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No matter where you stand (some meat eaters tend to become extremely emotional on this): The fact that the scientific results and recommendations get utterly c

No matter where you stand (some meat eaters tend to become extremely emotional on this): The fact that the scientific results and recommendations get utterly censored like this before publication makes me really angry. It’s somewhat fine for me if people/governments choose to ignore or argue against these results after publication, but this is just absurd… and is then used from people all over the world to point to „see, even scientists say it’s fine!“! We must find a way to eliminate this lobbying/corruption, rather soon! Meanwhile, of course a vegan diet is better for the environment and renewables/green energy should be a top priority, and yes every bit counts, and if everyone would agree and do this instead of arguing we would have solved the issue already.

nradov 4y ago
This was an ideological recommendation, not a scientific one. It's fine for scientists to also engage in political advocacy but we should be clear about which role they're playing at the time.
jrootabega 4y ago
> Meanwhile, of course a vegan diet is better for the environment This is not a matter of course. Humans are part of the environment, and it is not a matter of course that a vegan diet is healthy for humans. The idea (I don't want to say fact, but I believe it) that meat and dairy consumption/industry are currently happening at a scale that is harmful does not mean that meat and dairy are bad for the environment.
- dTal 4y ago
  I don't understand the structure of your argument. What do you mean by "not a matter of course"? There is plenty of evidence that 1) vegan diets are associated with improved health outcomes, broadly speaking and 2) animal consumption has a disproportionate environmental impact for the nutrients obtained (which is unsurprising from a physics perspective, since the animals eat plants that humans could eat directly). Perhaps these things are not "inherently" true in that one can easily come up with edge-case counterexamples, but they are true on the whole.
  - jrootabega 4y ago
    You say "of course" when something is a matter of course. It is similar to begging the question. 1. Compared to what? 2. Animal consumption or current patterns of animal consumption? Note too that I do not claim that meat and dairy are proven more healthy, or better at any scale. Just that we must be careful not to let greenwashing make us think they're evil and gross as a kneejerk reaction.
GoblinSlayer 4y ago
> Meanwhile, of course a vegan diet is better for the environment Doesn't agriculture cause deforestation? That said what is better for environment?
- hdhrufjdi 4y ago
  With meat there is more demand on agriculture
autoexec 4y ago
> We must find a way to eliminate this lobbying/corruption, rather soon! Who is the person who is caving to pressure or accepting bribes and making changes to scientific results? We could start by finding names and calling for them to become unemployable anywhere they could cause further damage.
- incone123 4y ago
  "calling for them to become unemployable " Good luck with that. One common form of corruption is companies hiring public officials who helped them out.
- scns 4y ago
  How bout punishing those handing out the bribes? Oh noes they are rich, powerful, well connected and have an army of lawyers. Let's rather fry the small fish. No snark intended.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    I agree, we should go after them too, but right now it's not usually illegal to bribe people, and where companies and industries can't do it directly and openly they'll do it indirectly and quietly to get around the law. We can try to increase regulations and enforcement, but as long as people don't face any consequence for accepting bribes, I don't like our odds getting those changes pushed through. Without the power of the law on our side, we're better off putting pressure on the small fish since it's hard to put real social pressure on corporations and industries that make more money in a year than the collective wealth of entire nations.
roenxi 4y ago
The UN is literally an international political organisation. The shocking truth here is that all the work they do is political. Whether they are helping or hindering is only a question of what your political leanings are.
mnd999 4y ago
Those in power both in government and in the private sector seem to have completely lost interest in the bigger picture and are optimising for short-term personal wealth at pretty much any cost. Perhaps a benevolent AI is the only way forward.
- asterix_pano 4y ago
  Eating a plant based diet seems more straightforward to me.
- anonyfox 4y ago
  just look even at the comments here on HN (not specifically in this thread): so many people are defending viewpoints that somewhat A is not as bad as B if only C would happen, or pulling up weird conspiracy stuff or whatever only to be able to deny what needs to be done. We have the knowledge, the tech, the wealth, and everything possibly needed lined up to tackle the problem. But then people get somehow catched by wird arguments and turn against each other instead of simply doing what needs to be done together.
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
The problem here is, that the giant corporations can pollute the environment (eg. coca cola in a plastic bottle, with a plastic cap, with a plastic label, wrapped in a plastic 6-pack, with a plastic handle, on a plastic pallet wrapped in plastic foil), and rich environmentalists then fly their private jets to some 'green' conference and tell an 'average joe' that he shouldn't drive his car and eat meat, and should pay for plastic bags.
- anonyfox 4y ago
  the point is it doesn't matter that you are right - all involved parties have to do their part. rich guys point at average Joes and vice versa, and both don't take action because "but the others".
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    So, how about we ban private jets, both for rich guys and average Joes?
    - anonyfox 4y ago
      why not? its clearly an inefficient way of travelling, probably MUCH worse than even ordinary flights, which already is a problem. Every bit counts, so lets start with that. (I'd allow some solar powered ultra-light jets (the emission-free thingys), though.) Once enough people are making sacrifices on their own, the tolerance of assholes polluting freely should finally become less and less, this can get the ball rolling.
      - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
