Bye bye MEAT! How will the post-meat future look?

[WouldBe]

You can look them all up yourself and. Its not hard.

• Prateek Sharma,
• Shijie Shu,
• Tzu-Shun Lin,
• Philippe Ciais,
• Francesco N. Tubiello,
• Pete Smith,
• Nelson Campbell &
• Atul K. Jain

Which parts of their research do you find too be inaccurate?

They just link back to the article in question.

 

[Karl Masks]

You can look them all up yourself and. Its not hard.

• Prateek Sharma,
• Shijie Shu,
• Tzu-Shun Lin,
• Philippe Ciais,
• Francesco N. Tubiello,
• Pete Smith,
• Nelson Campbell &
• Atul K. Jain

Which parts of their research do you find too be inaccurate?

Do you have the full article?

 

[editor]

Do you have the full article?

 

[Karl Masks]

What?

I'minterested in reading the article. You've linked to the abstract but afaict the full thing is behind a paywall. Do you have it?

 

[DaphneM]

This may be useful

How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

From vaccinations to climate change, getting science wrong has very real consequences. But journal articles, a primary way science is communicated in academia, are a different format to newspaper a…

blogs.lse.ac.uk

 

[Funky_monks]

What?

I'minterested in reading the article. You've linked to the abstract but afaict the full thing is behind a paywall. Do you have it?

I can't get access to it either, seems my institution is too tight to pay for nature - it looks like it is measuring estimated 2010 emissions using the now outdated CO2 equivalent method.

 

[Karl Masks]

This may be useful

How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

From vaccinations to climate change, getting science wrong has very real consequences. But journal articles, a primary way science is communicated in academia, are a different format to newspaper a…

blogs.lse.ac.uk

Indeed, but you still need to see the article. I'm not able to read confidence intervals and hazard ratios etc, but an abstract alone isn't going to get into the details unfortunately.

 

[Funky_monks]

This may be useful

How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

From vaccinations to climate change, getting science wrong has very real consequences. But journal articles, a primary way science is communicated in academia, are a different format to newspaper a…

blogs.lse.ac.uk

I think the problem is that the journal articles are often cited in an agenda driven lay press article that misinterprets them in order to make good copy.

 

[DaphneM]

Indeed, but you still need to see the article. I'm not able to read confidence intervals and hazard ratios etc, but an abstract alone isn't going to get into the details unfortunately.

Absolutely, couldn’t agree more

 

[Jeff Robinson]

I think the problem is that the journal articles are often cited in an agenda driven lay press article that misinterprets them in order to make good copy.

Yes, I too have often thought, "Everyone has an agenda except me and everyone who agrees with me". A fascinating coincidence.

 

[Karl Masks]

Yes, I too have often thought, "Everyone has an agenda except me and everyone who agrees with me". A fascinating coincidence.

Do you think seeing the whole study is important, yes or no?

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Do you think seeing the whole study is important, yes or no?

Here's the prepublication draft:

https://www.fao.org/3/cb7033en/cb7033en.pdf

I hope you enjoy not reading it after pretending you wanted to.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

Here's the prepublication draft:

https://www.fao.org/3/cb7033en/cb7033en.pdf

I hope you enjoy not reading it after pretending you wanted to.

Interesting. One of the authors is Founder and President of Plantpure Communities Inc.

Officers and Board of Directors | PlantPure Communities

Bios for the PPC Board of Directors and Officers

plantpurecommunities.org

Not terribly unbiased, perhaps.

 

[Funky_monks]

Yes, I too have often thought, "Everyone has an agenda except me and everyone who agrees with me". A fascinating coincidence.

Jeff, many of the publications posted have been in such esteemed organs of the press as "Plant Based News".

Looking for a balanced viewpoint on the ins and outs of sustainable livestock production is such places is like quoting the "Angling Times" in an argument about whether fishing is a worthwhile passtime.

 

[Karl Masks]

Here's the prepublication draft:

https://www.fao.org/3/cb7033en/cb7033en.pdf

I hope you enjoy not reading it after pretending you wanted to.

The difference in GHG emissions for plant vs animal doesn't really seem all that vast.

Cow milk is less enivornmentally damaging (according to fig 3) than rice. Is there a plan to remove rice from the diet of vegans?

Beef appears to be very problematic, but it is far from the only source of animal food, and fish isn't even on that list. Horse meat is even more environemntally harmful by comparison it seems. So there's a lot of places that clearly eat it while we in the west absolutely don't. How do people intend to address such cultural differences?

If you look at the total emissions from all food (iirc) (fig 4) you can see the problems are largely regional based. China, the US, Brazil and, to a lesser degree, the Indian subcontinent. Do they all eat large amounts of beef?

 

[editor]

Interesting. One of the authors is Founder and President of Plantpure Communities Inc.

Officers and Board of Directors | PlantPure Communities

Bios for the PPC Board of Directors and Officers

plantpurecommunities.org

Not terribly unbiased, perhaps.

Could you give some examples of the clear bias in the study?

 

[editor]

The difference in GHG emissions for plant vs animal doesn't really seem all that vast.

Cow milk is less enivornmentally damaging (according to fig 3) than rice. Is there a plan to remove rice from the diet of vegans?

Why are you comparing rice with cow milk?

 

[Karl Masks]

Why are you comparing rice with cow milk?

Because the article does. Fig 3 compares the top emitting foodstuffs from either category, plant/animal.

