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Deep Decarbonization: A Realistic Way Forward on Climate Change

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Re: Deep Decarbonization: A Realistic Way Forward on Climate Change

#91

Post by jeffdavis »

vzidex wrote: post #82
jeffdavis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter is vegan and sometimes I worry about her diet. A diet is what you do eat, how much, when, etc.; but being vegan only tells you what you don't eat. Surprisingly little about vegan promotional stuff gives practical advice. It's mostly talking about how wasteful meat is and how foolish meat-eaters are. Where is practical material about daily eating habits? Like, what should an athletic teenager eat, how much…

I'm a young, vegetarian person who is working on going vegan - and making good progress. If you do a cursory search of vegan material, or only pay attention to stuff that pops up on your Facebook/Reddit/HackerNews/Twitter feed, you'll definitely get a lot of "meat = bad"-type material. However, if you put in a little more effort there's a lot of good material available - from recipes, to nutrition advice, to guides o…

Looking for vegan recipes in google usually doesn't result in staple meals that you can have several times per week.

More importantly, a recipe doesn't tell you how much or how often you should eat it in your diet.

Re: Deep Decarbonization: A Realistic Way Forward on Climate Change

#92

Post by matznerd »

jeffdavis wrote: post #42

What ever happened with Project Vesta? https://projectvesta.org/

Hi Jeff, Project Vesta is making great progress building out our scientific team and deployment plan! We have an update coming out very soon, our last poster in December was featured in the SF Chronicle under the titled "Could putting pebbles on beaches help solve climate change?" -> https://www.sfchronicle.com/environment/article/Could-puttin...

Re: Deep Decarbonization: A Realistic Way Forward on Climate Change

#93

Post by kiliantics »

LatteLazy wrote: post #81
perfunctory wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, it's a (geo-)political problem. So what do we do now? Besides posting HN comments that is.

You write to your representatives. You vote for greener parties. You donate to green peace etc. None of those things are actually likely to work. But they're infinitely more likely to work that talking about local action and cutting back your meat intake. Sorry if I wasn't clear, this problem is really hard. Likely unsolvably hard. But that doesn't make an impractical solution practical.

There are effective things you can do but they require coordination with your community. Mass protests and worker strikes can force the hands of governments and big business. There are many historical examples that this works and just look at how much success the French are having right now. But they need to happen at scale and very frequently. Voting only happens once every few years for a reason.

Re: Deep Decarbonization: A Realistic Way Forward on Climate Change

#94

Post by bjoli »

hkeide wrote: post #49
bjoli wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how much arable land is used to produce animal feed (about 50%) there is quite a lot of room for improvement, especially considering how inefficient meat production is.

That's not true in the US. Less than 15% of the feed used for animals would be edible for humans, and much of the land in the US is not suitabe for growing crops other than grass. Most of the food given to animals are farm waste products and leaves etc. Using regenerative farming, cows can even be net carbon negative, meanwhile a lot of human feed uses artificial fertilizer which is a big contributor to carbon emissi…

That is not what I said. I said that fodder production takes up a very large part of arable land. In my home country, animal feed and human food take up the same amount of area. That land is suitable for growing human food as well. I suspect that arable land use is about the same in the US.

Land that is capable of storing carbon is generally great farmland since the process in carbon sinks is what leads to humus.

Re: Deep Decarbonization: A Realistic Way Forward on Climate Change

#95

Post by simonsarris »

jeffdavis wrote: post #58
efnx wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first and easiest thing we can each do, individually, is eat less meat (or better - no meat). My wife and I have been mostly vegan for a year for health reasons and it’s surprisingly easy. Throw on the eco benefit and it’s a very good feeling. Very worth it.

My daughter is vegan and sometimes I worry about her diet. A diet is what you do eat, how much, when, etc.; but being vegan only tells you what you don't eat. Surprisingly little about vegan promotional stuff gives practical advice. It's mostly talking about how wasteful meat is and how foolish meat-eaters are. Where is practical material about daily eating habits? Like, what should an athletic teenager eat, how much…

I'd be very worried about brain development and health. I suspect they are making a big mistake, but its especially so for children.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408398.2018.1...

> The present paper argues that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics ignores or gives short shrift to direct and indirect evidence that vegetarianism may be associated with serious risks for brain and body development in fetuses and children. Regular supplementation with iron, zinc, and B12 will not mitigate all of these risks. Consequently, we cannot say decisively that vegetarianism or veganism is safe for children.

I seriously recommend you read the entire review. I do not think it's something that can be trivially solved with supplementation. Eg:

> The AND says that “[v]egans must regularly consume…B-12-fortified foods or B-12-containing supplements,” and “[m]ost vegetarians should” do the same (Melina, Craig, and Levin 2016). The results of Herrmann et al. (2003) suggest that even with supplementation vegans may still tend to cluster in the deficient-to-borderline-deficient range. Vegetarians can achieve adequate B12 levels with supplementation, but some are still in the deficient and borderline-deficient range. Whether it is realistic for vegetarians/vegans to maintain adequate B12 levels throughout their entire childhood via supplementation is an open question.

> The consequences of B12 deficiency in childhood for brain and body development are extensive, severe, and can be irreversible. Potential consequences include (among many others) impaired cognitive development/school performance, depression, weakness, fatigue, nerve damage, and failure to thrive (Graham, Arvela, and Wise 1992; Rasmussen, Fernhoff, and Scanlon 2001). Breastfeeding infants whose mothers are vegetarian/vegan are also known to be at risk for B12 deficiency (Graham, Arvela, and Wise 1992; Kühne, Bubl, and Baumgartner 1991; Roschitz et al. 2005; von Schenck, Bender-Götze, and Koletzko 1997).

