211–220 of 409 posts
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You can not grow enough fruits, vegetables and nuts to feed the human population without severe deforestation. Also, agriculture uses up pretty much most of the obtainable drinkable water.
Can you sustainably feed all of humanity by feeding cattle from all the world's grasses? I don't understand your position. What's the better alternative to a more plant-focused diet?
Skeptical science remark: This whole "if cows eat seaweed that'll vastly reduce their carbon footprint" is based on a single study with 12 cows. If you take into consideration that especially small, never replicated studies often don't hold up to scrunity the next thing to do is not to ask how to produce the seaweed. The next reasonable step would be to try to replicate this study in a larger sample (and probably als…
You're absolutely right, but the effect size is pretty damn impressive and I expect this to at least partially replicate.
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But almost nobody is eating pasture-raised meat, though the industrial meat complex loves that you think that or are pointing it out as if that's how beef is made.
I asked a small town butcher in Scotland if his beef was grass-fed and got seriously laughed at. Then he sold me some damn good steaks.
I mean, I'd guess it was, but equally it could be "why do you care, it tastes good", so ...?
The gut bacteria in a cow digest components of the animal's food preferentially and excrete methane. If you knock those bacteria out, does the stuff the bacteria would have eaten get excreted by the cow? If so, do the organisms that digest it external to the cow emit greenhouse gases?
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You're absolutely right, but the effect size is pretty damn impressive and I expect this to at least partially replicate.
Having a small sample and a large effect doesn't mean you're guaranteed at least some effect on a large sample. If anything, a very large effect is more likely to indicate a flaw in your method.
Disclaimer: I'm plant-based, and of course biased. What would it take people to realise that eating meat is just not good for the environment and rather than going through all these 'fixes', just stop eating meat? We're getting to the point where we're going to have to sacrifice some 'comforts' IMO.
For most people that's simply not an option. But, if all people were eating just a little less meat, that would be an incredible improvement already.
I believe we better fight down the meat problem with small steps, especially by creating more delicious plant based food for the mainstream, creating an alternative that is really hard to resist because it tastes so good.
That's cool, but let's not forget that methane stays in atmosphere only for 12 years. That means that if methane production stays constant, it doesn't actually increase amount of methane in atmosphere. Therefore I think that reducing production of greenhouse gases with longer longevity should be preferred.
More of a philosophical perspective here: The eco-systems on Earth have evolved over a long time. Without bias against scientific progress, why do we think we can "solve" this without going down a slippery slope of creating another problem? When is comes to complex systems that we don't completely understand, maybe the simplest solution is to just restore the system, that is "give up" on cows as human feed.
But not water usage, land usage, suffering for sentient beings, transport of feed, waste of human food for feeding etc etc
I am pretty sure that growing rice requires land, water, and transport. And I do not think cows eat human food nor humans would be very pleased to eat what cows eat.