3 ms·

All of these "beef is bad for the environment" articles are written by vegan activists, seventh day adventists, or other extremist groups who have a political a

by wyager 3y ago

All of these "beef is bad for the environment" articles are written by vegan activists, seventh day adventists, or other extremist groups who have a political agenda against meat. The amount of methane emissions from all beef agriculture today is within a factor of like 3 of the natural methane emissions from American bison prior to colonization of the Americas. All of these analyses completely ignore the base rate of methane emissions in the absence of cattle, whether from preexisting natural ruminants, from e.g. the fungal decomposition of plant matter that would have occurred on grasslands anyway, or from "meat substitutes". Even if the methane emission was 10x the absurdly inflated figures that anti-meat extremists try to claim, it would still be overwhelmingly worth it for me to consume it for the health benefits. It would be better for society to spend Manhattan-Project-plus-NASA levels of our GDP on methane catalysis/capture technology, if it were actually necessary, than to stop eating ruminant meat.

Shekelphile 3y ago
The methane emissions from farming do not matter in the slightest anyway. They can only release what they already absorbed from their feed. We should stop adding more ghg to the atmosphere that hasn't been there for millions of years, allowing the carbon cycle to continue with that ghg currently in atmosphere does no harm. The people crying about this are simply serving an agenda of people who want to force the average citizen to eat bugs to make literal pennies more in profit for them and their family. It's absurd. We won't do anything about climate change by stopping agriculture, it will simply ruin food supply.
- peterpost2 3y ago
  But if the cows were not there, what they eat would not be cultivated in dire circumstances. Instead that place would sequester carbon. And even if it would not be allowed to sequester it would largely be emitted as co2 and not methane which is a lot less potent greenhouse gas.
  - Shekelphile 3y ago
    None of that matters. Plants only sequester carbon that was already in the atmosphere and it goes right back into it when they die. Methane breaks down to CO2 in a number of months/years and has no effect on geologic timescales. The only solution to climate change is to stop introducing carbon that was sequestered hundreds of millions of years ago. Championing causes like 'you need to eat the bugs' is not a productive use of time and does nothing to change the status quo in the end.
    - peterpost2 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - dang 3y ago
        Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Also, please avoid internet tropes like "citation needed". They have a degrading effect on discussion quality and aren't the curious conversation that we're hoping for. All this is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you wouldn't mind reviewing them and sticking to them, we'd appreciate it.
jplrssn 3y ago
Ah yes, the famously extremist BBC and their vegan agenda. Even ignoring the environmental issues, high consumption of red meat has been linked to a number of adverse health outcomes. Processed meats even more so. [0] But I imagine you'd call Harvard Medical School extremist too? [0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/whats-the-beef-with-red-meat https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/whats-the-bee...
- wyager 3y ago
  If you think the BBC is apolitical, you are frankly a fool. The author of that piece is a specialist in churning out low-information articles on various progressive concerns for low-information readers. https://muckrack.com/isabelle-gerretsen/portfolio https://muckrack.com/isabelle-gerretsen/portfolio > high consumption of red meat has been linked to a number of adverse health outcomes The epistemic value of current nutrition "science" is less than garbage. It's one of the worst-replicating fields that claims to be scientific. Did you even read the article you linked, or did you just do something like google "red meat bad" and copy/paste the first link? If you actually read it, you should be saying to yourself, "huh, sounds like they don't really have very strong evidence".
peterpost2 3y ago
>All of these "beef is bad for the environment" articles are written by vegan activists, seventh day adventists, or other extremist groups who have a political agenda against meat. [Citation needed] Most soil for where nowadays cattle grace farm is not anaerobic so not sure how that could work with methane emissions. Also about 90 percent of the food that cattle eat doesn't come from there but from south America where conditions are clearly different. Animal farming is incredibly inefficiënt and the health claims are dubious at best.
- wyager 3y ago
  > [Citation needed] Why do you think posting something like this is a valuable use of anyone's time? What are you expecting here, an article that exactly restates my claim? If such an article existed, would you even read it or take it into account? There are only two possibilities here, neither of them good: 1. You are looking for an "authoritative" source making exactly the claim I'm making, so you can outsource your entire thought process to someone else. Besides being extremely risky, this also precludes you from ever absorbing a novel or semi-novel conclusion that isn't widely known enough to have an NYT article written about it or something. 2. You are arguing in bad faith, trying to waste my time finding a "citation" that inevitably you would find some excuse to ignore in any case. The proper response here is to say "huh, that's interesting, maybe I should check on that claim next time I see something from the USDA, or maybe I could google it for 5 seconds". Lucky for you, here is a convenient source so you can turn your brain off. https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/9/251 https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/9/251
  - dang 3y ago
    You broke the site guidelines extremely badly with this post. We ban accounts that do this repeatedly, and we've already had to warn you many times. I don't want to ban you, but if you keep doing this, we'll eventually have to. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules going forward? We'd appreciate it. (Btw, the parent comment also broke the site guidelines, which ask people to omit internet tropes such as "citation needed", and I've replied to them too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38300759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38300759. But they didn't get aggressive the way your comment did, and that's a big difference.)

