321–330 of 344 posts
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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.
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Right. Prices, not arbitrary bans, are the correct way to incorporate externalities in the costs of a product. People are far too happy to promote ad-hoc bans of all sorts of arbitrary things without creating any kind of general incentive structure that would automatically optimize the metrics of interest. The result is malinvestment, economic inefficiency, and global poverty. The problem is that the externality is s…
OTOH 50% of emissions are due to the richest 1%. [1] They are price insensitive for the most part. Their yachts and personal airplanes don't make a dent in their billions of assets. I still support carbon taxes as a source of investment for sustainable transition. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-ric...
It might be a bear to administer, though...
Beef is delicious. Meat is delicious. We have to figure out how to replace that before we get rid of cattle farms.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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Do I need to pay carbon tax on my dog?
Unless your dog burns fossil fuels you most likely only need to pay carbon tax on the dog products you use that were made using fossil fuels. Dogs don't produce a lot of Methane either, because they're not ruminants.
Cattle only burn fossil fuels to the extent that transporting water and feed, fertilizing that feed, and manufacturing and transporting fencing materials, antibiotics, etc, use.
Guess what? Your dog has roughly the same impact making and transporting his food, his water, his veterinarian supplies, any bedding you've purchased, bags to dispose of his feces, collars, leashes, toys, etc.
I don't have hard numbers but intuitively I'd guess dogs and cattle have approximately the same climate impact on a pound-of-bodyweight basis.
Dogs probably have slightly more, since they live in much more luxurious digs than CAFO cattle, eat higher quality feed, get to ride in cars, etc.
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I feel like I'm being gaslighted. In advanced physical chemistry we took IR spectroscopy of methane and CO2 and CO2 definitely had much, much more absorption than methane on account of the dipole difference between Carbon and oxygen (IR absorption depends on stretching modes between atoms of different electronegativity, carbon is very close to methane). At the time, it was explained to us young chemistry students tha…
the greenhouse effect is about internal reflections basically. its the same effect that makes cloth appear darker when its wet even though water is basically colorless. greenhouse gases bend light slightly, making it more likely that a light ray will hit the ground multiple times.
artificial plant based meat is treated with so many chemicals that it is potentially worse for you than eating real meat
Citation needed. "Chemicals" are not all bad. Everything you eat is a chemical.
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There is a certain amount of carbon in the atmosphere, and a certain amount of carbon in the ground. When you burn oil, you take carbon from the ground and introduce it into the atmosphere. This increases the total amount of carbon resident in the atmosphere. When you grow plants, you take carbon out of the atmosphere. When you eat it, you release it back into the atmosphere. The total amount of carbon resident in th…
Grass grows more vigorously but also consumes more nutrients when regularly pruned, other plants also "grow more vigorously" e.g get replanted when harvested by humans. This does not seem unique to grass or animal feeding. Even if it was, grass-fed beef is about 1% of the supply in the US. It has also been shown that grass-fed beef on average causes more environmental degradation than conventionally fed beef, due to…
Deforestation is a real problem. How do you address this from a policy perspective? If you ban beef, that is only a temporary band-aid on the real problem of deforestation, which both fails to address deforestation properly, and which prevents beneficial uses of livestock such as for reuse of food waste products, grazing of natural grasslands, production of natural fertilizer, etc.
Beef is delicious. Meat is delicious. We have to figure out how to replace that before we get rid of cattle farms.
It's not as delicious to people who grow up not eating meat. I expect if we want a change it'll have to be generational.