Also because the discussion is about the effect of GHG's. Nature doesn't care where those pollutants come from, just the effect. Presumably you'd still object to animal agriculture even if - and i'm not saying this is so - it could be demonstrated plants agriculture was producing dangerous levels of emission

 

[8ball]

I think the problem is that the journal articles are often cited in an agenda driven lay press article that misinterprets them in order to make good copy.

Certainly that's one of the problems. You might enjoy Bad Science by Ben Goldacre if you haven't already read it.

 

[CNT36]

Because the article does. Fig 3 compares the top emitting foodstuffs from either category, plant/animal.

Also because the discussion is about the effect of GHG's. Nature doesn't care where those pollutants come from, just the effect. Presumably you'd still object to animal agriculture even if - and i'm not saying this is so - it could be demonstrated plants agriculture was producing dangerous levels of emission

One of the charts posted up several times on these threads shows a range of emissions for each item measured. The low end of the range for Rice was considerably lower than the low end of cow's milk. The cow's milk range itself was quite wide. The accompanying paper argued that mitigation could have a massive effect on emissions by encouraging the least damaging means of producing each food.

 

[8ball]

I eat loads of rice. Think I should switch to potatoes.

(until these mitigations come along, anyway)

Wonder what buffalo milk tastes like... (article could plausibly have been written by the Buffalo Marketing Board).

 

[Funky_monks]

One of the charts posted up several times on these threads shows a range of emissions for each item measured. The low end of the range for Rice was considerably lower than the low end of cow's milk. The cow's milk range itself was quite wide. The accompanying paper argued that mitigation could have a massive effect on emissions by encouraging the least damaging means of producing each food.

The problem is that we don't accurately know how much ruminants emit, and then whether it varies by climate/size/breed (most of the cow work has been done with holstiens iirc).
One of the major criticisms of Poore and Nemecek (2018) is that they took the most polluting systems (in the case of beef, American feed lots iirc) and applied those emissions to all cattle systems globally.

There is some disingenuous about nitrous oxide too - the major sources of it are dung and synthetic fertiliser, so wherever you get lots of animals, you are going to get nitrates, doesn't matter if they are farm animals or not. Similarly enteric methane - all ruminants emit it, it's a natural process. Unless you are going to try and eliminate ruminants, you won't eliminate it.

 

[CNT36]

The problem is that we don't accurately know how much ruminants emit, and then whether it varies by climate/size/breed (most of the cow work has been done with holstiens iirc).
One of the major criticisms of Poore and Nemecek (2018) is that they took the most polluting systems (in the case of beef, American feed lots iirc) and applied those emissions to all cattle systems globally.

There is some disingenuous about nitrous oxide too - the major sources of it are dung and synthetic fertiliser, so wherever you get lots of animals, you are going to get nitrates, doesn't matter if they are farm animals or not. Similarly enteric methane - all ruminants emit it, it's a natural process. Unless you are going to try and eliminate ruminants, you won't eliminate it.

In the same way do we know what wild ruminants emit? You've quoted numbers of animals before to support your arguments but even if there were more ruminants in the past without knowing what they emit it's hard to know where we stand.

 

[MrCurry]

I eat loads of rice. Think I should switch to potatoes.

But are you comparing per kg. rates or per portion rates to conclude switching to potatoes is helpful? A portion of rice would weigh 1/5 to 1/4 of a portion of potatoes, so maybe that makes a difference to the calculation?

 

[friedaweed]

Cow milk is less enivornmentally damaging (according to fig 3) than rice. Is there a plan to remove rice from the diet of vegans?

That's rice pudding off the menu then.

 

[Funky_monks]

In the same way do we know what wild ruminants emit? You've quoted numbers of animals before to support your arguments but even if there were more ruminants in the past without knowing what they emit it's hard to know where we stand.

We don't accurately know what farmed ruminants emit - I don't think anyone has done any work on wild ruminants at all. The reason I mention Holstiens is that they are pretty big as far as cattle go (but smaller than a bison, Buffalo etc), it may be that smaller ruminants have smaller rumens, therefore less rumen flora, potentially emitting less per animal. We also know that diet has some effect (some feed additives seem to reduce it).

 

[Funky_monks]

But are you comparing per kg. rates or per portion rates to conclude switching to potatoes is helpful? A portion of rice would weigh 1/5 to 1/4 of a portion of potatoes, so maybe that makes a difference to the calculation?

And equally, potato production is terrible for soil loss.

 

[Karl Masks]

One of the charts posted up several times on these threads shows a range of emissions for each item measured. The low end of the range for Rice was considerably lower than the low end of cow's milk. The cow's milk range itself was quite wide. The accompanying paper argued that mitigation could have a massive effect on emissions by encouraging the least damaging means of producing each food.

It's been discussed but industrial feed lots are not the only way to farm animals. None of the local farmers I see around here use such things. Obviously their flocks of sheep (mainly, some cattle, on grass) are smaller than the vast monoliths you see in big business. So if we have a holistiic approach that would make things better I think. However at worst, humans can live without eating one or two specific foods. If I never ate beef again it wouldn't be the end of the world

 

[8ball]

A portion of rice would weigh 1/5 to 1/4 of a portion of potatoes..

Not when I’m eating it, it doesn’t.

 

[8ball]

And equally, potato production is terrible for soil loss.

Oh ffs!

What’s ok then? Carrots? Wafer-thin ham?