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Holocene Extinction

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Re: Holocene Extinction

#111

Post by ebiester »

jungletime wrote: post #72
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.

I'm always amazed how good the fruit and vegetables look, but how little flavour they have when bought from super market here, compared to Europe, or actually most parts of the world where vegetables are grown locally and organically. Very sour unripe oranges, bananas, grapes, flavourless green peppers, tasteless tomatoes. Pretty much the norm in Supermarkets.

California is not nearly as bad as the rest of the country. the southeast US has some decent produce, but not much, and not nearly as much as its soil should offer. I am continually flabbergasted that Americans accept this - or rather, they don't.

I think so much of meat consumption and fast food consumption can be explained by how bad our fruits and vegetables are.

Re: Holocene Extinction

#112

Post by gamblor956 »

gibolt wrote: post #93
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.

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).

Cows primarily eat grass and other ruminants that humans can't digest until the cows reach the finishing stage. At that point, expensive beef is finished on grass and cheap beef is finished on corn (to fatten it).

So 1 pound of corn might only product 0.01 pound of cow, but that's because 99% of the cow was built up by its non-food diet.

Re: Holocene Extinction

#113

Post by [deleted] »

tejohnso wrote: post #88
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.

> but it may be necessary to eat some meat to get nutrients you wouldn't otherwise get from plants. It is not necessary to eat meat.

[deleted]

Re: Holocene Extinction

#114

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

gdubs wrote: post #102
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's "we", Kemosabe?

Humans, basically — the majority of agriculture.

Well, no.

Nobody grew food to feed to farm animals one hundred years ago, and I'd bet the vast majority of farm animals today are still not fed agricultural products.

Your complaint is against American factory farming, which is a whole separate issue of economic incentives and wealth distribution.

Re: Holocene Extinction

#115

Post by Endlessly »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #75
Endlessly wrote: post #69

Struggling to find a word for it, but it’s obvious that humans lack the will collectively to avoid certain types of systemic multigenerational issues. Climate change is the most obvious, but there’s long list of issues like this that if suddenly every human on Earth magically expected to live 1000 to 10,000 years would become more pressing issues. As a semi-futurist, this is the core issue, it’s not that humans don’t…

Even if humans did care, that doesn't mean they could organize a meaningful response. COVID-19 is affecting people right now. It, and other viruses like the flu, are just a giant rhythm game: if everyone could be isolated for 2 weeks, it would be over in 2 weeks, and we'd never have to deal with it ever again. We just have a fundamental coordination problem. A lot of foresight and resources are required, and only a C…

>> “ COVID-19 is affecting people right now. It, and other viruses like the flu, are just a giant rhythm game: if everyone could be isolated for 2 weeks, it would be over in 2 weeks, and we'd never have to deal with it ever again.”

Above claim includes set of assumptions that are unsaid and likely unaccounted for, for example:

- isolation occurs per person, not per household.

- 14 days is enough; research I’ve seen claims that only covers 97.5% of the population, which clearly is not 100% of the population; meaning that in 2.5% of the cases, it took longer than 14-days for the individual to become systemic; longest claim I have seen is 28 days, but that’s clearly an outlier may have been due to error of some sort.

- 14-days assumes you’re systemic on the first day of isolation, though mean time to becoming systemic in not zero days, it’s 5-days.

- assumes no latent environmental infection, wildlife based exposure, no bad actors intentionally reinfecting a population, etc

- simply put, no, 14-days is not enough, and few people understand the dynamics at play.

Re: Holocene Extinction

#116

Post by 29athrowaway »

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…

[flagged]

Re: Holocene Extinction

#117

Post by raiflip »

tejohnso wrote: post #88
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.

> but it may be necessary to eat some meat to get nutrients you wouldn't otherwise get from plants. It is not necessary to eat meat.

Necessary is not the right word. More efficient might be better. It's entirely possible to get protein from plants and omega-3 from vitamins, but from a human health point of view, is it more efficient?

Re: Holocene Extinction

#118

Post by raiflip »

GcVmvNhBsU wrote: post #109
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.

That’s an interesting point, given modern animal farming practices. 97% of cows are going to come from a feedlot, where they’ll be fed grain (corn). The special part of their stomach that allows them to extract more nutrients from certain plant foods compared to humans, the rumen, is “made” for grass. When switching over to grain, acid builds up in the rumen which can lead to acidosis, so we then have to pump the cow…

That's interesting. I certainly do not claim to be an expert in raising cattle. Perhaps there are smarter ways we can raise cattle. Is that why the grass-fed label is so important?

Re: Holocene Extinction

#119

Post by throwaway894345 »

godtoldmetodoit wrote: post #66
throwaway894345 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any resources for determining which US politicians support environmentalism (specifically meaningful, evidence-based policies as opposed to vapid virtue signalling) and/or where the "battleground" states are? I guess in general I'm looking to get involved more in climate politics, but I don't know where to start.

Check out Citizens Climate Lobby. citizensclimatelobby.org Non-partisan group attempting to get a carbon tax and dividend law passed, and they are making progress. They continue to get new co-sponsors on their bill, they do a lot of training on how to get involved, how you can speak to your Congressperson etc.

Thank you! I'll dig into this. This sounds like exactly the thing I've been looking for!

Re: Holocene Extinction

#120

Post by raiflip »

My question to people who think this is objectively a bad thing - given the usual line of thought to get that conclusion is that we shouldn't be prejudiced towards valuing humans any more than other living creatures (which makes sense), then why would the replacement of non-human biomass with human biomass necessarily be good or bad?

Now I kinda know some sensible answers to this question. For one, genetic diversity in life is critical for survival given diversification means at least a few strands can survive sudden unexpected events. i.e if everything were giant dinosaurs there may have been no life left after the dinosaur extinction. The other answer is that we are pre-built to aesthetically enjoy thriving nature (which is probably meant to drive us towards protecting genetic diversity).

However given the human backlash to human trashing the environment, I could easily see us settling on an equilibrium where life is not, at least for the most part, the kind of wild chaotic world that it was before us, but a world where the environment is increasingly managed to some degrees by humans. You see this as nations getting richer stop eating cats, dogs, care more about preserving the environment, raising better treated wildlife, etc.

In that case, perhaps humans can help facilitate a new epoch in nature where genetic diversity is not just a biproduct of a random process, but a conscious goal. Granted this would require a much deeper knowledge of nature, humility to know when we can't control everything, and a cultural shift towards being stewards of nature. But given the shifts that have already occurred in human thinking around nature, I don't think this is outside the realm of possibility. Given our increasing energy usage, it's probably the only route in which we don't end up causing environmental catastrophes that either kill us off, or our civilization. That and finding new planets.

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