Huge Reduction in Meat-Eating 'Essential' To Avoid Climate Breakdown (theguardian.com)

Huge reductions in meat-eating are essential to avoid dangerous climate change, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of the food system's impact on the environment. From a report: In western countries, beef consumption needs to fall by 90% and be replaced by five times more beans and pulses. The research [PDF] also finds that enormous changes to farming are needed to avoid destroying the planet's ability to feed the 10 billion people expected to be on the planet in a few decades. Food production already causes great damage to the environment, via greenhouse gases from livestock, deforestation and water shortages from farming, and vast ocean dead zones from agricultural pollution. But without action, its impact will get far worse as the world population rises by 2.3 billion people by 2050 and global income triples, enabling more people to eat meat-rich western diets.

Comments

KNEW it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Climate change is a plot by vegetarians and PETA to force the rest of us to follow their views! Seriously, though, if we've infested this globe to the point where the only way to avoid destroying it is to alter our eating habits to only be plant based, perhaps population control should be a priority.

Re:KNEW it.

[InvalidsYnc]

By switching to plant based foods, then you will have to plant a ton more plants, and that would act as a carbon sink... Yeah, that could totally do it! On the other hand, they can pry my steak out of my cold dead hands! Bastards!

Re:KNEW it.

[damn_registrars]

This is really simple math here. To feed livestock, we have to first raise plants. To raise those plants we have to invest time, water, space, fertilizer, etc. Then we have to get the plants to the animals to feed them. We know that in most cases we get about 1 pound of meat from an animal for every 10 pounds of plants we put into them, and that's completely ignoring the economic costs of getting the plants to them and everything else that goes in to that.

We may recall that for a while we tried feeding the fattiest part of the cows back to other cows to speed up development, it turned out that didn't work out very well (economics not even considered in that part).

If we're lucky though we'll be able to scale up lab-grown meat within the next few decades and we can get the benefits of meat without the costs of raising entire animals. While we do a good job of using a lot of the parts of the animals that are not usually considered edible, we still lose out on the deal.

And this is coming from someone who really would love a good steak. I eat a fair bit of meat but I realize we may reach a tipping point here.

Re:KNEW it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't even need the lab grown meat. If impossible foods continues its expansion (see impossible burger at white castle) then the plant based meat substitute (that really does mimic beef scarily well) then the gound beef industry can switch over. This will not replace the fancy full cuts of beef; but, by percentage, that's the small slice of the beef industry.

Now, getting the beef industry to relinquish the ground beef market is a different hurdle entirely...

Re:KNEW it.

[olsmeister]

we may reach a tipping point here

Tipping? Cows? I see what you did there! Hats off to you my friend.

Re:KNEW it.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a lie, but an untruth.

We don't need to plant grain, to feed cattle. We can just let them eat natural grasses -- they taste better too.

What's driving this behaviour isn't that it is required to feed grain, but that it is required in the current competitive loop! We currently have waaaaay more in the way of crops, than we need. 1/3 of our grain rots in the silos, and massive -- I repeat MASSIVE amounts of ground is fallow. Nothing planted, because it's not worth it with the price of grains so low.

And this is in a market where large quantities of grain is fed to animals as well! Imagine the drop in prices on various grains, if we switched entirely to grass fed tomorrow!

In my area of the world, most animals are fed hay. Hay that grows without fertilizer (people rotate crops, instead of fertilizing), and there's no shortage of water. Most don't irrigate at all.

In this context? It's very close to a zero cost to the environment to eat meat. Might even be less, since the cost of trucking grain (less dense) is about space -- and meat packs more protein and energy into a smaller space.

The great plains in the US are still there. They could easily start to feed cattle, instead of growing corn for gas. And if we stopped the absurd habit of making oil from soy, canola, and corn? And instead just ate animal fat/oils? Guess what, we'd be fine.

It's all backwards. And every year more and more stories come out, about how animal fat isn't bad for you -- but, that various industries wanted animal fat to look bad.

Re: KNEW it.

[Miamicanes]

We might not eat 100% of a cow, pig, etc... but the net waste is practically zero. AFAIK, practically every cell of a cow now has commercial value for something. A friend who once had a summer job at a slaughterhouse told me that most of the trash leaving a slaughterhouse comes from garbage cans in the offices & break room, and most of the remainder comes from the janitorial or maintenance departments (detergent containers, old knives, etc) & ends up getting recycled.

Re:KNEW it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it makes sense to feed lifestock with food that we humans can't digest anyway. Cows, chicken, sheep, goat, and rabbits are ideal candidates here. Having spent a third of my life on a homestead, I understand pretty well what kind of effort goes into growing 'meat'. We used chicken and rabbits as our biological lawn mowers, that would eat grasses and shrubs that would have been otherwise useless to us. And they provided us with eggs and meat. Meat is a nice source of food. You can cure it and make it last for a long time, when you need it. For example in winter, when other food sources are scarce.
But if you do it this way, the meat 'grows' pretty slow. And that is the central issue here. We can't satisfy the gluttony that has been growing in the western world by letting lifestock feed off natural resources. In order to make them grow fast enough and in large enough numbers we have to grow their food on fields, where we could otherwise grow fruit and vegetable for human consumption.

Re: KNEW it.

[tysonedwards]

But, isn't it also true that the vast, vast majority of the polluters is energy, manufacturing, and transportation? The environmental cost of food of any source is a rounding error compared to the energy industry. Transitioning to cleaner sources of energy - not this clean coal that is being pushed in the US - would be far more effective. This isnâ(TM)t a race of meters but of miles and these sorts of optimizations are far too little and too late to the point of being distracting of the real issues by making suburban liberals feel like âoeI can make a difference by eating healthyâ while driving to the store in their Subaru hatchback.

Re:KNEW it.

[bluefoxlucid]

Actually, something like 70% of our agricultural land isn't useful for growing human food. It's used for pasture, hay, and feed grain because you throw stuff out there and then go crudely harvest it. Pigs will eat corn cobs, so you can just dump an entire uprooted corn plant in front of the pig and that's that.

That land isn't economically-viable for food production: you'd have to use a hell of a lot more irrigation, fertilization, and pesticides, with lower yields despite all that, plus more human investment. The amount of greenhouse gas and runoff involved per unit food produced would be massive. Instead, we'd pave over it, build cities, and employ the labor in new factories--assuming we could find a way to feed people.

It has been observed that some regions grow beef entirely on waste byproducts, with 100% of their feed coming from corn stalks, wheat stalks, and the like. More often, it's that plus pasture. Irrigation and fertilization of feed crop is either not used or not used as intensively as for produce, and the use of cover crop also provides an alternative to moisture retention, fertilization, and weed control: legumes add nitrogen to the soil between crop cycles, vetch crowds out weeds aggressively, and any dense cover planting (including plantings during crop growth) retains moisture. Such cover crops also provide feed and forage for livestock.

Re:KNEW it.

[Mashiki]

Thing is, "feeding the fattiest part of the cows" back to cattle was known as a bad idea for centuries. You can see it in older farm literature and so on with cattle having those symptoms. It's kinda like retroactively looking back through old medical reports from 150 years ago, when you see thing like "bad air" "swamp gas" and so on, and people suddenly realize that it wasn't either case but things like malaria. Anyway, ask yourself why it became such a big thing to do...mainly starting back in the 1980's. Give you a hint, but it was because governments lowered regulations allowing it due to demands from companies engaged in the factory farm business. This was right around the time that those factory farms started demanding that pickers, and so on should only be paid by weight and not hourly. Anyone who say picked tobacco, fruit, or whatnot back in the 1980's can remember that amazingly swift change all across the board, then the cries of "but we CAN'T find anyone who wants to work for $28/day. So we HAVE to import labor."

To be honest? Genetic engineering of livestock will likely be the next frontier, much like the "green revolution" back 40-50 years ago. Thing is, can you get the stupid people and environmentalist groups to stop crying over GMO crops, livestock, and so on, making up bullshit and letting millions of people starve to death in some type of malthusian fantasy and believing that they're good people because of it? Cause that's one of the real problems right now. Greenpeace for example would rather people be blind, or die of starvation.

Re:KNEW it.

[cayenne8]

...On the other hand, they can pry my steak out of my cold dead hands! Bastards!

Yeah, good luck to them on the reducing meat consumption by 90%...

And you know,if we quite raising so much food to export, it might help turn the tide of world overpopulations around and solve the problem itself, no?

But more realistically.....drop our consumption by 90%, again....good luck with that.

Re:KNEW it.

[cayenne8]

Don't even need the lab grown meat. If impossible foods continues its expansion (see impossible burger at white castle) then the plant based meat substitute (that really does mimic beef scarily well) then the gound beef industry can switch over. This will not replace the fancy full cuts of beef; but, by percentage, that's the small slice of the beef industry.

Now, getting the beef industry to relinquish the ground beef market is a different hurdle entirely...

You don't have to get the beef industry to stop grinding beef....just make the artificial stuff insanely cheap and the masses will largely run to that.

Personally, I'd pay the higher prices still for the real stuff.

I figure we already have enough chemical laden, over processed foods getting into my diet anyway, I'm trying to actively avoid them by mostly cooking at home, but when you dine out, well, you inevitably get some.

But, make the artificial stuff good, and the masses will flock to it, and those with a bit more disposable income and taste will still get the real stuff.

Re:KNEW it.

[StrangeBrew]

... alter our eating habits to only be plant based, perhaps population control should be a priority.

By changing to people based foods, population control will be a priority.

Re:KNEW it.

[religionofpeas]

The ground beef industry uses the waste products from the fancy cuts of beef industry. It's an almost free product.

Re: KNEW it.

[religionofpeas]

According to IPCC, CO2 contributes 3.5 times as much as methane. And only part of the methane comes from cow farts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:KNEW it.

[MobyDisk]

We know that in most cases we get about 1 pound of meat from an animal for every 10 pounds of plants we put into them, and that's completely ignoring the economic costs of getting the plants to them and everything else that goes in to that.

Aha! But what if getting the plants to them was free? And what if the pound of meat was more nutritious than a pound of plant?

The reason humans started domesticating livestock is that we don't digest grass very well. But livestock can digest grass and turn it into fertilizer, milk, meat, and work. There are places where it is environmentally and economically more sustainable to raise ruminants than to raise plants. The midwest of the united states, for example, is filled with grasslands where these animals natively thrive. The problem is that these animals are so tasty that humans decided to engage in the unsustainable process you described in order to make more of them. We grow plants elsewhere, truck it to the livestock, then gather burn the fertilizer from the livestock, then mine some coal or metal from yet another place, then derive fertilizer from the mine, truck it back to the plants so we can grow more of them, ...

But a certain amount of this is actually okay. The 10 points of plants to 1 point of meat thing oversimplifies the process. We should be producing meat where meat is viable, and plants where plants are viable.

Re:KNEW it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not nearly as simple as you claim. A cow is an excellent method for turning a plot of untended, uneatable grass into human-digestible food. The fact that we choose to feed so many cows corn is only a symptom of our warped politics. They don't need corn.

Re:KNEW it.

[Darinbob]

Not really, because so many plants are used to raise meat animals. Think of animals raised for meat as middle-men. For the same amount of calories there would be fewer overall plants consumed if you ate the plants directly rather than going through the meat middleman.

Re: KNEW it.

[ewibble]

First most prey outnumber predators because well it has to otherwise the predators die of starvation.

Second the place where fewer plants grow would naturally be taken over by wild plants

Re: KNEW it.

[funny_smell]

Ahh, but methane is a MUCH more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

The (much) bigger radiative forcing of methane is already accounted for in the 3.5 times influence of CO2

Re: KNEW it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the cow fart bullshit again! Repeat after me: Cattle don't drink petroleum. They eat plants that just absorbed their carbon this year from the air and ground. Cows fart out the same new carbon. No net change in the ancient carbon that we dig up/pump and then burn.

Re:KNEW it.

[ewibble]

Even if you feed that cow on grass grown in the field it has an opportunity cost that field could be used to grow food directly for consumption. We are not talking about cost here in dollar terms but cost to the environment. These are quite different things, if I throw my trash outside it cost me nothing.

A cow has to eat and convert that energy into meat, like all processes that is has loss even if the cow just stood there from birth doing nothing but eating. But the cow also walks around and does what ever cows find interesting.

Re:KNEW it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Our society has "advanced" to the point where the majority of the people in big cities have no clue how food is created. If we'd get out of our sterile, windowless office cubicles and actually travel around the country and observe the realities of our world, it'd be obvious that there are VAST stretches of land that do nothing but grow otherwise worthless grass and weeds that humans are not built for eating, yet are perfectly suitable for ruminant herds of cattle. This is converting inedible biomass into edible meat.

The idea that we need to force everyone into a vegetarian diet in order to produce enough food to feed the world is outrageous. It's counter-productive, as switching everyone to a strictly vegetarian diet would actually REDUCE food supplies because now you can't make use of the worthless grass and weeds.

Re:KNEW it.

[TechyImmigrant]

The nutritional content of a gram of beef is far, far higher than the nutritional content of a gram of grass that cows eat.

This is because cows live off fat. The plenitude of stomachs allows the bugs to consume the fiber and turn it into short chain fatty acids, which the cow absorbs.

A unit area of grassland supporting one cow, with the cow being eaten or milked yields more human nutrition per unit time than planting grains and eating them.

Then there's the issue of killing all the wildlife to turn grassland into cropland that requires carbon-heavy fertilizing - you aren't going to fertilize with shit if you aren't eating cows.

Or you can believe unscientific nonsense.

 

Re: KNEW it.

[religionofpeas]

Ahh, but methane is a MUCH more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

That has already been discounted in their numbers (look at the numbers in the column called "radiative forcing")

Re:KNEW it.

[MachineShedFred]

And in order to get the crop yields necessary to support all that, we'd better increase the use of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Because that doesn't present any problems at all!

Re:KNEW it.

[jeff4747]

This will not replace the fancy full cuts of beef; but, by percentage, that's the small slice of the beef industry.

Ground beef is usually made from the trimmings and other waste when producing the "fancy full cuts".

Turning ground beef into a waste product probably isn't getting us much.

Re:KNEW it.

[Cyberax]

Except that most cows are not grazing outside on the fields, they are eating grain or specially grown alfalfa.

Re:KNEW it.

[William Baric]

You are right, that's why we should make sure we reduce the world population. Since first world countries consume more meat than third world countries, we should make sure those countries are the first to see their population diminish. As pretty much all of them have a natural negative growth rate, the only thing we have to do is to stop immigration in order to save the planet.

Re:KNEW it.

[ShanghaiBill]

Yeah, good luck to them on the reducing meat consumption by 90%...

The problem is not "meat" but beef. Chicken, farmed fish, and even pork have far less environmental impact. Cattle use a lot of land, eat a lot, fart a lot, and reproduce slowly.

And you know,if we quite raising so much food to export, it might help turn the tide of world overpopulations

Most American food exports go to countries that are already at or near ZPG. We already know how to reduce population growth:
1. Reduce child mortality, so people don't feel a need to have so many kids.
2. Increase female literacy so women have other options than to stay home and pop out babies.
3. Easy access to contraceptives. Many women would choose fewer kids if they had a choice.

Re:KNEW it.

[TechyImmigrant]

So they get fat (with the wrong type of fat) and sick. That's cows in the US.
Grains fatten humans too. Again, the US leads the way.

 

Re: KNEW it.

[dargaud]

"Dans le cochon, tout est bon." goes the saying...

Re:KNEW it.

[q_e_t]

It depends where/how. If you are talking sheep on steep uplands raised for meat, you aren't going to really be replacing that with crops, so you might continue to raise sheep that way, but you might reduce corn production for feeding beef cattle, although you might continue to raise corn-fed chicken. There are some instances where grazing is required to maintain certain habitats (some upland ones being examples).

