>whether it is better to let tree grows on a parcel, or cut grass regularly and let it compost, adding biomass to it.
Of those two options, trees. Compost does not sequester carbon in and of itself. That's a wishful thinking myth that is based on a lack of understanding of soil. Compost is organic matter, in various stages of life, death and decay. We want soil to have more organic matter. So people assumed adding compost to dirt would accomplish this. It does not. The organic matter is decomposed into CO2 and returns to the atmosphere. We need to increase STABLE organic matter in the soil, and compost does not do that simply by adding it to dirt. The only thing that creates stable organic matter is microbes living in the rhizosphere in symbiosis with plants. In order to increase soil SOM, we need more root mass. The way compost can help is to plant a forest or meadow and keep soaking it in compost tea so that the roots get deeper and deeper, expanding the rhizosphere and the depth of the soil. Normal roots will only grow as deep as there are symbiotic microbes, and yet those microbes will only live where there are roots, so there's a catch-22. We can use the microbes in compost, dissolved into water as compost tea, to get microbes deeper than the roots, so the roots go deeper, and then keep doing that. There's people with grass that has 20 foot deep roots from doing this.
So does that mean that at any given place, there won't be soil for deeper than the roots go? What happens to the soul if all the roots die or are removed (assuming it is not washed away by water)? Does it decay into CO2?
Different plants have different behaviours. Some sequester carbon well in the ground, others have near zero long term sequestration value. Some of the best are algae and seaweed that are allowed to sink to the bottom when they die. Plants that grow in bogs behave similarly. Chestnut is one of the best long term carbon sequestering trees.
1. Yet the industry still refuses to stop forcing honeybees to have abnormally long and large growth, which is the main factor in death by varroa.
2. Not really. None of the temperatures we're recording anywhere around the country are special. We've had extreme variations in seasonal temperatures forever.
3. Commercial bees aren't africanized.
4. And just like with #1, the industry refuses to make any changes to accomodate the fact that bees are bees. They want to continue to treat them as machinery and then complain that they keep "mysteriously" dying.
5. I have to be fair to the beekeeping industry here in that they really have no say in this. Industrial agriculture is a disaster.
> There is nothing to suggest this, and overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
I'm willing to read a good citation here if you have one, but the "overwhelming evidence" lies on the other side where docile and submissive specimens of fighting breeds and aggressive and dominant specimens of family-friendly breeds can be easily observed. There is plenty to suggest this.
> No, some subset of purebreds will have genetic defects. Just as some subset of mutts will.
These subsets are not equal. I'll clarify in a bit.
> Why? They are doing the same thing you are complaining about, just using a specific cross of two breeds rather than a specific single breed.
That's not how genetics work. Inbreeding increases the number of recessive genes floating around in the gene pool, increasing the number of carriers.
Say, for simplicity's sake, hip dysplasia is bound to a single recessive gene. If you cross a breed that is prone to hip dysplasia with one that isn't, none of the offspring will suffer from hip dysplasia, and it will halve the number of carriers of the recessive gene in the genetic lineup.
Do that a couple of generations with different breeds, and it starts becoming very unlikely that two recessive genes for dysplasia will match up.
Now understand that a lot of genetic diseases are the result of the interactions of many genes of which the exact mechanism is unclear, and it should become clear there is no solid way to prevent a disease from expressing itself through careful monitoring.
For now, the best way to guarantee a healthy dog is to mix in new genes and keep the gene pool healthy, which is very much the opposite of breeding for conformity.
By not taking the calves away from their mothers? That's how we did it for centuries, we only started taking calves away from their mothers when artificial milk replacements made it more profitable to do so.
>At least a plant-based diet reduces your GHG footprint
That isn't actually true. It is a very misleading claim spread to promote veganism. It comes from comparing the raw caloric value of field corn, to the caloric value of beef. In reality, We do not actually eat field corn, we turn it into HFCS and corn oil, this reduces the energy efficiency of corn dramatically. A plant based diet also should not be based on HFCS and corn oil.
Second, beef is the worst meat to compare to, it is not an accurate representation for meat in general. Chicken being fed on corn based feed produces 5 million calories per acre, more than almost all the plant based crops a vegan diet would generally be based on, including soy, and equal to staples like wheat.
Third, even in comparing beef they do it wrong. They are comparing to hypothetical beef raised entirely on corn. There is no such beef. All beef is grass fed for the first year, they are only finished on grain.
That's interesting. I based my opinion on reports such as [1]. Do you have any (semi-)scientific references that support your opinion?
I agree that we don't eat much corn directly, but if it weren't used to feed livestock, we could use the land for something else, like potatoes or lentils or whatever grows in similar climate to corn, which are actually eaten. I'm somewhat doubtful of your claim that corn fed chicken produce 5 million calories per acre. Do you have a citation for that? The usual rule of thumb for going up one level in the food chain is that you lose 9/10th of the energy and corn only produces on the order of 12 million calories per acre. This random google result here [2] indeed claims about 1.4 million calories per acre for chicken.
>Do you have any (semi-)scientific references that support your opinion?
Does arithmetic count? The stats are available to look up yourself, the math is simple to do. But there's nobody funding publishing "debunk vegan nonsense" papers like there are people funding "make up vegan nonsense". So the only people you can find doing the math for you are just random people like the blog I link to later in this post.
