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Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

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Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#291

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

codr7 wrote: post #287
josefresco wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> distract from the root cause It's all hands on deck dude. Do you think we have the luxury to focus on just the worst offender? People (society) can work on more than one problem at-a-time, it's not a "distraction" it's doing anything and everything we can to prevent extinction of our species. Meat consumption and the environmental damage caused by it's infrastructure AND fossil fuel usage need to be addressed, not…

One alternative would be accepting that the climate has always changed, regularly dramatically so, and focus on adapting to survive the inevitable. It sucks, but it is what it is, and it's not going anywhere. The environmental movement was fully compromised a long time ago, it has absolutely nothing to do with the environment anymore, it's all about profit and shame.

The geological record is quite clear that the climate has never changed like this without extinction events that kill 75% of all life on earth. Personally, I don't like those odds, especially since we have an alternative (keep the climate from changing). Furthermore, the climate has never changed anywhere near this quickly before. Natural warming and cooling happens over 100s of thousands of years, not a lifetime. This is unprecedented and preventable.

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#292

Post by bjoli »

Doji wrote: post #125

A common misconception which I frequently see when this topic arises is the failure to distinguish carbon cycles and one-way carbon emission. You exhale carbon dioxide. However, this carbon dioxide comes from the carbon in the food you eat, and the food you eat obtained it from the atmosphere. Thus, it's a cycle. As a system (ignoring food transportation, deforestation, etc.) it's effectively carbon neutral. By contr…

What you are saying is true, of course, but you are overlooking the fact that cattle that graze on large enough areas (like the buffalo of historical time) are a part of an ecosystem that sequesters carbon dioxide.

Game meat is often carbon neutral because of that, whereas very little meat produced today is.

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#293

Post by pbhjpbhj »

pharke wrote: post #185
titzer wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like we got shot by a firing squad of 6 people and we're arguing about which one of them had the blank.

Not really, we're trying to do some important math to figure out how to balance a carbon budget. We need to know what options are on the table and how much each of them contribute. It's the same as balancing a household budget, you don't just flail wildly about slashing costs and enduring privation. You reduce expenditures in areas where they are unnecessary and try to cause the least disruption to your life.

FWIW, IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) reports gather statistics and best practice across science and engineering and produce reports at multiple levels to detail pertinent statistics on this area.

This seems to be a good review, https://www.c2es.org/content/ipcc-fifth-assessment-report/.

The sixth report is due soon. Everyone should read the policymakers summary IMO.

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#294

Post by MsMowz »

ip26 wrote: post #280
VBprogrammer wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an interesting TV show on British TV (apologies, my Google foo is not able to find the name at this moment in time) where they invited a number of people to eat dishes at a hypothetical restaurant, after each course the tallied the carbon emissions released in creating the dish. Now obviously being a TV show they had to show some extreme examples but it was definitely interesting when things like imported a…

Too bad there isn't some sort of free market based mechanism that would inherently account for all of these factors without you needing to think about it.

I'm not sure if this is sarcastic, but there quite literally is not a "free market based mechanism" to do this. If there were, there would not be the market failure that we can observe today.

There are plenty of market-based methods for accounting for these externalities though, such as Pigovian taxes.

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#295

Post by dang »

Tenal wrote: post #79
j-pb wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got any research to back up your claims? Your "natural" meat also contains "natural stress hormones", "natural inflamation inducing cytokines", and not so natural antibiotics. Your anti-scientific attitude is not helpfull.

Wow, listen to a few podcasts and educate yourself. Try Peter Attia at the very least.

We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. Please don't create accounts to do that with—we're trying for something a bit different on this site.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#296

Post by eecc »

Doji wrote: post #125

A common misconception which I frequently see when this topic arises is the failure to distinguish carbon cycles and one-way carbon emission. You exhale carbon dioxide. However, this carbon dioxide comes from the carbon in the food you eat, and the food you eat obtained it from the atmosphere. Thus, it's a cycle. As a system (ignoring food transportation, deforestation, etc.) it's effectively carbon neutral. By contr…

Yes but also no... while it's true that it doesn't accumulate in the long term, in the short one it does induce a dynamic equilibrium with a higher concentration of greenhouse gasses that do contribute to atmospheric heating and the approach to potentially catastrophic tipping points... so no.

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#297

Post by codr7 »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #291
codr7 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One alternative would be accepting that the climate has always changed, regularly dramatically so, and focus on adapting to survive the inevitable. It sucks, but it is what it is, and it's not going anywhere. The environmental movement was fully compromised a long time ago, it has absolutely nothing to do with the environment anymore, it's all about profit and shame.

The geological record is quite clear that the climate has never changed like this without extinction events that kill 75% of all life on earth. Personally, I don't like those odds, especially since we have an alternative (keep the climate from changing). Furthermore, the climate has never changed anywhere near this quickly before. Natural warming and cooling happens over 100s of thousands of years, not a lifetime. Th…

My point exactly, so we're better of figuring out how to survive it asap.

Remains to be proven, it's never a linear process, once certain critical masses are reached it will happen more or less instantly. We're about due for an ice age, and from what I understand this is possibly how they start.

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#298

Post by Tepix »

briandear wrote: post #206
Tepix wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at India. There you have more than a billion people who don't eat cows.

How’s their carbon footprint?

According to https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/overview.php?v=booklet2018&ds...

     1.83 tons of CO2 per capita for India
    15.74 tons of CO2 per capita for the USA

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#299

Post by Tepix »

snarf21 wrote: post #260
ArkanExplorer wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More importantly: what is their CO2 efficiency? How much GDP and science do they output per unit of CO2? India is close to Italy in Scientific output [1]: 1040 units vs 1104 respectively. India's CO2e output is 2.62 billion tonnes, vs Italy 337 million tonnes. India's GDP is $2.869trillion vs $2.004 trillion. India's population is 1,336million vs Italy 60 million. So, India consumes 7.7x the Earth's CO2 budget, but g…

It is such an unpopular opinion but this is the answer. Humans are selfish. The earth can't sustain 8B+ people. Maybe 2B max with some technological advances for cleaner cars and other renewables.

It's a very arrogant comment indeed. A human's permitted CO2 output should not depend on how much she/he contributes to science or even the GDP.

Anyway, earth could very well sustain even 20 billion people according to Martin Rees (in "On the Future"). It does require that we really reduce our resource usage, however. Going vegan, using virtual reality instead of travelling etc.

Luckily the trends seem to indicate we won't reach more than 11 billion (which is still way too much at today's resource usage) before the numbers go down.

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#300

Post by kazinator »

Tepix wrote: post #299
snarf21 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is such an unpopular opinion but this is the answer. Humans are selfish. The earth can't sustain 8B+ people. Maybe 2B max with some technological advances for cleaner cars and other renewables.

It's a very arrogant comment indeed. A human's permitted CO2 output should not depend on how much she/he contributes to science or even the GDP. Anyway, earth could very well sustain even 20 billion people according to Martin Rees (in "On the Future"). It does require that we really reduce our resource usage, however. Going vegan, using virtual reality instead of travelling etc. Luckily the trends seem to indicate we…

> Going vegan, using virtual reality instead of travelling etc.

Heck, a trillion or more, if we all agree to be suspended in tanks and fed by tubes!

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