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Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

economist.com

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Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#141

Post by elihu »

jeffbee wrote: post #16
throwawaysea wrote: post #4

I can’t view the whole article due to the paywall, but I have to ask - where does this line of thinking lead? Does every pleasurable activity we might voluntarily undertake get scrutinized, regulated, or banned? I certainly hope not, since such losses of freedom can make the tyranny of the majority very real. It’s important that any potential policies are applied in a fair manner. For example, priced externalities sh…

The most straightforwardly fair way to do it is a carbon budget. If each person has some carbon budget and you want to spend yours on beef and I want to spend mine on motorcycle racing fuel, who is to argue we made the wrong choice? It goes back to one of my pet peeves that it is increasingly hard to find the kind of light bulbs I prefer, despite the fact that the electric supply to my home is powered by 100% renewab…

For most people with solar, surplus energy gets fed back into the grid. So, from a policy point of view it kind of makes sense to not allow people to use inefficient lights, even if they're running a surplus. Inefficient lights can consume a lot of energy.

Have you looked at metal halide lights? They require specialized ballasts, so they aren't exactly a drop-in replacement for a standard bulb. The light quality is said to be pretty good, similar to incandescents, but they're more energy-efficient. I have an unfinished project to make an indoor artificial sun (basically, some bright lights projected through lenses to create parallel rays), which is how I started looking at metal halide lamps.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#142

Post by [deleted] »

oezi wrote: post #135
hncurious wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revealed preferences don't match that rhetoric. - People are not migrating North in droves. They are not preparing in any way. - Nuclear energy, the only realistic solution to climate change, is not being supported. It's actually being retired early in many cases and replaced with coal of all things. - Property prices on the coastline are going up. President Obama, who has access to the best information and experts,…

> People are not migrating North in droves Yes, because - you might be surprised to hear - people actually like to life where they are born and raised and require catastrophic hardship (such as the Syrian civil war) to actually start a migration.

[deleted]

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#143

Post by y4mi »

wumpus wrote: post #128
Doji wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a certain amount of carbon in the atmosphere, and a certain amount of carbon in the ground. When you burn oil, you take carbon from the ground and introduce it into the atmosphere. This increases the total amount of carbon resident in the atmosphere. When you grow plants, you take carbon out of the atmosphere. When you eat it, you release it back into the atmosphere. The total amount of carbon resident in th…

> When you grow plants, you take carbon out of the atmosphere. When you eat it, you release it back into the atmosphere. So the electricity and diesel that are involved in growing plants come from the atmosphere? That's new to me.

They didn't say that.

> In practice, farms regularly use synthetic fertilizers. They might cut down trees to clear fields for animals. They use heavy, oil burning equipment. These, and many other practices, actually increase atmospheric carbon, and for that reason should be discouraged.

I cannot say anything wherever cows really are inconsequential wrt the warming effect, but it definitely goes against what's generally said by climate scientists.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#144

Post by wumpus »

adrianN wrote: post #104
kybernetyk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, can’t hear you over the sounds of the ice age they prophesied in the 1970s.

Global cooling was never a majority opinion among climate scientists. It existed almost exclusively in popsci magazines.

Global cooling was a specific reference to cooling caused by particles emitted in areas with no air pollution laws. Oddly enough, it faded away when standards were raised.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#145

Post by Doji »

mdorazio wrote: post #125
Doji wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cow feed is generally not human edible: https://www.milkmeansmore.org/what-do-cows-eat/

This implies that the land used to grow cow feed couldn't be used to instead grow human-consumable crops or left fallow as a carbon sink. I'm not aware of any studies showing that.

You make a strong argument. I think this is a case where we'll find the global optimum somewhere in the middle.

Deforesting the amazon to grow corn for cows is something I'm sure we can all agree is bad.

Should we use livestock to eat cover crops and waste products like corn husks and cobs? This way we reuse waste and produce high quality protein to supplement our diets.

Should we graze cattle on natural grasslands like the great plains? Especially in rotation with human foods, like the cover crops mentioned before?

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#146

Post by wumpus »

tuatoru wrote: post #101
elil17 wrote: post #85

> The simplest way to cut beef output is for people to eat other animals instead, or become vegetarians. That’s like, in 1900, saying “the simplest way to prevent road deaths is for everyone to drive slower.” That’s not simple at all - that’s an intractable group behavior problem. What you really need is for the government to come along and put up speed limits. Most people will push those rules, a few will flout them…

Remember to apply Gell-Man Amnesia[1] to all of The Economist 's writings. It's self-parody at this point, or Mad Magazine for PPE[2] nerds. 1. https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has…

Michael Crichton, the author who has researchers overwhelmed with lust for research grants as the evil people in his novels.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#147

Post by cjblomqvist »

Doji wrote: post #111
tasty_freeze wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article seems highly motivated to marginalize the effects of livestock. Quoting a section: While methane is 28-times more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide, methane’s lifespan is just a decade, while CO2 — known as a long-life pollutant — remains in the atmosphere for 1000 years. After ten years, methane is broken down in a process called hydroxyl oxidation into CO2, entering a carbon cycle which sees the gas ab…

There is a certain amount of carbon in the atmosphere, and a certain amount of carbon in the ground. When you burn oil, you take carbon from the ground and introduce it into the atmosphere. This increases the total amount of carbon resident in the atmosphere. When you grow plants, you take carbon out of the atmosphere. When you eat it, you release it back into the atmosphere. The total amount of carbon resident in th…

I've always thought along the same lines. But whatabout methane being 10 times the pollutant?

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#148

Post by adrianN »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #136
adrianN wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have to simultaneously lower emissions in all sectors if we want to prevent catastrophic warming. 10% is massive.

How much resistance and effort for 100% of beef, which is a part of 10% are you willing to expend to push for elimination versus transportation at 29% and electicity usage at 25%? To put it into perspective, how would you focus energy on lowering output out of 100% of your personal energy? https://cfpub.epa.gov/ghgdata/inventoryexplorer/

I'd implement a high price on carbon(-equivalents) and let the market figure out where it is cheapest to reduce emissions first. I'd probably also get rid of many subsidies.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#149

Post by swader999 »

voldacar wrote: post #48

It feels like we are headed into a new medieval era of sumptuary laws and moral decrees promulgated by a decentralized international clerical-academic class. I don't think I like it very much

Naw, too complicated. They'll just pit us against each other, cull us here and there maybe finish us off with robots.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#150

Post by [deleted] »

y4mi wrote: post #143
wumpus wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you grow plants, you take carbon out of the atmosphere. When you eat it, you release it back into the atmosphere. So the electricity and diesel that are involved in growing plants come from the atmosphere? That's new to me.

They didn't say that. > In practice, farms regularly use synthetic fertilizers. They might cut down trees to clear fields for animals. They use heavy, oil burning equipment. These, and many other practices, actually increase atmospheric carbon, and for that reason should be discouraged. I cannot say anything wherever cows really are inconsequential wrt the warming effect, but it definitely goes against what's general…

[deleted]
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