5 ms·

No matter where you stand, these type naive recommandations are responsible for some of the greatest enviornmental dissasters of the last century. "Bio"-Fuels b

by 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.
  - anonyfox 4y ago
    are you aware that stuff like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Foods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Foods is a thing now? not in the "we made it work in a lab" but in "there are factories now" meaning? Also never asked yourself how iE the Dutch can be a world leader/exporter of plants/foods despite having a tiny amount of land compared to many other countries? Just asking questions here, because it seems that your anger over the BioFuel disaster (and granted, it literally is!) seems to overshadow a bit of rationality needed here to see how stuff is going here-and-now.
    - cowl 4y ago
      The Netherland Case is specifically what I am referring to with the need for huge automatization. It's a very high tech solution, a very good one but can it be effectivly replicated world-wide without a concentrated effort? I would be enthustiacly supporting a big push toward this direction and if this result in less need for meat product, it's very welcome. But in the absence of a big Investment push what will problably happen in reality is that Brazil,Argentina etc will not push for this kind of agriculture because it is cheaper and faster to just cut some hectars of the Amazon Forest and use traditional agriculture. That is what I am afraid of, unintended consenguences that come naturally from simple raccomandation like "use a plant-based diet" withough going through the steps of making it actually sustainable.
midland_trucker 4y ago
> 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. Where do you think the calories in meat ultimately comes from?
- cowl 4y ago
  That is an absurd question and may I bring the absurdity to it's final form? where do the calories in the plant then come from? Is the next raccomandation to eat CO2 and Sun Rays?
  - midland_trucker 4y ago
    I'm pointing out that you don't seem to realise how insanely resource inefficient meat is: [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/feed-required-to-produce-one-kilogram-of-meat-or-dairy-product https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/feed-required-to-produce-... [2] https://cbey.yale.edu/our-stories/disrupting-meat https://cbey.yale.edu/our-stories/disrupting-meat Napkin maths from the first source suggests 5kg of feed to produce a 200g steak. All while losing all but 4% of the original calories. This is of course ignoring the vast water consumption and emissions (and of course ethical problems) which are issues worth talking about in themselves. Conclusion is quite the opposite of your original comment, it seems we could feed the world MANY times over using less land on a 'plant based' diet.
    - hbogert 4y ago
      Of course it's more complicated than just naming numbers. Why is water consumption an issue perse? What did the 5kg of food consist of? Is that 5kg we humans could've ate? I doubt it. Throughout time we've given our animals scraps which we think is beneath us. Take for example a cow in England eating grass and drinking water which directly came from the rain. What is inherently bad about that? Don't get me wrong, I think that the bio industry has taken things to the extreme, but simply saying meat is inefficient and naming some numbers is not giving us a proper basis for discussion to really address how we can make things durable.

by cowl 4y ago

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.
- anonyfox 4y ago
  are you aware that stuff like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Foods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Foods is a thing now? not in the "we made it work in a lab" but in "there are factories now" meaning? Also never asked yourself how iE the Dutch can be a world leader/exporter of plants/foods despite having a tiny amount of land compared to many other countries? Just asking questions here, because it seems that your anger over the BioFuel disaster (and granted, it literally is!) seems to overshadow a bit of rationality needed here to see how stuff is going here-and-now.
  - cowl 4y ago
    The Netherland Case is specifically what I am referring to with the need for huge automatization. It's a very high tech solution, a very good one but can it be effectivly replicated world-wide without a concentrated effort? I would be enthustiacly supporting a big push toward this direction and if this result in less need for meat product, it's very welcome. But in the absence of a big Investment push what will problably happen in reality is that Brazil,Argentina etc will not push for this kind of agriculture because it is cheaper and faster to just cut some hectars of the Amazon Forest and use traditional agriculture. That is what I am afraid of, unintended consenguences that come naturally from simple raccomandation like "use a plant-based diet" withough going through the steps of making it actually sustainable.

midland_trucker 4y ago

> 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. Where do you think the calories in meat ultimately comes from?

cowl 4y ago
That is an absurd question and may I bring the absurdity to it's final form? where do the calories in the plant then come from? Is the next raccomandation to eat CO2 and Sun Rays?
- midland_trucker 4y ago
  I'm pointing out that you don't seem to realise how insanely resource inefficient meat is: [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/feed-required-to-produce-one-kilogram-of-meat-or-dairy-product https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/feed-required-to-produce-... [2] https://cbey.yale.edu/our-stories/disrupting-meat https://cbey.yale.edu/our-stories/disrupting-meat Napkin maths from the first source suggests 5kg of feed to produce a 200g steak. All while losing all but 4% of the original calories. This is of course ignoring the vast water consumption and emissions (and of course ethical problems) which are issues worth talking about in themselves. Conclusion is quite the opposite of your original comment, it seems we could feed the world MANY times over using less land on a 'plant based' diet.
  - hbogert 4y ago
    Of course it's more complicated than just naming numbers. Why is water consumption an issue perse? What did the 5kg of food consist of? Is that 5kg we humans could've ate? I doubt it. Throughout time we've given our animals scraps which we think is beneath us. Take for example a cow in England eating grass and drinking water which directly came from the rain. What is inherently bad about that? Don't get me wrong, I think that the bio industry has taken things to the extreme, but simply saying meat is inefficient and naming some numbers is not giving us a proper basis for discussion to really address how we can make things durable.