by wyager 3y ago

Shekelphile 3y ago

The methane emissions from farming do not matter in the slightest anyway. They can only release what they already absorbed from their feed. We should stop adding more ghg to the atmosphere that hasn't been there for millions of years, allowing the carbon cycle to continue with that ghg currently in atmosphere does no harm. The people crying about this are simply serving an agenda of people who want to force the average citizen to eat bugs to make literal pennies more in profit for them and their family. It's absurd. We won't do anything about climate change by stopping agriculture, it will simply ruin food supply.

peterpost2 3y ago
But if the cows were not there, what they eat would not be cultivated in dire circumstances. Instead that place would sequester carbon. And even if it would not be allowed to sequester it would largely be emitted as co2 and not methane which is a lot less potent greenhouse gas.
- Shekelphile 3y ago
  None of that matters. Plants only sequester carbon that was already in the atmosphere and it goes right back into it when they die. Methane breaks down to CO2 in a number of months/years and has no effect on geologic timescales. The only solution to climate change is to stop introducing carbon that was sequestered hundreds of millions of years ago. Championing causes like 'you need to eat the bugs' is not a productive use of time and does nothing to change the status quo in the end.
  - peterpost2 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 3y ago
      Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Also, please avoid internet tropes like "citation needed". They have a degrading effect on discussion quality and aren't the curious conversation that we're hoping for. All this is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you wouldn't mind reviewing them and sticking to them, we'd appreciate it.

jplrssn 3y ago

Ah yes, the famously extremist BBC and their vegan agenda. Even ignoring the environmental issues, high consumption of red meat has been linked to a number of adverse health outcomes. Processed meats even more so. [0] But I imagine you'd call Harvard Medical School extremist too? [0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/whats-the-beef-with-red-meat https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/whats-the-bee...

wyager 3y ago
If you think the BBC is apolitical, you are frankly a fool. The author of that piece is a specialist in churning out low-information articles on various progressive concerns for low-information readers. https://muckrack.com/isabelle-gerretsen/portfolio https://muckrack.com/isabelle-gerretsen/portfolio > high consumption of red meat has been linked to a number of adverse health outcomes The epistemic value of current nutrition "science" is less than garbage. It's one of the worst-replicating fields that claims to be scientific. Did you even read the article you linked, or did you just do something like google "red meat bad" and copy/paste the first link? If you actually read it, you should be saying to yourself, "huh, sounds like they don't really have very strong evidence".

peterpost2 3y ago

>All of these "beef is bad for the environment" articles are written by vegan activists, seventh day adventists, or other extremist groups who have a political agenda against meat. [Citation needed] Most soil for where nowadays cattle grace farm is not anaerobic so not sure how that could work with methane emissions. Also about 90 percent of the food that cattle eat doesn't come from there but from south America where conditions are clearly different. Animal farming is incredibly inefficiënt and the health claims are dubious at best.

wyager 3y ago
> [Citation needed] Why do you think posting something like this is a valuable use of anyone's time? What are you expecting here, an article that exactly restates my claim? If such an article existed, would you even read it or take it into account? There are only two possibilities here, neither of them good: 1. You are looking for an "authoritative" source making exactly the claim I'm making, so you can outsource your entire thought process to someone else. Besides being extremely risky, this also precludes you from ever absorbing a novel or semi-novel conclusion that isn't widely known enough to have an NYT article written about it or something. 2. You are arguing in bad faith, trying to waste my time finding a "citation" that inevitably you would find some excuse to ignore in any case. The proper response here is to say "huh, that's interesting, maybe I should check on that claim next time I see something from the USDA, or maybe I could google it for 5 seconds". Lucky for you, here is a convenient source so you can turn your brain off. https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/9/251 https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/9/251
- dang 3y ago
  You broke the site guidelines extremely badly with this post. We ban accounts that do this repeatedly, and we've already had to warn you many times. I don't want to ban you, but if you keep doing this, we'll eventually have to. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules going forward? We'd appreciate it. (Btw, the parent comment also broke the site guidelines, which ask people to omit internet tropes such as "citation needed", and I've replied to them too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38300759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38300759. But they didn't get aggressive the way your comment did, and that's a big difference.)