What are /r/environment's favorite Products & Services?

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ny'ker here - our city is full of shit, here's why; in april they mandated building cut co2 by 2030 https://weather.com/news/news/2019-04-22-new-york-city-requires-buildings-to-cut-greenhouse-gas-emissions but that's compared to emissions from 2005 the city mandated that oil heat convert to gas heat years ago;
https://www.ny-engineers.com/blog/how-nyc-is-phasing-out-heavy-heating-oils
so that change alone which most buildings already did (not for co2 reasons, but because gas is dirt cheap now)
reduces their co2 by at least 55% or above the 40% difference requirement from 2005 to 2030.

so basically, NYC is full of shit when it comes to environmental law.

Original study citation: Patterns of widespread decline in North American bumble bees; Sydney A. Camerona, Jeffrey D. Loziera, James P. Strange, Jonathan B. Koch, Nils Cordesa, Leellen F. Solterd, and Terry L. Griswold; November 2010 PNAS.

It was only 4 cherry picked species, and only those with high Nosema bombi infections + low genetic diversity within their populations. Already we have a problem because populations at risk of decline from ongoing high rates of infection are inherently genetically slim.

The study and model are so complex that we (a small, admittedly self-righteous group of entomologists, climate modelers and ecologists) spent over 2 hours today trying to understand how they had "corrected" 100-year-old data with unknown sampling methods and how they constructed their model from the historical data.

Hysteria about native bee decline pays my stipend and does generate interest in their conservation, so I'll keep my criticisms brief. There is little conclusive cause for alarm at this point, and this study is not conclusive or even reliable at this point.

I really hope this leads to better quality "reef safe" sunscreen. Right now, I did a lot of research and the best product I came up with is this... and honestly, it's not great. It spreads like petroleum jelly which is not nearly as nice as "traditonal" sunscreens

Hello, I'm a bot! The movie you linked is called Flow: For Love of Water, here are some Trailers

This seems a convenient place to recommend that everyone use Ecosia as their search engine. It’s basically google, but they use the ad revenue to fund tree planting. Absolute no brainer.

This is exactly it - I also have taken refuge in spending my spare time working towards solutions. At this point, I think it’s about raising awareness and activism to bring about social change and mobilize our society.

I'm building an app called Earthrise which helps you take direct action wherever you live by showing you the nearest protests, meetups, groups and talks in your area - no matter what group is local to you. I strongly feel that taking to the streets is the only option we, as a society, have left. You can find it on iOS and Android.

>Anyone else think this trend is frightening and needs more public awareness? (self.environment)

Yes, the international scientific community.

It's a huge issue, and we've already seen huge global damage to our reefs occur because of it.

I recommended this TED talk about it.

I'll leave this up because I'd be interested if anyone has anything to say about it, but a little more inspection has me thinking this is actually unlikely: Pine Bluff is 70 miles from Beebe and is most definitely down river.

For those who haven't read it Naomi Oreskes et. al.'s <em>Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming</em> does a fantastic job of laying all of these tactics and campaigns out.

Actually he has signed it now after the backlash, he's there if you click the link. In fact he's one of (last I heard) 2 presidents who have actually presented a plan. It's not as thorough and effective as Jay Inslee's Evergreen Economy Plan but at least it's something. Hopefully now that EEP is out it'll encourage more candidates to follow suit. We need more candidates to take it that seriously

5.266 million square miles / 1.364×10^7 square kilometers. Which is larger than the area of the United States and Central America.

"Hvalur (the company) claims that the whale was a blue-fin whale hybrid." As if that makes it any better. This is a travesty!

Great things to grill are marinated tofu, tempeh, mushrooms, all kinds of vegetables. I have this kindle book that has some good recipes.

One of the coral reefs that had been declared dead, has exploded into life again. Some people expect the same thing for the great barrier reef. Dead reefs can bring Life Anew a lot faster than an area with no reef at all it seems.

Yeah, that's almost certainly wrong. LDPE is pretty valuable. Plastic bags are especially nice because they require almost no pre-processing (few contaminates, no other components that need to be removed).

Repro LDPE, once processed can go from $0.25 to $2.00 /lb, based off of current rates. $2.09/lb for natural (no dye) repro from here lower quality stuff is cheaper, but these guys are quoting $0.015 (one and a half cents) for LDPE repro film, which is just stupid.

I don't even know where the $4000 to process comes from. It shouldn't take more than 4 or 5 man hours/tonne (if the recycling plant is run by a bunch of monkeys) to go from in the plant to fully processed. Assuming they've got a semi decent sorting machine.

Edit: It's HDPE, not LDPE that is used. HD is worth more than LD usually, so I don't feel too bad about the mistake, the point still stands.