Re:KNEW it.

[q_e_t]

If reducing meant consumption required 50% of the current plant production, but you then needed to cultivate twice as much land if not using pesticides, etc, it would even out. So it's not a given that it's an issue, but it does depend on details, and those were contrived example figures to make a point, and not accurate. Some crop rotation methods, and the use of biochar might improve soil fertility, and some forms of intercropping can result in reduced pests (although relatively few and it's a while since I last researched this so I am a bit rusty)/

Re:KNEW it.

[ShanghaiBill]

And in order to get the crop yields necessary to support all that, we'd better increase the use of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers.

Plant based protein requires less land. water, and chemicals than animal protein.

The biggest consumers of irrigated water in America is grass and alfalfa.

The best sources of plant protein are legumes (beans, peas, lentils, and peanuts), which have symbiotic nitrifying bacteria in their roots. They require less fertilizer than animal feed crops such as maize.

Re:KNEW it.

[q_e_t]

There's a difference between free to buy and cost to the environment. But then wasting it would not be prudent either.

Re:KNEW it.

[q_e_t]

You can tip hats too.

Re: KNEW it.

[q_e_t]

The plant takes CO2, turns it into plant. The cow turns some of it into methane which is a more potent greenhouse gas, so you are missing the point. The methane eventually ends up as CO2 again. But it's not a big effect overall.

Re: KNEW it.

[Savantissimo]

A small addition of seaweed to cow diets virtually eliminates methane:

The crucial research, by Robert Kinley of CSIRO and Rocky De Nys, professor of aquaculture at Australiaâ(TM)s James Cook University, and colleagues, involved testing some 20 different species of seaweed in artificial cow stomachsâ"that is, a mix of rumen and microbes that mimics the behavior of a cow stomach in a bottle. When grass or feed is added to this in vitro tummy, fermentation takes place and the scientists are able to measure the resulting methane output. In the presence of Asparagopsis taxiformisâ"described by De Nys as âoea real stand-outâ among the tested seaweedsâ" methane production was cut by 99 percent. Experiments in sheep showed that if dried Asparagopsis taxiformis seaweed made up just 2 percent of total feed, methane emissions drop by 70 percent. It can be added as a sprinkle, De Nys says, just as you might add a smattering of herbs to roast chicken.

Asparagopsis is so effective because it contains a chemical called bromoform (CHBr3) that interferes with the microbial digestive enzymes responsible for methane manufacture. ... Seaweed experiments in Canada were inspired by observations that seaside cattle, who periodically chowed down on storm-tossed seaweed, were both heftier and healthier than their inland relatives. Less belched-out methane, in other words, makes for more on-the-hoof meat.

Cattle's methant emissions are estimated to be about 10% of GHG emissions, and it would take 30,000 sq . km of seaweed growing to eliminate that, or 2,000 sq. km for the US.

Re:KNEW it.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

For the same amount of calories there would be fewer overall plants consumed if you ate the plants directly rather than going through the meat middleman.

Not necessarily. Herbivores' digestive systems are more efficient, especially after thousands of years of selective breeding. (I hear some domestic animals (e.g. meat chickens) can turn feed into meat at nearly 2:1.) Pushing a pure veggie diet through our non-optimized omnivore digestive tracts might end up wasting more due to our inefficiency than is lost on the extra step between the veggies and us.

Also: Some regions (e.g. western range land) can't grow anything we can eat without massive reengineering and water importation. But it can grow lots of stuff that cattle can eat (much of which is invasive plants that the native animals DON'T eat and which thus take over and wipe out the native fodder if you don't add cattle, who consider it a treat). The most efficient - indeed, nearly the only, way to get human nutrition off this land is to let cattle and/or native quadrupeds eat the low-water weeds and then eat THEM.

Re:KNEW it.

[Darinbob]

Even when grazing cattle there is a whole industry devoted to raising alfalfa used only to supplement feed; especially in winter.

Re:KNEW it.

[Bongo]

This is the whole point of why we should be eating ruminants: they eat GRASS.

We feed them crops rather than their natural food, and it's incredibly stupid.

I gather the statistic is that only 4 percent of land can be used for agriculture, but 40 percent can be used for grass and ruminants.

The experts who write these reports claiming we should be cutting meat, are clueless, probably just specialists in the wrong fields.

Re: KNEW it.

[thesupraman]

And the methane has a rather short half-life in the atmosphere before it breaks down, much MUCH shorter than CO2.
Which, somehow, the IPCC DOES NOT allow for in their calculations - gee, what a surprise.

However it does make the impact of big businesss (mostly CO2) look better with regard to farming (Methane).

BTW, when your local vegie is waxing lyrical about how evil meat is because of Methane, perhaps point out that race farming produces over half the methane of cattle farming, and thats only rice. The methane produced by the breakdown of crop waste, although nicely ignored by the IPCC in general, is estimated by other sources to contribute over 2 TIMES the amount of Methane as meat - however is discounted as a 'natural process', which is rather special.

Coal and oil extraction also produces MUCH more methane than meat farming, what a surprise (but rarely mentioned).

Basically the cattle/methane thing is a misdirection by big business - meat is not as profitable as other areas, so gets less protection funding.

Re:KNEW it.

[HornWumpus]

They're _much_more_delicious_ when supplemented with corn, don't believe the derpers.

They don't need it, but I do pay extra for prime.

Re:KNEW it.

[HornWumpus]

Your lawn lets off ultrasonic screams as soon as you fire up the mower. Before you start cutting, the grass is screaming in fear and agony.

Vegetable rights!

Re:KNEW it.

[Darinbob]

Look at this from the American view. We've added way more meat to our typical diet than was eaten in the past by most societies. You don't have to cut out meat completely to make a huge difference. Drop it down to 10% of the diet or less.

Re:KNEW it.

[hankwang]

The feed conversion ratio typically compares dry weight of feed to gross live weight of the animal. If you'd compare by nutrients, the numbers can be 3x worse because of water, bones, and intestines. Even for poultry it'd be better to eat the poultry feed directly instead of converting it into chicken.

Re:KNEW it.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Yes, nutjobs who don't pay their bills and go out of their way to antagonise the authorities often wind up in trouble. What of it?

Re:KNEW it.

[ShanghaiBill]

You forgot the easiest, which also can not only reduce growth, but also reduce population itself:
4. War.

Unstable war-torn countries tend to have the HIGHEST birthrates, and the fastest population growth rates.

The country with the highest birthrate in Asia is Afghanistan.

The highest birthrates in Africa are in Mali, Niger, and Angola.

Birthrate by country

People in war-zones move toward an r-selection reproductive strategy.

Re:KNEW it.

[losfromla]

It's because they're vegans and vegetarians, thus their main driving force is a religious rather than a scientific viewpoint.

Re:KNEW it.

[losfromla]

Plant proteins are only about 30-40% bioavailable, so you'll need to eat roughly 3x as much to get the same benefit as you would from a delicious steak or a compact serving of whey protein.

Re:KNEW it.

[currently_awake]

Feeding human food to animals is only common in the western world. The rest of the world feeds their cattle whatever they don't eat, like the stuff left over after harvest and organic garbage.

Re:KNEW it.

[Darinbob]

True, but also where are the most cattle raised? Not sure actually. A lot of cattle in third world countries are used to labor also, not just for food.

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[rtb61]

So to really solve the problem, the rich just need to consume the poor at a faster rate. Work them harder, pay and feed them less and provide no health services, just work them to death as fast as possible and no more problem. You just know that thought is going through those psychopaths minds, the ones at the top of the corruption pile.

Nothing will change, except of course the rich consuming the poor at a faster rate, that is pretty obvious, greed will keep USA focused humanity stuck until the USA focus dies. Greed Trumps all, thought that is, greed driven stupidity will keep things stuck in this path to destruction until the US has been effectively destroyed, well at least it's global influence. Corruption is keeping the power base locked in as it eats itself alive, right now they are trying to eat as fast as possible because someone else might eat more than them, so they are killing the beast pretty quick now.

Re:KNEW it.

[Can'tNot]

Not necessarily.

No, there's no hedge on this: the meat overhead is huge. Twenty five plant calories for every one beef calorie. There's no way to rationalize your way around that, no matter how many whatabouts you throw at it. It would take a really extreme edge case, like your bit of land which is unsuitable for growing most plants without irrigation but yet can somehow support large grazing animals. (This land exists, but the plant life there is sparse enough that a huge area can only support a paltry amount of beef production.)

The animals which have the lowest overhead, fish and chicken, are not herbivores.

Re:KNEW it.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Twenty five plant calories for every one beef calorie. There's no way to rationalize your way around that, no matter how many whatabouts you throw at it.

Yeah? Let's see you digest the calories from the cellulose in sage and clump-grass, without a four-chambered stomach full of symbiotic bacteria. Then tell me it's more efficient to eat desert plants directly than to process them by passing them through a cow.

A shortage of calories is not the issue - as anyone trying to lose weight will tell you. The issue is nutrients: Amino acids, vitamins, trace elements, ... Animals synthesize some vital compounds that we don't, and some of those aren't even found in plants. Others aren't found in plants in the levels we need, but are concentrated even by beasts that don't make more.

One example is vitamin B12, a shortage of which causes nerve damage. It's virtually impossible to get it from a pure plant diet. (Fortunately for vegans, some plants have enough insect contamination to keep them alive.)

B12, along with substantial numbers of various sorts of vegetarians in the population, is the reason that the US government limits the amount of folic acid in vitamin supplements - dooming women to morning sickness in early pregnancy: Folic Acid masks the early, reversible, symptoms of B12 deficiency, so vegetarians don't notice it until irreversible nerve damage has occurred.

Another is the essential amino acid Lysine, which is short in things like maize. (Shortage of any essential amino acid stalls protein synthesis, causing a ribosome to be "stuck" waiting for the missing piece when it's time to add it to the growing chain.) There is some question whether the cannibalism in the Inca empire (where corn was the main vegetable staple) was partly driven by the need to conserve and recycle the available lysine. Though the plants may have proteins that average low lysine and there may be less muscle tissue on a lysine-starved animal, the muscle tissue that IS there has the normal number of LYS residues.

Re:KNEW it.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The feed conversion ratio typically compares dry weight of feed to gross live weight of the animal. If you'd compare by nutrients, the numbers can be 3x worse because of water, bones, and intestines. Even for poultry it'd be better to eat the poultry feed directly instead of converting it into chicken.

From WattAgNet.com:

Bird performance in the commercial poultry industry has shown a staggering improvement over recent decades. Modern broilers weigh about 2.5 kg at 39 days, with a live-weight feed conversion ratio of 1.6 kg of feed per kilogram of body weight gain. Laying hens in modern commercial flocks typically produce about 330 eggs per year with a FCR of 2 kg of feed per kilogram of eggs produced.

For white leghorns the FCR is closer to 1.5.

Maybe that is somewhat inflated by water that isn't counted in the feed weight. But 3x? Hardly. (Birds get a lot of their water from the waste of their energy metabolism.)

Meanwhile: Have you looked at what chickens eat? (I have - in detail - because my wife and I raise the birds.) If you want to make porridge of layer chow, grower chow, insects, grass, etc. you're welcome to try it. (Don't forget to include the fuel and other inputs of any cooking and/or processing you have to do to it to make it digestible by a human.) But I bet you'd have to eat a LOT more than 3x the weight of that gorp to actually absorb and utilize the nutrients you'd get from a roast chicken or a plate of eggs.

I'll let the birdies do the chemical magic of turning that low-grade veggie junk into the raw material for tasty and nutritious meals.

Re:KNEW it.

[Mashiki]

The feeding of left over animal parts to other animals was pursued aggressively by Britain during WW2

Yeah you got that spot on. Blame my canadian centric farming knowledge on that, and that I completely forgot about that clusterfuck.

Re:KNEW it.

[mentil]

Damn middlemen stealing my nutrients! Well, I'll just have to eat THEM!

Re: KNEW it.

[q_e_t]

And the methane has a rather short half-life in the atmosphere before it breaks down, much MUCH shorter than CO2. Which, somehow, the IPCC DOES NOT allow for in their calculations - gee, what a surprise.

I take it you have never read the IPCC, looked at any climate models or talked to any climate scientists, as it is most certainly part of the calculations.

The methane produced by the breakdown of crop waste, although nicely ignored by the IPCC in general, is estimated by other sources to contribute over 2 TIMES the amount of Methane as meat

Citation? I have talked to people working on various effects of crop and land use on climate change (and vice versa) and would be happy to send them details of this research they've neglected.

Re:KNEW it.

[q_e_t]

If you think that most grass used to feed cattle, outside ranches in the USA (which I wouldn't count as 'a plot'), is untended, then I take it you are not a farmer. In the UK, certainly, you need to go and make sure that poisonous weeds have not ended up in the pasture, and potentially also add fertiliser in addition to what the cows provide (depends on density of grazing). Goats are probably more efficient at grass to meat.

Re:KNEW it.

[Barsteward]

Stop injecting common sense and education into the slashdot conspiracy theorists.....

Re:KNEW it.

[Barsteward]

you mean ground beef wasn't fed or reared in any way?

Re:KNEW it.

[Cederic]

Nope. A fantastic 14oz fillet was fed and reared, the beef sausage is merely edible waste from that process.

Re:KNEW it.

[Cederic]

or goats. Goats are awesome. Harsh climates in Africa support domesticated goats where sheep would struggle.

Re:KNEW it.

[Cederic]

Finally, what stories about animal fat being good for you? Can you cite one? Or are you just talking about your feelings?

Here's an entirely completely totally unbiased source with no reason at all to tell anything other than the absolute objective truth:
https://greatbritishmeat.com/b...

Re:KNEW it.

[damn_registrars]

Stop injecting common sense and education into the slashdot conspiracy theorists.....

(emphasis mine)

Inject it straight into the conspiracy theorists themselves? I must admit I hadn't considered that. I'm pretty sure I don't have the time and travel budget to find them all myself though.

Re:KNEW it.

[Daralantan]

4. War

War. Huh. Yeah. What is it good for?

Re:KNEW it.

[Can'tNot]

A shortage of calories is not the issue - as anyone trying to lose weight will tell you.

You're confusing the situation here. We're not trying to address human starvation, we're trying to address the fact that literally one quarter of all of the land on earth is dedicated to livestock and that livestock accounts for eighteen percent of all greenhouse emissions. This is the result of the fact that our enormous quantity of livestock needs calories, lots and lots of calories, while humans could easily get by on much less if we ate those calories directly.

Lack of micronutrients is not an issue that we're struggling with, they're not needed in large quantity. Distribution of micronutrients is occasionally an issue for humans, that's why we have iodized salt for example, but that doesn't consume farmland and doesn't produce an appreciable amount of greenhouse emissions.

You continue to harp on this tiny edge case with the switchgrass: grass fed beef accounts for only 3% of the beef raised in the US, and even there the majority of what they eat is "forage" - i.e.: hay and alfalfa, which are grown on cropland and so do nothing to address this issue.

Methane?

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't all those beans mean....

Re:Methane?

[bluefoxlucid]

Humans don't produce methane during gut fermentation.

Re:Methane?

[MrMr]

Some do apparently.
https://gut.bmj.com/content/32...

Re:Methane?

[bluefoxlucid]

Interesting. That's not a lot; I was under the impression a specific gut flora unique to ruminants produced methane.

Re:Methane?

[BeaverCleaver]

Partly due to hydrogen:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
https://www.quora.com/What-is-...

Sorry for the quora link.