        But we didn't. We're pushing down on average working class of people while the rich can do whatever they want. Average joe can't get a plastic bag anymore and has to pay more for even worse alternatives (thick plasic bags need MANY reuses compared to thin plastic bags, plus joe now needs to buy plastic bin liners [0])... but coca cola (company) can still sell sugary water in ten layers of plastic, because reusable glass bottles would cut into their profits. People are getting more and more fed up with this already.. luckily for some, there are bigger things happening, and people protest for those, but it's a mark of a wider trend happening all over the western world, where there are a set of rules for rich and influential and another for 'normal people'. [0] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220329142327.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220329142327.h...
Sapere_Aude 4y ago
[flagged]
revelio 4y ago
Yes it would be terrible if IPCC reports were somehow to be censored or politically biased! https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Image-1930-689x1024-1.png https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Im... Climatologist: "We have to get rid of the medieval warm period" https://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/climategate.10yearsafter.pdf https://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/climat... Climategate emails (IPCC): "It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by a select core group. Is it true that only climate sceptics have political interests and are potentially biased? If not, how can we deal with this? How should we deal with flaws inside the climate community? I think, that "our" reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann's work were not especially honest. All these decisions about IPCC chairs and co-chairs are deeply political I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is ! IPCC report: https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf "Equity remains a central element in the UN climate regime ... Prioritising equity, climate justice, social justice, inclusion and just transition processes can enable adaptation and ambitious mitigation actions and climate resilient development ... cash transfers and public works programs [are] highly feasible and increase resilience to climate change" IPCC press release: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2023/03/IPCC_AR6_SYR_PressRelease_en.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2023/03/IPCC_AR6_SYR... "these choices need to be rooted in our diverse values, worldviews and knowledges, including scientific knowledge, Indigenous Knowledge and local knowledge" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-emails-climate-jones-chinese https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-e... Today the Guardian reveals how Jones withheld the information requested under freedom of information laws. Subsequently a senior colleague told him he feared that Jones's collaborator, Wei-Chyung Wang of the University at Albany, had "screwed up". The apparent attempts to cover up problems with temperature data from the Chinese weather stations provide the first link between the email scandal and the UN's embattled climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a paper based on the measurements was used to bolster IPCC statements about rapid global warming in recent decades.
- 4y ago
realworldperson 4y ago
[dead]
friend_and_foe 4y ago
Well, speaking on the report, you'll find that all these bodies and their reports are written by committees of special interests in their entirety. There wasn't some report of substance here that was muddied and made less truthful by the meat industry. It had always been this way, even the UN Declaration of Human Rights was written so as to ensure membership in the UN by the big states of the time, and not principled based on some understanding of human rights. Theyre always statements and decisions of convenience for the interests of the attendant parties.
cowl 4y ago
No matter where you stand, these type naive recommandations are responsible for some of the greatest enviornmental dissasters of the last century. "Bio"-Fuels being one of the main culprits of deforestation that has created way bigger problems than the ones they were trying to fix. In this case a Plant based Diet would require much more agricultural land for the same calorie intake than a balanced meat and plant one. And guess where that land will come from? guess how much more automation will be needed to take care of that extra agriculture, so more machinery, more pesticides, more transport etc. There is nothing scientific about a recomandation. it's a hypotesis that until gets implemented can not be called scientific. Like the the implementation of BioFules showed, that recommandation was not scentific at all. And by definition can not be scientific. There's an inflation of the word "scientific" nowadays that is beinng used for any study that makes it almost a religion. the core concept of Scientific it is always to question and especially can not be applied to new un-tested procedures that however rigorous they might have been on planning phase, can not by definition account for all variables. Something that is un-tested by definition can not be scientific.
- anonyfox 4y ago
  so you say that the amount of land and water needed to grow a cow that ultimately I can eat is LESS than if I would use that land to grow food to eat directly? thats pretty wild, I'd think. Not even thinking about the methane issues with cows and other things they add ontop of land use. BioFuels are a joke, though, a result of lobbyism, fully agree. Individually owned ICEs on a large scale are the problem here, that BioFuel shit is just deflecting blame.
  - cowl 4y ago
    Yes I am saying that to get the same Nutritional value that you would get from a cow you would need much more amound of land to grow the plants that would subtitute it. Plants that would require a lot more care and a lot more automation/pesticides that the plants cows are eating. Even the volume of the needed transport/storage/refiregeration would be way bigger. Ask anyone living in a rural area, what amount of land/effort would be the equivalent of a cow. Hopefully everyone agrees now that BioFueld are a joke but this same discussion was held some 25 years ago and BioFuels became a reality because everyone opposing them then was beaten down with the "scientific" stick. Because we are using "scientific" to camuflage the fact that we are acting out of fear and we don't really know what to do. That would be the first step. IPCC raccomends a plant-free diet MIGHT help the enviornment? Good as long as it is clear that is a Test and we need to evaluate maybe on a smaller scale first, and not the God-given truth that allows us to stone everyone who thinks eitherwise. If the IPCC says This not Might but this WILL, that I'm gonna file it together with the Biofuels and for once be glad that some lobies, for their own interests are doing us all a favour.