Try this app. It guides you to eating only sustainable fish using sustainable practices. Its a bit confusing at first, but essentially, eat only fish that aren't highlighted red or even yellow.

Seafoodwatch.org (WEBSITE) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.montereybayaquarium.seafoodwatch

I'm surprised no one has suggested the Buycott App (Apple link, Android link). This is my go-to app for making sure I don't support companies I don't like. You simply choose the campaigns you want to support and the level of importance, then you scan the product and it tells you which campaigns it supports and which ones it conflicts with. It can be difficult to keep track of every parent company or cause. If you decide not to buy it, it will give you the option to send a prewritten tweet to the company. Even companies I assumed were innocent turn out to do things like refuse to disclose where they source their Cocoa from (looking at you Lenny and Larry's All-natural Complete Cookie).

EDIT: fixed a typo

This is the 'new capitalism'; everything is privatized and deregulated so the government is essentially an empty shell that our tax dollars flow through on their way to the private sector. We pay taxes then the government gives that money to private contractors to do the jobs they're responsible for as the private sector is 'more efficient'. When things are good the private companies clean up and make massive profits, when things go bad they sit back and do nothing while the government takes all the blame and starts throwing more money at the private companies to fix the problem.

Katrina was the most blatant example of this. When Katrina hit everyone was screaming WHERE IS FEMA?, which is a fair question. The problem is that FEMA had been completely gutted by the Bush administration and it's function had, in essence, been outsourced to private contractors who had no interest in spending all their profits dealing with the problem.

See Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine for further examples.

Of course. There is an entire "small cell" and also a "natural" beekeeping movement.

The natural size of honeybees varies depending on latitude. In general, the further north you go the smaller the size of the honeybee is. (The tropics have some non-honeybee bee species that we would think of as huge.)

The difference in the size of the honeycomb seems small. A 4.8 or 4.9mm diameter honeycomb is natural for US latitudes. But in the 1920s/30s, back when beekeeping first started to become commercialized, honeycomb size was increased to about 5.3mm. Though that ~.4mm difference seems small to us, when extrapolated 3D it creates a honeybee about 50% larger. That large size is now the norm. If you buy bees in the US, they'll be that large size. (And of course the US impacts other countries too.)

The commercial beekeeping industry, like all of US agriculture, only responds to science and especially to money. While there are many anecdotal reports of small cell beekeeping resulting in fewer problems, it doesn't eliminate all problems and there are few hard, scientific studies that testify to its effectiveness. This is real biological science and it is interwoven with many factors.

While the small cell and natural beekeeping movements are increasing in size, they're having little impact on commercial beekeeping and beekeeping as a whole. Unless something dramatic happens, at the current rate of change it'll take decades to fully change, if it ever happens.

Feel free to draw your own analogies to organic produce or other common sense movements which run up against hard corporate/commercial interests.

First off, the NYT unsubscription system sucks. Why do I have to find a support member to cease payments? And their tiny ass chat window is ridiculously hard to type in if I want to be in depth as to why I am unsubscribing. I should be able to just fill out a form and be done with it.

Second, why the fuck would the NYT forgo their reputation over something like this? I mean, this is possibly only second to the time Breitbart tried to misinform Americans using a weather.com video, in terms of fuck ups by a major publishing news organization. The thinkprogress article already covers all the flaws, but I can't wrap my head around how the NYT did nothing to even try and verify this information.

I agree that China needs to do more with regards to the climate and CFC emission problems. However, your tidbit about

>They’re fucking shit up, way worse in many ways than we ever had the opportunity to.

Ignores the huge volume of historic CO2 emissions the US and many western nations have belched out since the industrial revolution, the disgraceful state that America was in before the inception of the EPA, the use of things like Agent Orange in Vietnam and so on.

I agree with 'leading by example' (this doesn't mean that countries are free from consequences, like economic sanctions), and I agree with the fact that we can all do our part.

Glyphosate is being used routinely in Colombia to fumigate against coca, and there have been numerous campaigns showing the birth defects associated with those fumigations: PDF and scholar.

I think it comes down to a general erosion of the concept of objective truth arising from decades of conservative bashing of science which discredits their stances.

It began with Carl Sagan and others discrediting the Global Defense Initiative as being onerously costly, ineffective, impossible to test, and a first step towards the total militarization of space. Hawkish Republicans high on McCarthyism found a retired doctor (who didn’t even study physics, but medicine IIRC) to provide “alternative facts” on the plan and to try to undermine the mainstream scientific community. Thus was born an attitude of skepticism towards mainstream science among Republicans.

Since then, the strategy has been applied to tobacco smoke, secondhand smoke, acid rain, DDT, and climate change.

