Where Climate Change Is Heading

[ysabetwordsmith]

Oh, look, they did the math.  It shows that people are choosing not to solve the problems effectively.

My best recommendation for the most bang-for-buck: reduce or eliminate eating beef, because cows are bad for the climate.  Not only do they fart methane, they take up a lot of space that could be used for carbon-holding forests instead.  Consider exploring delicious vegetarian recipes, and not the substitutes, the real kind from countries where people don't eat much meat.  Indian is a personal favorite; here are some cookbooks for your holiday shopping perusal.

If you have a yard, you can also sequester carbon by such means as hugelkultur or planting trees.  Hugelkultur has the advantage of storing water, so it also fights drought, and can be used to grow trees.  The most useful tree in almost every environment is some local species of oak, which support thousands of other species.  Just search your state or other regional term and something like "best oak species for."

In the end, the world probably isn't getting saved.  But if you go through the motions, you will be justified in saying "I fucking TOLD YOU SO!" in the Foyer-Ever-After.  Yes, this a whole fresh hell for the ravagers, getting ragged on by outraged greenfreaks.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

You know lab-grown beef has got FDA approval... what you might not know is that there's a firm already building a truly massive factory to turn out beefburgers using cultured meat. But here's the thing, roughly 80% of beef production ends up in beefburgers... and not only is cultured meat vastly less polluting and resource intensive, it's also cheaper. Weight-for-weight we're talking cents on dollars (they are being rather cagy about how much cheaper, but it's an order of magnitude less).

So... not eliminating eating beef, but eliminating, by making it obsolete, beef production. Ok, people might still have the occasional steak that's traditionally grown, but that is going to end up as a luxury item. that said, I'm sure we'll see vat-grown beef that's indistinguishable from natural grown steaks soon afterwards. but burgers are going to be universally cultured meat very soon and that will be big... I mean, think how many burgers McDonalds alone use, now imagine all that tonnage of meat slurry from slaughterhouses replaced with hygienically grown cultured meat, guaranteed safe from pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, mad cow disease..and so on and so forth..

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>You know lab-grown beef has got FDA approval... what you might not know is that there's a firm already building a truly massive factory to turn out beefburgers using cultured meat. <<

Well, that's disturbing.

>> not only is cultured meat vastly less polluting and resource intensive, it's also cheaper. <<

That depends on whose math you use. Remove the data-cropping to include the whole process and it looks much worse.

>>I'm sure we'll see vat-grown beef that's indistinguishable from natural grown steaks soon afterwards.<<

Nope. Vat-grown meat differs in many ways from animal flesh:

* It cannot be done by individuals on a small scale. You have to put very many eggs in very few baskets, which always creates supply line vulnerability.

* It cannot be organic or grass-fed, features of increasing concern to many consumers.

* It usually can't be local either, which adds shipping and other costs to its financial and carbon burdens.

* It cannot have terroir.

* What it will have is the weird metallic-chemical-medicinal taste from the growth medium. You're never getting that out of the end product. Early adopters have already noticed this.

* Right now, all we have is the technology to grow a bunch of disorganized cells. It won't be anything like actual muscle until we develop the ability to grow organs, which is foreseeable -- people are working on it -- but I wouldn't describe that as "soon" yet. So the texture of lab-grown burger is not good, which early adopters have remarked on.

* The only way to make non-animal meat molecularly identical is to build it with a replicator, literally copying one original piece of meat to assemble from base atoms when ordered. The problem with that is, unless your replicator includes many sample patterns for each item, you get the same thing over and over. Human brains and bodies are designed to reject too much similarity in diet. It usually takes a while for people to connect that dot with the "why do people love a new replicator item at first then fall out of love with it?" problem.

* It is always going to be an ultra-processed product, and those things kill people.

>> hygienically grown cultured meat, guaranteed safe from pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, mad cow disease <<

... but also guarantees it will be created in a vat of some other chemicals, which might cause problems, which wouldn't be noticed for a while, and then would be suppressed for decades while continuing to ravage people. Lab cultures are also extremely vulnerable to contamination by undesirable organisms, because duh, growth medium; so then you're reliant on the scientific ethics of people who are only in it for profit. I don't see that working out any better than the people who think that reusing the same wash water at a meat-processing plant constitutes "cleaning" the carcasses.

I'm just not impressed.

Re: Thoughts

[acelightning73]

Vat-grown meat has always been a popular science fiction trope - how to provide a protein food for space travelers, since large mammals don't adapt well to zero G. The food scientists will probably come up with a way to make the vat-grown stuff have the flavor and texture we expect. And not just beef - in Heinlein's future, a spaceship has a vat growing chicken meat, and they nickname the device "Mrs Harris" (from the name of a book and movie in the 1950s, when Heinlein wrote about it). In some other story I dimly remember, they were growing salmon, and why not Wagyu beef, or heirloom pork, or the flesh of other animals we enjoy eating - if we can do chicken, why not quail or pheasant? if beef, why not venison? (For that matter, some people might want to find out what human meat - long pig - tastes like?)

Replicator technology would be awfully handy - there was one episode of ST:TNG where they had to set the replicators to produce hand phasers for everybody. And I'd love one of Deanna Troy's hot fudge sundaes!

They used to mention hydroponic farming in SF a lot. I once tried to grown hydroponic watercress (one of the few vegetables I can stand the taste of), but it took weeks to get enough to harvest for a simple stir-fry for two adults. I don't think hydroponics is the way we're going to feed the passengers on an an interplanetary luxury liner.

[seleneheart]

I hate the idea of meat substitutes or lab grown meat because there are so many beautifully tasty veggies out there and amazing dishes that can be made with them.

Plus anything made in a factory has the same food safety issues as regular beef such as that factory in Ohio (which I can't find the link at the moment).

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I hate the idea of meat substitutes or lab grown meat because there are so many beautifully tasty veggies out there and amazing dishes that can be made with them.<<

I agree.

Of course, most fake meat products are not made for vegetarian or vegan people who find meat repulsive. They're made for meat-eaters who are in some way pressured away from eating the meat they really want. I'll make an exception for things like tofu since fermented foods are good (barring allergies or other aversions) but most ultraprocessed stuff is bad for you.

There are many whole foods that can take the place of meat in recipes.

>>Plus anything made in a factory has the same food safety issues as regular beef such as that factory in Ohio (which I can't find the link at the moment).<<

Well, not identical risks, but certainly plenty of risks. The chemicals might be carcinogenic or otherwise harmful. Someone might put in the wrong thing or too much of a thing. Any food can get contaminated by a variety of filth or pathogens if handling is not careful enough. And so on.

I certainly wouldn't want to eat vat meat. Gods bless the Amish, I won't have to, even if it means eventually driving 15 minutes to shop in their stores.