Milk alternatives produce up to 4.5x less greenhouse gas emissions as milk • Hacker News Board

Re: Milk alternatives produce up to 4.5x less greenhouse gas emissions as milk

#151

Post by tmitchel2 » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 7:14 PM UTC

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #149

gmuslera wrote: post #140

Meanwhile 100 million oil barrels are extracted (each producing 0.5/0.7 ton of CO2 equivalent), 23 millions of tons of coal, and 365 thousand million of cubic feet of natural gas are consumed. All those numbers each day, and without counting leaks. And we are talking of fossil fuels, carbon that wasn't in the ecosystem for maybe many millions of years, compared with the relatively short lived and recycled methane tha…

This is talked about literally daily. Unfortunately your message comes off as whataboutism in disguise. Let's focus on the fact that milk alternatives are good and cow farming is problematic in this thread.

Can you explain why cow farming is bad?

Re: Milk alternatives produce up to 4.5x less greenhouse gas emissions as milk

#152

Post by Volundr » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 7:18 PM UTC

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #130

lern_too_spel wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the math: https://mrdrscienceteacher.wordpress.com/2019/09/21/bison-vs...

> This is an issue being pushed with the intention of distracting from the real issue: fossil fuel use. This part is still horribly true though. Emmisions related to livestock are 5.8% of _all_ global CO2 and other GHG emissions [0] In comparison Transport emissions are 16.2%. [0] The steel industry as a single industry accounts for 7.2% of emissions.[0] Methane leaks from Oil and gas drill sites and abandoned wells…

Do we have to do these things in a specific order? Can't we do them in parallel? I suspect you'll find the cross section of people who want to reduce agricultural CO2 emissions and those who want to clean up gas and oil leaks to be quite large.

Re: Milk alternatives produce up to 4.5x less greenhouse gas emissions as milk

#153

Post by karmakurtisaani » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 7:20 PM UTC

tmitchel2 wrote: post #151

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is talked about literally daily. Unfortunately your message comes off as whataboutism in disguise. Let's focus on the fact that milk alternatives are good and cow farming is problematic in this thread.

Can you explain why cow farming is bad?

Methane emissions and ethical reasons (if you care about such things).

Edit: also they take a lot of land to feed. Soy grown in where Amazon rainforest used to be and so on.

Re: Milk alternatives produce up to 4.5x less greenhouse gas emissions as milk

#154

Post by gmuslera » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 7:25 PM UTC

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #149

gmuslera wrote: post #140

Meanwhile 100 million oil barrels are extracted (each producing 0.5/0.7 ton of CO2 equivalent), 23 millions of tons of coal, and 365 thousand million of cubic feet of natural gas are consumed. All those numbers each day, and without counting leaks. And we are talking of fossil fuels, carbon that wasn't in the ecosystem for maybe many millions of years, compared with the relatively short lived and recycled methane tha…

This is talked about literally daily. Unfortunately your message comes off as whataboutism in disguise. Let's focus on the fact that milk alternatives are good and cow farming is problematic in this thread.

In the other hand, it may be about shifting blame. Sugar industry did that with fat.

Re: Milk alternatives produce up to 4.5x less greenhouse gas emissions as milk

#155

Post by DoingIsLearning » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 7:27 PM UTC

Volundr wrote: post #152

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is an issue being pushed with the intention of distracting from the real issue: fossil fuel use. This part is still horribly true though. Emmisions related to livestock are 5.8% of _all_ global CO2 and other GHG emissions [0] In comparison Transport emissions are 16.2%. [0] The steel industry as a single industry accounts for 7.2% of emissions.[0] Methane leaks from Oil and gas drill sites and abandoned wells…

Do we have to do these things in a specific order? Can't we do them in parallel? I suspect you'll find the cross section of people who want to reduce agricultural CO2 emissions and those who want to clean up gas and oil leaks to be quite large.

This is always the counter argument but I never see any mediatic outrage towards Oil&Gas except for the odd Oil spill and the periodic outrage at fuel prices on every crude price rise.

Policy measures forcing Oil&Gas to clean-up or to internalize the environmental costs of emissions are _never_ part of public debate and to me that is worrying.

Re: Milk alternatives produce up to 4.5x less greenhouse gas emissions as milk

#156

Post by chrisweekly » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

tpush wrote: post #141

chrisweekly wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my doubts about such recommendations; aside from the influence of the dairy lobby, how many such nutrition guidelines account for high-quality non-dairy alternative sources of protein and calcium?

The only dairy alternative that has comparable protein quality (DIAAS) is soy, and AFAIK there aren't many studies of soy milk given to toddlers/small kids.

Ok, but even if you rule out soymilk, it's not like there's no other source of protein suitable for a toddler.

Re: Milk alternatives produce up to 4.5x less greenhouse gas emissions as milk

#157

Post by tmitchel2 » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 7:35 PM UTC

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #153

tmitchel2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why cow farming is bad?