Merchants of Doubt is a well-sourced, thorough review of this deplorable pattern of behavior among American politicians to discredit science for corporate and political gain.

e: word

I just read <em>A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic</em> by Peter Wadhams (Cambridge Professor). He thinks we are past the tipping point and need to develop a way of pulling co2 out of the atmosphere.

Hopefully he'll start losing sleep over it when he sees the people kick jerks that are screwing over the planet out of office. With stuff like Jay Inslee's Evergreen Economy Plan releasing today, hopefully everyone who hasn't yet wakes up and realizes this is the direction our government needs to go.

This reminds me of one of the more immediately amazing TED Talks by Paul Stamets... "Paul Stamets believes that mushrooms can save our lives, restore our ecosystems and transform other worlds." http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world.html

I highly, highly recommend watching it.

About 120 metres. And we're not on top of a hill but part of a wide hilly region extending into Tasmania's inland so we're not going to become a tiny island that's eroding.

My wife got sick of me in the last 18 months: "We need to live above the 70 metre mark just in case Antarctica melts!".

We live in this general area

There's an Android app called Breezometer that does something similar.

Unsurprisingly, the areas with the shittiest air quality are clustered in cities next to highways and power plants.

It's going to be much better for the economy in the long run if we don't ruin everything with climate change. Hopefully all of the political world takes note of the Evergreen Economy Plan Jay Inslee released and starts jumping on board with the action required.

Mark Bitman talks well about this topic. He has a good piece here and he also has a good ted talk here

Come on! That's such cheap rhetoric. GHGs aren't bad in themselves (just like O3 isn't bad in itself). AN EXCESS of GHGs is what's bad. The issue is the AMOUNT of CO2, methane, etc. being pumped into the atmosphere over and above the levels global ecology has evolved to deal with in its current, civilization-sustaining configuration (we're way above those levels and getting futher above them every year).

UPDATE: Approximate CO2 exhaled by your average human in a year -- 252 Kg/yr and 525Kg/yr

So let's say 375 kg / yr * 7,000,000,000 = ~2.6 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted by human breath per year.

By comparison, the estimated emissions related to human activity for 2011 was approximately 12 times that (31.6 billion tonnes).

Oxygen toxicity is a thing. Not sure whereabouts it would kick in (I think somewhere around 60% oxygen level from what I can determine from other articles), but it can kill you.

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity

For some reason I feel like this will still not convince you, but NASA says since 1880, the temperature in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere has risen 0.4°F per decade. The data is taken from satellite observations, amongst other things. Where did you get your information from?

Source is here

Hey! Captain Planet has a blog, check it out!
http://gocaptainplanet.com/

She also has an OkCupid profile "GoCaptainPlanet", which is how she found me :p

Wait, what's that - large portions of the book are available for free on Google Books, and it's likely available for order at your local public or university library?!?!?!?! It's like you're trying to compromise your credibility in this discussion!

And yes, I am belittling you and committing an ad hom!

Absolutely. I did my presentation in a Scientific Writing class on this. Pretty interesting subject to look in to.

Edit: Here's my presentation, missing my notes and sources. I can provide the sources, but I only have about a quarter of my notes

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AbbCF7uCq03SZGRuNjdzYnpfMWZkOW5ncnE5

How about peer-reviewed scientific articles? This is a seriously well-documented phenomenon among biologists and has been for decades.

They calculate these numbers by using science.

Beebe is where the birds died. But yes, normal weather conditions for Arkansas, it would not be downwind from Pine Bluff.

And the fish occurred in a 20 mile stretch in the northwest. We'll say about Ozark. & is most definitely upstream from Pine Bluff. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&amp;source=s_d&amp;saddr=Pine+Bluff,+AR&amp;daddr=Beebe,+AR&amp;hl=en&amp;geocode=Fc9ICgIdhSSE-inTGtQeeDwthjGYKsfqg5PcYQ%3BFbIiFwIdXgeG-inpP1avVfLShzEFwc2pPmT4Kg&amp;gl=us&amp;mra=ls&amp;sll=35.05698,-91.887589&amp;...

Done. But, one point I'd make is that recycling is only a last resort.

Reduce, reuse, repair, respect.

Reuse what you can as often as you can.

Repair your items, such as shoes and other goods that can be repaired, even if America's economy is set up to prefer replacement and to make replacing cheaper. It's not cheaper for the environment.

Respect your possessions and take good care of them so that they last longer and don't need replacement as often.

Then, and only then, recycle what can't be used any further.

Also, for those items you no longer need, consider programs like Freecycle.org that will put your unused possessions in the hands of someone else who will use them instead of buying new items.

Using disasters as an excuse to enslave us all is the strategy of international corporations. Read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein or watch the film.