I wonder if it's worth farming these bacterial to generate hydrogen commercially?

Better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather than exterminating hundreds of existing species of animals, how about we reduce our population growth to a number less than zero, and bring our own population down to sustainable levels?

What happens when we get to 20 billion and can no longer subsist on soy protein and rice rations? Going after all of these leftist utopian dreams of state control over personal living is not going to solve the problem of how to feed an unsustainably-growing human population.

Re:Better idea

[olsmeister]

Random lottery. Every year 3% of the population is harvested and eaten.

Re:Better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather than exterminating hundreds of existing species of animals, how about we reduce our population growth to a number less than zero, and bring our own population down to sustainable levels?

What happens when we get to 20 billion and can no longer subsist on soy protein and rice rations? Going after all of these leftist utopian dreams of state control over personal living is not going to solve the problem of how to feed an unsustainably-growing human population.

Except our current economic models of "growth" rely on undermining the value of labor and increasing consumption by more and more people to justify greater concentrations of wealth among the hereditary class.

If we need the occasional war to thin the herd then the rich oligarchs can wait it out in some isolated corners of the world where they can "live a simple life" and write books about how it is all the fault of the dead poor people that created an sustained their extreme wealth in the first place yet were somehow expected not to kill one another fighting over the scraps.

Re:Better idea

[Oswald McWeany]

Rather than exterminating hundreds of existing species of animals, how about we reduce our population growth to a number less than zero, and bring our own population down to sustainable levels?

What happens when we get to 20 billion and can no longer subsist on soy protein and rice rations? Going after all of these leftist utopian dreams of state control over personal living is not going to solve the problem of how to feed an unsustainably-growing human population.

It's happens naturally as populations join the first world. Japan's population is shrinking and much of the Western world would be experiencing shrinking population without immigration (immigration increases population now- and immigrants tend to have more children than people who have been living in the West for generations).

Re:Better idea

[jeff4747]

What happens when we get to 20 billion and can no longer subsist on soy protein and rice rations?

Birth rates across the planet are dropping. Europe and Japan is already below replacement rate. The US is barely above replacement rate. The places with high birth rate are rapidly falling as we spend more time and effort educating girls.

So, we're probably not going to reach 20 billion, even if we just blunder along our current path. Especially when you consider all the upcoming famines and wars thanks to climate change.

Re:Better idea

[vlad30]

It's happens naturally as populations join the first world. Japan's population is shrinking and much of the Western world would be experiencing shrinking population without immigration (immigration increases population now- and immigrants tend to have more children than people who have been living in the West for generations).

Yes now why can't those countries that are growing way to fast start reducing like the western countries as for economics requiring population growth. No, what we need is a way to sustain our comfort levels and start creating more instead of playing games on our phones. the robots* \have done well for us so far and will do even more in the future

*robots include things like dishwashers previously done by house staff, think about it.

Cue the next disaster

[Brett Buck]

One hysterical scare story after another, all of which require drastic damage to the civilized nations.

        Does anyone still fail to grasp that this is about centralized control of individual behavior instead of the environment?

Re:Cue the next disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

The most effective way to combat climate change with minimal effect on the economy is nuclear power. Until the climate alarmists start pushing nuclear instead of pixie-dust solar and wind, I won't listen.

Re:Cue the next disaster

[AmiMoJo]

What stage is this again? We had denial, then we can't do anything about it anyway, then we can do something but China won't, and now it's down to wild conspiracy theories...

Is this the last step? I hope so.

Re:Cue the next disaster

[mspohr]

Just keep wearing your tin foil hat and you'll be safe.

Re:Cue the next disaster

[mujadaddy]

The wild conspiracy theory phase is actually how it started.

But while I have you here, how long is it supposed to take to reverse centuries of carbon pollution's effect on atmospheric heat retention?

I have a pretty solid hunch it's going to be longer than "centuries," but I'd like to see what others think.

Re:Cue the next disaster

[Mashiki]

And has been going for 30 years?

So...the UN didn't author Agenda 21? Am I in an alternate timeline again? Why not go read the 300 page document, and then compare the things listed, suggested, or should be imposed against actions of various governments over that same time period. Sure there's some good things in it, but then there's the government policies that act in a coercive manner to force them through. Which of course moves it out of the realm of UN mandated conspiracy theories.

Politics does not plan for that long...

Brilliant ignorance, most countries have 50-100 year plans. China being a bit odd out has 200-300 year plans.

No, the threat is real and imminent. People like you just demonstrate why it will likely be the end of the human race.

So, you're all in favor of imposing structure, order, and governance on say Africa in order to make it into the bread basket of the world, while forcibly modernizing their societies to make them more environmentally friendly? How about the same for many countries in South America?

Re:Cue the next disaster

[JoshuaZ]

There's no mysterious group trying to control everything. I've drastically reduced my meat consumption over the last few years precisely for this reason (and maybe eat meat about once a month). If you talk to climate scientists, a lot of them have become complete vegetarians, and they generally did so after becoming interested in climate issues. They aren't pushing the climate issue as part of some nefarious vegetarian or vegan plot.

Re: Cue the next disaster

[jd]

Anyone who believes that you could have a sustained conspiracy for 128 years with only a few fringe conspiracy theorists noticing is... probably not worth my time debating.

Re:Cue the next disaster

[cascadingstylesheet]

What stage is this again? We had denial, then we can't do anything about it anyway, then we can do something but China won't, and now it's down to wild conspiracy theories...

Is this the last step? I hope so.

Is it the stage where you finally admit that we aren't going to give up eating meat and all live on greens from our back yards? I hope so.

Re:Cue the next disaster

[jeff4747]

Does anyone still fail to grasp that this is about centralized control of individual behavior instead of the environment?

Option 1: the published science is actually true. (And since it's all published, you can feel free to replicate the studies and show they are wrong).

Option 2: There is a shadowy cabal that consists of millions of people who all are out to destroy your individuality because of their perverse hatred of you. And despite there being millions of people who participate in this conspiracy, nobody has leaked evidence of the cabal's existence. Including the massive profit that a leaker would receive from all the industries that are desperately searching to discredit everything in this area of research.

One of these options seems just a tad more far-fetched than the other.

Re:Cue the next disaster

[jeff4747]

The most effective way to combat climate change with minimal effect on the economy is nuclear power

[Citation Required]

And no, "It just makes sense" is not a citation.

Re:Cue the next disaster

[Topwiz]

I had lunch at Arby's today. We've got the meats!

Re:Cue the next disaster

[danlip]

how long is it supposed to take to reverse centuries of carbon pollution's effect on atmospheric heat retention?

Most of those centuries are pretty insignificant. 0.03 billion tonnes/year in 1800, 2 billion in 1900, 6 billion in 1950, 36 billion in 2015. If we could reverse the last 50 years we'd be doing pretty good. Of course we can't reverse anything until we stop producing more.

Re:Cue the next disaster

[mujadaddy]

If we could reverse the last 50 years we'd be doing pretty good. Of course we can't reverse anything until we stop producing more.

If the latter were to magically happen, what time scale do you think the former would take?

Re:Cue the next disaster

[DigressivePoser]

It could not possibly be that drastic change is needed. It MUST be a conspiracy if it inconveniences me!

Over time, we will move on to use other sources of energy. It will obviously not be fast enough for you. In the mean time, all the scare mongering and failed predictions by AlGore et al. are not helping your cause.

Re:Cue the next disaster

[Mashiki]

50 year plans? In a democracy? JFC, man, are you trying to kill me with laughter? Most countries can't keep a plan going past the next lost election, much less for two generations.

You're showing your fundamental ignorance of the world.

Seriously, get your head out of your ass.

You first, you've managed to show in two sentences that your understanding of politics and social change is so poorly lacking that you've never been involved in politics beyond a surface level...aka voting.

Doomed to fail

[sjbe]

Huge reductions in meat-eating are essential to avoid dangerous climate change, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of the food system's impact on the environment.

Asking people to voluntarily change their diet away from things they find tasty is doomed to failure. McDonald's isn't a multi-billion dollar company because people like eating broccoli. Any politician that suggests regulation of what foods people can buy is going to be out of a job rather quickly.

Re:Doomed to fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Any species that increasingly pumps CO2 into their atmosphere is going to be out of a planet rather quickly.

Re:Doomed to fail

[gweihir]

Indeed. People will keep voting themselves bread and games until both are used up. Then they will die.

Re:Doomed to fail

[Brett Buck]

I think in this case the IPCC might be doing society a tremendous service. Having a "world government" panel on climate attempting to decide (dictate) what an individual can and cannot eat could not illustrate more clearly what "world government" actually means. Doing things like this virtually guarantees no one will ever take :world government" seriously, Just like the Democrats daily writing the script for the "Trump 2020!" ads. Keep up the good work!

Re:Doomed to fail

[AmiMoJo]

I dunno, worked okay with junk food taxes in some places.

But really the better solution is synthetic meat. Lower environmental impact, fewer antibiotics and other additives, and eventually should be a lot cheaper.

Picard was right.

Re:Doomed to fail

[religionofpeas]

Synthetic meat is just silly. You have a bunch of muscle cells, and you feed them nutrients that they can live and grow on, and then you eat those cells. Why not skip all of that, and just eat the same nutrients yourself ?

Real meat makes sense, because the muscle cells get fed real cow's blood, with immense complexity of nutrients that we cannot duplicate.

Re:Doomed to fail

[DaFallus]

Then I guess its so long, and thanks for all the beef.

Re:Doomed to fail

[mrbonefish]

Huge reductions in meat-eating are essential to avoid dangerous climate change, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of the food system's impact on the environment.

Asking people to voluntarily change their diet away from things they find tasty is doomed to failure. McDonald's isn't a multi-billion dollar company because people like eating broccoli. Any politician that suggests regulation of what foods people can buy is going to be out of a job rather quickly.

"Asking"...I hope this isn't a veiled "requires forcing" reply. Perhaps I am over-reacting like the BBC here. Just curious.

Re: Doomed to fail

[jd]

What's wrong with synthetic meat?

Re:Doomed to fail

[cayenne8]

"Or, just maybe, that won't happen, like every single other doomsday scenario never happened."

You mean like in Florida RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT?

Err, a hurricane, while damaging, is nothing akin to a "doomsday" event.

They have been blowing in from the ocean for as long as the earth has been here...they damage, and then, you pick up, rebuild and go on with normal life again.

Hurricanes, tornados, forest fires and earth quakes, while inconvenient, and damaging to human property and lives, aren't doomsday events...they are more like nature shrugging her shoulders from time to time.

Re:Doomed to fail

[gweihir]

No. What you have and clearly do not understand is called "survivor bias". To make this as simple as possible so maybe even you can understand this: You have not died yet, right? So, by your approach it is safe to think you never will.

As to bet, there is nothing that you could offer that would compensate for the case where you are wrong. But that idea mist be completely put of your mental reach.

Re:Doomed to fail

[gweihir]

Power without accountability. Corrupts masses just the same as it corrupts individuals.

Re:Doomed to fail

[skam240]

Of course there's abolutly no drive for creating a binding global government body to dictate what people can or cant eat. You're just making shit up.

Re: Doomed to fail

[religionofpeas]

What's wrong with synthetic meat?

It doesn't exist yet.

Re:Doomed to fail

[RightwingNutjob]

In English it's "bread and circuses," comrade. In Russian the closest equivalent in English is "bread and spectacles."

Re:Doomed to fail

[jeff4747]

You have a bunch of muscle cells, and you feed them nutrients that they can live and grow on, and then you eat those cells. Why not skip all of that, and just eat the same nutrients yourself ?

Because 1) humans have difficulty digesting algae, and 2) meat tastes better.

Real meat makes sense, because the muscle cells get fed real cow's blood, with immense complexity of nutrients that we cannot duplicate.

Of course we can duplicate cow's blood. The question is whether it's worth the cost and whether the blood is actually relevant for flavor development (it isn't).

The main issue with synthetic meat at the moment is texture. Getting the meat-to-fat ratio correct while also in the correct structure of the meat isn't easy. Synthetic beef has already "passed" blind taste tests against extremely lean beef, we just don't each much extremely lean beef.

Re:Doomed to fail

[Topwiz]

http://www.aei.org/publication...

Re: Doomed to fail

[jeff4747]

It doesn't exist yet.

Sure it does. It currently costs $37/lb. Which is just a tiny bit over the $3/lb beef costs.

Re:Doomed to fail

[religionofpeas]

1) humans have difficulty digesting algae

They don't feed algae to the synthetic meat cells.

The question is whether it's worth the cost and whether the blood is actually relevant for flavor development (it isn't).

No, it's relevant for the growth of the meat cells. They need all the proper nutrients. Also, these nutrients are then transformed to the nutrients in the final meat product. For instance, vitamin B12 in meat is required to make the cells grow (it's a vital part of their energy system). The muscle/fat cells don't make B12 themselves, it comes from the blood and is actually made by intestinal bacteria. When we eat the meat, we ingest that B12 again. If you grow meat in a petri dish, you need to add that B12 (there is no B12 in algae, for instance). That's just one example. Real blood contains many other nutrients as well that are necessary for the cells to grow.

The main issue with synthetic meat at the moment is texture

For you maybe. I care more about the nutritional value.

Re: Doomed to fail

[religionofpeas]

So it doesn't exist in a practical sense. Also it requires fetal blood to grow, which we only have available because people eat regular meat.

Re:Doomed to fail

[jeff4747]

They don't feed algae to the synthetic meat cells.

Some versions use algae byproducts to produce the media for the cells to grow on.

No, it's relevant for the growth of the meat cells. They need all the proper nutrients

Those nutrients aren't blood. Blood is a transport mechanism for those nutrients in a cow. You don't have to use the same transport mechanism when it's growing in a lab.

For you maybe. I care more about the nutritional value.

Good news! They're already equal in nutritional value.

Re: Doomed to fail

[jeff4747]

Also it requires fetal blood to grow

Nope. Earlier versions required fetal serum albumin in the growth media. The way they got it down to $37 per pound is to change the growth media so that it no longer contains FSA.

Re:Doomed to fail

[Brett Buck]

Except that that is *exactly* what this panel is suggesting. Keep up the good work!

Re:Doomed to fail

[AmiMoJo]

You could make the same argument about most foods. Why spend time combining ingredients and preparing stuff when you can just eat each part individually or throw it all in a blender?

Clearly there is a demand for things that are delicious.

Re:Doomed to fail

[skam240]

No, they're suggesting people eat less meat. They are not suggesting a globally binding panel. There is a world of difference between suggesting people should eat less meat and making them. Keep up the good work!

Quickly

[Kazymyr]

Invest in Beano!

Better idea:

[thegarbz]

Prescribe more antibiotics. Remove the requirement to take a full dose. Eventually when a superbug kills half the population the world will finally be in a position to survive.

Or we just collect a bunch of gems, fit them into a metal glove and snap our fingers.

Re:Better idea:

[olsmeister]

Option 2 will not work. There will be a bunch of dumbass superheroes that undoes it in the sequel.

Horse-manure prediction

[mi]

The "Horse-manure panic" was caused, at the end of the 19th century, by the "predictions" that "By the late 1800s, large cities all around the world were “drowning in horse manure”.

The times have changed, but the term "horse manure" (equivalent in this context to the more common "bullshit") remains strangely apropos...

Re:Horse-manure prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because they switched away from using transportation that produce horse manure. So, let's switch away from transportation and other things that release CO2.

Re: Horse-manure prediction

[jd]

Problem is, the population changed what they were doing, in part to avoid the problem.

You know, if you stop driving at full tilt towards the brick wall, then the prediction that if you'd contributed you'd have hit it doesn't apply.

