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New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

interestingengineering.com

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Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#11

Post by roflyear »

pkphilip wrote: post #9

Livestock is grown in parts of the world on stuff which cannot be sold or which grows on its own - example: grass etc. How in the world is lab grown meat going to compete with that in terms of efficiency, CO2 emissions etc?

You have to explain to me what this:

> Livestock is grown in parts of the world on stuff which cannot be sold or which grows on its own - example: grass etc.

Has to do with CO2 produced from raising livestock? I can't connect the two in my head, there's some missing information here I don't have.

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#12

Post by dgfitz »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #5
lukas099 wrote: post #3

Wow, a brand new technology is less efficient than a process that has been refined for thousands of years?! Unbelievable!

> for thousands of years rather thousands of thousands of thousands of years ...

Define: pedantic

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#15

Post by roflyear »

Seems like the global average for beef is 188 kg of CO2 equivalent per kg - and the article suggests that "each kilogram of ACBM produces 542 pounds (246 kg) to 3,325 pounds (1,508 kg) of carbon dioxide emissions"

That's a HUGE range - but let's assume this new tech can get down to 250kg/1kg, that's not much worse than 188kg/1kg, so... what's the headline? That we don't expect the process to be able to scale better?

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#16

Post by roflyear »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #5
lukas099 wrote: post #3

Wow, a brand new technology is less efficient than a process that has been refined for thousands of years?! Unbelievable!

> for thousands of years rather thousands of thousands of thousands of years ...

We haven't been factory farming for even a hundred years (not really). I would also challenge that cows evolved to be efficient at producing CO2? haha.

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#17

Post by pkphilip »

roflyear wrote: post #11
pkphilip wrote: post #9

Livestock is grown in parts of the world on stuff which cannot be sold or which grows on its own - example: grass etc. How in the world is lab grown meat going to compete with that in terms of efficiency, CO2 emissions etc?

You have to explain to me what this: > Livestock is grown in parts of the world on stuff which cannot be sold or which grows on its own - example: grass etc. Has to do with CO2 produced from raising livestock? I can't connect the two in my head, there's some missing information here I don't have.

Haven't you heard the argument that livestock raising releases methane/CO2 etc?

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#18

Post by myshpa »

Or we could switch to eating plants now.

We already get 82% calories and 63% proteins from plants. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

We could stay on our 1% of habitable earth, lower our agricultural footprint from 48% of land to 15%, use quarter of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, double forest area and store entire 1.5C carbon budget (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4) in the process, and enable return of wildlife and sealife (also storing a lot of carbon in them https://www.oneearth.org/how-restoring-key-wildlife-species-...).

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#19

Post by roflyear »

hospitalJail wrote: post #14

But how much methane?

I am against factory farming, but I think the CO2 numbers are usually "Co2 equivalent" (at least if the study is being honest) and sources put cows at 100kg/kg to 300kg/kg for CO2eq - several I found say that 188kg CO2eq is a fair number to use (the U.S. apparently is much lower, even as low as 70kgCO2eq?)

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#20

Post by blitz_skull »

myshpa wrote: post #18

Or we could switch to eating plants now. We already get 82% calories and 63% proteins from plants. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets We could stay on our 1% of habitable earth, lower our agricultural footprint from 48% of land to 15%, use quarter of pesticides,…

Good luck enforcing a world-wide “plant-only” diet. I know people who would go to war just over that.
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