Obama isn't an opponent of this strategy either, he's simply more "diplomatic", some would say "slimy," about implementing this policy than Romney.

https://weather.com/news/climate/news/ice-age-climate-change-earth-glacial-interglacial-period

"We should be heading into another ice age right now," Columbia University paleoclimate doctoral student Michael Sandstrom told Live Science.

The big ice ages account for roughly 25 percent of the past billions of years on Earth, says Sandstrom. The most recent of Earth’s five major ice ages in the paleo record dates back 2.7 million years and continues today.

Within these large periods are smaller ice ages called glacials and warm periods called interglacials.

(MORE: Will Leftover Heat from the Last El Niño Fuel a New One?)

During the Quaternary glaciation period, which began about 2.7 to 1 million years ago, cold glacial periods took place every 41,000 years, according to Live Science. However, huge glacial sheets have appeared less frequently over the last 800,000 years and now appear about every 100,000 years.

In the 100,000-year cycle, ice sheets grow for roughly 90,000 years and then take another 10,000 years to collapse in warmer periods before the process repeats itself. However, the two factors related to Earth's orbit that affect the glacials’ and interglacials’ formation are off, Live Science added.

“That, coupled with the fact that we pump so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, means we're probably not going to enter a glacial for at least 100,000 years," said Sandstrom.

Hopefully you've seen it by now, but Jay Inslee just released his Evergreen Economy Plan, the most thorough and ambitious climate change plan a candidate has released so far! And he has an AMA coming up this Saturday at 2 ET. Lets make sure we let all the candidates know we demand someone who prioritizes climate change as highly as this!

I don't usually find myself on PETAs side of things, but really?

http://www.google.com/search?q=animal+cruelty&amp;tbo=p&amp;tbs=vid%3A1&amp;source=vgc

or livestock specifically:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;tbs=vid%3A1&amp;q=animal+cruelty+livestock&amp;aq=f&amp;aqi=&amp;aql=&amp;oq=&amp;gs_rfai=

Naomi Klein and Chris Hedges are the current leading voices in the correlation of environmental and social struggles, though this has been a thread in various movement theories for several decades. (I've most recently become aware of Bookchin after reading this recent FT article...)

And also, this law that reduces Amazon reserve from 80% do 50% and gives amnesty for those that deforested lands just passed today in the chamber of deputies in Brazil, the same day Zé Claudio was killed.

That's the reason deforestation went up so much in the last 12 months, everyone is expecting the amnesty from this law. And nobody seems to be caring much about it.

I disagree. Listen, "developed" countries have slowing birthrates. Better health care, lower infant mortality rates, more reproductive freedom, and equality for woman have all lead to families having fewer children later in life.

In developing countries families have more children because they know that many of them aren't going to survive.

But a developed family uses a massive amount of energy. Not because they have kids but because we are wasteful. We aren't raping the earth because we have kids to feed, we are raping the earth because we are raping it.

Worry about cutting down your waste, not about other people having kids...

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html

It's not even necessarily that much more expensive. Both Publix and Kroger carry store brand natural peanut butter that's cheap and contains nothing more than peanuts and salt.

Our choice is renewables or more fossil fuels -- with natural gas being default choice.

Gas means more wells: tens of thousands of them. Getting gas from wells means more pipelines. Take a look at this (western Colorado)

Centralized energy production requires more means of getting the energy/energy source from where it is to the people who consume it. Until we can beam concentrated power, that means transmission lines/pipelines/etc.

So the question is back to: do you want to generate energy with stuff that pollutes local communities and the global climate (given that transmission/transportation impacts are a given), or do you want renewables like wind?

Ah, and one final thing. Even the transmission/transportation issue isn't equal. Natural gas pipelines explode and leak. Transmission lines from wind turbines don't.

> When I see it in an actual journal, I will take it seriously, until then it is simply FUD.

Glyphosate effects on diseases of plants

Seeing, generally, involves looking. :p

I only read the abstract, but the suggestion there:

> Given that recommended doses of glyphosate are often many times higher than needed to control weeds, we believe the most prudent method to reduce the detrimental effects of glyphosate on GR crops will be to use this herbicide in as small a dose as practically needed. Such a frugal approach will not only curtail disease predisposition of GR crops, but will also benefit the grower and the environment.

You're right...there is a human overpopulation problem on Earth

World Birth and death rates chart...notice the extreme difference in birth vs. death

You're very welcome.

And btw, if the environmental reasons to quit meat don't convince you, try the health ones. Check out What the Health and/or The Gamechangers. Both on Netflix, and YT I think.

And if THAT doesn't convince you, then watch Dominion or Earthlings.