Re: Horse-manure prediction

[mi]

Problem is, the population changed what they were doing, in part to avoid the problem.

a) That's not a problem; b) people switched to cars because they are better.

The point is, we do not need to use the force of government to compel ourselves to change. And this opportunity to force others into doing, what they believe is good, is the real motivation behind the noises being made by "global warming" crowd, 99% of them far-Left partisans.

Re:Horse-manure prediction

[skam240]

Right, bullshit 19th century horse manure panic = bullshit modern global warming theories.

That's just an amazing conclusion you've come to there.

Re: Horse-manure prediction

[jeff4747]

b) people switched to cars because they are better.

And one of the primary ways they are better is they do not produce horse manure. And yes, this was actually a perk when cars were first becoming popular.

The point is, we do not need to use the force of government to compel ourselves to change

Sometimes we don't, and sometimes we do. The tragedy of the commons is a real thing and it can't always be fixed by asking nicely.

And this opportunity to force others into doing, what they believe is good, is the real motivation behind the noises being made by "global warming" crowd, 99% of them far-Left partisans.

Nope. There's plenty of people that understand climate change is happening are not "far-Left". Or even "left".

But in the US we have a very large industry that has been created to convince a subset of our population that climate change isn't actually happening. Instead, there's a massive secret cabal out to harm you, personally via an incredibly awkward and inefficient plan. And despite the massive size of this cabal, nobody has leaked proof of its existence. Even though such a leaker would reap massive financial rewards from all the industries that don't want climate change to exist. This also ignores there are far easier and more direct ways to actually accomplish this supposed goal of hurting you, personally.

Despite the fact that this story is about as unrealistic as "NASA faked the moon landing!", it has sold surprisingly well to certain groups who now cling to it as a religious belief.

Re:Horse-manure prediction

[mi]

Yep. Same kind of people, cheered by the same kind of journalists, making the same kind of apocalyptic predictions. More likely to be bullshit than not.

And, just as back then, nothing needs to be done to avert this crisis even if it really is looming — if population growth increases the demand for meat, the prices will rise and consumption will drop. And/or we'll change to some tastier alternative — the way we switched from horses to mechanized transport.

Re: Horse-manure prediction

[Ichijo]

b) people switched to cars because they are better.

Also because of massive road subsidies and governments forcing developers and business owners to provide more parking than the market wanted (unfunded mandates).

The point is, we do not need to use the force of government to compel ourselves to change.

See above. We (ab-)used the force of government to make us all good obedient little oil consumers.

Re: Horse-manure prediction

[mi]

Nope. There's plenty of people that understand climate change is happening are not "far-Left". Or even "left".

Remarkably, you aren't citing even one name for the crowd you claim to be plentiful. Nope, all of them are, what I call "watermelons": green on the outside, red inside. Scratch one such person — yourself included, little doubt — and you'll find a Che Guevara T-shirt underneath. Sheesh...

One has just manifested himself by anonymously posting a homophobic personal attack against my person for example.

Re:Horse-manure prediction

[skam240]

"Yep. Same kind of people, cheered by the same kind of journalists, making the same kind of apocalyptic predictions. More likely to be bullshit than not."

Oh thank god we have the authority here to tell us well accepted science is bullshit.

"if population growth increases the demand for meat, the prices will rise and consumption will drop."

Let's ignore your first glaring error and assume that supply doesnt increase to meet demand which is economics 101. If supply stayed the same consumption per person would certainly drop but overall consumption would stay the same, otherwise prices would drop due to lower consumption. Your statement here is basically suggesting that prices would go up in the face of lower consumption.

Either way you're not really understanding how economics work here.

Re:Horse-manure prediction

[XxtraLarGe]

The "Horse-manure panic" was caused, at the end of the 19th century, by the "predictions" that "By the late 1800s, large cities all around the world were âoedrowning in horse manureâ.

/.'s full of doom-mongering Malthusians. They remain committed to ceteris paribus analysis, not even contemplating that the market could possibly respond to this stimulus.

Re: Horse-manure prediction

[Kyr Arvin]

Nope. There's plenty of people that understand climate change is happening are not "far-Left". Or even "left".

Nope, all of them are, what I call "watermelons": green on the outside, red inside.

I mean, is that even possible that people on the right or far-right believe in climate change? Or would you say that climate-change-belief (and thus, believing that something has to be done about it) is fundamentally left / far-left, and the former makes you the latter?

Re: Horse-manure prediction

[mi]

I mean, is that even possible that people on the right or far-right believe in climate change?

Though I've never encountered such a person, it is possible, they exist.

would you say that climate-change-belief (and thus, believing that something has to be done about it)

Believing in it and believing something has to be done about it are two very different things. I believe in gravity, for example...

fundamentally left / far-left, and the former makes you the latter

The urge to control other people — to compel them to do, what you view as worthwhile — and to ban, what you believe is wrong — makes you an Authoritarian. Though the Right aren't immune to that sentiment, in the past few decades it's been the Left's exclusive.

The question never asked

[ToddN]

You see all kinds of articles bandying about the "9 billion people by 2050" figure.

Not a single one ever asks "wait a minute, maybe there shouldn't BE 9 billion people by then?"

Re:The question never asked

[gweihir]

Quite a few people with actually working minds ask it. The rest is dominated by religion, selfishness and an insane belief in growth and cannot even see the extremely obvious problem, because their minds are broken and do not work. The average person does not even understand simple things.

Re:The question never asked

[DontBeAMoran]

Japan is still working on their "Godzilla" solution.

Re: The question never asked

[jd]

If talking is dictating, democracy is slavery and war is peace.

Besides, if you want to talk about dictating, start with the religious and the Tea Party. They're the ones who will not tolerate dissension and who demand everything is their way.

In Britain, it's the religious who are threatening to overthrow May's government if they don't have things their way.

When was the last time you heard threats to depose a government by a geneticist or mathematician?

Re: The question never asked

[jd]

No, it isn't, and nobody but the white extremists have ever claimed that.

The rule is that you must have a rule that is equal and equitable. That's it.

Re:The question never asked

[gweihir]

You do not understand how this works: I am well aware that basically all authoritarians justify their actions using the presence of a serious threat. That is not the problem and that part of the argumentation is actually valid. The problem with authoritarians is that they routinely manufacture the threats and lie about them and never restrict their authority to actually dealing with these threats only.

So yes, I would force the fight against the existential threat of climate change on people, but only this.

Re:The question never asked

[Whorhay]

I agree in large part that curbing population growth would be the best solution. The problem is that the only morally justifiable way to accomplish that is to lift a very large majority of the population of the world up to first world standards. Practically speaking every other method is very likely to just lead to more suffering and evil shit.

The problem with bringing most other countries into the first world is that it's a very expensive proposition, in every way you can measure. Those costs are increased even more by the corruption that is rife in the developing world. And of course there is still corruption and no lack of people in the 1st world countries that will exploit every opportunity to maximize their own personal profits. The most precious resource though is time, and of course there is likely just not enough of it. To affect the kinds of changes in cultures that lead to populations stabilizing we likely need multiple generations of relative prosperity.

In the end I don't think we'll see people sharply cut back on the amount of meat they eat. Instead we'll see meat incrementally increase in price relative to other food sources because of demand increasing faster than supply. This process has actually already been happening for centuries. Our ancestors frequently ate much more meat than we do today.

Re:The question never asked

[Mashiki]

So you're a simple authoritarian, who believes that "intervention" aka "imperialism" is the solution to countries who don't bow to your view of how things should be.

Re: The question never asked

[Mashiki]

If talking is dictating, democracy is slavery and war is peace.

Except that's not what they said. Read their other replies, and you'll figure it out.

Besides, if you want to talk about dictating, start with the religious and the Tea Party.

You mean the same tea party that thew out neocons because of their lust for wars? Wanted smaller government and less taxation? Hey did you notice where all those neocons went? To the democrats, progressives. Noticed how well and warmly they were welcomed and with open arms?

They're the ones who will not tolerate dissension and who demand everything is their way.

Really? I don't seem to remember them beating the piss out of people for refusing to align their political beliefs to them. Or openly advocating for violence. Hell they even picked up after themselves when they had protests and didn't leave trash around. Want to see what a group that doesn't tolerate dissent looks like? Try the democrats, their pundits who make comments like, might go take a look at CNN's pundits a few days ago. How about antifa, who assault people who don't fall in line?

In Britain, it's the religious who are threatening to overthrow May's government if they don't have things their way.

Yeah but "what" religious. It's not Christians now is it, since they constitute what 8% of the population. But you sure do have all those muslims making those demands, and of course you've also got a rampant anti-semitism problem in UK politics too...gee...I wonder what from?

When was the last time you heard threats to depose a government by a geneticist or mathematician?

Haven't been paying attention to the communist agitators in your local university have you?

Re: The question never asked

[Raenex]

Your early 2000s view of politics is quaint.

Re:The question never asked

[AmiMoJo]

It will be extremely difficult to avoid 9 billion by 2050 because a lot of those people are already alive. The fertility rate is actually reaching replacement rate already, countries like Bangladesh have gone from an average of 9 children per woman to around 2.2 now. 2.2 is replacement level due to untimely deaths.

The reason the population continues to increase is that people are living longer. People born today can expect to live into their 70s, even in developing countries which will probably reach that level by 2100. So to get the population down we would have to lower the fertility rate below 2.2 and wait until the latter part of this century for it to have a major effect.

The good news is that most of the population growth is in places where there is a lot of scope for sustainable development to support it, primarily Africa. At the current rate we are headed for 12 billion by 2100 which is sustainable with modern environmentally responsible farming methods.

Not going to work

[pak9rabid]

Getting large swaths of people to agree on anything, much less actually changing their ways, isn’t going to happen, and any plan that relies on that will fail miserably and shouldn’t even be considered as a viable option.

What’s ultimately going to save us from climate change are advances in technology (green renewable energy, electric vehicles, carbon capture devices, etc) that will allow people to largely preserve their current way of lives. Our focus should be on advancing these technologies and breaking the barriers that are currently making them difficult or impossible to implement.

Re:Not going to work

[gweihir]

I don't think so. New technology is advancing far too slowly, because old tech is making some people still extreme amounts of money.

Re:Not going to work

[cascadingstylesheet]

Getting large swaths of people to agree on anything, much less actually changing their ways, isn’t going to happen, and any plan that relies on that will fail miserably and shouldn’t even be considered as a viable option. What’s ultimately going to save us from climate change are advances in technology (green renewable energy, electric vehicles, carbon capture devices, etc) that will allow people to largely preserve their current way of lives. Our focus should be on advancing these technologies and breaking the barriers that are currently making them difficult or impossible to implement.

Precisely so.

And those are the only gains that have been made. There wasn't any mass movement to go back to stone age lives.

Re:Not going to work

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

True.

Also, make fewer people.

Or, we could..

[cyberchondriac]

How about we just eat people .. at least until the population gets back down to 3 billion. Set up a lottery. Problem solved.
Human - the other, other, white meat*. Yummy.

*No that has nothing to do with skin color, it's based on an old pork industry slogan

Re:Or, we could..

[DontBeAMoran]

As long as vegetarians and vegans are excluded from your meat-eater lottery, I think it's a great idea. Either you stop eating meat now or you may become meat yourself.

What about...

[thePsychologist]

What about people who can't digest beans easily? As far as I know there are quite a lot of them. I would think that a far more sensible solution is lab-grown meat, which wouldn't contain the fibrous material in beans that is indigestible to many.

Re:What about...

[Oswald McWeany]

What about people who can't digest beans easily? As far as I know there are quite a lot of them. I would think that a far more sensible solution is lab-grown meat, which wouldn't contain the fibrous material in beans that is indigestible to many.

Gluten! It was a popular healthy protein used in vegetarian "pseudo-meats" before new age millennials invented having gluten-sensitivities.

Re:What about...

[mspohr]

The indigestible fibrous material in beans (also vegetables, grains, etc.) is actually good for you. It soaks up the toxins and prevents bowel cancer.

Re:What about...

[religionofpeas]

There's actually very little evidence of a causal effect between fiber and bowel cancer.

Re:What about...

[mspohr]

It's not a causal effect. It a preventive effect.

Re:What about...

[religionofpeas]

Ok, in that case: there's actually very little evidence of causal effect between lack of fiber and bowel cancer.

Or limit population growth...

[siege72]

Switching to a plant based diet will reduce your carbon footprint by less than one ton/year. Having one fewer child will reduce it by _60_ tons per year.

Source: http://www.sciencemag.org/news...

The CO2 impact of children is the equivalent of burning a 55 gallon drum of oil, per week, per child.

Re:Or limit population growth...

[mspohr]

Switching to a plant based diet has the same beneficial effect on the climate as giving up driving your car.

The earth could easily support ten times current population if people stopped eating meat.

www.cowspiracy.com

Re:Or limit population growth...

[religionofpeas]

Also, don't have pets. A lot of meat is grown specifically for pet food.

And don't eat too much. Eating more than you need is a total waste of resources.

Re:Or limit population growth...

[religionofpeas]

The earth could easily support ten times current population if people stopped eating meat.

Total bullshit. Meat makes up a small percentage of all the resources we use up.

Even without meat, we can't even support current population.

Re:Or limit population growth...

[mspohr]

Meat takes about one square meter of land (and corresponding amounts of water, fertilizer, etc.) to produce a gram of protein.
Plants take about 0.01 square meter of land.
Meat takes 100 times as many resources as plants.

Re:Or limit population growth...

[CrimsonAvenger]

Even without meat, we can't even support current population.

Oh? Have there been some recent famines that I managed to miss?

Note that when I was a kid, famines in India and such places were fairly common. Now? Not so much. Don't recall reading about widespread lack of food for millions in 30 years or so....

Re:Or limit population growth...

[religionofpeas]

Oh? Have there been some recent famines that I managed to miss?

No, you forgot to fast forward to the future. When I said "support", I meant it in a sustainable way. As long as we're taking more fossil fuels out of the ground than we're putting in, we're not doing it in a sustainable way. Same goes for fossil aquifers, topsoil, and phosphates to name a few of the many things we're depleting.

Re:Or limit population growth...

[siege72]

"The earth could easily support ten times current population if people stopped eating meat."

The article I mentioned clearly shows that's not the case, as far as environmental impact goes. Would you kindly try using a _rational_ argument?

Re:Or limit population growth...

[DarkOx]

dont have pets
dont eat to much
dont ...

See the problem with that is things like eating and having pets are joyful and fulfilling experiences. If you start making these long lists of donts and cants what is the point the point of it all?

I am not saying I'd kill myself if you forced me to give up my cat and replace all the beef in my diet with kale but I sure as heck might try to kill you!

Re:Or limit population growth...

[jtalle]

Exactly.

Well we could curb population growth

[edris90]

It's always more than one way to approach the problem. It Is more ethical to prevent a life then it is to allow an existing life to suffer. So adjust our environment to to make a successful pregnancy more difficult to achieve.

Ok, Greens.

[mujadaddy]

Let's assume that particulate carbon increases the retained atmospheric heat.

How long will it take to counteract this process by reducing human-generated carbon?

Show your work.

I don't think you're thinking this through.

Re:Ok, Greens.

[mspohr]

Particulate carbon is a problem but CO2, methane and other human generated gasses are a much bigger problem.
We need to stop burning fossil fuels.
We need to stop eating meat.

Re:Ok, Greens.

[mujadaddy]

Hello. That does not answer the question.

The question is, how long is the rehabilitation going to take, realistically? And the answer is thermodynamic in nature.

Re:Ok, Greens.