>I agree that we don't eat much corn directly, but if it weren't used to feed livestock, we could use the land for something else, like potatoes or lentils or whatever grows in similar climate to corn, which are actually eaten
Most of those alternatives produce far fewer calories per acre than corn, which is the issue. An honest comparison shows most plant crops produce very low calories per acre, and require lots of diesel to produce and transport. Yes, you could grow something else. And almost all of those something elses are worse than corn fed chicken from an energy efficiency standpoint. If vegans want to argue the impact of meat vs plants in this way, then they need to apply the same standard to plants, and that means demanding that the vast majority of crops being grown are abandoned in favor of the tiny number that meet corn's energy output: corn, sugarcane, potatoes, palm. There's your acceptable vegan diet if we're going to limit things for being less efficient than corn.
>The usual rule of thumb for going up one level in the food chain is that you lose 9/10th of the energy
We're not talking about a natural ecosystem, which is what that rule of thumb is for. We're talking about animals that have been bred specifically to grow very large very quickly on very little food.
>and corn only produces on the order of 12 million calories per acre
No, corn produces 12 million calories per acre in human edible calories when converted to corn oil and HFCS. It produces 15 million calories per acre as livestock feed.
>This random google result here [2] indeed claims about 1.4 million calories per acre for chicken.
And it is very wrong. It is making up a silly number by using the human figure for corn calories per acre not the livestock feed figure. Then assuming chickens are fed 50/50 corn and soy when in reality their feed is almost entirely corn. It is also assuming a feed conversion ratio of 3, which is nearly double the actual ratio of 1.6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio#Poultry
You'd think that the meat industry would pay for debunking vegan nonsense papers, especially when the world starts talking about a carbon tax that would make beef a lot more expensive if they use the numbers I cited. But I'll read the links you provided and update my opinion. Thanks for looking them up for me.
Pasture is not harvested or stored, so there is no rodent or bird deaths from harvesting equipment, and no mass rodenticide usage as there is with grains.
It is far from "loaded". 0.15g per serving is not "loaded", and is half the level of salmon for example, which is promoted as healthy. Omega 6 polyunsaturated fats are highly inflammatory. But our intake is almost entirely from "vegetable oil", not chicken.
That's because people eat a lot of chicken and eggs, and don't each much salmon. When deciding what to eat, the amount per serving is what matters, not how much of it the average person eats. And again, arachidonic acid is just one omega 6 PUFA, being specifically singled out for promotion by vegans because it is found in meat. The rest of the omega 6s are all just as bad, and our intake is almost entirely from vegetable oil. A serving of chicken has less than 2g of omega 6s in total. That's less than of the omega 6s in a serving of tofu.
That site is run by a well known quack, and is full of misrepresented "evidence" and even outright lies. It used to be called the "vegan research institute" until he renamed it so it was less obvious as a propaganda outlet.
And btw you linked an article with the following conclusion : "The video confirmed what I already knew from evaluating the published evidence: it is healthier to eat more plant-based foods and less red meat."
Many fresh vegetables are inflammatory. Plants evolved chemicals to hinder herbation. Roots/tubers and fruit are generally fine, but leaves/stems/flowers are generally full of inflammatory anti-nutrients and should be cooked.
Blog posts and HN posts have an equal lack of authority. Authority does not matter though, facts do. You can look up the levels of oxalates, phytates, PUFAs, etc from whatever source you like and confirm reality. You don't need an "authority" to tell you what to think.
>Blog posts and HN posts have an equal lack of authority.
I agree that ultimately facts are what matter, but I disagree on this point. In the real world where it's not possible to author or reference a peer-reviewed research study for every statement or decision you'd like to make, this authority has value.
TThe administrators of Harvard Medical School, a well respected university, were willing to publish this content on a domain they controlled. This implies that some trusted expert at this trusted institution authored, reviewed, and published this content. This means that they don't believe that this content is so inaccurate as to expose the institution to a reputation loss, as opposed to say www.fake-health-expert.example.com. In fact, this may have more authority than a peer-reviewed study that doesn't properly disclose its funding by e.g. the dairy or sugar industry.
This skin in the game of reputational risk is orders of magnitude different than your or my reputational risk by posting a comment to HN.
>This implies that some trusted expert at this trusted institution authored, reviewed, and published this content.
No it does not. It is a blog post. Tons of people have blogs on that domain. There is absolutely no standard of authority or correctness involved. You are falsely inferring that there are trusted experts involved. There is no factual basis for that belief.
Of those two options, trees. Compost does not sequester carbon in and of itself. That's a wishful thinking myth that is based on a lack of understanding of soil. Compost is organic matter, in various stages of life, death and decay. We want soil to have more organic matter. So people assumed adding compost to dirt would accomplish this. It does not. The organic matter is decomposed into CO2 and returns to the atmosphere. We need to increase STABLE organic matter in the soil, and compost does not do that simply by adding it to dirt. The only thing that creates stable organic matter is microbes living in the rhizosphere in symbiosis with plants. In order to increase soil SOM, we need more root mass. The way compost can help is to plant a forest or meadow and keep soaking it in compost tea so that the roots get deeper and deeper, expanding the rhizosphere and the depth of the soil. Normal roots will only grow as deep as there are symbiotic microbes, and yet those microbes will only live where there are roots, so there's a catch-22. We can use the microbes in compost, dissolved into water as compost tea, to get microbes deeper than the roots, so the roots go deeper, and then keep doing that. There's people with grass that has 20 foot deep roots from doing this.