HTH. If you want more studies, please ask. I think this one is really important to know about.

https://sci-hub.do/downloads/2020-11-05/54/[email protected]

It was in the journal Science. It says that even if we stopped all other sources of carbon emissions, we would still cook the planet by 2070, but if we go to a very low meat and dairy diet (the one on page 10 of the EAT Lancet report above) then we can actually make the food system sustainable and even carbon negative.

So changing our diets isn't optional if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change. And the sooner we jump on this train the better.

Swedish Skeptics article, I can't get much of it, any Swedish around to give us the gist of it?

Err you do realize that Obama began in January 2009 right?

You're also ignoring the fact that Bush had a high of $4.12 which was greater than any time under Obama. Also the low wasn't Bush's doing - it was the fact that crude oil prices experienced a huge drop and it began at the start of the Obama presidency which is why the Republicans are trying to blame him to lure the favor of idiots that have no context or education on the matter.

It's pure spin however way you put it.

Edit: In response to the NYTimes article you mentioned, America was experiencing the highest gas prices in years so of course Bush was talking about drilling. The public was pissed at him.

It hit 75 F (24 C) where I live in Texas today. Crazy weather.

Of course, it's dropping like a stone now and is predicted to be below freezing tomorrow morning. It's been like this all month. Unseasonably warm, then a freeze, then right back to unseasonably warm. I wish it would make up its mind already.

My personal favourite tofu recipe: marinate silken firm tofu in
1/4 c soy sauce, 1/4 c rice vinegar, 1/4 c sesame oil, 1/2 c water overnight. Sautee it in a pan or bake it in the oven. It's great hot or cold.

Second favourite, breaded fried tofu!

Also get the app on your phone called "5 calls"

iOS https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/5-calls/id1202558609?mt=8

Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.a5calls.android.a5calls&amp;hl=en

Pretty sure particle guns are relatively recent.

> In 16 countries surveyed in a report…185 activists were killed, making 2015 the deadliest year for environment and land campaigners since 2002…The reported killings rose nearly 60 percent from 2014. Brazil fared worst with 50 activists murdered, followed by the Philippines with 33 deaths, and 26 in Colombia… > >

As a Colombian it's a little sad to see Colombia third on the list.

This Guardian article cites a report saying that 56 human rights activists were killed in Colombia in 2015; "most of the attacks are aimed at activists who work in a few particular areas: conflict resolution, mining and energy extraction, as well as agrarian issues." This other article cites the UN saying that 729 human rights activists have been killed in Colombia since 1994.

Make sure we're not giving all the coverage to the people who are messing up, and are giving support to those who are putting forth an effort in the right direction. O'Rourke recently released a climate change plan, and just this morning Jay Inslee released the most ambitious and thorough one yet, the impressive Evergreen Economy Plan which details a plan to rebuild the entire nation

When folks raising cattle on grass have a drought, they must bring in feed, or sell off the herd early.

Nearly all cattle are first grazed, either in pasture or rangelands. Feed lots are a secondary step. A few folks have small herds where I live. They graze them on irrigated pasture.

The following image is of one of the farms I'm referring to, although I think he quit. Each of the sections are fenced off irrigated pastures. When the cattle consume the pasture, he moves them to the next one, and so on. He continues to irrigate the consumed pasture area so it can rejuvenate. He also fertilizes the pasture for optimum growth and nutrition of the pasture.

It's all brown in the image, so maybe he went out of business, IDK.

>Over 1.3 million Europeans want a Monsanto weedkiller linked to cancer banned.

Point? I'm sure I can find treble that who'll demand Half Life 3 or in religiously backward countries who want to make my sexuality illegal. 1.3 million isn't a whole lot out of the 742,073,853 European population.

As the article says it is linked to cancer by the IARC report. A report that ignored several and more sound studies that showed no results of statistical significance and was partly conducted by a scientist who was paid £120,000 to bring cases against glyphosate manufacturers..

But apparently this doesn't matter to anti-glyphosate activists and instead try to get scientists who merely claimed expenses like Kevin Folta and didn't take a fee to speak about glyphosate or transgenics - fired from their jobs at universities or at least abuse FOIA requests, falsely claiming he took money from just Monsanto, including Greenpeace. The truth? Monsanto at some point as well as many other non-profits and companies contributed to pro-science cause.

But fuck it. Ban glyphosate. Then we can all have more toxic pesticides but it's all okay because it's organic toxic pesticides.

Low birth rate is good but we are living longer than ever before and that is bad... that means that our population is growing.. our dying folks are being replaced.. and them some.. but really to be sustainable we need a slightly lower population than we have now because we rely on non-renewable resources and are using renewable ones up faster than they can be replaced, this is a crisis most people don't realize...

Even two kids is population growth because you are still alive - and will probably be alive to see them have kids or even grandkids.. in the past that was very rare.. four generations living at one time was unheard of.. now it is the norm.

