Greta Thunberg - brave campaigner or deeply disturbed? Part II.

[The Don]

OK, so now that the locavore idea has been shot down in flames and I can continue to have Voss water (in glass bottles) shipped +7000km to my home, guilt free.

I'm pleased to see that there has been a recent development in the government restricting people's access to specific foods in the name of climate change.Good on ya Edinburgh. Now lets go further and ban the serving/sale of meat in the entire city. Time to start rethinking that national dish as well. Or at least reimagine it using beans, rice and soy pastry.

Link

Like for like locavore makes sense.

The trouble is that in the UK, a locavore diet would be quite boring and restrictive for much of the year.

IMO if you want to manage your carbon footprint a (largely) vegan diet with food miles is better than a meat-heavy locavore diet.

Shipping water half way round the planet doesn't seem to make much sense from a carbon footprint perspective.


Edited to add....

The story about Edinburgh schools is from the Daily Mail so at best is likely a misleading presentation of the facts and most likely is entirely made up.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Really..

How big a factor in the whole AGW thing, are dietary choices ?

Maybe a good question for ChatGPT.

 

[The Don]

Depends on where and how you live but it's estimated that diet contributes between 10 and 30 percent of carbon emissions.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/...kes,your household's greenhouse gas emissions.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

The food we eat makes up a sizable portion of our individual carbon footprint – depending on where you live and what you dine on, it can account for between 10-30% of your household’s greenhouse gas emission

It may be 30% of a household's emissions, but it says nothing about what any one households' total emissions are.

That really doesn't say what everyone, everywhere's diet contributes to the whole problem , i.e. total global carbon emissions.



The " it can " is a gotcha also..

I can't believe it's up there with personal transportation, heating and cooling, and plastic consumption for the majority of people in highly developed countries.

 

[arthwollipot]

Basking in the attention. Gotta get arrested now and then to keep the cred levels up

Detained, not arrested.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

I can't believe it's up there with personal transportation, heating and cooling, and plastic consumption for the majority of people in highly developed countries.

Argument from incredulity. Not a good start.

Here's a pie chart of greenhouse gas emissions in one highly developed country (New Zealand).

Dairy cattle:- 22.4%
Sheep and Beef cattle:- 20.2%
Transportation:- 17.5%
Electricity generation:- 5%

Kiwis could cut their emissions by over 20% simply by not consuming dairy products.

 

[arthwollipot]

Kiwis could cut their emissions by over 20% simply by not consuming dairy products.

Well, that and slaughtering thousands of dairy cattle that they have no more use for.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Well, that and slaughtering thousands of dairy cattle that they have no more use for.

Mmm. Cheap steak!

In case you didn't know, dairy cows only live for around 5 years - because they only produce milk for around 10 months after giving birth and at 5 years old their bodies are 'spent', so they are slaughtered. Most of the calves are slaughtered too.

Something to think about the next time you see a warm fuzzy advert extolling the benefits of milk. Dairy farming is a dirty business in more than one way.

 

[arthwollipot]

Mmm. Cheap steak!

In case you didn't know, dairy cows only live for around 5 years - because they only produce milk for around 10 months after giving birth and at 5 years old their bodies are 'spent', so they are slaughtered. Most of the calves are slaughtered too.

Something to think about the next time you see a warm fuzzy advert extolling the benefits of milk. Dairy farming is a dirty business in more than one way.

You're going to get absolutely zero effect on greenhouse emissions while those cows are still alive. Furthermore, if you stop milking those dairy cattle on a daily basis, most of them will contract mastitis and die painfully, and that would not be humane.

You can't wait until they're all 5 years old. You have to kill them all, now. Every last one. Okay, now that you've done that, you've got a huge amount of substandard meat - dairy cattle aren't the same as beef cattle and their steaks aren't anywhere near as good. So all that unsellable meat is going to rot. Have you taken into account the greenhouse gas emissions of millions of tons of rotting cow carcasses? Where are you going to put them? Or are you going to burn them and put all the carbon that is currently sequestered in their bodies into the atmosphere?

These are the things that you have to think about before proposing "just stop eating cheese". It. Ain't. That. Simple.

Also - stop eating cheese? Are you crazy?

 

[Roboramma]

Kiwis could cut their emissions by over 20% simply by not consuming dairy products.

I agree with your general point, but is New Zealand the best example? Isn't a lot of their dairy production for export?

