Methane rises to highest level on record
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
https://www.smartenergydecisions.com/blog/2020/07/15/burger-...
While population may be a concern, it's not the main problem.
> The richest 10% of people in the world are responsible for around 50% of global emissions
https://oi-files-d8-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-pub...
Take a look at the locust, and how in [1], they say:
"Cheke’s team is recommending a fungus called Metarhizium anisopliae, which kills a locust by growing inside its body."
Typically, when a population becomes unsustainable, as humans are because of their immense requirements over vast decades, we tend to find a way to 'control' that population. Typically, this is by killing them.
Yet, because we have the capability to rationalize we understand vast swarms of locusts are terrible yet vast swarms of humans are just something we have to accept. The idea that we need to kill billions of humans would be unfathomable, yet, reducing our numbers will be the only way to make life on earth sustainable - for all living things. This is something Sir David Attenborough also agrees with [2]. This planet is not, was not and will never be capable of sustaining 8 billion healthy, prosperous humans with fair and equal access to food, water and shelter.
We need to kill, or in some way reduce the number of humans on this planet. Anything else is a gigantic waste of time and will only serve as a distraction and way to make us feel better that we can somehow overcome this earth threatening disease called "human kind". Because of our constant encroachment into nature, we are pushing animals to their limits, which is how great pandemics are developing and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future (e.g wet markets).
Coronavirus is not the worst pandemic we're dealing with right now.
Humankind is.
And whilst we're constantly taking space away from nature, nature will fight back and take away ourselves.
We are the worst problem this planet has.
[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00725-x
[2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-45741482/sir...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/business/global...
Keep in mind that this richest 10% contribute the majority of humanity's value-added commerce and production, cultural output, and scientific output.
For example, Romania has an equal scientific output to Pakistan: https://www.natureindex.com/country-outputs
Despite Pakistan being 212 million people vs Romania 19 million. Pakistan emits 178mt of Co2, vs Romania 79mt (2016). Pakistan's CO2 output is 2.2x greater, but their total GDP is only 1.31x bigger.
When you look at emissions against output, its clear that the West and East Asia are substantially more efficient than other regions on the planet.
I guess my point is if Pakistan were able to keep their population healthy and happy with less GDP per capita, scientific input or output, and less environmental impact per capita than Romania, I'd say they were doing alright.
An artificial virus, deadly and highly contagious, with long incubation periods, forcing people to stay home and sending high CO2 emission industries crumbling into bankruptcy. Look what something as weak as COVID has done in a short amount of time. Also make another virus that can spread through high methane emitting livestock and kills them quickly, and anyone who eats an infected animal.
At the same time if you create a vaccine against the virus, you can sell it to powerful and wealthy individuals on the black market for vast sums of money. There might be riots, but why contain it? Let it spread through the schools and churches.
But people don’t change. They have to be forced to changed.
You're talking like a character from a bad sci-fi movie. And I should know. I've been binge-watching MST3K for a week solid.
As for what the solutions are: Reduce meat consumption, particularly beef, develop better meat/milk/cheese alternatives, replace fossil fuels, for the time that won't be completely possible fix methane leakage in fossil fuel production.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/11/23/1826/how-seaweed...
Every time I looked it up it seems this is based on some very small studies. As far as I know noone has ever implemented this at scale (if you know otherwise - please provide links) and is selling meat produced that way.
Look, I'm not against researching such stuff. But calling that "a pretty simple solution" before this has ever been tried out for real doesn't seem valid.
I don’t have any better idea than you how the science works out, and the supply chain thing sounds nontrivial, but that’s nothing compared to getting masses of people to change their habits.
We can’t talk red staters into take wearing masks for a few months, and next we are going to make them give up bbq?
Over a billion cows are spread over the world. They eat over 10 billion kg of dry food each day. Estimating a 0.5% seaweed supplement, we're talking about 50 million kg of dry seaweed. Assuming a 90% water content, we're talking about 500 million kg of one particular type of seaweed that need to be harvested, dried and shipped all over the world.