[mspohr]

You can googleit, lots of people have studied it. However, you're missing the point that carbon particulates are not the main problem.
The theory of the role of CO2 in Climate change didn't start with a graph.. it started with physics. Is there an explanation to how we can add >6,701,400 TWh/yr from radiative imbalance without heating the planet? What is it? Is the math wrong? If it's right how can global warming be false?

Air temperature is completely irrelevant to any informed discussion of manmade global warming. The fixation on air temperature by denier commentators and the media is an irritating distraction as it disregards basic laws of physics (which are taught in grade 11 in high school):

- The conservation of energy is a fundamental concept of physics - the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system cannot change. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
- When assessed from the top of the atmosphere, the earth is in substance a closed system, subject only to the incoming and outgoing flows of radiative energy.
- NASA has repeatedly confirmed that manmade greenhouse gas emissions are causing a net energy imbalance of approximately one half Watt per square metre the top of the atmosphere. See: http://phys.org/news/2012-01-n...
- This surplus energy (equivalent to roughly the energy which would be released by the detonation of 300,000 Hiroshima bombs each and every day) is for the most part accumulating in the oceans, from which it will eventually find its way back into the atmosphere and increase the air temperatures on Earth.
- As previously noted, numerous studies have fully accounted for the additional energy which is accumulating in the deep oceans as a consequence of manmade global warming.
- The continuing massive additions to the total energy of the globe means that any apparent delay in the continuing increases in air as well as water temperatures are bound to be short lived, as water temperatures continue to rise.
- The all-time record high global monthly temperatures for May and June of this year suggests that some of the energy accumulating in the oceans may well be making its way back into the atmosphere.

I would ask those who believe there to be any doubt about AGW to posit a credible theory and some evidence that the planet is not in an energy imbalance (the energy imbalance has been repeatedly demonstrated by the vast majority of peer reviewed scientific studies, and has been accepted by all national and international scientific bodies of any standing).

Or, alternatively, explain how they have managed to repeal the law of conservation of energy, such that the additional energy trapped by the AGW energy imbalance is magically disappearing rather than accumulating in the oceans from which it will eventually find its way back into the atmosphere and increase the air temperatures on Earth.

Re:Ok, Greens.

[jeff4747]

Let's assume that particulate carbon increases the retained atmospheric heat.

Why? CO2 isn't "particulate carbon".

Re:Ok, Greens.

[mujadaddy]

doubt about AGW

You misread me -- my question is NOT regarding the warming.

If we accept the inputs are creating an output, what on Earth makes you conclude that the actions we take in the midst of a massive human output of "bad X" will, in fact, minimize the impact of a global trend which is causing immediate, measurable harm? The plans you seem to advocate will take a thousand years to impact what is already set in motion.

You see, we are a global society, which makes global waste, which turns, in part, to heat. That heat will cook the poor.

It will be ugly, brutish and nasty. And pretending it won't happen is folly.

Re:Ok, Greens.

[mujadaddy]

OMFG nerd STFU if you have nothing to contribute. This is about policy, not science.

Re:Ok, Greens.

[mspohr]

Pretending that you can't do anything about it is folly.

Re:Ok, Greens.

[mujadaddy]

Pretending? I can't do anything about it. I'm outnumbered by morons.

Re:Ok, Greens.

[mspohr]

Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
Is that only for poor people?

Re:Ok, Greens.

[mujadaddy]

Everyone is pretending. Everyone plays make-believe to support their own side.

Pretending that you can control everyone is folly. Wanting to is worse.

The plans you seem to advocate will take a thousand years to impact what is already set in motion.

It will be ugly, brutish and nasty. Pretending it won't happen in our lifetime is folly. Pretending you can stop it in a dozen lifetimes probably is, too.

Re:Ok, Greens.

[mujadaddy]

What the fuck are you talking about? I am poor, and you probably are too.

Re:Ok, Greens.

[jeff4747]

If your policy is utterly detached from reality, AKA science, then you're going to produce bad policy.

And the real problem: 10 Billion people

[gweihir]

If the human race does not get that problem under control fast, nothing else will save it.

Re:And the real problem: 10 Billion people

[Gravis Zero]

If the human race does not get that problem under control fast, nothing else will save it.

This is perhaps the problem that humans are best equipped to handle. I mean, we could wipe out billions of people in less than an hour. ;)

Re:And the real problem: 10 Billion people

[Ichijo]

In the USA, the right has an unwritten plan to control population: keep refugees of violence out, keep the poor poor, keep health care unaffordable, keep guns in the hands of unstable people, arm the police with military equipment, start some wars, use density limits to limit the population-carrying capacity of the land, etc.

The left is unrolling the right's efforts to curb population by working to make everyone healthy and prosperous.

Unfortunately, the right is also trying to make the planet inhospitable to all life. A post-human Earth would look very different if the right had their way versus the left, and might lead to no intelligent species ever inhabiting the Earth again.

Re:And the real problem: 10 Billion people

[rogoshen1]

you do sound like a horrible, pretentious snot though.

Re:And the real problem: 10 Billion people

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

If the human race does not get that problem under control fast, nothing else will save it.

Skipping dictatorships and war, free people solve problems faster than they become major problems, leading to a steady increase in measurements of average health, wealth, and longevity, and progress in invention.

10 billion people would be significantly better than today, which is phenomenal compared to 50 years ago, and so on.

So much so you can't even predict what life would be like in 100 years.

You can less predict that than people in 1900 could predict today.

This isn't to say unconstrained pollution can't be an issue, but the screaming hyperbole of topics like this that ignore the reality serve no one.

Re:And the real problem: 10 Billion people

[Raenex]

The left is unrolling the right's efforts to curb population by working to make everyone healthy and prosperous.

Because it worked so well in Venezuela?

Here's where the population growth is coming from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

But it's so kind of you to want to take all these people in.

Re:Save The Planet!

[ToddN]

Nah, I'd rather that the 2.5 billion future assholes in the pipeline just never get born.

Re:Laughing out loud

[Anonymous Coward]

PETA is on board the global warming hoax, apparently.

You tell'em Billybob! I live here in Buttfuck, Potatohoe, US of Fucking A! Ain't no one gonna take my gas/Diesel guzzling pickup truck, guns, burgers, Bible, and football! It's all a hoax to destroy Capitalism!

And those Liberuls, gays, and immigrants want to take all that away from us God Fear'in 'Muricans!

I'm just glad that there's a billionaire who inherited most of his money in the Whitehouse who is gonna watch out for my white working class ass interests! You know he will!

I can tell! My standard of living isn't declining as fast as we originally thought. And "free" health insurance? Fuck that! The free markets will take care it! So what that the insurance in my Medicaid non-expansion state costs twice as much as a make in a month. Our Republicans had to put a stop to that Socialist Obamacare and not accept federal money to help make it affordable. Because Barack HUSSEIN Obama! (Notice how clever I sound when I yell his middle name like it means something bad.)

Yours,

Elroy (Bubba) Jediah Jones.
"Government Sucks!"

*Posted from the Libraries free computers*

Re:Stop eating meat?

[jellomizer]

We can eat meat, we just need to produce less of it. Or come up with methods to raise meat with less of an impact.
Also in terms of environmental impact not all meat is equal. Meat from small animals that grow up rather quickly and don't need to eat so much have a better impact per pound of meat then a larger animal does.
Also we as spoiled Americans only like to eat particular parts of the animal while we toss out other parts of if we lucky we try to ship it oversea.

Also we should consider vegetarian meals as a type of meal not a life style or political view. Where we can have a vegetarian lunch, but some meat for dinner.

Now with all that being said, Wheat and vegetable production isn't necessarily green food either.

Where did this line of thinking originate?

[anegg]

Let me guess... the folks who already think everyone else should stop eating meat, I bet.

Yuck, beans

[DarkRookie2]

Do these people not know that beans taste and feel terrible to eat.

Re:Stop eating meat?

[Oswald McWeany]

Over my dead body.

Depends on how well cooked your body is.

Re:Stop eating meat?

[Bert64]

What's being advocated is reducing the animal population to allow a matching increase of human population..
The end result is the same, humans also produce quantities of shit and piss just like animals.

Animal waste is also generally used to fertilise crops, whereas human waste generally is not. With a massive reduction in the production of animal waste, you'd require an increase in artificially produced chemical fertilizers.

Re:Stop eating meat?

[Oswald McWeany]

It's not about stop eating meat dumbass, it's about reduction. Eating meat isn't really the issue, depending on the place you live in, meat is the only really viable source of calories anyway, because humans can't process the shit that grows there naturally. Thinking that eating a bucket of chicken wings every day should be the norm is a problem.

Mass livestock farming of pigs, cows, or even chicken is an environmental issue because it wastes a huge amount of resources that could be used otherwise and creates huge amounts of waste in form of animal shit and piss. But who cares about clean water, right?

I could really do this. I could easily cut half... three quarters of meat out of my diet. I love meat- but there are lots of meatless dishes that are good too. India has some fantastic vegetarian dishes. I could quite happily eat some vegetarian Indian meals a couple days a week. I love red beans and rice (and black beans and rice too).

I love meat- but I could adapt to eating less without it impacting my life in a major way.

So we have to replace cow farts by human farts?

[bluegutang]

More seriously: didn't they figure out that adding seaweed to cow feed results in a massive decrease in cow methane production?

Re:So we have to replace cow farts by human farts?

[RyanRife8866]

It's also the fact that it takes lots of land to raise cows, so we need to find a way to raise wild cows on seaweed.

We need Thanos!

[RyanRife8866]

We need a Thanos-like solution to fix this problem.

Re:We need Thanos!

[Mashiki]

You mean the guy who's so in love with death he wants to kill half the universe to prove that he really loves her? Don't we have enough problems keeping China from engaging in "imperialism"(that westeners who protested european powers of doing are silent on), or stopping slavery. Do we really want someone like that instead?

Re:We need Thanos!

[Cro Magnon]

Depends on which half gets killed.

Re:We need Thanos!

[Mashiki]

Depends on which half gets killed.

Good question, so I'm guessing you're volunteering first? I mean he did give people that option.

Welp earth is fucked

[aepervius]

There is no way whatsoever I am giving up meat. I am ready to reduce many things leading to CO2. But food enjoyment ? I am rioting if anybody try to pass a law stopping beef raising.

Re:Welp earth is fucked

[Mab_Mass]

There is no way whatsoever I am giving up meat.

Ok, what about giving up factory-farmed meat? I'm talking about that super-cheap, wrapped in plastic meat.

How about instead you continue to eat meat, but only meat that is sustainably raised? This requires more work from you as the consumer, but it is worth it. For example, I have some pork from a local producer that raises pigs on old farmland turned to pasture with the pigs spending the fall months fattening up on acorns from some adjacent woodland. It is more expensive than anything you can get at the Walmarts of the world, but it is way tastier - easily the best pork I've ever had.

If you are serious about changes to reduce CO2 AND you love good food, I highly suggest looking for locally sourced, sustainable meats.

If God didn't want us to eat animals...

[sgage]

If God didn't want us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them out of meat.

Seriously, humanity needs to start considering whether there is any way to control population. I am not sure that there really is. Population will simply grow until we eat the planet. Sad.

Re:If God didn't want us to eat animals...

[jcr]

The population will level off as prosperity increases. Japan and several European countries are already below replacement levels.

-jcr

Re:If God didn't want us to eat animals...

[Pinky's Brain]

Half of Africa is getting ready to migrate to Europe and Europe doesn't have the determination to stop them. Partly because the media keeps screaming about climate refugees while their reduction in per capita water resources because of population growth dwarfs that because of climate change.

Re:If God didn't want us to eat animals...

[RightwingNutjob]

There is. Stop fucking after the third or fourth kid.

Re:If God didn't want us to eat animals...

[rogoshen1]

RIP Europa.

Hopefully the upcoming revolts come before too much damage is done.

Re:If God didn't want us to eat animals...

[jeff4747]

And Europe needs those immigrants because the internal birth rate is below replacement rate.

Japan's economy has been in deep trouble for the last few decades because their birth rate is below replacement and they more-or-less do not allow immigration.

As for Africa itself, birth rate is plummeting. It was quite high before, so it still has a ways to go.

Re:If God didn't want us to eat animals...

[jeff4747]

Population will simply grow until we eat the planet.

Except population growth is leveling off. The developed world is at or below replacement rate (2.1 kids per woman). The places that used to have very high birth rates (>5/woman) now have much lower birth rates (~3/woman) and those birth rates continue to drop.

It turns out there is a way to control population. Educate girls.

Re:If God didn't want us to eat animals...

[jeff4747]

Most of them end up in welfare or the exact same work which is disappearing any way because of automation

[Citation Required]

Also, your alternative is to not have enough young people to support your economy, as Japan does.

Re:If God didn't want us to eat animals...

[Pinky's Brain]

Lets take a large central African immigrant population in my country, Somalians ... over half of the potentially economically active Somalians are on welfare.

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017...

We won't have enough qualified young people to support our economy either way, but now we ALSO have to support all these extra people on welfare. Sure in theory we could reduce welfare and force them into the labour pool by creating more low paid jobs, like the US does, but as I said they all vote for leftist parties.. This will eventually destroy our economic competitiveness and unlike Japan we don't have social cohesion to keep our best and brightest in our borders as the economy takes a consistent downturn.

Massive brain drain is the future of Western Europe. For the moment highly industrious Eastern Europeans immigrants (minus the gypsies) are still offsetting the less useful immigrant streams (gutting the Eastern European countries in the process). That can't last though, Europe is a dead man walking.

Re:If God didn't want us to eat animals...

[jeff4747]

over half of the potentially economically active Somalians are on welfare.

In the short term. Longer-term, they work. You're getting a flood of refugees so you're getting more people in that short-term situation. Presumably they will end up like previous immigrants who did the exact same thing and ended up working.

Massive brain drain is the future of Western Europe

To where? Those brains going to move to the US and enjoy our low-paid jobs?

Re:If God didn't want us to eat animals...

[Pinky's Brain]

With previous large scale non European immigration, the guest labourers started working immediately and even after 3 generations they are still far behind the native population in educational attainment and labour participation. For refugees it will be far worse, when an entire generation spends its time on welfare it poisons a culture ... it's very hard to get these cultures into the workforce without making welfare much less comfortable and they all vote left, so that's very hard before collapse.

Once collapse comes, communists or fascists will have to solve the problems modern-liberals and poor geography wrought ... best case. We could just become anarchic tribal states like the one Somalians fled.
>To where? Those brains going to move to the US and enjoy our low-paid jobs?
If necessary, sure, they are high attainment individuals ... they'll work themselves up.

Citation needed

[sjbe]

I dunno, worked okay with junk food taxes in some places.

Name one place where taxes resulted in a massive decrease in junk food consumption.

But really the better solution is synthetic meat. Lower environmental impact, fewer antibiotics and other additives, and eventually should be a lot cheaper.

Note that Better Tasting is not among the items you listed. Until better tasting is #1 on the list it's a waste of money, brains, and time even if you manage to convince people that the ick factor doesn't matter.

Re:Citation needed

[AmiMoJo]

I was thinking of alcohol minimum pricing. It's worked in a few places.

I don't see why synthetic meat would not taste great too. The best beef is from cows that live a life of luxury and little stress, and synth meat doesn't have a brain to get stressed...

Re:Stop eating meat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit (pun intended). it's only in idealized ways used as a fertilizer. On a small and local scale that works, sure, but for the large scale crop production that feeds mass livestock breeding we still need tons of artificial fertilizer, which is more effective here than transporting animal crap over huge distances. It's a highly unsustainable model, that's the problem.
Don't get me wrong. I'd be all for using animal waste as fertilizer and all. That way you could have a decentralized agriculture where farmers are highly independent. But the meat that you produce this way is a lot more expensive. Farmers will have troubles staying competitive. If that's not their goal anyway, sure, they can do it. There are homesteaders living happy lives. But that won't cut it for an entire national economy.