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

Doesn't this strike you as BS. There are 91 million total housing units for single detached and mobile homes in the United States. That would mean every household spills about a quarter gallon.

link

According to the citation on this wiki page, solar irradiance is about 120W/m^2.

If you could capture that at 80% efficiency, you'd need to cover just under half the area of Germany to supply the entire global energy demand.

That's assuming that you needed to complete replace every other form of power, which is of course a stupid assumption. Imagine though if the roofs of half of the commercial buildings / strip malls of the world could be covered in economical solar panels. That would make a huge dent in the requirement for fossil fuels.

Other gains can already be made today by better construction methods, passive solar heating, and plenty of other tricks. Like other people have said, solar electricity isn't an "all-or-nothing" thing.

And just a reminder. Food system emissions, with current diets and processes, alone will cause 2C warming by 2070.

But they can be eliminated and we can have a carbon negative food system if we switch to predominantly plant-based diets, along with some other (though less impactful) measures on reducing waste and boosting productivity.

https://sci-hub.do/downloads/2020-11-05/54/[email protected]

And "predominantly plant-based" means what it says. Here are the daily limits for meat, fish, eggs and dairy - 14g beef/pork/lamb - 29g chicken/poultry - 28g fish - 13g eggs - 250g milk (or equivalents)

https://eatforum.org/content/uploads/2019/07/EAT-Lancet_Commission_Summary_Report.pdf

Everything else would be plant-based.

I understand why people are trying to somehow turn the most destructive form of agriculture on the planet into something more benign, but it does annoy when I read stuff like this

> It would be difficult to eliminate agriculture’s environmental impact entirely, even in light of these advancements. Some scientists believe the answer might involve taking farming indoors or underground, where leafy vegetables grow without soil or sunlight.

The pathway is already known

https://sci-hub.do/downloads/2020-11-05/54/[email protected]

This study shows how agriculture can become net negative for emissions if we combine - plant-rich diets (this does most of the heavy lifting) - healthy calories (less overeating) - boosting yields - halving food waste - high efficiency

This may seem hard, but it's a lot easier than trying to square the circle of keeping a billion cows grazed, fed and watered globally. Not to mention the 2/3 billion pigs and the 23 billion chickens.

And it's not like this meat is actually good for us anyway.

https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j1957

I think it would be better if we just get the message that times up and animal agriculture is not sustainable on a planet and ecosystem, the destruction of which, we have turned into an industrial process for the production of meat and dairy.

The Swedish Skeptics society Write up of the device they say it has overunity but how it does this is a trade secret. Regardless, Rossi is going into full production with it anyway. He made a shit load of cash selling a biodeisel invention and isn't looking for money or investors.

OR... instead of listening to a local Tea Party supporter we could actually look at gas prices for the last 6 years and see how much bullshit the Republican party is spouting.

They're basically saying that Gas Prices doubled in the last 4 years - it's somewhat of an exaggeration, but only because oil hit a huge low at the start of Obama's presidency in 2009 after a high of $5.38 just 3 months ahead of that period.

It's pure spin.

Animal ag is working as hard as they can to hide it from us. It’s extremely naive and oversimplified to say that policies would have been passed long ago if empathy and intuition was enough

It is enough

The problem is not seeing it and the profits that depend on us denying it. Denial and avoidance are just a few or the defense mechanisms in play that ensure the oppressive system of meat eating continues

I’d suggest this book from PhD in psychology Melanie Joy

Jesus Christ NO wtf

I am saying that your culture is not justification for anything. If you think anyone can justify their behaviour by "it's my culture", then americans who eat bacon and beef 3 times a day don't have to change either

Culture is why we're in this mess

I am asking you to PLEASE stop using indigenous people as a cover for your own flaws. That is absolutely disgusting. Don't try to pass this off as being "woke" or "taking them into consideration"

Environmentalists who try to change the world for the better are going to be perceived as smug. Why are you even here?

We cannot have a discussion about this or change the world in any way if getting called out on your own behaviour and excuses triggers you to bring up 0,01% of the population as though they're relevant to you

We are screwed because of this defence mechanism. I won't discuss this further with you because you are legitimately not interesting in solving the issues we face. Maybe if you had a shred of understanding of what carnism is, we could have a discussion.

Fun facts:

> All branches of the Wu clans claim Wu Zixu as their "first ancestor" ... His city planning was said to have incorporated the environmental harmony between earth and water and the cosmic balance between celestial and terrestrial forces... In 506 BC, King Helu appointed Sunzi (of the famous Sun Tzu's The Art of War) as chief commander and Wu Zixu and Bo Pi as vice-commanders of the Wu army.

Corporate power is like a cancer. It only takes one to get through before the rest invade in the exact same way.

