this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

If the non-food products (which account for about 40% of the animal) are accounted for, the food-CO2 falls by ~40% to about 51.

This doesn't seem to take into account methane production and its effect on the climate either, which would probably put cows and pigs much higher.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Right. Cattle produces a lot more than just beef. Leather, horns, bones, and hooves are additional products that come from the cow. Then there's all the animal feed and plant fertilizer that come from the less desirable parts of the cow. I wonder what the carbon footprint is when the entirety of the cow is taken into account. No part of the animal is wasted during rendering.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

Another "fun" chart on various food sources green house gas emissions adjusted per kilogram of food product.

Source

I love how the chart breaks cows into multiple categories making it look that much smaller even though it's still chart topping.

Edit: Oddly enough they're citing the same data in both the one I link and OP's link.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

Why is Kilograms of food product the one axis? shouldn't it be kcals or something?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (13 children)

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-kcal-poore

They have that too. Beef is still the worst by a huge margin

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Though this is a great chart, it isn't quite the whole picture either for climate impact. Almonds and almond milk get to be a lot worse alternative option if you consider the water consumption concerns where they are grown in California. They have many similar charts that attempt to quantify holistic carbon footprint.

Long story short, though not eating animal products is best for the environment, even just eating beef less often and not worrying about eggs and chickens can get you to over half the climate impact of full veganism and is a much easier transition for some.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago (1 children)

it's basic physics: animal products consume more energy (calories) than they produce in food because they exert energy on living - moving, eating, converting food to energy, etc.

Eating a plant directly (or with comparable processing to meat) means less wasted energy (as in calories burned compared to calories produced as food) simply because you're going one step higher (lower?) in the food chain to obtain that energy.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Would it make more sense to compare based on calories and not weight? Since you need to eat more tofu than beef for the same calorie intake. If my math is right, tofu is about 760 kcal per kg while beef is 2500 kcal per kg so that makes it ~34 grams of CO2 per kcal for beef and ~3 grams of CO2 per kcal for tofu.

Definitely tofu is still better obviously, just wanted to compare with that metric. Not sure if it makes more sense or not.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago

The website has a graph for that and for protein as well. It's pretty neat

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I don't like tofu. I like other meat substitutes but idk tofu is not the greatest comparison to meat in my opinion

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I always find the comparison between tofu and meat a bit unfair, as it wasn't invented for that purpose. In many asian cultures it is simply a thing in its own right, only we in the West have popularized it as a meat substitute and I don't think that does tofu justice.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

other meat substitutes

Tofu is not a meat substitute. Tofu is just tofu, unless someone specifically picks it as a substitute for meat and sticks to it, in which case I guess it's their personal substitute for meat.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Tofu is not a meat substitute.

Correct, however I believe it has been commonly accepted as a such because of its protein content... just clarifying what I think people mean here

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (7 children)

Isn't air travel and large ships far worse for the environment? I don't mean to derail a conversation, but I suspect that air travel and ocean liners have a significantly bigger impact and I don't see as much coverage on that issue.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Fortunately, we have a series of tubes connecting every computer on the planet that can help answer questions like this!

Source

In short Aviation (1.9%) and Shipping (1.7%) are smaller than Livestock & Manure (5.8%) even before factoring in the secondary impacts that are largely driven by the livestock industry, like land use change, soil loss, and deforestation.

If you're specifically talking about transportation emissions for food, there's a graph for that as well!

Supply chain represents ~18% of the overall food footprint, smaller than livestock and land use changes.

Source

Talking meat specifically, the transportation emissions are a tiny piece of their overall footprint, as is shown in the OP.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

Damn these charts are nicely made.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago

Agriculture makes up a full quarter of our total emissions. Some of that is because of shipping it, of course, but there is absolutely no question whatsoever that agriculture is a huge contributing factor to climate change

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

I don’t see as much coverage on that issue.

No, there's plenty of coverage. If anything, there isn't enough coverage on animal agriculture because people can't fathom a world where they don't eat meat (or even just significantly reduce their consumption).

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

Data about greenhouse emissions from transportation is talked about more frequently than any other source in my experience. I don't see the relevance to this data as beef and tofu can be produced locally or shipped overseas, so the emissions to produce the product would be a separate discussion versus emissions in transit.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

I didn't realize that there was a direct correlation between CO2 expenditure during food production and the final product's flavour

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm all in for reducing beef consumption, not just because of the green aspect but also health... having said that, this is yet another fool's errand the masses have been set to follow:

  1. we could curve global beef consumption significantly by realign massive sectors of the supply chain, agriculture and education OR
  2. we could get rid of the Kardashian (sp?) that likes to take private jet hops to avoid minutes of traffic
[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

You know who says changing beef consumption is impossible so it's meaningless to even try? Beef industry spokespeople.

I mean, what's more impossible - changing Western dietary habits or changing the entire structure of capitalism and representative democracy that allows rich people to own private jets?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (10 children)

I was curious and went looking because I suspected it was low emissions but not how low. Research seems to suggest Kangaroo meat is significantly lower GHG per kg than tofu!

In our calculations we use 1.30 CO2 equivalents for one kilogram production of kangaroo meat which is an average of the estimates reported in the literature

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5308823/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

From a quick glance, it seems they didn't consider emissions coming from exporting kangaroo meat abroad. Though I fancy the total will still be way lower than the alternatives.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

This paper focuses on Australian domestic consumption although transportation is still a factor especially with the sheer size of Australia.

I guess it’s good news that Kangaroo thrive basically anywhere that isn’t sand dunes

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Can I get some numbers on a bottle of Gochujang sauce?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (6 children)

anywhere that compares by calorie? just curious

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (3 children)

The carbon that we dig out of the ground and put in the air, that is the ony one relevant to global warming. Everything else is just a change of phases in a cycle.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

this is based on the poore-nemecek study and should not be regarded as "true". it's "true if they methodology reflects reality" but it does not.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (6 children)

Can you expand on that or at least link me to the people smarter than me?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (4 children)

I can just tell you: they did some looking at each production process and the inputs and outputs, then extrapolated it out to global scale.

The problem is that inputs and outputs vary wildly from place to place, that’s why some places are all corn and beans and others are cattle and yet others are something else. Given those differences are because of the economic inputs varying as opposed to the environmental inputs and outputs varying.

You can’t just go around to all the beef producers in the county and figure out how their operation works then multiply it by however much to fit the world scale because the rest of the world might be doing it wildly differently.

Although while I see the criticism of their methodology I think it means things are actually way worse, not better in terms of the environmental impact of beef.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Why is beef from a beef herd worse than beef from a dairy herd?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I think just because dairy cows live longer. Beef cows are killed younger, you don't need to wait until their milk production dwindles. It's not clear if accounting for the milk carbon footprint was taken into account or not.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I freakin love tofu, air frying it is so tasty. I just wish it were cheaper.

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