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Holocene Extinction

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Re: Holocene Extinction

#91

Post by rapind »

cranekam wrote: post #47
MattGaiser wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology makes cleaner solutions cheaper, rendering all that irrelevant.

Over time, perhaps. But we don't have time. Where are the low-methane cows? The low-carbon flights? When will cement pollute less? Why are we still generating 61% of power with coal and gas [0]? Part of the answer to all of these things is that there is a lot invested in maintaining the status quo. Airlines getting away with tax-free fuel isn't a technology problem. How long, realistically, until any significant prop…

I think you're both right. I don't think we'll get much mileage by limiting consumption via legislation, but I do think subsidizing industries like renewables and green research (and phasing out dirty energy subsidies) combines policy and technology to get us there faster (in time?).

Re: Holocene Extinction

#92

Post by jtolmar »

raiflip wrote: post #78
alex_young wrote: post #64

A huge chunk of our net impact on global warming and deforestation is a direct result of our food system, namely animal agriculture. There is disagreement about just how inefficient turning an acre of corn into slabs of cow, but it should be clear that it is some fraction of the efficiency of just eating that corn as food itself.

What about in the case where animals can extract more nutrients from plant food than we can? Cows in particular have specially built stomachs that can extract nutrients from plants than we can. I don't think this would be enough to make eating meat more efficient, but it may be necessary to eat some meat to get nutrients you wouldn't otherwise get from plants.

Letting grazing animals eat grass that's just growing on its own is incredibly energy-efficient, but that's not what we do. We manually grow food for them then ship it to the animals.

Re: Holocene Extinction

#93

Post by gibolt »

raiflip wrote: post #78
alex_young wrote: post #64

A huge chunk of our net impact on global warming and deforestation is a direct result of our food system, namely animal agriculture. There is disagreement about just how inefficient turning an acre of corn into slabs of cow, but it should be clear that it is some fraction of the efficiency of just eating that corn as food itself.

What about in the case where animals can extract more nutrients from plant food than we can? Cows in particular have specially built stomachs that can extract nutrients from plants than we can. I don't think this would be enough to make eating meat more efficient, but it may be necessary to eat some meat to get nutrients you wouldn't otherwise get from plants.

Animals can't extract that much more. And we certainly can't get 100% of that back out during consumption, ignoring all the inefficiencies of the process.

1 pound of food in might produce 0.01 pound of cow (probably much less).

Re: Holocene Extinction

#94

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

jtolmar wrote: post #92
raiflip wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about in the case where animals can extract more nutrients from plant food than we can? Cows in particular have specially built stomachs that can extract nutrients from plants than we can. I don't think this would be enough to make eating meat more efficient, but it may be necessary to eat some meat to get nutrients you wouldn't otherwise get from plants.

Letting grazing animals eat grass that's just growing on its own is incredibly energy-efficient, but that's not what we do. We manually grow food for them then ship it to the animals.

Who's "we", Kemosabe?

Re: Holocene Extinction

#95

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #87
raiflip wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about in the case where animals can extract more nutrients from plant food than we can? Cows in particular have specially built stomachs that can extract nutrients from plants than we can. I don't think this would be enough to make eating meat more efficient, but it may be necessary to eat some meat to get nutrients you wouldn't otherwise get from plants.

It’s true that some animals can digest plants that we can’t digest. But there is plenty of evidence that humans can live perfectly well on a plant based diet if they eat the right plants . It’s not necessary to eat meat for getting nutrients.

> But there is plenty of evidence that humans can live perfectly well on a plant based diet if they eat the right plants .

Vitamin B-12

From https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-vitamin-b12/art...

“However, if you follow a vegetarian or vegan diet, you might be prone to deficiency because plant foods don't contain vitamin B-12. ”

Re: Holocene Extinction

#96

Post by eanzenberg »

CalRobert wrote: post #52
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #49

Many times there is a heavy dose of misanthropy in these environmental discussions. Phrases like "humanity is a virus", etc. I would like to share a different perspective.There is a saying, "It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." Even if humanity overburdens the planet and goes extinct in the next 100 years, I prefer what we have now, than if we had remained hunter-gatherers or pre-ind…

100 years may be optimistic. And I don't think young people or children today deserve an agonizing life watching their loved ones, their own children, perhaps, starving to death or dying in a water war. Also you don't need to be a hunter gatherer to not rape the planet.

Said every decade for the past how many centuries?

Re: Holocene Extinction

#97

Post by yosito »

rbg246 wrote: post #48
jungletime wrote: post #39

Humans can have a beneficial impact on the environment too, by terraforming and making the land more productive. There's some evidence that the Amazon mix of fruiting tree and nut species were selected for by humans. "The Supposedly Pristine, Untouched Amazon Rainforest Was Actually Shaped By Humans" https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pristine-untou... Since some people us this as political grounds for eug…

May I kindly ask, why do you feel the need to jump out and defend the human species as also being good in the face of what is described in the article? I am genuinely interested in understanding what motivates this reaction.

Humanism is a fairly common value system.

Re: Holocene Extinction

#99

Post by gibolt »

almost_usual wrote: post #24

The Biomass of mammals on Earth is sobering. Livestock, mostly cattle and pigs (60%) Humans (36%) Wild animals (4%)

While it is crazy, all of the animals listed are already some of the largest physical beings on the planet. Multiply them to 10000x the size of other animal populations, and this is what the scale will turn to.

Re: Holocene Extinction

#100

Post by gdubs »

alex_young wrote: post #64

A huge chunk of our net impact on global warming and deforestation is a direct result of our food system, namely animal agriculture. There is disagreement about just how inefficient turning an acre of corn into slabs of cow, but it should be clear that it is some fraction of the efficiency of just eating that corn as food itself.

It’s really only recently coming into focus. Because if you look sector by sector it’s not clear (in terms of emissions). But when you look close it’s clear that a sector like chemical production is heavily weighted towards producing fertilizer. And the majority of that is being used to grow animal feed. Or the transportation sector, a lot of which is shipping food all over the world. And land-use change, deforestation, etc, to create grazing land or grow conventional mono crops — again, mostly for animal feed.

Basically, in our current system, plant foods are an edge product of an animal agriculture system. To be more sustainable, we probably want the opposite — meat as an edge product of a plant-focused agriculture.

The picture in my head is a more decentralized system — regional farms, urban farms, etc. And probably a carbon tax which would make meat a little pricier. It doesn’t have to disappear, but the externalities should be baked into the cost.

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