Things seem to be going bad for NZ since the earthquake. It reminds me of The Shock Doctrine.

> I used to be weary of referencing hemp so I would not come off as a tree hugging hippie

Sorry, but only tree-hugging hippies claim that hemp will save the world! ;-)

Hemp or not, your optimism is exactly what we most need. Climate solutions are neither hard nor expensive, but we do face the small challenge of shutting down (and shutting up) the world's largest industry. The good news: it's already happening, just not fast enough.

For those of you who clicked the link looking for the Elvis monkey, there is no picture available, only this drawing.

Not quite as cool as the other Elvis monkeys that can be found in an image search (I couldn't pick my favorite), but still pretty cool.

Good news. Everyone needs to hop on board with clean energy rather than hurting everyone by refusing to adapt. It's the only way maintain an Evergreen Economy

Clinton does not appear to many favorable climate positions that money can't change - see https://theintercept.com/2016/05/23/hillary-clinton-fracking/

At best she will be "less bad", and by how much is questionable. It all comes down to ethics and that is where Sanders shines.

1. America’s capitalist ideology is killing human civilization and Planet Earth
2. Today capitalists worship a new “Golden Calf,” the god of money
3. American capitalism lost its moral compass, has no public conscience
4. Capitalists are destroying scarce resources for selfish personal gain
5. Capitalism’s endless pursuit of wealth is destroying the common good
6. Capitalists are wasting our home planet’s limited natural resources
7. Capitalism treats humans as disposable tools and mere consumers
8. Capitalism is the root cause of all the world’s problems read the details at: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/8-reasons-pope-francis-will-pummel-republicans-over-climate-change-2015-09-15?page=2

TED Talks like this always make want to quit my job immediately, move to a place which suffers from serious deforestation and start helping in such projects.

EDIT: TED Talk download as MP4

Maybe I'm just being cynical but I suspect this a case of "Don't bite the hand that feeds you."

The science was provided by: >John Kessler from Texas A&M University couldn’t find any traces of the gas above background levels.

It would appear that BP has been a large financial supporter of Texas A&M for a long time. google

Here is a blog post that recaps July and has a list of the big events of 2018. The blog tends to cover weather events rather than climate events.

yep and was just a few months ago a huge chinese fishing fleet raided the protected Galapgos Islands...China is devouring the oceans and roiling the skies with toxic pollution. A literal cancer spot on the planet.

Off-shore wind turbines seem like a neat idea: here is a 'farm' just off of Denmark, which is here (because not everyone is good with geography).

Very good question. My statement was more of a proposed solution than a "relax, it's taken care of!"

I live not too far from Pinawa, Manitoba, Canada. It's located on the Canadian shield and is home to a proposed site for long-term storage. This is a link to an interesting study about it.

Seems more likely, they might be clearing for lumber and then replanting.

The actual article, seems to be implying that there are regional quotas? Or it could be that they seed better in one region and can be transplanted elsewhere. It's really hard to tell from the terrible machine-translation.

Come on guys, the Electronic Frontier Foundation will give you SSL certificates for free, even for commercial use.

Did you mean increase not decrease? It's mostly melting ice which is ocean in the winter months and thaws for a short time in summer becoming ocean for more of the year, which mean polar bears, penguins seals and other predators rely on the ice struggle to feed. It will unearth more land in coastal areas where melting occurs and it is doing. The problem there is that the melting permafrost causes the release of until then frozen methane held as rotting matter. Over millions or thousands of years this might not be a major issue but over tens of years it's potentially a huge problem. Part of the non-definitive climate change figures are because of the differing estimates of how much is going to be released. It's a much more effective insulator than CO2. 30 times more if I remember rightly. I suppose the climate science issue is that when dealing with an extremely changeable system it's best not to rock a wobbly boat, whereas the fossil fuel industry would rather just have the money and not consider the consequences. My argument would be on two fronts 1) How many times have the FF industry been fined for spillages and not improved practices sufficiently. 2) The tobacco industry (basically the same ethos) had exactly the same approach, but this time it's the whole earth at stake.

Germany seems to be doing something right. Some states there have wind covering over 40% of their electricity needs. It's only a matter of time and investment when renewables are more practical and financially feasible compared to dirty oil.

I fail to comprehend how some people believe this is true. If any form of economic stimulus is beneficial, why not develop the hole digging industry in the US, or any other useless field of endeavor where lots of stimulus and intelectual property can be had?

A dollar spent on clean tech is a dollar not spend on clean drinking water or medicines. I would really like to recommend Björn Lomborg on that topic.

Nice to see this getting traction. I sent Stephen $15. Do you like the planet being habitable? Throw a couple of bucks over to see if he can uncover something to help keep it that way.

