New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2 • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by theobromananda » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #107

daneel_w wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"The solutions of "everyone just needs to do " are a dime a dozen. We could solve war if everyone just stopped fighting." As evident from your (absurd) comparison you're responding to the parent from the perspective of another completely different problem. Consuming less meat and more plant-based foods, including going fully vegetarian, is absolutely within grasp for a substantial amount of people in the west.

Only if they were forced, is the point. For most it's a significant reduction in quality of life they're not going to choose.

Is a little bit of umami taste really a significant part of your quality of life? When other parts go or die (health, friends, meaning), one can easily realize how little that actually matters for one's happiness.

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

#152

Post by dmbche » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

user3939382 wrote: post #91

I want to eat meat from chickens and cows that had good, happy lives, eating the healthiest most natural form of their diet possible. I don't want lab grown meat, the concept is disgusting. As it is our food is too processed and industrial. Maybe we can focus on mixed farming instead https://www.earth.com/news/mixed-farming-could-increase-food...

I'm sorry, this is propaganda. These animals have not lived happy, full lives, and the mixed farming is about using their excrement. Nothing to do with animal well being.

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

#153

Post by beebeepka » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

estebank wrote: post #130

beebeepka wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Being performatively abrasive is no way of convincing anyone. I happen to agree with some of the underlying points you're making, and I still find myself shaking my head. Being off-putting is not a personality.

Dear estebank, even the nicest words cannot convince anyone to eat less, drive less or anything of sorts.

I am venting. The things I complain about have been bugging me for decades and I am under no illusion that my occasional rants can change anything, nicely worded or abrasive.

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

#154

Post by dmbche » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

cpeterso wrote: post #120

user3939382 wrote: post #91

I want to eat meat from chickens and cows that had good, happy lives, eating the healthiest most natural form of their diet possible. I don't want lab grown meat, the concept is disgusting. As it is our food is too processed and industrial. Maybe we can focus on mixed farming instead https://www.earth.com/news/mixed-farming-could-increase-food...

I wonder who the market for lab-grown meat would be. I bet that 99% of vegetarians (myself included) and maybe 90% of meat eaters would never eat it. Meat eaters will insist on “real meat” and vegetarians don’t want any meat.

I think if the subsidies for meat are stopped or reduced this becomes much more interesting - kind of like synthetic fuel is stupid today, but when most cars are EVs synthetic fuel becomes a good idea for car enthusiasts.

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

#155

Post by dmbche » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 4:15 PM UTC

barbariangrunge wrote: post #108

Forget about lab grown meat: give me a bean that doesn't cause gas or other stomach irritation. We could eat beans 3 times a day and save the world while we're at it, all while saving money.

You just need to eat beans for two weeks - then your flora is used to it and you don't fart (in my experience).

Will go away if you stop eating beans though.

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

#156

Post by mrguyorama » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 4:17 PM UTC

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…

>serious PR campaign to support farmers/small business (conservative hook)

This has not worked for a long time in the US. Conservatives have repeatedly cut their nose to spite their face. Plenty of states have still refused to expand medicare simply because it's a liberal policy, and the conservatives in these states have not wavered in their support of those politicians despite directly suffering as a result of poor access to healthcare. They will simply boot up a GoFundMe and muse about "why can't we just set up one big GoFundMe for everyone?" without an ounce of self reflection.

Consider Florida: Thousands of conservative voters died from covid needlessly, while cheering on Desantis as he made it a crime to not allow someone in your private business who didn't take precautions.

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

#157

Post by earthling8118 » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 4:18 PM UTC

beebeepka wrote: post #65

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

Yeah, I think you come from a different group of people than me for sure. Throwing away meat? No, I can't do that on the regular. I don't get to eat it anywhere near as much as I want to because it's so expensive compared to everything else. This is in the US and in an area that produces a lot of meat.

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

#158

Post by yamazakiwi » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 4:19 PM UTC

peteradio wrote: post #143

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A minor addition, the agriculture industry had an enormous amount of subsidies and decades of research and work at the global scale to reach the current state. Comparing an early prototype with an industry of this kind is disingenuous at best.

No, its called a benchmark and tells you how much you have to do to reach the goal you are ostensibly trying to reach. Its useful not disingenuous. Now if someone says this is the final word on lab meat, that would be disingenuous.

That is pretty much what the previous comment was implying.

Any comparison outside of goal-setting (if that is the case) is most likely purposefully biased or misleading.

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

#159

Post by mrguyorama » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 4:24 PM UTC

baremetal wrote: post #116

melling wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I blogged about that 4 years ago and classified that under “stupid ideas” Have we made any progress on the coal problem? https://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-... Nope. Maybe we can limit these silly discussions to one day a year to avoid these “Groundhog Day” discussions. In other news, 1.5C is guaranteed within a decade. To keep it interesting, Let’s come up with a few more miracles that…

China is permitting 2 new coal plants a week[1]. Yet it's cow flatulence that is the problem. How people get convinced to act against their own self interest I'll never understand. [1] https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-permits-two-...

Why is china being a bad actor mean we should ignore the real damage climate change is already causing? How are we supposed to stop china from building coal plants? They were leading the way with cheap renewable energy until recent economic contractions.

"Someone else is lighting a fire in the building so we shouldn't try putting out this grease fire we have here" is a stupid, accelerationist take that doesn't even make sense on it's face.

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

#160

Post by alfiedotwtf » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 4:24 PM UTC

kevincox wrote: post #136

coryfklein wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it makes sense. People like to eat meat. Meat is expensive to produce, particularly including externalities like CO2, animal suffering, etc. Making meat less expensive to produce across some or all of those dimensions seems like a no brainer.

Exactly. And yes, starting with new technologies, but if we try to optimize our existing process for obtaining meat we will likely not get far before hitting a local maximum. So it makes sense to try to make dramatic leaps to other areas of the solution space to see if we can fine a new maximum. It will take a lot of resources until the new technologies are better (by various metrics) than the old ones, but that does…

In terms of optimising, I can see it going two ways:

1. Optimising for the consumer means that we will be able to engineer meat to our preferred and individual tastes. Gamey or fatty, dry or falling off the bone etc.

2. Optimising for the producer means that we will get the slurry what was served as a meal in the movie Brazil.

The free-market optimist in me would like to see 1, but the realist in me knows that once corporations monopolise the fake-meat industry and eventually water it down to slurry, we'll get Brazil... and we'll be convinced this is how meat should taste.