may as well advocate for anyway, because so long as society is not going to stop (or even measure) my wastefulness, then who can say it is wrong? Only 'feeble hypocrites' who don't care enough to actually do anything about it. You can blame me for destroying the world, but if you won't lift a finger to stop me, then you're intentionally conceding your moral responsibilities to permit outright evil. Our ship isn't strong simply because it refuses to go into rough waters.
They are three hours each and I promise you will learn many things that give perspective on the repeat arguments and confusion about the climate. There are many other podcasts with these gentlemen, but here are three to start with.
Joe Rogan and Randall Carlson #606 (3 hours) [1]
Joe Rogan, Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson #725 [2]
Joe Rogan, Randall Carlson #1284 [3]
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0Cp7DrvNLQ
I switched to a plant based diet last year after reading similar articles on climate change and was surprised to see an additional set of benefits. I feel a lot healthier, my skin is clearer (struggled with frequent untamable breakouts), I save money, etc. Diet is a very individualized thing, so don't dramatically overhaul your entire lifestyle based off what a random stranger says on the Internet but if you haven't…
This is a great article. Do I have to go vegan? No. But it would have the biggest impact if you did. Is organic farming the answer? No. It tends to use more land for less output (although maybe the health-foodies could get off the No-GMO bandwagon). I also appreciate that the authors recognize that for some people living in certain cultures and climates _have_ to eat meat and there's no shame in that. The bulk of the…
Use of land per unit of output (or vice versa) is not the only important metric though, not by a long chalk. A more holistic approach is needed [1], otherwise it is back to the same as the issues that the OP attempts to address.
[1] An approach that considers equally important things like effects of pesticides, other negative effects of non-organic farming (there are other important ones, and more).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is social media, not a peer-reviewed journal. I don't think primary sources are necessary to justify basic numbers. Pointing out that Pinker isn't a primary source isn't ad hominem. Bringing up that he's a psychologist and popular writer, repeatedly , is very much ad hominem. It's trying to discredit the messenger in order to dismiss the message. Don't do that, it's bad rhetoric. Popular science writers serve an…
You say that, but witness Roger Penrose and James Watson speaking and writing outside of their areas of specialty. I think it's completely reasonable to ask for primary sources in any informed discussion, regardless of forum. It's just as easy as citing the secondary source in any book worth citing. I think your concerns over my rhetoric have some merit, but ultimate editing my comments at this point would just creat…
I think there's a substantial difference in value between citing primary sources to refute a secondary source, versus dismissing a secondary source out of hand because it's not a primary source.
(This is actually familiar ground to me; my spouse has been teaching popularized dance history lately, and I've been encouraging her to write a book on the subject, because her interpretation challenges some conventional wisdom. She doesn't want to write a book because she's too reliant on secondary sources and too lazy to go read through more of the primary source material.)
this is a great article, both in content and in form. keep in mind though managing your carbon budget is like managing any other budget, which in turn is like optimizing any other queue. meaning: don't over-optimize the 5th most important thing when you're ignoring the top 2 - 3 most important things. by which I mean: #1 flying, #2 driving, #3 heating and #4 cooling. just to put a sortof min-max on it: if you eat veg…
At least in the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change's Global Calculator[1] the food lever appears to have the greatest impact on greenhouse gas emissions, even more than heating or transport.
I know this isnt going to be a popular opinion here, but I'm going to say it anyways -- we are simply not going eat our away out of this climate change problem, and we shouldnt even try, we should focus the efforts in other places Here is the current breakdown of the world's emissions as of 2018: 1. heavy industry (29 percent) 2. buildings (18 percent) 3. transport (15 percent) 4. land-use change (15 percent) 5. the…
Most estimates put it at around 15%, not 5. Stopping climate change is going to require action on all these vectors, and diet is one of the easiest to change. It also has knock on effects like clear cutting rainforest to plant crops to feed to cows. On top of that it’s just cruel and unnecessary to go on eating so much meat.
I don't know if this is actually true, but anecdotally at least it seems to be. The people around me who seem to be most active when it comes to the topic of climate change also tend to be vegetarians or vegans. And many of them started down this path by changing their diets, sometimes even for reasons that weren't ideological.
Ultimately there is no birthright to eating meat every day, there are no health benefits or other benefits of doing so, contrary it;s actually bad for health and our planet and therefore there is nothing classist about taxing beef so high that the average person shouldn't be able to afford it more than a handful of times per month.
We need bold politicians in this world to look at the cost of these things and implement a tax system which incentivise a more balanced lifestyle and also account for the cost/damage that a high consumption of meat causes to society.