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Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

science.org

171–180 of 183 posts

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#171
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I will bite. Concrete proposals for anybody regardless of political view: * Eat half the meat you do or less * Don‘t fly unless absolutely necessary * Get on a plan for renewable electrical energy if possible I know, far from everything in this topic is about consumer choices but a lot really is. If you don‘t want the nanny state to fix your problems you can start at your own doorstep.

It’s expensive to eat less meat. And I done mean in an abstract way about the time it takes to prepare meals, etc. On a per weight basis, chicken is half the price of peanut butter or cheese at the local grocery store. A whole cooked chicken is even cheaper at Costco. Not everyone can afford to eat less meat and replace it with plant protein.

Chicken is a really green choice for getting your protein:

- Chicken produces around 1/6 the CO2 of beef, and less than cheese.

- Chicken uses around 1/10 the water than beef does.

- Beef produces lots of methane and chicken doesn't.

Chicken consumption isn't really a problem. When we say "reduce meat consumption" we should be saying reduce beef consumption.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#172
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the thought, like death, is simply so horrible it defies full consideration. This is why climate activists can seem fanatical, because it has a religious quality. Either you believe “it” will happen in our lifetime, very soon, or it will not happen at all, and it’s this horrifying, apocalyptic nature of the problem that causes this schism. If some of these climate scientists are right in their claims it is th…

There’s a lot of religion going on right now. Whatever that is in humans that encourages that, going back to tribal behavior, or survival or whatever, it hasn’t gone away just because formalized religions are weak right now.

>just because formalized religions are weak right now.

Do you mean in average number of active participants? Because everywhere I look, there are headlines full of religious based government decisions being made. So while the number of sheep in the flock might be lower, the power being wielded by the religious leadership is not weak at all

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#173
post #146

I feel like climate issues are best solved by anthropologists and diplomats. That aside, considering how much things improved during covid lockdowns, I've wondered if one of these climate failures killing a fee billion people will fix the whole problem on its own and have earth recover from the human parasite for a few more decades.

If anything, the covid lockdowns just proved that human activity has that much of an affect on the climate. Some people already accepted that prior to lockdowns, some people became aware of it, others continue to deny it. Those that deny that human activity has an effect will never be convinced otherwise.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well no, but it's either pedantic or meant to mislead. If we're in agreement we need to do something about CO2, then we both know we're talking about human sources of CO2, so why be pedantic?

Also part of my point is that we do not have to focus on human emission as the only lever. We can also focus on sequestration of natural emission (or sequestration of atmospheric carbon as a whole). Telling people to not emit carbon dioxide from, say, a health related usage (sanitation) IMO is foolish when we can choose to sequester from other areas. Frankly I think we need to focus on the decarbonization of energy,…

What's a non human source of CO2 emissions that we can reasonably prevent?

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well no, but it's either pedantic or meant to mislead. If we're in agreement we need to do something about CO2, then we both know we're talking about human sources of CO2, so why be pedantic?

For one thing, because it's important to know the lower bound of success in order to identify the reasonableness of the proposed solution, competing its perceived costs with its perceived benefits.

That entire sentence means nothing, and is entirely irrelevant to my comment and the discussion at hand.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#176

The one thing I don’t see people take into account is a globally declining birth rate, very rapid declining birth rate. Fewer humans will mean less consumption, and therefore lower demand and less production. This could reverse many effects within the lifetimes of millennials and GenZ.

Population momentum means the total human population will top out at 9-10 billion people before rapidly declining after 2100.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why should commenting and posting history count any less than a specific comment? That seems to be ... integral to the function of the site itself: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... > Reputation and patterns of behavior matter.

> And why should commenting and posting history count any less than a specific comment? Because the user/writer is completely unimportant in an endless flowing sea of anonymous text. Whatever one of us writes in a comment, somebody else could as easily have written, that's why only the argument itself is interesting. It is misguided effort to care about any "reputation" of an anonymous user on an anonymous discussion…

Because the user/writer is completely unimportant in an endless flowing sea of anonymous text.

I reject both of those assertions.

Authorship matters. Comments are not anonymous, but optionally pseudonymous, where reputation (karma) is explicitly tracked.

The significant point of karma tracking isn't the accuracy of that karma, but the tracking of it. Other measures, such as flags and moderator admonishments, are also presumably tracked, at least by mods.

All imply that reputation is an integral element of Hacker News participation.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot of religion going on right now. Whatever that is in humans that encourages that, going back to tribal behavior, or survival or whatever, it hasn’t gone away just because formalized religions are weak right now.

>just because formalized religions are weak right now. Do you mean in average number of active participants? Because everywhere I look, there are headlines full of religious based government decisions being made. So while the number of sheep in the flock might be lower, the power being wielded by the religious leadership is not weak at all

You are reading the text from one religion that is upset at another.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And why should commenting and posting history count any less than a specific comment? Because the user/writer is completely unimportant in an endless flowing sea of anonymous text. Whatever one of us writes in a comment, somebody else could as easily have written, that's why only the argument itself is interesting. It is misguided effort to care about any "reputation" of an anonymous user on an anonymous discussion…

Because the user/writer is completely unimportant in an endless flowing sea of anonymous text. I reject both of those assertions. Authorship matters. Comments are not anonymous, but optionally pseudonymous , where reputation (karma) is explicitly tracked. The significant point of karma tracking isn't the accuracy of that karma, but the tracking of it . Other measures, such as flags and moderator admonishments, are al…

The very concept of science is a revolution against the idea that author matters more than content. What you propose is how the world used to work, and still does in many aspects and places, ie that something is to be judged not by what is said, but by who said it. If a nobody or disreputable person says something it is to be considered false, and if a reputable and honored person says something it is to be considered true. But that's backwards and hurts both science and justice. Instead we must dare to take arguments at face value in order to move forward.

Studying court cases, I've seen too many instances of people who initially weren't believed or just dismissed, because they weren't considered the right "who", but in the end were proven to be completely right. Studying the history of science, there are many such famous cases.

As for the science of meteorology, it shouldn't be treated as an ideological war, where people go after each other's characters – even pseudonymously. It's the study of elements that don't care what humans think of them.

Apart fromt this, you seem to confuse moderating with discussing. Wether somebody or somebody's comments are subject to moderator actions have nothing to do with the truthfulness of what they wrote.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a reason there is a Van Gogh painting called 'the potato eaters' and it isn't called 'the sides of beef' eaters. Eating meat was a luxury simply because the vast majority of the people was poor. Poor beyond our present day imagination. In between the hunter gatherers (who had a diet that went from 'gluttony' to 'starvation' twice annually) and the industrialized production of meat (and chicken, and fish) the…

It was absolutely normal for most times for most people. I cited a source for you. I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time in my life studying social conditions and the daily experience historically. I get the feeling we’re not going to be able to meet on this. If expertise isn’t enough for you, well, it is what it is.

Sorry, but AC's don't get to claim expertise.
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