The complete protein theory is a myth. Almost all plants contain the essential amino acids, and as long you're getting enough calories, you'll be getting enough protein (and eaa).

If you check out cronometer or nutrition data and check out the protein content for lentils, rice, tofu, broccoli, etc, it will make more sense.

Actually, statistics and probability are on the side of his observations. Last year's JD Power car reliability survey put VW at 29th out of 34th place, at 191 problems per 100 vehicles. Toyota was the most reliable non-luxury brand (5th place), at 122 problems per 100 vehicles. For reference, Lincoln was most reliable, at 101.

Source: http://www.bankrate.com/financing/cars/j-d-power-lincoln-most-reliable/

Using a different methodology, Consumer Reports found in 2009 that Volkswagen cars age the least gracefully - the results for problems per 100 vehicles by age for Volkswagen is consistently the worst at all ages of car, at approximately 175 per 100 at Year 10, while Toyota's is consistently the best, at around 70 per 100 at Year 10.

Source: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/money/shopping/ways-to-save-on/save-on-wheels-new-or-used/reliability-snapshot/save-on-wheels-new-or-used-reliability-snapshot.htm

TIL: The plural of roof is only spelt as rooves in Australia and New Zealand. I live in NZ and was just about to get all Grammar Nazi up in here. Carry on.

From MasterClass:

Why Is Context Important in Writing? 4 Types of Context, Explained

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/why-is-context-important-in-writing#:~:text=4%20Types%20of%20Context%2C%20Explained,-Written%20by%20the&amp;text=Context%20is%20information%20that%20helps,you%20provide%20as%20the%20author.

Not for CO2. Hydrocarbons are chains of CH2. Complete burning of a hydrocarbon in oxygen yields CO2 + H2O. Incomplete burning yields less energy.

For example:

> Engine downsizing and fuel diversification of spark ignition (SI) engine are of current interest and numerous attempts have been done by researchers around the world in the past decade [1]. Engine downsizing can achieve higher thermal efficiency and lower CO 2 emissions [2]. Direct injection (DI) technology with greater precision in fuel metering, allowing higher compression ratios and significant potential in fuel economy, is widely used in downsized SI engine [3] [4].

Another example:

> Under the Nissan Green Program 2010, the company is working to raise the efficiency of internal combustion engines to the ultimate level. Nissan is developing technologies to cut engine emissions of CO2 by 30%* from the current level by 2015.

30% less fuel = 30% less CO2 emissions.

For another example, a piston airplane engine has two magnetos, mainly to enhance reliability, but it has a side benefit of more completely burning the fuel, resulting in slightly more power.

If the people in that area have it bad enough and are feeling helpless, I can understand that becoming popular. The observations are not that crazy. The gulf is already depleted of oxygen and a big oil spill would cause more depletion. The conclusions are pretty whack though. I've heard that BP, or some big corporation, has interest in the manufacturing of Corexit and lobbied for it to be used, but that is about as far as I'd go down the rabbit hole. Conspiracy theories tickle me.

Leave it to Google Scholar to find some research on Corexit. The abstracts of the first few papers on microbes aren't too conclusive to my eye.

No it's quite practical to think "given that the dipshits in power have been ignoring this for fifty years, how can we adapt to it?" And in fact adapting to climate change is emerging as a major theme in climate research now.

>Arguing it's a bad flood because of climate change because you can't figure out why else it would be a bad flood is rather underwhelming.

Google Scholar suggests that this is not a case of "just blame everything on GCC":

&quot;Climate change&quot; precipitation patterns

&quot;Climate change&quot; extreme weather

You could have also just read the slideshow that TheGreenMiles linked you to since it goes over the reasons why GCC is causing larger floods in some areas. (Try the slide called "Scientific Evidence for Growing Climate Risks of Flooding in Mississippi Basin.")

You can change your default search engine to https://www.ecosia.org/

They're a non-profit search engine that uses ad revenue to plant trees. The results aren't nearly as good as google, but it works just fine. I switched over last month, at that point that had planted bout 50,000,000, they're up over 55,000,000 now.

Through using ecosia for three weeks I have already searched enough/generated enough ad revenue to fund the planting of 216 trees. There's even a nice little counter in the corner where it shows your contribution.

Two things help me when I despair:

- "Look for the helpers, you will always find people who are helping" - Fred Rogers' Mum. There are so many people doing amazing things, wonderful initiatives, great work being done to reduce carbon emissions and improve the environment. My recent favourite is Ecosia - such a simple idea.

- " “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly” - Even if we can't cut CO2 emissions to 0, reduce plastic use to 0, or completely abolish other things that harm the environment, we must try. Global warming of 2 C is less damaging than 4 C which is less damaging than 8 C.