nradov 4y ago

This was an ideological recommendation, not a scientific one. It's fine for scientists to also engage in political advocacy but we should be clear about which role they're playing at the time.

jrootabega 4y ago

> Meanwhile, of course a vegan diet is better for the environment This is not a matter of course. Humans are part of the environment, and it is not a matter of course that a vegan diet is healthy for humans. The idea (I don't want to say fact, but I believe it) that meat and dairy consumption/industry are currently happening at a scale that is harmful does not mean that meat and dairy are bad for the environment.

dTal 4y ago
I don't understand the structure of your argument. What do you mean by "not a matter of course"? There is plenty of evidence that 1) vegan diets are associated with improved health outcomes, broadly speaking and 2) animal consumption has a disproportionate environmental impact for the nutrients obtained (which is unsurprising from a physics perspective, since the animals eat plants that humans could eat directly). Perhaps these things are not "inherently" true in that one can easily come up with edge-case counterexamples, but they are true on the whole.
- jrootabega 4y ago
  You say "of course" when something is a matter of course. It is similar to begging the question. 1. Compared to what? 2. Animal consumption or current patterns of animal consumption? Note too that I do not claim that meat and dairy are proven more healthy, or better at any scale. Just that we must be careful not to let greenwashing make us think they're evil and gross as a kneejerk reaction.