Re:Humans are OMNIVORES..

[Rick Schumann]

You think I don't know all that? More of these religious types not only don't believe in climate change, they want the Apocalypse to come, because they fervently believe Zombie Jesus will come down from Heaven to take them all back there with him, and they're making as many babies as they possibly can because they believe those 'souls' need to be born in order to be saved; this is the mentality we're fighting against, which is why I hate religion so much. One way or another the human species is going to become the author of it's own extinction-level event, either through human-caused climate change, war, or stupid bullshit like this, sabotaging everyones' health. The only thing that keeps me from offing myself here and now is that I know I'll at least be able to live out the rest of my natural life in relative comfort and safety, and still have a little fun, and all this bullshit my species is perpetrating on itself won't happen for a few generations after I'm dead.

Population

[reanjr]

Population control is essential to fight this. Meat is not the problem.

Re:Population

[RightwingNutjob]

Population control is a totalitarian's wet dream. It's trotted out as the solution to every problem, whether that problem is current, probable, possible, or entirely made up.

In America we have a system of government that limits the ability of totalitarians to make any headway. We fight it with laws, with traditions, and if need be with the guns most of us keep in our homes. Traditions are the more potent weapon. Maybe "population control" mumbo-jumbo will fly in some third-world shithole where they can't tell a latrine from the dirt floor in their own hut, but we're civilized people and we've been around long enough to know that there's not a damn thing wrong with the way we live.

Re: Population

[reanjr]

Actually, here in the first world, economics have already began to impose population control. The US at least will soon be population negative if it weren't for immigration from the third world.

Re:Laughing out loud

[Chewbacon]

And you're going down with 'em. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Re:Sure...

[mspohr]

Yes, humanity is the problem. We are polluting our environment and changing the climate to the point where it will soon be uninhabitable.
We have a choice. We can learn from science, change our behavior, stop polluting and have a chance of continuing to exist. Or, we can continue as we have been going and die off. The earth doesn't care. We should.

Tough steak

[nhtshot]

I read the article, not the study. But, it's obvious that they're making two very huge assumptions here:
1. World population hits 10B
2. That entire 10B eats like an American/Brit due to rising wages and the ability to afford it

For the sake of argument I'll concede to middle class expansion. Although, that's not really a foregone conclusion.

But, middle class expansion doesn't necessitate eating like an American. The Chinese are a great example of what happens when other cultures are pulled out of poverty. They do eat more meat than they used to, but not even close to Western levels. India is the next "big lump of people" and half of them are vegetarian. Finally, middle class expansion tends to result in smaller families. This is currently true for almost every one of the Western nations, it's also true in China. Even with the one-child policy gone, they're still having fewer children.

Conclusion: Neither 1 nor 2 is very likely. Both of them? Forget about it.

Re:Tough steak

[religionofpeas]

Did they also assume that the 10B would be living in the same kind of house as the typical American/Brit, and drive their SUVs to work ?

Re:Humans are OMNIVORES..

[mspohr]

We need to stop burning fossil fuels. We have renewables (wind, solar, etc.) to substitute.
We need to stop eating meat. We have healthy plant diets. Humans are omnivores and can thrive eating just about anything. There are several billion people who eat primarily plant diets and they have been healthy for millenia.

Just reduce population

[Pinky's Brain]

With a small enough population we can all live in luxury, with a large enough population we can all live in hell.

Where is Tuf with his sterilization fruit tree when you need one.

No thanks...

[ewhenn]

From the Article:
"Feeding a world population of 10 billion is possible, but only if we change the way we eat and the way we produce food,” said Prof Johan Rockström at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.


Yeah, sorry, I'm not interested in changing my food consumption so that people in other countries can have more kids than they can generate resources to care for. I delayed having kids until I was able provide a stable home and adequate resources to raise them, it was a conscious choice. Sorry, but I'm not going to change my ways just because some people who didn't think things through are in a bad spot. How about if you live in a desert you don't have 5 kids?

Re:No thanks...

[AmiMoJo]

That's not the issue. It's not that they can't grow enough food, it's that if everyone eats lots of meat the planet can't sustain the number of food animals and the amount of methane that they produce.

So either you are going to have to tell other people "sorry, I got here first and you will just have to do without meat, now excuse my while I enjoy this steak" or we all get together and find some other solution.

Fortunately synthetic meat looks like it could solve a lot of these issues and be just as delicious, if not more so.

Re: Laughing out loud

[jd]

This would be the hoax started in 1890 by a global elite that didn't exist for another hundred years, thus proving Doctor Who is real.

Synthetic meat

[sjbe]

Real meat makes sense, because the muscle cells get fed real cow's blood, with immense complexity of nutrients that we cannot duplicate.

Well, to be fair we cannot duplicate it now but that isn't evidence that we never could do so. It's entirely conceivable we could even come up with something that is an improvement in both nutrition and taste. Unlikely I'll grant but possible. Just because we lack the technology currently doesn't mean we always will.

In any case I think it's a moot issue because of the ick factor. Butchering meat is gross but we've got a few thousand years of getting used to it and millions of years of evolution as well. Synthetic mystery meat is not something people are going to accept overnight even if all the evidence says it's great - which isn't likely to happen.

Re:Synthetic meat

[religionofpeas]

Well, to be fair we cannot duplicate it now but that isn't evidence that we never could do so.

The important part is to realize that the industry has no incentive. Look at baby formula. Everybody is apparently happy with current product, even though something simple as fatty acid profile from breast milk isn't duplicated. Instead, industry uses cheapest oils they can find to meet minimum standards.

I agree, maybe with billions of investment, we can make an expensive duplication of real blood. In practice, they'll make something that's as cheap as possible that does the job well enough that people aren't dying too soon after they eat it. Preferably addictive.

Re:Synthetic meat

[DarkOx]

I disagree most people eat ground beef patties without any idea how it got from cow to their burger bun. (Hint parts of the process are pretty stomach turning).

I think if made synthetic meat that was similar in taste, mouth feel, and nutrient content but first and foremost appearance to whatever meat product it was replaced - people would by and large eat whichever they could obtain at the least cost.

Obviously on the appearance front replicating ground meat products like burgers, and sausages is going to be most easily achieved.

Re:Synthetic meat

[goose-incarnated]

Synthetic mystery meat is not something people are going to accept overnight even if all the evidence says it's great - which isn't likely to happen.

We don't care what the evidence says it is, we care how it tastes. Lots of synthetic food is more popular than natural food; this would not be the case if people cared about synthetic food.

If the synthetic meat tastes good people will eat it. If it's cheap as well it'll all but drive out real meat, leaving real meat meals as a sign of conspicuous consumption.

Won't happen

[sjbe]

"Asking"...I hope this isn't a veiled "requires forcing" reply.

I don't think you could force it either. Cripes, look at the fit people throw if you just tax some soft drinks a little extra. Asking people to voluntarily exchange a steak for kale will be ignored. Trying to force them to make such an exchange on an ongoing basis will be met with revolution.

Another false binary choice

[WillAffleckUW]

Look, the world is not binary. It's not 100 percent this way or 0 percent this way.

It's a scale.

The probability is that less than 10 percent of current meat eaters of beef will become vegetarian, and most of those due to heart attacks.

A more likely scenario is if 90 percent of current beef consumers replace beef for all but one to two meals a week, and increase the amount of vegetables, fruits, and nuts gradually over time. It's fairly easy to change your diet slowly, experimenting with different choices, and ignoring all those ads on TV that try to get you to eat beef as manly, when actually any of us who grew up in the boonies know it's more manly to eat bison that grow up on scrub land, and learn how to eat a varied diet.

Re:Another false binary choice

[bussdriver]

You can have meat at every meal if you treat it more like seasoning instead of making nearly the whole meal a slab of meat! The poor westerners have a long history of stretching out their meat as well due to it's cost.

The Chinese diet (from The China Study) use meat more like a seasoning, an ingredient which gives taste. In big part because of COST this has always been done and their fancy rare special expensive meals will have more meat... so if they had $$$ they'd have turned into us sooner. (source: Asian girlfriend, friends; as in nationality.) It's much more HEALTHY and more sustainable, but no official US movement will happen because of rural lobbying power. The patriot act had beef protectionism written into it!

Re:Another false binary choice

[WillAffleckUW]

Are you saying I could make a dish with only strips of chicken or beef but mostly vegetables, noodles, rice, nuts and fruit?

But that would require ... moderation!

Re:Stop eating meat?

[Oswald McWeany]

I love red beans and rice (and black beans and rice too).

You can't really make red beans and rice without andouille sausage, that's a HUGE flavor component.

You can try vegetarian RB&B, but it really isn't worth eating. I've tried.

You gotta have sausage, and even maybe a little pickle pork in there too.

That's very true... but it doesn't really need a lot of sausage to improve it. Compared to a hamburger and fries, or a steak dinner with potato and salad... RB&R even with sausage uses a lot less meat... ... assuming the goal here is to cut back on meat eaten rather than go cold turkey vegetarian- red beans and rice (even with sausage) is a step in the right direction.

Per this TED Talk, this is 100% backwards

[bjdevil66]

Per this TED Talk, this is 100% backwards. We need to eat MORE cows.

Re:Per this TED Talk, this is 100% backwards

[G00F]

Wow, good link, really opened a new thoughts and I love how the scientist said how wrong he was, and how doing the opposite thing is actually producing results.

Also, the midwest use to have 100,000's of thousands of buffalo, and it's all desert now.

Re:Per this TED Talk, this is 100% backwards

[danlip]

Good link, but he is really saying we need better livestock management, not more livestock. We can use the livestock we have on marginal lands to improve the land and the climate; at the same time we get rid of the feed lots that are raising grain fed cattle.

Re: How about recognizing that corporations do mos

[jd]

I can't see Red Hat generating in a year as much CO2 as all steps in the making, transporting and consuming all the hamburgers all Red Hat employees + users over that same year.

Do you have contrary figures somewhere?

Re:Humans are OMNIVORES..

[Rick Schumann]

We need to stop eating meat.

I disagree and will continue to disagree, and I have fact-based reasons to back my opinions up.</thread>

The Answer Has Always Been

[BlueStrat]

Soylent Green.

They're simply trying to find the right problem.

Strat

Re: Save The Planet!

[jd]

People aren't equal, and one person is truly insignificant.

What we need is to greatly reduce unnecessary duplication of genes. You might find a hundred schizophrenics useful, or a thousand, but not a quarter billion.

You certainly don't need three or four billion neurotypicals. I suspect one is sufficient, since normal genes will exist dispersed across everyone else.

As long as all useful mutations are represented (schizophrenia, bipolar, autism, depression, synaesthesia, tetrachromatism - these are all useful, as are many others) then you don't need specific combinations in individuals.

Individuals have limited worth, there are no souls and acquired knowledge can be acquired through books. You still need people, but people aren't the same as individuals.

Indeed, as the body is a federation of many organisms - you are a gestalt, a superorganism - neither you nor I are individuals.

Bad Question

[skam240]

Your question makes no sense. Cutting back isnt about reversing climate change that's already happened, it's about stopping its continued growth

Re:Bad Question

[mujadaddy]

Cutting back isnt about reversing climate change that's already happened, it's about stopping its continued growth

When do you think the impact of the industrial revolution, to date, will fully be absorbed by the biosphere?

When do you think the reduction of carbon inputs will begin to reduce the impact to the biosphere?

I am asking for an integer, plus or minus a thousand years.

Re:Bad Question

[skam240]

No idea! Maybe try researching things yourself!

If your question is meant to undermine cutting back though, they are certainly dumb questions

Meat Made US What We Are

[sycodon]

As a new study in Nature makes clear, not only did processing and eating meat come naturally to humans, it’s entirely possible that without an early diet that included generous amounts of animal protein, we wouldn’t even have become human—at least not the modern, verbal, intelligent humans we are.

Layman Terms

If you want to get into the weed

The 97% of scientists

[rsilvergun]

who agree that climate change is both real and a threat seem to fail to grasp that. Here's the obligatory XKCD comic

The ruling class has been able to keep the pleebs in line for thousands of years without Climate Change. They've got much, much better tactics to use than a complex boogie man like Climate Change. There's religion, racism, classism, war. All are much more effective at controlling a population. Easier to understand and proven to work. Hell, ignoring the damage from Climate Change is a better bet. It'll result in rampant food shortages, which are always an effective way to keep the working class in line (so long as you control who eats, which the ruling class does).

I don't know if you really believe what you wrote, but, well, this is a science forum, and the science is settled. There's some details to work out, but they're details. Go do some reading on google, and step outside the right wing blogosphere and into actual scientific papers.

Opportunity cost

[Solandri]

Study suffers from a common mistake - failing to account for opportunity cost. It incorrectly compares the environmental impact of livestock versus no livestock.

A proper comparison takes into account opportunity cost - the next most likely alternative. In this case, if we reduced meat consumption, we wouldn't be raising huge amounts of cattle. But neither would we be hunting large grazing herbivores to extinction for meat. Meaning the reduction in cattle would be offset by an increase in buffalo, wild oxen, yak, deer (elk, moose), wild goats, etc. And aside from agricultural runoff and antibiotics, the net environmental impact of the change would be zero.

It also fails to realize that almost all population growth is in developing countries, whereas most meat consumption is in developed countries. In fact several developed nations are experiencing population declines . You cannot take characteristics of the population with nearly zero population growth (rate of meat consumption), and apply it to the totally different population experiencing large population growth. The countries with large population growth are mostly poor nations where people live off subsistence diets consisting of grains and starches. In fact if one were to apply the study's flawed reasoning here, one would conclude that eating meat correlates with reduced population growth. And therefore to prevent the problems caused by a growing population, we need to get more people to eat meat.

Re:Opportunity cost

[danlip]

Your wild herbivore argument is a strawman - you don't need to go to zero meat, you just go to a lot less meat, and if hunting that little bit of meat keeps the wild herbivore population under control that is fine. Wolves and mountain lions work too.

Re:Opportunity cost

[dfghjk]

"Meaning the reduction in cattle would be offset by an increase in buffalo, wild oxen, yak, deer (elk, moose), wild goats, etc. And aside from agricultural runoff and antibiotics, the net environmental impact of the change would be zero." ...yet you have the nerve to say that the study suffers from a common mistake. At least if didn't suffer from your uncommonly stupid mistake.

Re: Laughing out loud

[bluelip]

It's THE protein with a wonderful taste.

If all of the whiners that cry about the climate want to do something, they should be sterilized. It's an easy fix with that will do wonders for this planet.

Well, that's quite over-the-top.

[Pollux]

Talk about hyperbole. But you sound pretty serious about your feelings, so let me address each of your points one at a time.

1) We've been evolving into omnivores for at least a million years.

Not quite. Homo sapiens has been evolving for about 250,000 years, give or take. And we evolved into omnivores mostly because gathering plants and fruits was easier, safer, more reliable, and a more dependable source of food. Meat from hunting was a high-risk-high-reward method of feeding oneself; while more caloric-dense, hunting took days, risks, and many people to do, and many times the hunters came back empty-handed. Evolving into omnivores allowed us to diversify our diets, giving us a greater chance of survival.

2) You can't just decide you're going to be strict vegetarian and not expect to have health problems related to that.

Says who? There's plenty of research supporting the benefits of vegan diets. As long as people watch what they eat to make sure they're consuming appropriate amounts of vitamins, proteins, and lipids, it really doesn't matter what diet they consume.

