Civilizational Collapse, Part 4 • Hacker News Board

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#141

Post by beat » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #137

philg_jr wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When farming, the questions are even more complex. The livestock generates manure that fertilizes the fields, so much of that "lost" energy is recovered. Which is why grassfed > cornfed in pretty much every situation except for the extra fat/flavor you might get from cornfed beef. Having cows that consume grass is a win-win. The grass absorbs sunlight instead of reflecting it back into the atmosphere like a feedlot…

Net of methane production from the cattle may affect that. I don't know if it does or doesn't, but you might want to incorporate that into your model. (NB: I'm not a vegitarian myself. I'm quite familiar with arguments. And have some familiarity with feedlots.)

If we didn't have cattle, would we have buffalo? Large wild herbivores in general? (Hmm, results of a quick google... there were 30-60m buffalo in the 19th century, and there are 94m cows in the US today. Given relative size, methane output has probably been more or less static over that period.)

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#142

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 4:05 PM UTC

gdubs wrote: post #102

solotronics wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, animals can digest many forms of plant that are useless as human food such as plains grasses and tree leaves. Vegetarianism is elitist in that many people on earth cannot afford to foregoe any availible source of protein and food, there are starving people already and telling someone in Africa they shouldn't eat a chicken that forages near their house is pretty narrow minded. I tend to eat vegetarian on my own…

The world’s wealthiest (eg, the American middle class) have the largest carbon footprint, and would make the most immediate impact by eating less meat.

A set of mid-sized though significant quibbles.

The United States no longer has the largest total national carbon footprint. That title now goes to China, which has exploded past the US. The total carbon emissions title, since 1970 (roughly half, probably somewhat more, of the total since the Industrial Revolution, given ~30-ish year doubling rates), remains the US, though China are on track to surpass this within a few years.

Per capita, US residents still have a larger carbon footprint than China.

It's not the largest in the world, though, with that title going, depending on how you allocate, to petroleum exporting regions (e.g., Saudi Arabia), fueling and bunkering centres (e.g., Gibralter), ammonia fertiliser production (e.g., Trinidad and Tobago), or, if you're looking at direct local consumption rather than exports, largely Scandinavian countries with very large heating requirements.

Emissions by country, graph, 1970-present: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...

2017 national vs. per-capita emissions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...

Cumulative emissions, 1970-2017: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#143

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

liotier wrote: post #70

HNcantBtrustd wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegetarian is lower cost and better for the environment. Protein per calorie doesn't seem comparable.

> Vegetarian is lower cost and better for the environment Depends on the biotope. In fertile European fields, less meat is much more efficient. In the arctic steppe or in the Sahel, animals are the more efficient way to extract calories from the land (though it doesn't scale to high population densities...)

What is the net total protein yield of sustainable grazing-based non-augmented livestock production in those regions, and the equivalent global daily per-person ration?

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#144

Post by EForEndeavour » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 4:15 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #138

ddxxdd wrote: post #12

This feels reminiscent of the current issue of long-term data storage. Flash drives are volatile and can lose your data any minute. Solid State drives are slightly less volatile, and a hard disk has magnetic fields that will last decades, but nothing will keep our gigabytes of data alive and intact for future archaeologists. If the Library of Alexandria can burn, then so can any form of digital storage. On a side not…

> On a side note, I enjoy reading John Baez's answers to common physics questions: http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ Me too. But take care about the infamous answer to "Why is the sky blue?", which is quite confusing. The take of Randall Munroe is much clearer, and exactly as correct: "the sky is blue because air is blue".

> the sky is blue because air is blue

This comes off as a smart-alecky non-answer to anyone not already familiar with what gives things colours in the first place. John Baez's answer captures the core mechanism in two sentences and one diagram, and provides more detail below for the curious:

> A clear cloudless day-time sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light. When we look towards the sun at sunset, we see red and orange colours because the blue light has been scattered out and away from the line of sight.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#145

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #109

HNcantBtrustd wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegetarian is lower cost and better for the environment. Protein per calorie doesn't seem comparable.

I'm trying to figure this out. I see chicken breast at $3 for 450g which is about 900 calories? So 1/3 penny per calorie? A tomato is 16 calories per 100g which cost 50 cents so what, 3 cents per calorie? Did I do that right?

"Table crops" (vegetables, fruits) are not dietary staples, that is primary sources of calories.

Grains are.

Rice. Wheat. Maize (corn). Rye. Oats. Barley. Millet. A handful of others.

A 50# bag of rice (22.7kg) costs less than $20, and provides 17,800 calories, or about 900 calories per dollar, or about 0.1 cents/calorie.

I see chicken at about $2/lb, 102cal/3oz, or 544 cal/lb. That's 2.7 cents/calorie, 27 times more expensive than rice.

(And for the nutritionists out there: kilocalories are not all that food provides, but it's the most significant start. Macros and micros as well as other factors do matter. I've been told.)

