Neil Degrasse Tyson on the plant based diet

[garrethdsouza]

m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=In6YtNK9PCs

[Jebus]

So disappointing. Your thread title made me believe that NDT had gone plant based.

[garrethdsouza]

Looks like he hasn't watched cowspiracy. Ghg emissions from All Transportation, not just of food, pales in comparison to the greenhouse gas emissions as a result of animal agriculture. And his solution is a pipe dream that may not materialize that's the whole point of capping emissions.

[EquALLity]

Did he seriously make the argument that we breed cows to kill, so therefore it's justifiable to kill them? -_-

If I breed dogs for dog-fighting, I suppose it's then perfectly acceptable for me to use them for dog-fights?

[brimstoneSalad]

Ghg emissions from All Transportation, not just of food, pales in comparison to the greenhouse gas emissions as a result of animal agriculture.

I don't think that's accurate. What sources are you basing that on?

IIRC, animal agriculture is second to transportation. Two reasons:

1. You can not count the CO2 released by the animals. This is carbon neutral, because it was captured by plants prior to release. You DO count the CO2 released in burning fuels for transportation.

2. You DO count the methane released by animals, BUT you also have to count the methane released in drilling oil for transportation (which is substantial, and the fault of transportation; you can't discount it because it happened before the oil got to the vehicle).

Fuel used for heating and electricity, particularly in developing countries, is also substantial. Too many people burning coal to keep their houses warm. This is less of a first world problem, so it's hard to do much about it aside from insure our own fuel sources are as green as possible.


Tyson is talking out of his ass about food transportation, though, which only makes up a small amount of the embodied energy involved in food production. Eating locally doesn't mean much, and could even be a bad thing when we consider variable efficiency of agriculture in different regions (waste of water, poor land utilization).

[garrethdsouza]

This was mentioned in the documentary cowspiracy, have you seen it, it was fairly informative on the environmental impacts angle of animal agriculture.

Much of the data they used is summarised here http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/
The greenhouse gas data is the first on the list. Transport is at 13% while aa is at 18% (or even 51% based on their third point). The projected increase of GHG emissions by 2050 is also v different (20% transport vs 80% for aa).

[brimstoneSalad]

Yep, looks like cowspiracy made BOTH errors I mentioned above.

These kinds of documentaries are very important, but when they make basic factual errors like these it undermines their credibility.

Animal agriculture is a very serious problem. There's no need to exaggerate it, or downplay other problems in comparison. Doing so just makes people dismiss these things as propaganda.

I estimated 16% here: https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... ?f=7&t=654

18% is plausible, and within a reasonable margin of error. Claiming 51% is unreasonable; that CO2 came from plants being metabolized, which immediately prior captured the CO2 from the atmosphere -- totally carbon neutral.

What we can do, is talk about using that biomass and converting it into ethanol to replace gasoline (which is what would probably be done), and that is very meaningful. I wouldn't be surprised if we got numbers near 50%, but they don't seem to have presented that, and I don't see the math on that one.

[TheVeganAtheist]

Wow that was disappointing. The cognitive dissonance is so powerful in so many truly smart people. I think I have new video to do.

[garrethdsouza]

Then there's this:
http://www.peta.org/features/dr-neil-de ... interview/

[boyjenius]

interesting prospective