3) How about instead of screwing with people's diets, we create a timeline to eliminate fossil fuel use entirely, and stick to it?

No complaints. Maybe eliminating fossil fuel use entirely is a bit of a stretch, especially given our dependence on plastics and petro-chemicals, but a significant reduction needs to start now. But when thirty-six percent of the food we grow is fed to livestock, you're fooling yourself if you think that you can do that while advocating for meat consumption.

4) Also how about we stop destroying existing forests and start re-planting them?

Great idea. But then, where will we get the farmland for animal feed?

5) And start controlling our population growth, seeing as how the planet can clearly and objectively only support so many humans at once?

Well, good luck convincing everyone on the planet to stop procreating. Though, in a pure sense of supply-and-demand economics, it's our ability to improve agriculture production that allows us to sustain our population. After all, humans can't live if we can't grow food to feed them. Probably the most important man that nobody's ever heard of is Fritz Haber. It's his invention of the industrial production of nitrogen fertilizer that allowed the population of the planet to quadruple in one hundred years.

6) Why do we need 10 BILLION people alive at the same time? Can we get the nutjob 'quiverfull' religious types to knock it the hell off?

While -some- religious groups have population growth greater than average, most do not. The most influential variables in the United States are youth, fertility, and immigration. So, feel free to complain about the Mexicans, but the religious nutjobs, not so much.

Now that I've addressed your points, I'll take just a moment to make a few of my own. We eat far more than we need to. Given how many resources it consumes, as the parent article references, reducing our meat intake is not a bad t

Re:Well, that's quite over-the-top.

[Rick Schumann]

Humans are not evolved to be vegetarians. PERIOD. You cannot refute this not matter how many paragraphs you vomit all over your keyboard.

Re:Well, that's quite over-the-top.

[religionofpeas]

And we evolved into omnivores mostly because gathering plants and fruits was easier, safer, more reliable, and a more dependable source of food

Try gathering plants (let alone fruits) in the northern latitudes.

Re:Laughing out loud

[lgw]

"Aren't those rednecks funny with their redneck culture, they're not like real people"
"Aren't those gays funny with their gay culture, they're not like real people"
"Aren't those Jews funny with their Jewish culture, they're not like real people"
"Aren't those Blacks funny with their Black culture, they're not like real people"

None of these statements is OK. None of those jokes are funny. It is never OK to "unpeople" someone. It's not a fair tool in a political argument.

Anyone who reads history has seen what lies at the end of that path, and it's not a destination we want to revisit.

I for one welcome our new lab meat overlords

[cshark]

Let's face it, there's no possible way we're going to reduce meat consumption. But the way we make and harvest meat is already changing. Techniques for generating lab grown meat are almost ready for prime time, as well as new robotic farms which are starting to come online in California and Europe. I think the best outcome here is lab meat grown by robots on robot farms that live inside dank maze like underground fortresses of goodness.

Yea right

[rtkluttz]

I'm more likely to be on board with selective culling of PEOPLE than eating less meat. Heck, I'd eat the culled people before I'd stop eating meat.

Re: Laughing out loud

[MachineShedFred]

Bacon.

Next question!

How about....NO!

[Zorro]

Get out of my lunch you bug eating Envirofreaks!

Humans are toxic waste, unfit for eating

[PeterM from Berkeley]

Sorry, but my corpse wouldn't be fit for anyone to eat. I've spent a half-century absorbing and bioaccumulating metals like mercury and other nasty chemicals like PCBs. Not to mention I might have some nasty prions that would really screw someone up if they ate me that I don't yet know about.

No, sorry, most people need to be treated as toxic waste once dead, not treated as food.

--PM

Re:Stop eating meat?

[jeff4747]

Animal waste is also generally used to fertilise crops, whereas human waste generally is not

Treated sewage is commonly used as fertilizer. My city's waste department does it with most of what comes through the drain pipes.

Treat the sewage -> dump it onto a large concrete pad -> wait for it to dry some (it's still sludge-like consistency) -> put it in a truck and haul it to a farm.

I learned this when part of the city smelled awful one year. We had lots of rain that year, so farmers were not using the sludge because their fields were already too wet. So it was piling up at the treatment plant.

Re:Humans are OMNIVORES..

[green1]

I don't think the word omnivore means what you think it does... It doesn't mean we can choose to eat anything we like, it means we get our required nutrients from a variety of foods, INCLUDING meat.

Re:Humans are OMNIVORES..

[Oswald McWeany]

..and we've been evolving into omnivores for at least a million years. You can't just decide you're going to be strict vegetarian and not expect to have health problems related to that.

Well, you can, you just have to pay more attention to what you eat to not be deficient you can get what you need being Vegetarian. Vegan is perhaps more serious. You probably should be taking supplements if you go vegan.

What the studies are suggesting though, are not that we necessarily go vegan or even vegetarian, but cut back on meat. If the average person was willing to eat half as much meat as they do now, it could make a difference, there would be no negative health-consequences; actually, for most people it would be a health benefit. The longest lived societies on earth all eat mostly vegetarian based diets supplemented with just a little meat.

Limit reproduction

[Kohlrabi82]

How about we limit reproduction so that the world population can shrink to a sustainable 3-4 billion, instead of banning habits? Everything human climate change related scales with population, and currently population grows exponentially. Changing behavior in population stagnating western countries will not counteract the effects of the immense growth of population in the rest of the world.

Re:Stop eating meat?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't know much about this.

Here's how medium-to-large sized dairy operations actually work.

1. Get cow stables and barns
2. Get land around stables and barns
3. Get cows and put them in the stables and barns
4. plant feed crops (corn, alfalfa, hay, etc.)
5. Clean the animal waste from the stables and barns into a manure separator
6. Pump wastewater into large waste holding lagoon, where you can then pump it out onto fields using irrigation equipment
7. After harvesting and plowing land around barns, spread manure. Repeat before planting
8. Go to step 4.

Re:Humans are OMNIVORES..

[rogoshen1]

Explain to the class how you'd fertilize the crops without animals (manure) or fertilizer (petroleum) (never mind transportation)
Balanced, small scale ag is what's needed; anything else is just kicking the can down the road.

WRONG WRONG WRONG

[PortHaven]

Google the Great American Dust Bowl...

The issue there was that we cleared out the deep rooted grasses to plant food for human consumption. Corn, gets subsidized for human consumption, and therefore has also become the big feed staple for cows....but get this...cows naturally eat G-R-A-S-S.

So the entire Midwest region's crops are sustained by the depletion of the Ogallala aquifer, which is fast being depleted. In fact, plant edible plants for human consumption is one of the worst climate disasters ever. Rather, we should be restoring the deep rooted drought hardy grasses to the Midwest, and grazing large and small ruminants - cattle, goats, and rabbits. Then eat the meat that is raised from a healthy biome.

Applying math to crop production without taking into account the various biomes leads to inaccurate data and meaningless conclusions.

Re:WRONG WRONG WRONG

[bussdriver]

The vast majority of corn is INDUSTRIAL and completely not edible by humans. It's really heavily subsidized not for humans... for rural welfare and industrial welfare (ethanol being the extreme case.) It's another fine mess NIXON brought us by screwing up our whole farming system. High fructose corn syrup, HMOs ... thank Nixon.

On the contrary!

[zmooc]

A huge increase in meat-eating would probably be one of the best approaches to solving our climate problems once and for all.

Humans ARE carniverous

[RogueWarrior65]

We have canine teeth and binocular vision. Ergo predators. QED.

Re:Stop eating meat?

[LunaticTippy]

I've been using chorizo to flavor beans I generally use beef or pork. Lately I've been seeing soy chorizo, soyrizo they call it. It tastes good. Some soyrizo I've had is better than the low grade meat based stuff.

Re: Laughing out loud

[q_e_t]

I know several vegans, and never met any remotely like what you describe.

We already have

[rsilvergun]

in any place where religion doesn't prohibit birth control and sex ed. If anything we've got the reverse problem. From Japan to America to Scandinavia birth rates are below sustainability. Usually hovering around 1.8 or so.

Animals will breed to the limits of their environment. Humans, not so much.

Re:Humans are OMNIVORES..

[mspohr]

I think you answered your own question.

Re:Humans are OMNIVORES..

[mspohr]

It means we can get nutrition from a wide variety of sources. It doesn't mandate any particular source.

(I can't believe I'm arguing with these idiots.)

Re:Humans are OMNIVORES..

[rogoshen1]

So your original post should have been 'we need to stop large scale factory farming', vs eating meat?

Not really news.

[Qbertino]

The eco-balance of meat is abysmal. This is common knowlege. Don't even need to track meat related greenhouse gases to get to that conclusion. Water pollution and antibiotics abuse / resistance alone push meat off the charts right up there with 60ies coal-powerplants and 3rd-rate toxic waste management. SARS, BSE and other pathogens are directly related to current-day mass meat production. If one of those goes haywire, we're doomed. Big time "Contagion" movie style - good film btw., you should watch it.

Bottom line:
Eat meat consciously. 1-2 times a month, organic, from local farmers you know don't use antibiotics and feed real greens. You'll taste the difference *and* do some good.

Um.. No..

[thesupraman]

Just as soon as you grow the required multiple stomachs to process grasses.

Oh dear, you didnt realise a large amount of the worlds sheep/cattle are raised on pasture?
You didnt realise that the USs disgusting 'feed lot' system isnt the norm, and other countries generally avoid such fucked up approaches?

Next you will be worrying about how much water the cattle 'consume' because as we know they have internal fusion reactors, and they
dont just piss the water back out half a day later, as it returns to the natural cycle, and is cleaned up through the soil in a matter of weeks.

Re:Um.. No..

[Darinbob]

The US doesn't eat sheep for the most part; lamb is popular for richer people, but almost no one eats mutton in western countries. Cattle are often grass fed but this is becoming less common, and almost all are fattened up in the last few months on corn and such, in the US at least, becauses fatty meats sell better than lean.

As for pasture, yes, they eat grass. But much of that grass will come in the form of hay, because naturally grown grass isn't there year round, and they're putting more cows in the same amount of area than they used to these days, at least in the US. Pastures can be overgrazed. And the hay is an agricultural product itself, grown on crop land, irrigated, fertilized, harvested, and delivered. Now certainly this varies by region; my family is in California so things are done differently than in Texas.

Don't forget dairy cattle too, they're rarely fed in pastures.

Re:Um.. No..

[HornWumpus]

All cattle is 'grass fed'. They die without ruffage. The good beef is also fed grain.

Never been to a farm have you..

[thesupraman]

Ignoring the disgusting US 'feed lot' mentality (why is it americans seem to think 'intensive' is always 'better'?) do you not realise
that most of the worlds cattle are grown on pasture?

The cattle use this amazing technology called legs to wander around and eat that pasture, which is made mostly of grasses, which are
both very efficient at growing, and not digestible to humans. Non intensive farming throughout most of the world required little if no additional
water outside the stuff that falls from the sky, and a very small amount of fertiliser/chemicals (generally in the region of one application every several years,
often lime around here, but that varies depending on region).

As to space - you need to get out more, really.

But no, I'm sure from your city appartment you spend hours pouring over PETA horror stories of US feed lots (which are both terrible, and stupid).
Still, whatever makes you feel morally superior I guess. As we know your bicycle directly converts CO2 to kittens, so you are doing your bit.
I'll continue to maintain my 5 acres of green trees and gardens around the house, which as we know do nothing but rape the earth mother.

Re:Never been to a farm have you..

[damn_registrars]

do you not realise that most of the worlds cattle are grown on pasture?

However the American consumer consumes more beef than any other consumer in the world. Which is why we grow the majority of our cattle on

US 'feed lot' mentality

In order to get more beef in less time for less money. I don't know where you live but I can tell you that I can buy grass-fed beef at the grocery store where I live but it comes at a significant premium over the feed lot produced.

But no, I'm sure from your city appartment you spend hours pouring over PETA horror stories of US feed lots (which are both terrible, and stupid). Still, whatever makes you feel morally superior I guess. As we know your bicycle directly converts CO2 to kittens, so you are doing your bit. I'll continue to maintain my 5 acres of green trees and gardens around the house, which as we know do nothing but rape the earth mother.

You've gone well past hyperbolic there, friend. I eat meat. I live in the suburbs. I drive a car. I'm not trying to tell anyone to change their diet, I'm merely saying there is a good chance that eventually market forces will force all of us to do that.

Re:Never been to a farm have you..

[martinX]

Fear not. Soylent green is on its way!

Re: Humans are OMNIVORES..

[mspohr]

We need to stop all industrial meat production.

Re:Are you truly so naive?

[DigressivePoser]

Carl Sagan was on the global cooling bandwagon as late as 1980. He thought deforestation could cause us to turn into Mars.

And just to add a bit more information..

[thesupraman]

https://www.medicaldaily.com/vegetarians-cause-more-greenhouse-gas-emissions-meat-eaters-worst-foods-environment-365398
"Eating lettuce is over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon,"
"Lots of common vegetables require more resources per calorie than you would think. Eggplant, celery, and cucumbers look particularly bad when compared to pork or chicken."

But dont let facts get in the way..

Re:And just to add a bit more information..

[martinX]

Eggplant, celery, and cucumbers look particularly bad when compared to pork or chicken."

I think that's probably true regardless of how much water us used :-)

Re:Laughing out loud

[lgw]

I find it odd that you consider it a left/right issue.

I don't know if all vegetarians are lefties, but all vegan evangelists that won't shut up about it are lefties.

Howsabout "Nah"

[Chas]

There are other ways to more drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions .

Why is every "solution" being presented the equivalent of "Go shiver in a cave and eat grass!"?

Re: Laughing out loud

[HornWumpus]

To turn your anecdote into a data point, we need to know how batshit and bipolar you are.

'Never met any remotely like' sure sounds like bullshit. There's a % in every population, 'no worse than any other group' is a huge stretch in my experience. Given the known number of _batshit_ eating disorder people that take on veganism/vegetarianism as cover.

Re:Laughing out loud

[HornWumpus]

They're called 'watermelons', green on the outside, red to the core.

It's common among the deranged greenies, less so away from the lunatic fringe.

Re: Laughing out loud

[aliquis]

"The chicken population would get out of control!"
"A cow would eat you if it could!"

Re:Stop eating meat?

[HornWumpus]

Human waste is used as fertilizer for animal feed, and vice versa. It's a bad idea to use shit to fertilize food for the same creature.

Very easy solution

[smooth wombat]

Get rid of five billion or so humans. Meat consumption, and the necessary infrastructure which is supposedly the problem, will plummet.

Either that or we go out into space and bring back a giant ice cube which we drop in the ocean.

We can't fight climate change as individuals

[Dixie_Flatline]

https://www.theguardian.com/en...

tl;dr 70% of emissions come from 100 corporations, and we know who they are. Anything you do as an individual is effectively irrelevant, and only collective action through the governments we elect can do anything right now.

To wit:
"If affordable mass transit isn’t available, people will commute with cars. If local organic food is too expensive, they won’t opt out of fossil fuel-intensive super-market chains. If cheap mass produced goods flow endlessly, they will buy and buy and buy. This is the con-job of neoliberalism: to persuade us to address climate change through our pocket-books, rather than through power and politics.

Eco-consumerism may expiate your guilt. But it’s only mass movements that have the power to alter the trajectory of the climate crisis. This requires of us first a resolute mental break from the spell cast by neoliberalism: to stop thinking like individuals."

So vote. If you care, voting for a serious government that plans to tackle this problem on our collective behalf is your most meaningful action.

Re:population in the east needs to fall 90%

[bluegutang]

Well, the 1.3 billion people in India aren't eating many cows...

