Meat eaters are destroying the planet, warns WWF report

[Larry Noppius]

Oh sure, for something of particular interest, which is indeed what I do, and publications like NS will always provide links. But not everything can be of particular interest, so you do need to be able to have a degree of trust in the reporter's qualifications, honesty and rigour. Something like NS has a reputation to uphold, which helps - for any claim of substance, they will always contact at least one other expert in the field to find out what they think about it. Where I'm often left shaking my head is with the misrepresentations, misunderstandings and lack of checking (whether wilful or accidental) you find in the generic 'quality' press like the Guardian, etc (and all too often the BBC). There, you really need to follow the links every time, so they're of limited value.

I agree on your characterization of the relative accuracy, I'm just not seeing much of a need for NS either in a discussion. Either the links correctly support the claim being made, in which case one could just give those links directly, or they don't, in which case the article does not support the claims and hence should not be used at all.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

They are both generally terrible when it comes to anything science-based, though the Guardian is worse. NS is fine as a light magazine for the casually interested. Have seen some corkers in there, though haven't looked at it for years.

I find it's the general area of psychology where you get the real zingers.

You do find spurious evo-psych creeping in with NS - 'humans evolved x characteristic when hunting penguins on the savanna type-thing'. You can't expect perfect.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I agree on your characterization of the relative accuracy, I'm just not seeing much of a need for NS either in a discussion. Either the links correctly support the claim being made, in which case one could just give those links directly, or they don't, in which case the article does not support the claims and hence should not be used at all.

Yeah sure. It was just a general point tbh.

 

[Funky_monks]

I'm not sure if you are referring to the world or just the U.K. ? Population growth is not a major problem at the moment and as we all know education and economic advancement (especially of women ) is the key to having a non runaway population growth.
You appear to be taking data from the powers that be under the present orthodoxy. Arable land is on a continuum it's not black and white. Technology advances in food production are many

Talk bollocks on Internet forums.

Arable land is on a continuum?
Ag land is graded, so yeah, grades one through 3b are suitable for some forms of cropping. The lower the grade, the more energy you'll have to expend in terms of fert/ tillage to get a viable crop. Some crops can only be grown in grade one or two land.

As for your other point- are you trying to tell me that the global population isn't increasing and all of the projections are bollocks?

 

[Funky_monks]

Beaulieu?

Hamptworth

 

[8ball]

Beaulieu?

Bless you.

 

[8ball]

As for your other point- are you trying to tell me that the global population isn't increasing and all of the projections are bollocks?

They're unlikely to all be bollocks, seeing how they differ so widely.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

As for your other point- are you trying to tell me that the global population isn't increasing and all of the projections are bollocks?

That's a complex point, though, and we've had whole threads about it on here. fwiw projections are mostly being revised down - 9.something billion by 2050 is around the mark you'll mostly see now, with disagreement as to when this will level off. Of course, when it levels off isn't an inevitable force of nature, but dependent on how the world develops. There are massive regions where population growth has either gone or dramatically reduced. It's still an issue, particularly in the more fucked bits of Africa, but the only really effective way to address it is sideways - you improve people's living standards to such a degree that it no longer makes sense for them to have big families.

We could hit a reverse situation in the coming decades - population starts to decline as birth rates plummet (already we have countries that are way below the replacement rate, such as Italy, and that's likely to become more common). That could pose a whole new set of challenges. For starters, the capitalist rate of return on investments is largely provided for by a growing population, but more seriously, an aging population may find it doesn't have enough young people to support the old.

Overall the last 50 years' growth rate looks like this.



https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.pop.grow

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the big nut to crack regarding all kinds of things - health, malnutrition, warfare, disease, infant mortality, education, women's rights, etc. It's the one bit of the world that hasn't been getting better over the last 50 years, and not coincidentally, also the region with by far the highest population growth rate. It's not sub-Saharan Africans who are destroying the planet, though. Far from it.

The good news is that change, when it comes, can come fast - within two generations, family size can become transformed as the economic imperatives change. If you're interested in a case study of this, look up Addis Ababa.

 

[Larry Noppius]

They're unlikely to all be bollocks, seeing how they differ so widely.

I thought it was generally agreed that we're in subexponential growth and will stabilize at around 11 billion by 2050.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I thought it was generally agreed that we're in subexponential growth and will stabilize at around 11 billion by 2050.

Still exponential in sub-Saharan Africa, not so mostly elsewhere. Pretty much zero in Europe now.

 

[8ball]

I thought it was generally agreed that we're in subexponential growth and will stabilize at around 11 billion by 2050.

From my reading, stabilising at 11 billion is an 'optimistic' view of things, but yeah, that's in the range.
I've seen nothing like a general agreement but would be interested if you have anything on that.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

From my reading, stabilising at 11 billion is an 'optimistic' view of things, but yeah, that's in the range.
I've seen nothing like a general agreement but would be interested if you have anything on that.

I think you're a bit out of date on that tbh. Most figures you'll see now are for under 10 billion by 2050.

This is what the UN currently thinks (9.7 billion). I've seen other things that think we'll peak before 2100. But the trend in predictions is down. The rapidity of change in behaviour as economic imperatives change is being more widely recognised.

https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2019.html

 

[8ball]

I think you're a bit out of date on that tbh. Most figures you'll see now are for under 10 billion by 2050.

I might be, but specifically, I was talking about topping out, not the 2050 number.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I might be, but specifically, I was talking about topping out, not the 2050 number.

Ah ok. UN does still think topping out at 11 billion. My hunch is that the downward trend in predictions will continue. It's an optimistic hunch, as it's predicated on the idea that sub-Saharan Africa will improve in the next 30 years in a way that it hasn't improved in the last 30 years.