Re: Deep Decarbonization: A Realistic Way Forward on Climate Change

#96

Post by jeffdavis »

simonsarris wrote: post #95
jeffdavis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter is vegan and sometimes I worry about her diet. A diet is what you do eat, how much, when, etc.; but being vegan only tells you what you don't eat. Surprisingly little about vegan promotional stuff gives practical advice. It's mostly talking about how wasteful meat is and how foolish meat-eaters are. Where is practical material about daily eating habits? Like, what should an athletic teenager eat, how much…

I'd be very worried about brain development and health. I suspect they are making a big mistake, but its especially so for children. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408398.2018.1... > The present paper argues that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics ignores or gives short shrift to direct and indirect evidence that vegetarianism may be associated with serious risks for brain and body development in…

Thank you for your concern and helpful research. I am concerned as well. As a teen, she has her own mind and determination so my opinion only goes so far. But the links might be helpful.

Re: Deep Decarbonization: A Realistic Way Forward on Climate Change

#97

Post by beerandt »

shawndrost wrote: post #86
rayiner wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree for the most part. We will either fix it technologically (my guess through a combination of nuclear, renewables, and carbon capture) or we won’t fix it. In the latter case we either won’t fix it and everything will still be fine, because the IPCC and others estimate the cost of a do nothing scenario at like 10% of world GDP by 2100,[1] or we won’t fix it and we’ll all die. What will never happen is addressing…

I think you would probably agree that those technological shifts require significant policy shifts, like a carbon tax, right? Does your pessimism about social engineering extend to getting public support for those kinds of policy shifts? (I agree that individual choices to eg fly less will not be a major component of any solution we reach.)

How is that not still social engineering? It's just collective and punitive instead of individual and guilt driven.

A carbon tax (at least without going 100% to sequestration) is only an behavior penalty. It's not even a net gain, it's just slowing a net loss. There's nothing innovative about that.

The sequestration part of the equation is where there's potential for technological breakthroughs. If we go carbon negative, it won't be because it requires a change in lifestyle, but because we find a cheap way to offset our carbon generation. And I mean literally pulling carbon from thin air (or water). Not using accounting trickery to buy some emission "offset" that a developing population surely would have hypothetically used, had you not paid them cash money (along with a sizable percentage to some broker who has friends in DC).

I think you would find much less opposition, no matter the government's cost, once 1) a plan is laid out that doesn't require a regression in anyone's lifestyle, and 2) doesn't involve a punitive cost to sustain that lifestyle, and 3) doesn't involve any component resembling wealth re-distribution, or buying credit that amounts to paying someone else to not do something.

Re: Deep Decarbonization: A Realistic Way Forward on Climate Change

#98

Post by beerandt »

pmontra wrote: post #87
bazzert wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fukushima, "1 death from radiation, 2202 from the evacuation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...

As awful as it can sound it's not about the deaths. It's about people not being able to enter that area basically forever, on their time scale. If Fukushima was in New Yersey the USA would have lost New York City.

I'm starting to think the permanent evacuation zones are based more on arbitrary scare tactics than actual danger, at least after the acute event is under control. Maybe you don't want to live there. But entering doesn't seem to be the death sentence it's made out to be, based on the people that never left Chernobyl and returning population in Japan.

If global warming is as certain and as dangerous as what's being claimed, the risk of contaminating a few thousand acres (or even miles) with radioactivity is certainly worth it to save the world.

Plus Fukushima basically disproved the China syndrome scare we've been fed for 40+ years.

Re: Deep Decarbonization: A Realistic Way Forward on Climate Change

#99

Post by willis936 »

beerandt wrote: post #97
shawndrost wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you would probably agree that those technological shifts require significant policy shifts, like a carbon tax, right? Does your pessimism about social engineering extend to getting public support for those kinds of policy shifts? (I agree that individual choices to eg fly less will not be a major component of any solution we reach.)

How is that not still social engineering? It's just collective and punitive instead of individual and guilt driven. A carbon tax (at least without going 100% to sequestration) is only an behavior penalty. It's not even a net gain, it's just slowing a net loss. There's nothing innovative about that. The sequestration part of the equation is where there's potential for technological breakthroughs. If we go carbon negat…

A carbon tax is not paying someone to not do something. It is charging someone for the actual cost of their actions. It is pure utilitarianism.

Re: Deep Decarbonization: A Realistic Way Forward on Climate Change

#100

Post by teslaberry »

wind power sucks. no one who has watched and studied ot for the last 20 years refutes this. it has NO place in the enegry mix of the future.

it simply CANnot scale on the ground and airborn floating versions of it have failed.

tidal and river power may scale one day. maybe. for now we do with damming up rivers. the three gorges will prove the limits of dam building.

solar CAN scale. Nuclear DOES scale. fusion power MIGHT scale. burning EXISTING SUPPLIES of carbon has ALWAYS scaled.

nature has placed mass and energy in various locations and densities. wind on the ground is the worst of all.

emvracing the worst as a solution to something that already works isnt decarbonization, ..if done to excess, malivenstment is suicide of our civilization.

one CaNNOT ignore the need to maintain an energy surplus to invest into building the next energy revolution. if we fail to maintain a surplus in the name of decarbonization, we will surely wind up in a dark ages of sorts for an umpredictably lomg period of time.

surplus turns to scarcity much faste than scarcity naturally turns to surplus. with respect to civilization...what can be lost over a century may take centuries to recover.

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