Every single day.
And we have to be careful about not depleting natural resources, nutrients and destroying natural habitats.
I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that there's nothing simple about that.
Maybe instead we could find out why this type of seaweed reduces methane generation?
“Maybe instead...” yes, the researches who came up with this are doing that, it’s their job.
Mass-scale seaweed production has been thrown around as a method for sequestering CO2.
Methane itself could be sequestered as well.
Either way, I'm fine with a beef tax to cover some of those costs, but lower-income groups might. I'm not keen on forcing an inferior diet on them.
I am not forcing my standards on lower income people anyway, but supporting a tax that hurts them and not me seems wrong.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/feeding-seaweed...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5270371/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromoform
It would be easier to add small quantities of industrially produced bromoform to cattle feed than to cultivate enough seaweed to get the same effects. However, the sort of producers who cater to environmentally conscious meat consumers may want to be able to tout "seaweed dietary additive" rather than "bromoform dietary additive" in packaging and promotional material.
Also there may be regulatory barriers to adding pure bromoform. AFAIK there are few regulations on introducing new plants into cows' diet, but pure chemicals may be regulated. Even if the only reason to add certain plants is to add chemicals into their diet.
If I recall correctly there are two issues with that a) bromoform itself is a GHG, you don't want to create more of it that gets released into the environment and use natural sources instead b) the researchers tried this and at least simple additives didn't have the same effect, perhaps it has something to do with how it gets released during digestion
> A quick search doesn't show it as a greenhouse gas. It can deplete stratospheric ozone, but it is very short lived in the atmosphere.
Looks like you're right, I must have confused it with some other bromide.
Why? It also says that population is the problem, just that talking about it makes you sound like a nazi, so let's not talk about it.
Then it points out that educating women and "eat the rich" are the most effective ways to reduce environmental impact without explicitly talking about population.
(The historical rule is: If your civilization destroys soil it fails.)
The population is leveling off and is projected to stabilize by 2100.
[citation needed]
Not sure what kind of garden you are talking about, I like gardens to plant vegetables and such, but their caloric output is very low.
It's important to remember that the modern mega-farms are only cost-effective due to massive subsidies. A typical modern farm loses something like a dollar an acre per year and would fail immediately without subsidies. They're not profitable.
While they are certainly highly efficient for a narrow range of species, they are physically incapable of producing the vast majority of food species at all.
Comparing an acre of modern farmland growing modern corn in the modern way with modern subsidies to an acre of a Permaculture or Syntropic food forest:
The modern farm will produce far more of that corn than the eco-farm. But it will require inputs: fertilizer, irrigation, and everything concerned with the farm machinery, etc., and only produce that corn. Everything else: water, land, machinery, people, gets used up or polluted by the process.
In contrast the acre of food forest might not produce any corn at all, or it may contain four or five or more species of it, as well as fruit and nut trees, bananas and plantain plants, climbing fruiting vines, berry bushes, root crops, flowers, cucurbits, bamboo, etc. resulting in dozens of different yields. It requires no inputs.
It's more labor intensive and cannot (yet) be automated. But it's fun, easy, profitable, and it produces the material needed to make more of itself, so it's scalable.
However, grains are the staple food, not just in the US, but around the world. To my knowledge no other method than having fields of grains buffed with fertilizer comes close to its caloric output.
You're saying it requires "no inputs", but it actually requires a lot of land. The inputs you describe are plentiful, land is scarce.
If soil really does get used up as some scientists predict, we might naturally shift towards these kinds of farming, but we might also figure out a way to replenish the soil.
#1 is reduced food waste
We eat more meat than ever. We subsidize meat production at every level so that all taxpayers pay for cheap meat, even vegetarians and vegans.
We can reduce subsidies, or even reverse them to accurately account for the externalities of pollution and global heating.
While population growth rate is lowering, humans are still increasing in population. We can make contraception and education more available globally.
