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Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

economist.com

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Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#231

Post by theshrike79 »

tobtoh wrote: post #79

As someone in the Gen X demographic who has never smoked, I've watched the anti-smoking campaigns and shift in attitudes towards smoking with interest - particularly how resistant smokers were to initially giving up smoking. I feel like eating meat is going to be my generations equivalent of smoking. Intellectually, I agree that eating meat is bad for the environment, cruel to animals (esp industrial farming) etc ...…

The difference between stopping smoking and stopping eating meat is that it's perfectly possible to eat meat in moderation than it is to smoke just a few.

I haven't eaten any 4-legged animals with the exception of bacon and the odd burger here and there (a chicken burger just doesn't cut it) for 3-4 years.

I mostly eat fish and poultry and have been accidentally vegan a number of days.

I'd be completely fine paying 2x the price for beef if the animals were handled in a sustainable and humane way.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#232

Post by Jensson »

tuatoru wrote: post #118
tasty_freeze wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article seems highly motivated to marginalize the effects of livestock. Quoting a section: While methane is 28-times more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide, methane’s lifespan is just a decade, while CO2 — known as a long-life pollutant — remains in the atmosphere for 1000 years. After ten years, methane is broken down in a process called hydroxyl oxidation into CO2, entering a carbon cycle which sees the gas ab…

When measured over 100 years , methane has about 21 times the global warming potential of CO2. When measured over 10 years , it's more like 81 times. So the "28 times" already allows for the fact that it's mostly only there for 10 years. https://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/methane-vs-c...

But it means that the meat we eat today just warms the earth for 10 years in the future. Global warming isn't a catastrophe in 10 years, so eating meat today is a non issue. When global warming becomes an issue we can kill all the cows and stop eating meat and that way quickly cool the earth.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#233

Post by adrianN »

Jensson wrote: post #224
adrianN wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably they are. Although I'm not convinced that nuclear is the cheapest solution to climate change.

If we continued to build nuclear rather than retire them then we wouldn't have any issues today except cars and air. What do you mean "not most cost efficient", there are no other options we know of today. They are all based on future tech we don't have, like being able to store wind or solar etc. Do you really want to bet the future of earth on the chance that we find a solution to those problems before climate chan…

We have the technology to store wind and solar: batteries for very short durations, electrolysis (optionally followed by a Sabatier reaction to make Methane) for longer duration. Both are quite expensive, but so is nuclear. I don't know which option is cheaper overall.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#234

Post by axiolite »

wumpus wrote: post #220
axiolite wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is “pumping loss “? Unlike older scientific topics that have esoteric terminology, usually from the Latin, this one is pretty straight forward... It is the energy lost due to pumping. Basically, the overhead of keeping an engine running no matter how much distance of roadway you cover, but more on point, the extra losses due to running an engine outside of its peak power/performance range: https://www.cyclewor…

Weird, does this apply to EV's, too?

> does this apply to EV's, too?

Not "pumping" losses, no. There is no intake air or exhaust gas to pump.

EVs may experience an effect that is similar in practice, albeit much smaller... Things like headlights, HVAC, entertainment systems, etc., will draw more power the longer it takes you to get to your destination, so reducing your speed from 30 to 15 MPH might not be an efficiency win.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#235

Post by candiodari »

No it would not make even the tiniest dent. I don't get this sort of reasoning. We keep, and keep, and keep treating this like "let's force everyone" problem. Jevon's paradox. If we kill beef production, we change nothing.

Oil and coal that gets dug up gets burned. Law simply does not apply to all states that do this, so these sorts of measures are dead in the water. So the ONLY way to lower (eventual) greenhouse emissions is to leave coal and oil in the ground. Such measures can only ever change WHY fossil fuels get burned, bitcoins instead of steel production, not WHETHER or not coal gets burned ...

They can't leave oil in the ground. They can't leave coal in the ground.

Problem is that the real change we need can't be done with law, with political action, with any of that ... it can only be done by competing with oil. Outcompete oil and the problem is solved. No country will risk it's energy supply dropping by 0.1% for the climate, it's just not going to happen. Sure, they want to score points with the young political action crowd, but not where it poses actual risks to the economy. So this can only be done with science. You want to help the climate? Get a real education in chemistry and physics and figure out some small part of the problem.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#236

Post by soco »

Doji wrote: post #159
cjblomqvist wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought along the same lines. But whatabout methane being 10 times the pollutant?

It's a concern, but fortunately if cattle population stays constant, their portion of the atmospheric resident methane will also remain constant, because methane degradation will keep pace with emissions. Compare this to cars. Even if the number of cars remains constant, their contribution to the C02 pool grows every day. So we should avoid increasing cattle population 100x, but we wouldn't want to do that anyway bec…

The methane stays constant because it gets broken down into CO2 which thusly increases.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#237

Post by nimih »

seiferteric wrote: post #22
wumpus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of foods are commodities, so I'm not exactly sure why you think they aren't fungible. Soybeans, corn, pork bellies, ...

That's not what fungible means... A Watt is a Watt, a soybean is not a steak...

On the other hand, a Calorie is always a Calorie, and an amino acid is always an amino acid.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#238

Post by p_l »

tarsinge wrote: post #168
fidgetspinner wrote: post #18

Hm, this seems to be missing the point that plant monocrops destroy the soil and are not nearly as efficient a source of food for the human body as fresh animal meat. Regenerative agriculture, which ideally requires both animal and plant cultivation, would be a better path forward if it could scale. If I remember correctly the papers that originally thought cattle were a big contributor to global warming turned out t…

The vast majority of agricultural land today are for feeding animals (between 70% and 80% depending of the studies). The end product meat is maybe more efficient, but compared to what was needed for its production it is not. It’s not humans that eat that much monocultured corn and soy.

"Agricultural land" != "arable land'.

It varies a lot by country, pretty sure there's a lot more overlap between pasture land and arable land in Europe, but for example in USA not so much.

Considerable amount of animal food also involves byproducts of food production for humans, or plants used in cycling the fields (that's made worse with preference to just put ton of artificial fertilizer)

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#239

Post by WithinReason »

soco wrote: post #236
Doji wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a concern, but fortunately if cattle population stays constant, their portion of the atmospheric resident methane will also remain constant, because methane degradation will keep pace with emissions. Compare this to cars. Even if the number of cars remains constant, their contribution to the C02 pool grows every day. So we should avoid increasing cattle population 100x, but we wouldn't want to do that anyway bec…

The methane stays constant because it gets broken down into CO2 which thusly increases.

But all that CO₂ was captured from the atmosphere in the first place

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#240

Post by WithinReason »

mdorazio wrote: post #125
Doji wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cow feed is generally not human edible: https://www.milkmeansmore.org/what-do-cows-eat/

This implies that the land used to grow cow feed couldn't be used to instead grow human-consumable crops or left fallow as a carbon sink. I'm not aware of any studies showing that.

If you check out the link, most of the cow feed is a by-product of other industrial processes and would go to waste otherwise.
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