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

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

#61

Post by ethanbond »

ben_w wrote: post #55
asciimov wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even plant farming isn't without issues. Plant farming eventually strips the nutrients from the soil, and then they end up having to use lots of man made chemicals to "fix" the problem. We have to find a way to be more sustainable in our agriculture.

> Plant farming eventually strips the nutrients from the soil Crop rotation predates the wheel by about two millennia. We're using the synthetic alternative because it's really amazing not because we don't have alternatives.

> because it's really amazing on the timeframes and liability frameworks that govern industrial decision-making

Small but critical detail.

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

#62

Post by pdabbadabba »

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.

The argument seems to be that livestock only eats stuff that would have been grown anyway and therefore has no effect on CO2 emissions. But I think this is wrong for two reasons:

1. The premise is false. Quite a lot of farmland is devoted to growing feed grains. See https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feed-gr... If we had less livestock, we could either grow human-edible crops instead (with much less energy per calorie expended) or leave these fields fallow.

2. It ignores the fact that some livestock (cows) converts feed into methane, which has a disproportionate climate impact—more methane than if the same grain had been produced, but not consumed by a cow. Admittedly, this is less relevant when we're talking about lab-grown chicken meat. But GP's point was about livestock generally, so this is worth considering.

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

#63

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

thisGuyFlicks wrote: post #27
blitz_skull wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why do you go directly to the extreme implementation? No one said anything about "enforcement". There are ways to push society towards a better paradigm without enforcement. We also shouldn't let the lowest common denominator have a say in the direction of society. People that "would go to war" over the fact that they should eat less red meat are not exactly of sound mind.

So your answer is "we'll just manipulate people without them noticing"?

How will that not backfire?

> People that "would go to war" over the fact that they should eat less red meat are not exactly of sound mind.

I see nothing in their position that indicates they aren't of sound mind. They're inconvenient to your own position, and you're willing to manipulate them if you can manage the trick.

Maybe you're worried that they will choose to "go to war" as manipulated people do so often once aware of the ruse?

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

#65

Post by beebeepka »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #48
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,…

The solutions of "everyone just needs to do " are a dime a dozen. We could solve war if everyone just stopped fighting. It's better to fix incentives such as making meat more expensive through taxes or fewer subsidies on meat or feed grains (corn). Or making vegetables cheaper. I could see a serious PR campaign to support farmers/small business (conservative hook) and eat local planet variety combined with fulfilling…

[flagged]

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

#66

Post by thebigwinning »

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,…

Every activity and product has a cost and contributes to waste. If I enjoy that food and pay for the cost then whats the problem? Are we suggesting it's virtuous for its own sake to have a lower standard of living?

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

#67

Post by DennisP »

chrisbolt wrote: post #26
blitz_skull wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why does everything have to be all-or-nothing? Start by stop subsidizing meat.

Every climate solution I've seen that started with the word "just" has been woefully inadequate, and modestly raising the price of meat is no exception. People would still eat plenty of it.

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

#68

Post by ben_w »

100721 wrote: post #54
scotty79 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares The only way I can even remotely believe that is that 'agricultural' includes pastures which are useless to humans for any other purpose. Land used for plants intended for human consumption would need to be expanded along with everything bad they require. I also wonder how high would be the health cost…

> The only way I can even remotely believe that is that 'agricultural' includes pastures which are useless to humans for any other purpose. This is really interesting! I didn't know that pastures cannot support crops and/or buildings. Why are pastures so limited in their usability?

Historically speaking, hillsides and mountains are awkward for both homes and combine harvesters. Such land is currently where pasturing is most common.

But such things are always conditional and depend on the tech. If Boston Dynamics robots start building the houses, or picking fruit and herbs on hillside orchards, such concerns probably stops mattering.

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

#69

Post by plaidfuji »

This is an expected result if you extrapolate from an early R&D stage process to a global scale, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not worth pursuing more sustainable routes to the mass production of animal muscle.

And that’s really what the underlying goal is here - don’t fall for the false dichotomy of “farmed” vs “lab-grown” - factory farms are essentially process development labs. How efficiently can you convert land and feedstock into salable whole-cut animal muscle? The animals are just bioreactors at this point, with experiments being done on how to optimize feedstock conversion to fatty muscle mass, which antibiotics limit contamination and yield loss the best, etc.

The only question is how animal-like will the eventual bioreactors in the cultivated meat process have to look to reproduce the real thing at scale and at lower cost? The lines will only continue to blur.

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

#70

Post by golemotron »

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,…

> 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

All of this is `fighting the last war'. World population is going to fall precipitously by the end of the century.

The scarcity thinking everyone is parroting is a relic of the 20th century and it gets in our way. It keeps us from thinking about creating abundance.

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