 

[Chanakya]

You're going to get absolutely zero effect on greenhouse emissions while those cows are still alive. Furthermore, if you stop milking those dairy cattle on a daily basis, most of them will contract mastitis and die painfully, and that would not be humane.

You can't wait until they're all 5 years old. You have to kill them all, now. Every last one. Okay, now that you've done that, you've got a huge amount of substandard meat - dairy cattle aren't the same as beef cattle and their steaks aren't anywhere near as good. So all that unsellable meat is going to rot. Have you taken into account the greenhouse gas emissions of millions of tons of rotting cow carcasses? Where are you going to put them? Or are you going to burn them and put all the carbon that is currently sequestered in their bodies into the atmosphere?

These are the things that you have to think about before proposing "just stop eating cheese". It. Ain't. That. Simple.

Also - stop eating cheese? Are you crazy?

Haha, true. Giving up the pleasure and health benefits of eating other people's, sorry, animals', flesh, that's completely doable. Speaking for myself, that is. Ditto cutting down on flying where possible, if not completely eliminating it. But cutting out cheese, should that turn out to make sense? Now that's extremism, right there. Or Greta-esque autistic zero-dilution sincerity, and deserving of real applause.

 

[The Don]

Haha, true. Giving up the pleasure and health benefits of eating other people's, sorry, animals', flesh, that's completely doable. Speaking for myself, that is. Ditto cutting down on flying where possible, if not completely eliminating it. But cutting out cheese, should that turn out to make sense? Now that's extremism, right there. Or Greta-esque autistic zero-dilution sincerity, and deserving of real applause.

I guess different people have different "red lines" they are unprepared to cross.

I'm happy to cut down on my travel emissions but that's because I don't want to travel so far or so often as I used to so that's an easy win for me. Other people may find this far more difficult, not least if their job depends on it.

Likewise with diet. So far in January, I've been vegetarian and Mrs Don has been vegan. Clearly I have decided that I'm not prepared to give up dairy but Mrs Don is prepared to take an extra step.

Then again, we have three cats. If we were laser-focused on reducing our carbon footprint, we wouldn't have them.

Then again if everyone did their best to reduce their carbon footprint by doing everything they comfortably can, and a few things that are uncomfortable, then we'd see a significant reduction in emissions.

The opposite, Conservative, view is that because the most extreme measures are too hard (eating a vegan locavore diet) and that climate change protesters aren't perfect, then people may as well do nothing at all to change their behaviour.

 

[The Don]

You're going to get absolutely zero effect on greenhouse emissions while those cows are still alive. Furthermore, if you stop milking those dairy cattle on a daily basis, most of them will contract mastitis and die painfully, and that would not be humane.

You can't wait until they're all 5 years old. You have to kill them all, now. Every last one. Okay, now that you've done that, you've got a huge amount of substandard meat - dairy cattle aren't the same as beef cattle and their steaks aren't anywhere near as good. So all that unsellable meat is going to rot. Have you taken into account the greenhouse gas emissions of millions of tons of rotting cow carcasses? Where are you going to put them? Or are you going to burn them and put all the carbon that is currently sequestered in their bodies into the atmosphere?

These are the things that you have to think about before proposing "just stop eating cheese". It. Ain't. That. Simple.

Also - stop eating cheese? Are you crazy?

The dairy industry could be "managed down" over a period of a few years. It's unlikely that it would disappear altogether but then again those cows wouldn't require milking if they hadn't been forced to produce calves so the requirement to milk cows would be eliminated pretty quickly.

Even if all the current cows released all their carbon into the atmosphere, it'd be much better than tens or hundreds of generations of cows doing so if the dairy industry continues at its current (or even higher) level.

 

[FatherLukeduke]

Kiwis could cut their emissions by over 20% simply by not consuming dairy products.

Err, no. They export 95% of that dairy, so if they stopped consuming the 5% they keep then they would cut their emissions by 1%.

They'd also presumably replace the dairy in their diet with something else that would have a carbon impact, so the net effect would be less than 1%.

You could just say: well they should stop producing milk at all (I'm not sure this will be super popular election promise). However NZ is meant to have the lowest carbon footprint per litre in the world for milk production, so when other countries upped their milk output to cover the shortfall, you would end up with more CO2 output worldwide.


They would also have to live in a world without cheese, which sounds terrible to me.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Argument from incredulity. Not a good start.

Here's a pie chart of greenhouse gas emissions in one highly developed country (New Zealand).

Dairy cattle:- 22.4%
Sheep and Beef cattle:- 20.2%
Transportation:- 17.5%
Electricity generation:- 5%

Kiwis could cut their emissions by over 20% simply by not consuming dairy products.