Methane emissions and ethical reasons (if you care about such things). Edit: also they take a lot of land to feed. Soy grown in where Amazon rainforest used to be and so on.

If you eat meet which has been raised on ground where trees have been felled for the sole purpose of creating that meat then yes the amount of carbon released is going to be insane. Here in the UK (nearly?) all the meat we consume is grown nationally, i.e. doesn't originate from places like the Amazon.

And on the methane front, they eat the carbon in the grass which has literally just captured a bit of carbon from the atmosphere. They fart it up and then it comes back down in a reasonable period of time and goes back into the grass they are grazing upon.

The cycles and definitely complex and opaque but we need to get better at working with nature rather than engineering new ways to ignore the real issues.

Re: Milk alternatives produce up to 4.5x less greenhouse gas emissions as milk

#158

Post by fnordpiglet » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 7:36 PM UTC

jyounker wrote: post #142

googlryas wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can milk a hamster?

It's a mammal. You can milk it. It just takes a lot of time and appropriate milking equipment. Fortunately a full automated milking machine fits in a lunch pail. Sadly the equipment only gets you several thimblefuls per hamster-day.

But it also horizontally scales and fits in server racks.

Re: Milk alternatives produce up to 4.5x less greenhouse gas emissions as milk

#159

Post by cyberlurker » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 7:44 PM UTC

wbsss4412 wrote: post #137

bipson wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All our pediatricians strongly advised foregoing soy based alternatives (son had a milk-protein allergy), at least until he is 2, better even longer. The argument from the less concerned was something along: Better safe then sorry, no one can say what larger amounts of estrogen will do to a boy well below 1.

Doctors are inherently risk averse, all that means is “we don’t know, and there’s not much downside to not doing it, so we might as well advise against”. Saying “no one can say” means they literally have no idea. It’s not all that different than the statement “no one can say that 5G doesn’t cause cancer”. Note that phytoestrogens are categorically not human estrogen, they are simply compounds that mimic some of estro…

Many doctors also tell pregnant women to stay away from soy. One doctor linked me to a study that male babies from mothers that drank soy during pregnancy had statistically smaller genitalia.

You might be right about “overly cautious” but I think doctors being that way is more reputable than gym rats quoting their favorite fitness blog.

Re: Milk alternatives produce up to 4.5x less greenhouse gas emissions as milk

#160

Post by givemeethekeys » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 7:45 PM UTC

sudden_dystopia wrote: post #54

As far as almond milk goes, how much water do almond trees consume in places that are already water scarce? I really enjoy the new ultrafiltered cow milk that have come out recently. Half the sugar, no lactose but all of the protein.

Let's for a moment assume that an almond tree serves no other purpose than to produce almonds (for almond milk), and a dairy cow serves no other purpose than to produce milk.

The average dairy cow produces 2320 gallons of milk per year. Dairy cows drink 40 gallons of water per day, which is about 14600 gallons per year. A grown dairy cow eats about 30 pounds of food per day - 50% grain and 50% grass, so about 5475 pounds of grain per year. It takes 127 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of maize. Not counting the water requirements for grass, and assuming that our cow only eats maize, we'll need 695325 gallons to of water to feed the cow.

It takes 22000 gallons of water to irrigate an acre of land. Each acre produces 2 tons of hay, so we'll need 11000 gallons per ton of hay or 11 gallons per pound, which is 60225 gallons of water for grass.

Total water consumption of 1 cow per year for grass + grain + drinking water = 770150 gallons.

That brings us to needing 770150 gallons of water to produce 2320 gallons of cow milk. So, about 331 gallons of water to make 1 gallon of cow milk.

They say that each almond requires 1.1 gallons of water. 1 pound of shelled almonds = 3.63 cups of almonds. There are 416 almonds in a pound. So, about 26 per ounce, and 208 per cup. There are 16 cups in a gallon. To make almond milk, we mix 6 cups of water for each cup of almonds, which will yield us about 6.5 cups of almond milk. It'll take 2.46 cups of almonds to make 1 gallon of almond milk, so 512 almonds, so 563 gallons of water.

Things we're not accounting for in the above comparison:

The water cost of producing pesticides, fertilizers.

The water cost of producing health treatments for cows.

The water cost of producing diesel to transport grains to the cows.

The water cost of producing electricity and packaging.

I'm sure I'm missing a lot.

Sources:

- https://albertamilk.com/ask-dairy-farmer/what-do-dairy-cows-...

- https://dairy-cattle.extension.org/how-much-milk-does-the-av...

- https://thelivestockexpert.com/how-much-water-does-a-cow-dri...

- https://informedfarmers.com/how-much-grass-does-a-cow-eat/

- https://www.derthickscornmaze.com/interesting-about-corn/how...