GoblinSlayer 4y ago

> Meanwhile, of course a vegan diet is better for the environment Doesn't agriculture cause deforestation? That said what is better for environment?

hdhrufjdi 4y ago
With meat there is more demand on agriculture

autoexec 4y ago

> We must find a way to eliminate this lobbying/corruption, rather soon! Who is the person who is caving to pressure or accepting bribes and making changes to scientific results? We could start by finding names and calling for them to become unemployable anywhere they could cause further damage.

incone123 4y ago
"calling for them to become unemployable " Good luck with that. One common form of corruption is companies hiring public officials who helped them out.
scns 4y ago
How bout punishing those handing out the bribes? Oh noes they are rich, powerful, well connected and have an army of lawyers. Let's rather fry the small fish. No snark intended.
- autoexec 4y ago
  I agree, we should go after them too, but right now it's not usually illegal to bribe people, and where companies and industries can't do it directly and openly they'll do it indirectly and quietly to get around the law. We can try to increase regulations and enforcement, but as long as people don't face any consequence for accepting bribes, I don't like our odds getting those changes pushed through. Without the power of the law on our side, we're better off putting pressure on the small fish since it's hard to put real social pressure on corporations and industries that make more money in a year than the collective wealth of entire nations.

roenxi 4y ago

The UN is literally an international political organisation. The shocking truth here is that all the work they do is political. Whether they are helping or hindering is only a question of what your political leanings are.

mnd999 4y ago

Those in power both in government and in the private sector seem to have completely lost interest in the bigger picture and are optimising for short-term personal wealth at pretty much any cost. Perhaps a benevolent AI is the only way forward.

asterix_pano 4y ago
Eating a plant based diet seems more straightforward to me.
anonyfox 4y ago
just look even at the comments here on HN (not specifically in this thread): so many people are defending viewpoints that somewhat A is not as bad as B if only C would happen, or pulling up weird conspiracy stuff or whatever only to be able to deny what needs to be done. We have the knowledge, the tech, the wealth, and everything possibly needed lined up to tackle the problem. But then people get somehow catched by wird arguments and turn against each other instead of simply doing what needs to be done together.

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

The problem here is, that the giant corporations can pollute the environment (eg. coca cola in a plastic bottle, with a plastic cap, with a plastic label, wrapped in a plastic 6-pack, with a plastic handle, on a plastic pallet wrapped in plastic foil), and rich environmentalists then fly their private jets to some 'green' conference and tell an 'average joe' that he shouldn't drive his car and eat meat, and should pay for plastic bags.

anonyfox 4y ago
the point is it doesn't matter that you are right - all involved parties have to do their part. rich guys point at average Joes and vice versa, and both don't take action because "but the others".
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  So, how about we ban private jets, both for rich guys and average Joes?
  - anonyfox 4y ago
    why not? its clearly an inefficient way of travelling, probably MUCH worse than even ordinary flights, which already is a problem. Every bit counts, so lets start with that. (I'd allow some solar powered ultra-light jets (the emission-free thingys), though.) Once enough people are making sacrifices on their own, the tolerance of assholes polluting freely should finally become less and less, this can get the ball rolling.
    - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
      But we didn't. We're pushing down on average working class of people while the rich can do whatever they want. Average joe can't get a plastic bag anymore and has to pay more for even worse alternatives (thick plasic bags need MANY reuses compared to thin plastic bags, plus joe now needs to buy plastic bin liners [0])... but coca cola (company) can still sell sugary water in ten layers of plastic, because reusable glass bottles would cut into their profits. People are getting more and more fed up with this already.. luckily for some, there are bigger things happening, and people protest for those, but it's a mark of a wider trend happening all over the western world, where there are a set of rules for rich and influential and another for 'normal people'. [0] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220329142327.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220329142327.h...