 

[WouldBe]

Bless you.

Covid?

 

[8ball]

Ah ok. UN does still think topping out at 11 billion. My hunch is that the downward trend in predictions will continue. It's an optimistic hunch, as it's predicated on the idea that sub-Saharan Africa will improve in the next 30 years in a way that it hasn't improved in the last 30 years.

Well, let's hope.

 

[CNT36]

Just hope these wolves are clued up on humane killing practices and can deliver a quick, clean shot.

I did think similar when Monbiot made a comment about hopefully wolves will do it in the future and blubbering after putting a hole in one.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Well, let's hope.

In the context of this discussion, it bears repeating that it's not sub-Saharan Africans who are the real problem regarding unsustainable world consumption patterns. That's why world population growth is a bit of a red herring.

 

[Larry Noppius]

From my reading, stabilising at 11 billion is an 'optimistic' view of things, but yeah, that's in the range.

From this data stabilizing at about 11 billion is the median view, and at over 12 billion is about the 80th percentile. It is indeed later than 2050 though.

I've seen nothing like a general agreement but would be interested if you have anything on that.

Most of the projections mentioned here have the same form (ie falling rates and population peaking somewhere soonish).

 

[CNT36]

In the context of this discussion, it bears repeating that it's not sub-Saharan Africans who are the real problem regarding unsustainable world consumption patterns. That's why world population growth is a bit of a red herring.

Did you see Chris Packham talking population on the telly a few weeks ago? A lot of identifying problems that even his narrative suggested were about more than overpopulation then repeatedly saying the issue is overpopulation. Had some interesting moments and did highlight the role of rising living standards and education.

 

[Larry Noppius]

In the context of this discussion, it bears repeating that it's not sub-Saharan Africans who are the real problem regarding unsustainable world consumption patterns. That's why world population growth is a bit of a red herring.

Either they will get economically further, and growth rates fall so population isn't the environmental issue, or they won't, and they remain having only negligible impact per capita on the environment so their population still isn't an environmental issue.

 

[butcher]

Hamptworth

There you go, not my part of the Forest, I was Minstead way

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Did you see Chris Packham talking population on the telly a few weeks ago? A lot of identifying problems that even his narrative suggested were about more than overpopulation then repeatedly saying the issue is overpopulation. Had some interesting moments and did highlight the role of rising living standards and education.

The key is to change the economic imperative. People aren't having loads of kids because they're stupid or because their religion tells them to, or whatever. In a poor environment, very young children can be put to economically useful, unskilled work. In a richer environment, children need to be educated for much longer to become economically useful to their parents, while space is far more expensive, so the imperative quickly switches towards investing more in each child and having fewer of them.

I'll try to dig out a link to Addis Ababa as the worked example of this - how people totally change their behaviour when they move from the country to the city within two generations. I've linked to it before on here.

It saddens me when I hear people I like and admire like David Attenborough and now it seems Chris Packham falling for the 'there are too many of us' line.

 

[butcher]

They certainly aren't within the New Forest - there are cattle grids to keep the ponies and cattle within the national park, but deer can easily jump them

The one place where small holders have to fence to keep them out rather than in.

I spent a few cold evenings feeding our heifers up round Stony Cross and chasing off the colts by cracking a whip.

Not many even in my school were hot branding colts and stirks at 14.

 

[Proper Tidy]

Is this the thread where all the furloughed people hang about

 

[CNT36]

Is this the thread where all the furloughed people hang about

That thread is in butcher's shop.

 

[JimW]

bears repeating

Bears repeating is of course another little-understood source of methane.

 

[Saul Goodman]

Does anybody have a link to this EPIC-Oxford article? I'd like to read it. I had a look on that vegan website, and although they seem to be quoting or paraphrasing bits from it, they don't seem to link to it anywhere. Isn't it normal to cite your sources, and link to them if it's an internet article?

Although I did find this on the page.

"Data from the EPIC-Oxford study shows that nearly three-quarters of the participants who were vegetarian or vegan at recruitment in the mid to late 1990s were still either vegetarian or vegan when they completed a follow-up questionnaire in 2010," Appleby told me in personal communication.

So we're supposed to take the word of a radical vegan, that another vegan who worked on the EPIC-Oxford study divulged this information to them in private communication?

 

[CNT36]

Does anybody have a link to this EPIC-Oxford article? I'd like to read it. I had a look on that vegan website, and although they seem to be quoting or paraphrasing bits from it, they don't seem to link to it anywhere. Isn't it normal to cite your sources, and link to them if it's an internet article?

Although I did find this on the page.



So we're supposed to take the word of a radical vegan, that another vegan who worked on the EPIC-Oxford study divulged this information to them in private communication?

That week flew past.

 

[Larry Noppius]

I especially enjoyed this explanation for the difference in result:

Compare this to the EPIC-Oxford Study, where self-identified vegetarians and vegans were asked if they were still following their chosen diets. After five years, 85 percent were. After 20 years, 73 percent were still either vegetarian or vegan.

But studies of self-defined diets are often also problematic. Juan et al. found that 27 percent of self-identified vegetarians had eaten red meat within the past 24 hours, and almost half (48 percent) had eaten meat if you include poultry and seafood.

"Those figures are astonishingly high," says Anderson, "so it's unsurprising that studies [like EPIC-Oxford] that use a self-definition of vegan or vegetarian find a much lower rate of lapsing than ours did: if eating a steak doesn't count as lapsing, it's pretty hard to lapse!"

You see, as PlantBasedNews explains, there are not just dietary vegans but also lifestyle vegans (those who eat meat). So it's not really vegans stopping their diet, that high 80% relapse rate is just dietary vegans becoming lifestyle vegans.