B12

[Count Fecal]

The only place vitamin B12 occurs in nature is animal products.
Are the results of this study repeatable?

The answer is less people...

[ClarkMills]

...people want lots of food but also cars, houses, mobiles, children, holidays... and the powering/maintenance/upgrading of most them all too...

Why should a standard of living be lowered?

[AHuxley]

Normal advanced nations can enjoy the food they want. Let people shop for the food they enjoy.
A person in a free nation be able to select from a range of quality food.

Re:In Soviet USSA, the law breaks YOU!

[Kyr Arvin]

Read the Hammond case. They didn't break the law.

Sure they did. First, no one has the right to graze cattle on federal lands without a permit. You also can't set fires that spread onto federal land, nor can you "light the whole countryside on fire" without a burn permit.

Re:population in the east needs to fall 90%

[holophrastic]

I'm sure they're doing something else to ruin the planet.

Re:Laughing out loud

[Tjp($)pjT]

I’m a second tier vegan, the first tier are generally herbavoirs. I’m second tier, I eat the first tier. ...

But seriously scaffold grown factory beef will likely become more economical before I eat a diet of beans and pulses? And were do those green house gases from meat animals come from? It’s the circle of life. Carbon from the atmosphere is sequestered in plants. Animals eat those plants and release the carbon back into the environment. Same thing happens when people eat beans... burn coal? You’re adding carbon from plants back into the air. For current plants to use.

Re:Laughing out loud

[winse]

It's interesting to watch the double speak and who gets exceptions. This anti meat agenda is an us against them sort of thing much like other socialist crusades. I'm pleased as punch personally when people decide to go vegetarian. That makes my meat cheaper in the short term. Long term though I worry that forbidding meat in general will become fully canonized doctrine in the progressive church and then production will get threatened, taxed, and/or prosecuted even worse than it already is.

Is that the only way to do it?

[jtalle]

If I eat more beans, I'll be more flatulent, increasing my contributions to the problem.

Ever notice how Human Population Reduction or Stabilization is never a part of these proposed solutions? Though I will admit this time they're proposing to reduce the number of cows.

Burger please. Tofu is bad for one's thyroid.

Lots of numbers

[larryjoe]

The basic idea that eating less and raising fewer livestock animals should be beneficial for climate change is fairly intuitive. However, the numbers don't make sense, and unfortunately the Nature article is paywalled, so going off the Guardian article as a summary, how does the following statement make sense: "This flexitarian diet means the average world citizen needs to eat 75% less beef, 90% less pork and half the number of eggs .... This would halve emissions from livestock ..." Assuming that eating 75-90% fewer animals results in the existence of 75-90% fewer animals, how does that reduce emissions from those animals by 50%? Do the remaining animals compensate by emitting more greenhouse gases? And why is it necessary for people in the US and UK to compensate for lower meat consumption with more beans and pulses? Lack of calories is not a prevailing problem in the US and UK. The article rightfully addresses the environmental effects of plant agriculture but doesn't discuss any of the tradeoffs of less animal farming and more plant farming. That's the interesting part, not the round numbers that are proposed and appear to be arbitrary without the underlying mathematical models.

The only interesting part about the Nature article are the details in the proposed models, which I can't see because I'm cheap and won't pay for the article.

Re: Laughing out loud

[Swave An deBwoner]

This, from TFA, doesn't appear to at all agree with your opinion:

In some of the measures, vegetarians were higher than omnivores at baseline, by the way, and in general the memory tests between the two groups did not vary at baseline—the vegetarians just seemed to benefit much more from creatine supplementation.

Re: Laughing out loud

[Swave An deBwoner]

Oops. "TFA" I refer to is your link to "psychologytoday.com". Not TFA of the original post.

Re:Laughing out loud

[G00F]

There are a lot of things you say that I disagree with, and many wrong and ignorant.

But moving Israel embassy to Jerusalem, was doesn't in part to recognize it as their capital. A nation picks their own capital, but for most of the world is refusing to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Like it or hate it, why shouldn't Israeli pick their own capital?

Both the left/right are just as misinformed as each other as they are lost in a sea of group think. In fact that's a problem social media experts didn't expect, but knowledge now.

And "Democrats can't be bothered to vote in any election other than the Presidential" is completely missing the point and a lie. It's almost as bad as blaming russia for Hilary loosing, when she was just a bad and hated candidate. Both parties suffer in none presidential elections. Trump is the symptom that both parties where pushing candidates the people didn't want, and trump slipped in as a R.

Christians hatred of Muslims is mostly a fabrication of one side to make the other side look like villains. While the other side shows Muslims being villains and Christians the victims.

You need to find a way to respect people who do not fit in your group think for what ever reason you come up with.

Re:Laughing out loud

[Krishnoid]

Anyone who reads history has seen what lies at the end of that path, and it's not a destination we want to revisit.

Yup, we're all heading towards a planet where humans evolved into, of all things, vegetarians. Damn you all to hell!!

Easier solution

[hort_wort]

Jonathan Swift proposed a working solution in A Modest Proposal.

Re: Laughing out loud

[Anonymous Coward]

Replace rednecks with (Jews, blacks, women, Hispanics, etc) and you would be the first to call racist.

You are a bigot, hypocrite and racist.

WRONG

[bussdriver]

Our canines are a joke. We have lots of old junk DNA in our systems we no longer need. The vision argument is false. FYI, I'm a meat eater but I'm not going to rationalize lies for my bad habits.
Our digestive systems are the same as primates. They are not carnivores; neither are we. We CAN eat some meat; we are not herbivores. The primary "meat" we are made to eat are BUGS! Go ask a biologist or a specialist in digestive systems or the bacteria system; I have. Our digestive system and support systems are essentially completely different from a carnivore!
QED.
FYI, carnivores hardly eat anything but flesh; just because we can eat some doesn't make us the same... anymore than they are herbivores because sometimes you see your dog eat some grass. Furthermore, don't give me that crap about needing the meat protein - animals don't make them, it all comes from the plants and gets collected in the animal which "extracted" them. (except for a little bit which comes from a few sources, one if I recall was fungi? anyhow, essentially living filthy let you eat enough of that. so it's an issue for vegans to watch today.)

Re:Laughing out loud

[lgw]

"... and it's not a destination we want to revisit." - Speak for yourself. A mass population cull of those redneck American subhumans would do the world a huge favor. We really do need to be rid of them.

The reply, I think you'll find, is "come and take it". You don't think the other side is making lists of names? You know, the side with all the guns? The side who believes "never start a fight, but always finish one"? You're really not thinking this through.

And even if by some miracle you win, read some history! Leftist revolutions always end with those who led the revolution being executed by the brutal dictator who was waiting in the wings to take power.

You really don't want to go there.

Communist?

[bussdriver]

Our current global capitalistic economic system will always promote and result in over population and defend it's unlimited growth. Physics (reality) will dictate the ultimate limitations of how much we plague the planet's ecosystem until a predator emerges...(engineered?)

Seriously, people have to drop their religion and consider changes to the economic system with a rigid control scheme because the near global anarchy we have today suits the unrestrained capitalistic economic system we have. I don't see people capable of instituting anything regulated enough for long periods of time unless we evolve away from greed etc. It doesn't have to go communist; even minor tweaks like regulating CO2 are not going well. The fanatic true believers are imagining ways to profit from mass death; a marketplace that deals in death beyond what we presently have already.

Re:Communist?

[holophrastic]

That sounds really bleak. So let me shine a little light. I'm happy. I don't see all of this doom and gloom. I'm safe, I'm well fed, I'm well housed, I'm well paid. I can agree with your statement that it's global anarchy, but I can also say that it seems to have worked out pretty perfectly for me, for my friends, and for my neighbours.

remember: resource limits!

[bussdriver]

You can't produce enough meat without another planet. just look at the land used for farming now and how much of that goes to producing meat. That is with a minority consuming insane amounts of meat... to the point they die from eating too much meat! You can't ever reach a production level for that consumption level without some fake meat like soylent green.

says the virgin

[bussdriver]

>Stop fucking after the third or fourth kid.
Said like somebody who totally has no clue!

Abstinence education never worked for KIDS who have less sense and impulse control; it will never work on adults!

but seriously: birth control!! Religions have to stop playing political games with reproduction. Governments have to stop lying because they need constant never ending growth to fuel their economic growth systems. The real answer is to fix all males at birth. cheap, easy, simple. Want kids? get unfixed.

Abortion. Again, religions need to STU! Vengeance is mine saith the lord! Stop helping your supposedly all powerful God. FYI, God doesn't need your money either. Another benefit is lower crime rates, child abuse, poverty... and duh, over population.

Sadly

[vbdasc]

Sadly, it seems that we have missed the deadline. We had to act decades ago on this. And by the way, the correct action would be not to limit what people eat, but to limit the number of people, by doing what China was doing, globally. You say, humanity will soon number 10 billion? This is crazy. The Earth just can't feed so many people without slowly but irreversibly depleting its resources and destroying itself. And even if we stop eating meat, what will it accomplish? The problem just will be postponed by 20 or 30 years, the humans will continue to multiply like rabbits, and then the scientists will tell us that the world population now approaches 20 billion and in order to secure food for everybody, we will have to only eat grass? How is this a sustainable solution? I'm sad because humans proved to be an unreasonable species and that ultimately Maltus was right.

Re: Laughing out loud

[q_e_t]

To turn your anecdote into a data point, we need to know how batshit and bipolar you are.

I'm pretty dull and normal. Talking to my wife she says vegans in the USA are often more vociferous, but I haven't personally experienced that in the UK. The craziest things my vegan friends do is like folk music. The UK is pretty tolerant of eccentricity.

'Never met any remotely like' sure sounds like bullshit.

In my case it's true. I know four vegans, and shared a house with one, and folk music is as weird as they get.

Re:Stop eating meat?

[Cederic]

The thing is, a dozen cows will provide pretty much all the meat I'll need for the rest of my life.

If the planet can't sustain the acre of pasture needed to raise those cows (sequentially, because after all I'm not eating them all at once) for me then it's already fucked.

Re: Are you truly so naive?

[Cederic]

Erm. As it happens he did indeed explore the possibility of deforestation leading the Earth into a spiralling cold cycle resulting in more Martian conditions:
https://io9.gizmodo.com/heres-...

Of course, at the same time he contemplated the opposite happening. Venus anybody?

Marketing

[sjbe]

I disagree most people eat ground beef patties without any idea how it got from cow to their burger bun.

People have a pretty darn good idea how ground beef is made or more accurately and more importantly they think they know. I know what you are getting at and some of the industrial scale food processing involves chemicals and procedures many would not recognize and would likely find off putting. But I can go down to my local butcher, buy the ingredients (beef plus some fat) and grind my own beef patties if I want to and so can you so we think we know what we are getting at least in principle. The basic process of what is going on is something most people can wrap their head around just fine even if they aren't paying attention to the details. Synthetic meat grown in a proverbial vat however is something quite different and it will be like trying to convince them to eat cockroaches to get them to consume it regardless of the objective merits (nutrition, taste, cost) of the product.

The hard part really is very likely to turn out to be the marketing of the stuff presuming we figure out the technical details. For a start calling it "synthetic meat" is a perfect example of how not to convince people to eat this stuff. There is an old joke that if you let an engineer market sushi they would have labeled it "cold raw fish" which is accurate but not exactly enticing. Think more along the lines of the Chilean Seabass which is a trade name invented by a fish wholesaler because its proper name, which is Patagonian toothfish, doesn't exactly sound appetizing.

Re:Laughing out loud

[AmiMoJo]

Says the guy who writes off socialists as totalitarians or fools.

You are right about not unpeopling people, just a hypocrite.

efficiency

[nten]

Not eating the organ meats and obsessing about lean cuts is part of the efficiency problem, but also part of the health problem. Organ meats are good for you. I've tried a vegan lifestyle. At least for me, pulse and bean protein doesn't absorb very well. The genetic markers for this have been isolated. I need meat to be my healthiest self. We could crispr the next generation of us to be able to synthesize more amino acids and vitamins and that would help solve the problem too.

No. Just fucking no.

[dschiptsov]

The meat eating as an evolutionary adaptation was exactly what allowed humans to inhabit colder/northern/semi-desert regions, in other words - everything but subtropics where indeed vegetarian (but not vegan) diet is possible (but, obviously, not reasonable - the poorest families who cannot afford anything but local vegies suffer from malnutrition and other imbalance problems.)

Propaganda from the Vegan religion

[DaveV1.0]

Keep your religion to yourselves, vegans.

Re:Europe does not necessarily NEED immigration.

[jeff4747]

Japan's economy is only "in trouble" because of a flawed economic system where everything is expected to continuously grow and keep shareholders happy "or else"

Nope. Japan, like most of the developed world, has a lot of programs to aid seniors. Those programs are paid for by taxes on the two next generations that are still working.

When those next generations are smaller than the one they are supporting, you have a big problem funding those programs.

Also, shrinking populations have problems being sustainable. Because you have fewer workers, your ability to make goods and services shrinks. Which lowers quality of life, and encourages smaller families. Which leads to fewer workers. Which leads to less goods and services. Which lowers quality of life and encourages smaller families. Which leads to fewer workers....

Re: Laughing out loud

[HornWumpus]

Fair enough, count it as two data points. GGP says 50% you say 0%.

Average the two and you match about my experience...25% fully batshit.

Anybody who listens to Joan Baez _is_ batshit.

Re: Are you truly so naive?

[DigressivePoser]

LOL. You forgot to mention the part where the Earth is turned into a doughnut with dead tree sprinkles.

Re:Stop eating meat?

[q_e_t]

I could really do this. I could easily cut half... three quarters of meat out of my diet. I love meat- but there are lots of meatless dishes that are good too. India has some fantastic vegetarian dishes. I could quite happily eat some vegetarian Indian meals a couple days a week. I love red beans and rice (and black beans and rice too).

I love meat- but I could adapt to eating less without it impacting my life in a major way.

I was a vegetarian for a decade. Once avoiding meat is habitual it is easy, as long as you remember to still cook decent food, not just cook vegetables to a pulp and slap them on top of some sort of starch - if that was your only form of vegetarian food you'd give up pretty quickly. But you can make salads, pies, pasta, quiches, souffles, breads, soups, and many other things. Best of all, chocolate is vegetarian. It's not for everyone, of course. And I have had terrible vegetarian food as well as good. And some really terrible stuff.

It's easier when most people you know are vegetarian, or mostly so, though, or those that do eat meat do it at work and don't demand it at dinner parties. But there was a point that most of my friends were wholly vegetarian or mostly so, or even vegan, but that's not a common thing. And it was pretty accidental in terms of how that worked out, but there was a lot of cross over between folk-music nerds and vegetarians at the time.

A manic vegan lunatic wrote this article.

[jerryjnormandin]

I like my rib eye steaks medium rare. I like chicken on the barbie with bacon, cheese and mushrooms.. Swordfish with a hot crushed red pepper rub. The earth has kept things in balance for some time now. If there's an overpopulation, there's a plague to keep the population in check. What we are seeing in our lifetime is dead zones in our oceans. This is due to oxygen depletion in our waters due to algae bloom. The algae bloom is due to high nitrogen in the ocean. The high nitrogen is cause by fertilizer runoff draining into our coastal waters. I'm not going to give up eating farm raised livestock to fix the problem. What should be done is better water remediation. Coastlines should have thick vegetation to absorb the runoff. Poor water mediation is the problem. The red tide bloom around the Florida pan handle is due to poor water mediation management. We don't need to become vegatarians, we just need to be better stewards of our resources.

Everyone seems to avoid....

[fazil]

...that the headline should be:

Huge Reduction in *people* 'Essential' To Avoid Climate Breakdown