I didn't see any c02 in those numbers. Isn't it the big player in AGW?

Cherry picking is not a good start either..

 

[Stout]

The opposite, Conservative, view is that because the most extreme measures are too hard (eating a vegan locavore diet) and that climate change protesters aren't perfect, then people may as well do nothing at all to change their behaviour.

The opposite view is outright climate change denialism. Climate change deniers are still back in Al Gore times and citing his "failed prediction" about melting ice caps as "proof" that climate change is a hoax. Greta Thunberg was only a temporary blip on their radar for being a whiny brat who had a meltdown on the world stage and...for reasons that seem important to deniers, isn't a climate scientist.

I won't argue against most deniers being conservatives, or appearing to be conservatives as I don't track individual deniers across platforms i.e. I don't "stalk" them.

 

[Stout]

I didn't see any c02 in those numbers. Isn't it the big player in AGW?

Cherry picking is not a good start either..

This is where things start getting weird. Cows (basically) convert CO2 into methane, which rises up into the troposphere and gets converted back into CO2 so the whole meat/dairy issue revolves around carbon that's recently, geological timewise been in the atmosphere. The same atmospheric carbon that cows are consuming and rereleasing is the same carbon the buffalo were consuming when they were roaming the great plains.

The carbon that's causing all the problems is the carbons that's been sequestered underground for hundreds of millions of years that we humans are digging up and setting free. Burning fossil fuels is actually increasing atmospheric carbon and has been ever since whale oil became useless.

The meat thing is really a distraction, like the idea of planting trees to sequester carbon. Where is that tree sequestered carbon going to be in 100-200 years? Burned up in a forest fire? Rotted on the forest floor? Used in pulp/construction and eventually disposed of? Or buried deep in an abandoned mine never to see the light of day and converted back into coal. Both meat and trees amount to short term solutions for a long term problem.

 

[Chanakya]

This is where things start getting weird. Cows (basically) convert CO2 into methane, which rises up into the troposphere and gets converted back into CO2 so the whole meat/dairy issue revolves around carbon that's recently, geological timewise been in the atmosphere. The same atmospheric carbon that cows are consuming and rereleasing is the same carbon the buffalo were consuming when they were roaming the great plains.

The carbon that's causing all the problems is the carbons that's been sequestered underground for hundreds of millions of years that we humans are digging up and setting free. Burning fossil fuels is actually increasing atmospheric carbon and has been ever since whale oil became useless.

The meat thing is really a distraction,like the idea of planting trees to sequester carbon. Where is that tree sequestered carbon going to be in 100-200 years? Burned up in a forest fire? Rotted on the forest floor? Used in pulp/construction and eventually disposed of? Or buried deep in an abandoned mine never to see the light of day and converted back into coal. Both meat and trees amount to short term solutions for a long term problem.

Why is anything at all a distraction? It's not either-or, it's never either-or. Not eating meat does not make not flying any more difficult, and not flying does not make recycling any more difficult. And doing what we can, as individuals, does not make going for larger policy measures more difficult. It is NOT either-or, any of this.

I find this constant drumming of the Nirvana fallacy puzzling. Even as a facade for callous disregard it is puzzling, given it's been clearly pointed out so many times.

 

[Susheel]

Why is anything at all a distraction? It's not either-or, it's never either-or. Not eating meat does not make not flying any more difficult, and not flying does not make recycling any more difficult. And doing what we can, as individuals, does not make going for larger policy measures more difficult. It is NOT either-or, any of this.

I find this constant drumming of the Nirvana fallacy puzzling. Even as a facade for callous disregard it is puzzling, given it's been clearly pointed out so many times.

 

[Darat]

This is where things start getting weird. Cows (basically) convert CO2 into methane, which rises up into the troposphere and gets converted back into CO2 so the whole meat/dairy issue revolves around carbon that's recently, geological timewise been in the atmosphere. The same atmospheric carbon that cows are consuming and rereleasing is the same carbon the buffalo were consuming when they were roaming the great plains.
The carbon that's causing all the problems is the carbons that's been sequestered underground for hundreds of millions of years that we humans are digging up and setting free. Burning fossil fuels is actually increasing atmospheric carbon and has been ever since whale oil became useless.

...snip...

You seem to have missed out a stage - and that is how we produce feed for those cows, we use your "sequestered for hundreds of millions of years" carbon to make that food, to distribute that food and so on. The cows aren't simply recycling the same carbon.