The United States' science education has declined for generations so people don't understand nature and how we affect it. We can improve science education.
Also, a quick Google search says there were 30-60 million bison roaming the plains. Today, there are 95 million cows, and another 70 some million pigs.
I don't claim that farmed meat does not contribute anything, but it's not the only, or even main problem of the climate change. Start a garden, and see for yourself how much resources it takes to grow enough plant food to feed your family,and compare that to a number calories you can get from one cow.
Currently, the animals in our food system are not. I do garden extensively, and I know how difficult it is to produce food for a whole year. I also know that feeding carbon intensive corn to cows to eat is a thermodynamically loosing game calorie-wise. If you want to pay for regeneratively raised, grass fed beef from farms with integrated waste management, good for you. If you think your 99c hamburger at a fast food restaurant isn’t part of a climate and ethical catastrophe, I think you’re being willfully ignorant.
Personally I’m a vegetarian, but the main thing I care about is that people eat less meat, which was more sustainably and ethically raised.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C16&q=cow...
>I don't claim that farmed meat does not contribute anything, but it's not the only, or even main problem of the climate change. Climate change does not have a "main problem", it's multiple minor causes that each need to be addressed (and agriculture is a big one).
>Start a garden, and see for yourself how much resources it takes to grow enough plant food to feed your family,and compare that to a number calories you can get from one cow. Are you implying the cow doesn't need to be fed? Cows need a lot more water and land per gram of protein or per calorie than fish, poultry or legumes. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014Natur.515..518T/abstra... https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896971...
I'm glad that I can eat a meat-and-dairy-based diet and am not forced to fill my calories with garbage plant-based substitutes.
If you want to work on reducing enteric fermentation emissions with technology, I'm all for it.
If you want me to cut my consumption of meat to save a few percent of methane that will do next to nothing for climate change, then get off my lawn.
Must they be garbage substitutes? Must your vegetabilic food look and taste like a meat facsimile? I hear this perspective often from meat-eaters when they contrast their diet to a vegetarian diet, and I cannot understand it.
From a nutritional perspective however, animals can do things for us that we can't even do in the lab, let alone at industrial scale.
It might be possible to create some sort of fortified plant-based diet that has all the nutrients in a form that the body can actually absorb, but even then, that doesn't mean this is the route free people will go.
Even if you could change western food culture to make people to stop eating animal-based-food in favor of that plant-based Frankenfood, you will not change the food culture of rest of the world, which is shaking its head at white saviorism.
No.
> You know that animals eat food, and the food they eat is grown in crops, and the crops use fertilizer ... right?
Yes.
> Even if emissions associated with growing crops are higher than expected, if the number of people that they feed is higher than the number that can be fed through meat, then reducing meat consumption is a win.
I disagree, because plant-based food is inferior, therefore it is a loss. From a pure nutrition perspective, meat and dairy isn't as inefficient as you might think.
You could probably cut down on some emissions by feeding people Soylent or some other food that had better been served to livestock instead, perhaps you can even brainwash people into doing that voluntarily. That doesn't mean it is a better outcome.
> If 30 percent of methane comes from industrial meat farming and 20 percent comes from industrial rice farming but our industrial meat feeds 1 billion people and our industrial rice feeds 2 billion people, I don't understand how that's an irrelevant concern.
It's not just about feeding people, but feeding them well. White rice is probably responsible for the huge rates of Diabetes in Asia. Brown rice is poorly digestible. Altogether, it is not very nutritious either.
> It's very convenient to form opinions in such a way so that no personal changes in consumption are ever required.
Don't get me wrong, my opinion is borne out of self-interest, it's not about moral grandstanding.
Even if a meat-based diet was better for no other reason than being more delicious, it wouldn't change my position fundamentally.
You're very welcome to change your consumption, just don't force it on me.
What do you mean? I never heard any official recommendations.
With the meat packaging plant closures and the "shortage" of beef, the cattle herds are probably growing in numbers, which could cause the spike of methane.