Sapere_Aude 4y ago

[flagged]

revelio 4y ago

Yes it would be terrible if IPCC reports were somehow to be censored or politically biased! https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Image-1930-689x1024-1.png https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Im... Climatologist: "We have to get rid of the medieval warm period" https://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/climategate.10yearsafter.pdf https://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/climat... Climategate emails (IPCC): "It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by a select core group. Is it true that only climate sceptics have political interests and are potentially biased? If not, how can we deal with this? How should we deal with flaws inside the climate community? I think, that "our" reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann's work were not especially honest. All these decisions about IPCC chairs and co-chairs are deeply political I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is ! IPCC report: https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf "Equity remains a central element in the UN climate regime ... Prioritising equity, climate justice, social justice, inclusion and just transition processes can enable adaptation and ambitious mitigation actions and climate resilient development ... cash transfers and public works programs [are] highly feasible and increase resilience to climate change" IPCC press release: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2023/03/IPCC_AR6_SYR_PressRelease_en.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2023/03/IPCC_AR6_SYR... "these choices need to be rooted in our diverse values, worldviews and knowledges, including scientific knowledge, Indigenous Knowledge and local knowledge" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-emails-climate-jones-chinese https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-e... Today the Guardian reveals how Jones withheld the information requested under freedom of information laws. Subsequently a senior colleague told him he feared that Jones's collaborator, Wei-Chyung Wang of the University at Albany, had "screwed up". The apparent attempts to cover up problems with temperature data from the Chinese weather stations provide the first link between the email scandal and the UN's embattled climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a paper based on the measurements was used to bolster IPCC statements about rapid global warming in recent decades.

4y ago

realworldperson 4y ago

[dead]

friend_and_foe 4y ago

Well, speaking on the report, you'll find that all these bodies and their reports are written by committees of special interests in their entirety. There wasn't some report of substance here that was muddied and made less truthful by the meat industry. It had always been this way, even the UN Declaration of Human Rights was written so as to ensure membership in the UN by the big states of the time, and not principled based on some understanding of human rights. Theyre always statements and decisions of convenience for the interests of the attendant parties.

cowl 4y ago

No matter where you stand, these type naive recommandations are responsible for some of the greatest enviornmental dissasters of the last century. "Bio"-Fuels being one of the main culprits of deforestation that has created way bigger problems than the ones they were trying to fix. In this case a Plant based Diet would require much more agricultural land for the same calorie intake than a balanced meat and plant one. And guess where that land will come from? guess how much more automation will be needed to take care of that extra agriculture, so more machinery, more pesticides, more transport etc. There is nothing scientific about a recomandation. it's a hypotesis that until gets implemented can not be called scientific. Like the the implementation of BioFules showed, that recommandation was not scentific at all. And by definition can not be scientific. There's an inflation of the word "scientific" nowadays that is beinng used for any study that makes it almost a religion. the core concept of Scientific it is always to question and especially can not be applied to new un-tested procedures that however rigorous they might have been on planning phase, can not by definition account for all variables. Something that is un-tested by definition can not be scientific.

anonyfox 4y ago
so you say that the amount of land and water needed to grow a cow that ultimately I can eat is LESS than if I would use that land to grow food to eat directly? thats pretty wild, I'd think. Not even thinking about the methane issues with cows and other things they add ontop of land use. BioFuels are a joke, though, a result of lobbyism, fully agree. Individually owned ICEs on a large scale are the problem here, that BioFuel shit is just deflecting blame.
- cowl 4y ago
  Yes I am saying that to get the same Nutritional value that you would get from a cow you would need much more amound of land to grow the plants that would subtitute it. Plants that would require a lot more care and a lot more automation/pesticides that the plants cows are eating. Even the volume of the needed transport/storage/refiregeration would be way bigger. Ask anyone living in a rural area, what amount of land/effort would be the equivalent of a cow. Hopefully everyone agrees now that BioFueld are a joke but this same discussion was held some 25 years ago and BioFuels became a reality because everyone opposing them then was beaten down with the "scientific" stick. Because we are using "scientific" to camuflage the fact that we are acting out of fear and we don't really know what to do. That would be the first step. IPCC raccomends a plant-free diet MIGHT help the enviornment? Good as long as it is clear that is a Test and we need to evaluate maybe on a smaller scale first, and not the God-given truth that allows us to stone everyone who thinks eitherwise. If the IPCC says This not Might but this WILL, that I'm gonna file it together with the Biofuels and for once be glad that some lobies, for their own interests are doing us all a favour.