Oh: There are also root crops, especially potatoes.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#146

Post by jacobwilliamroy » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 4:20 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #138

ddxxdd wrote: post #12

This feels reminiscent of the current issue of long-term data storage. Flash drives are volatile and can lose your data any minute. Solid State drives are slightly less volatile, and a hard disk has magnetic fields that will last decades, but nothing will keep our gigabytes of data alive and intact for future archaeologists. If the Library of Alexandria can burn, then so can any form of digital storage. On a side not…

> On a side note, I enjoy reading John Baez's answers to common physics questions: http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ Me too. But take care about the infamous answer to "Why is the sky blue?", which is quite confusing. The take of Randall Munroe is much clearer, and exactly as correct: "the sky is blue because air is blue".

Except when air is red, pink, orange, grey, green, violet...

I found Walter Lewin's explanation of Rayleigh scattering to be pretty clear.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#147

Post by enriquto » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

EForEndeavour wrote: post #144

enriquto wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a side note, I enjoy reading John Baez's answers to common physics questions: http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ Me too. But take care about the infamous answer to "Why is the sky blue?", which is quite confusing. The take of Randall Munroe is much clearer, and exactly as correct: "the sky is blue because air is blue".

> the sky is blue because air is blue This comes off as a smart-alecky non-answer to anyone not already familiar with what gives things colours in the first place. John Baez's answer captures the core mechanism in two sentences and one diagram, and provides more detail below for the curious: > A clear cloudless day-time sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter re…

That is not the point. The point is that anything scatters and absorbs the light in a particular way, and we cal this phenomenon the "color" of the object. "Vegetation is green because chlorophyll is green" is deemed a correct answer. The same for the sky and for anything else.

Ref: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1818:_Rayleigh_Sc...

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#148

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 4:22 PM UTC

Gomer1800 wrote: post #79

chrisco255 wrote: post #41

This quote: "Ecologically, these Archaic hunters and gatherers had moved one entire link down the food chain, thereby eliminating the approximately 90-percent loss in food value that occurs when one feeds on an animal that is a plant-eater." This is just completely false. All meat consumed is bioavailable protein and nutrients. Even more so when it's cooked. Plants have reduced bioavailability due to high oxalate, ph…

“Humans would have never evolved the ability to eat meat if it didn't confer a natural advantage over foragers.” Is this really true though about evolution in general. Evolution happens because of adaptations due to selective pressures. This doesn’t necessarily mean that evolutionary changes are beneficial.

Evolutionary changes are virtually solipsitically beneficial, by definition.

They may be a local optimum, or adaptations to circumstances which existed at one time, but no longer, or be the result of a long chain of path-dependencies (effectively: multiple local optima jumps, a/k/a "the adjacent possible"), or even non-heritable benefits, such as "don't be under that big sky rock when it comes down" (luck plays a selective role, but features little if any heritable characteristics).

All that said, I'm not making any argument for or against meat eating, other than to note that the evolutionary support of it suggests that it was certainly useful at least at some point in the past.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#149

Post by squish78 » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

GVIrish wrote: post #134

squish78 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rainforest land is not arable. Farmers who try to grow crops (typically soybean) in the Amazon get 2-3 years of crops before the land becomes infertile, then it has to fallow again. Their only option is to add massive amounts of chemical fertilizers which washes out into the Amazon basin. Aside from leaving the forests undisturbed (which is my preference), raising cattle is better for that ecosystem than agricultural…

Slashing and burning rainforest to farm cattle or raise crops are both bad options given how critical the Amazon is to maintaining climate and biodiversity. Either way, the amount of land and water required to raise each lb of beef is an order of magnitude greater than the amount needed for a pound of chicken, which is in turn an order of magnitude higher than the resources needed for a pound of vegetables. The expan…

I don't think anyone disagrees with you. My point (again) is that this land can't be sustainably farmed for vegetable/cereal crops, so cattle is the only industry that the land could be used for. I would prefer there were some sustainable ranching practices, but I don't know enough about Brazilian agriculture to comment on how that land is managed after it's cleared.

I guess the million dollar question is - who has the moral authority to tell Brazilians that they don't have the right to utilize their land and natural resources like China, USA, India, and every other industrial nation?

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#150

Post by beat » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #140

beat wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology changes that game. Grains are the core of the human diet, and have been since the dawn of civilization. But they are only edible because of civilization - the grinding, fermentation, and cooking breaking them down into something our bodies can use. In the US and other wealthy countries, we might feed grain to livestock, but it's also often parts of grain that we can't really eat (hulls, etc). And in poorer…

Cultivation, selective breeding, and hybridisation of grains does not change the trophic level calculus. The bulk of livestock feed is corn (which has seen tremendous yield improvements since the 1960s through "green revolution" techniques), and for protein content, soyabeans, which have rather pointedly not . Additional silage provides some but AFAIU considerably less general nutritive content. And you will absolute…

And that's a totally legitimate point - but does it support your contention? You seem to be arguing that it is too expensive to raise meat. But food is driven largely by economics. Replacing the integrated farm with the sort of separation of duties you're talking about here is succeeding because it's cheaper.

If you're talking about thermal efficiency.. what you're saying is true but irrelevant. Whether my food is the optimum use of sunlight is not a real concern.