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Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

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Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#161

The next frontier will be meat consumption. Particularly red meat. A single 1/4 beef hamburger emits 7-12 kg of carbon[1]. Compared to ~1.5kg of carbon driving your car 3 miles[2]. Not telling you to go full vegetarian, but I'm personally far less interested in a beef product unless you're going to guarantee its an extremely expert prepared steak. Most beef is mediocre. 1 - https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-im…

Meat, and red meat, is truly a miracle food. Dense in nutrients, satiating and of course tasty.

Nature needs animals as well. In fact it is essential.

Agricultural reform or innovation is certainly an avenue to explore; but this strange obsession with "stop eating red meat" is a bit too much.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#162
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But so is German industry - every day in the news either insolvency or workforce reduction and moving production to Eastern Europe - main reason often stated "expensive Energy". I wonder what are the stats for industrial production in 2025 or total energy consumption in Germany?

Discussion about nuclear reactors aside, energy in germany became expensive when they cut off russian gas and they had no good alternative. There was no other source of cheap fossil fuels for electricity production. If anything, renewables are promoted as a solution to that energy problem. The discussion about fossil fuels vs renewables is a bit different within countries which produce fossil fuels than within those…

Gas became expensive, energy for private houeholds became expensive, despite that electric energy for industries is currently on the same level as 2020. Even though there was a short spike in 2022. See: https://www.smard.de/page/en/topic-article/5892/216044/indus...

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#163

The next frontier will be meat consumption. Particularly red meat. A single 1/4 beef hamburger emits 7-12 kg of carbon[1]. Compared to ~1.5kg of carbon driving your car 3 miles[2]. Not telling you to go full vegetarian, but I'm personally far less interested in a beef product unless you're going to guarantee its an extremely expert prepared steak. Most beef is mediocre. 1 - https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-im…

Meat, and red meat, is truly a miracle food. Dense in nutrients, satiating and of course tasty. Nature needs animals as well. In fact it is essential. Agricultural reform or innovation is certainly an avenue to explore; but this strange obsession with "stop eating red meat" is a bit too much.

>Agricultural reform or innovation is certainly an avenue to explore; but this strange obsession with "stop eating red meat" is a bit too much.

Most of the people pushing it are doing so because they believe it's immoral to eat meat, so they'll latch onto whatever excuse they can to try to stop people.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many miles does the burger drive my car? Not to question your numbers but they lack context. Also, it would be good for nature if there were fewer or no humans on this planet. But then there would be no human here to enjoy nature.

Sorry but this is just such an ignorant comment. You really need to read up on how agriculture contributes to global warming and loss of land/deforestation. What do you think cows eat, air?

If only they ate the thing that is the intuitive answer to your question!

It would be bad enough with all the burping and farting but at least we would not destroy the rain forest so we could produce more soy for fodder

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#165
The total carbon emission of Germany in 2024 as a percentage of whole world is 1.5% (https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by...). Even if Germany goes carbon neutral tomorrow, it wouldn't make any difference on global climate, but there would be millions of Germans on Bürgergeld (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCrgergeld)

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#166

The next frontier will be meat consumption. Particularly red meat. A single 1/4 beef hamburger emits 7-12 kg of carbon[1]. Compared to ~1.5kg of carbon driving your car 3 miles[2]. Not telling you to go full vegetarian, but I'm personally far less interested in a beef product unless you're going to guarantee its an extremely expert prepared steak. Most beef is mediocre. 1 - https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-im…

Going vegetarian would only cut it if you stayed clear of dairy. Gram for gram it's better to eat chicken than cheese for the climate.

I switched to fortified soy milk and haven't looked back. Milk is tasty but soy has less sugar as well and now I prefer it. Cheese is harder to make a substitute but eating it 1-2 per year satisfies my craving.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#167
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But so is German industry - every day in the news either insolvency or workforce reduction and moving production to Eastern Europe - main reason often stated "expensive Energy". I wonder what are the stats for industrial production in 2025 or total energy consumption in Germany?

Looks stable: https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/industrial-production-m... Of course, stable is probably bad here. But it's not declining.

also the raised energy prices are fake news regarding indutrial prices, which are differently taxed in Germany than consumer prices. https://www.smard.de/page/en/topic-article/5892/216044/indus...

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#168

The next frontier will be meat consumption. Particularly red meat. A single 1/4 beef hamburger emits 7-12 kg of carbon[1]. Compared to ~1.5kg of carbon driving your car 3 miles[2]. Not telling you to go full vegetarian, but I'm personally far less interested in a beef product unless you're going to guarantee its an extremely expert prepared steak. Most beef is mediocre. 1 - https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-im…

There's tens of millions of well-armed Americans who'd rather die fighting then let anyone take away their right to eat red meat, so good luck trying.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#169

The next frontier will be meat consumption. Particularly red meat. A single 1/4 beef hamburger emits 7-12 kg of carbon[1]. Compared to ~1.5kg of carbon driving your car 3 miles[2]. Not telling you to go full vegetarian, but I'm personally far less interested in a beef product unless you're going to guarantee its an extremely expert prepared steak. Most beef is mediocre. 1 - https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-im…

I question the methodology of that 100kg (per kg) figure for beef, for several reasons:

1. It's not the true Carbon or CO2 figure. It's weighted for other greenhouse gases. That's kind of an issue because methane naturally breaks down (into CO2 and water) over time. The methane issue comes up all the time in such estimates (eg leaks in natural gas pipelines) where methane is a worse greenhouse gas but temporary (7-12 years) and CO2 is essentially forever (until sequestration or photosynthesis);

2. Production method really matters here. American beef, for example, is primarily grain fed. That grain requires fertilizer (more natural gas) and distribution. Australian beef, for example, is largely fed on natural grasses and vegetation, typically until the last 60-120 days where it's transitioned to grain for marbling. American cattle is also heavily fed on corn, which really shouldn't exist in the quantities it does;

3. Ecosystems are complex. One of the big causes of the dust bowl, for example, was the destruction of the great bison herds. Replacing the natural grasses with crops like wheat was just the last straw. The point of the bison is that they're heavy, like up to 2000+ lb heavy, and they leave deep hoof prints on the plains. Water collects there when it rains and feeds cgrasses and the aquifers.

This has been backed up elsewhere too. China has had long projects to stop the desertification of the Gobi and spent a ton on planting trees with varied successes. You know what did work? Horses. They released horses and the same thing happened. Horse hoof prints allowed water to collect and grasses to grow and spread. Grasses, as it turned out, were key to stopping desertification, not trees.

So the point is that certain ecosystems need large herd herbivores to survive. So if you got rid of cattle entirely, what other second order effects would there be?

More practically, people just arne't going to give up meat. Sorry. Unless it become sprice prohibitve (as beef arguably is rapidly becoming now).

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#170

The next frontier will be meat consumption. Particularly red meat. A single 1/4 beef hamburger emits 7-12 kg of carbon[1]. Compared to ~1.5kg of carbon driving your car 3 miles[2]. Not telling you to go full vegetarian, but I'm personally far less interested in a beef product unless you're going to guarantee its an extremely expert prepared steak. Most beef is mediocre. 1 - https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-im…

Beef is already too expensive for most people. Americans are probably the exception but I can assure you that most Europeans do not have beef heavy diets. Even culturally, pork (and now chicken) were the proteins of choice.

'Europe' is a big place. Here in Ireland good quality beef is readily affordable, and not particularly more expensive than chicken or pork.
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