Hacker News Reader

Comment by zasz | Hacker News Reader

1), 2)--probably per month. 3) Well, of course the actual amount of energy would be better, but the poll did say "average American." 4) Because raising cattle is an incredibly expensive way of producing meat. For example, producing one pound of beef takes several thousand more pounds of water than a pound of chicken does. Did you notice how in their energy consumption pie chart how beef alone took up a big slice?

More sources on how expensive beef is: http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/environment.html

View on HN

Except for the small issue that more water does not equal more emissions. It's not like most cows are drinking desalinated water.

The link between increased emissions from beef and warming is tenuous at best. Cows eat grass or other feed, which absorbs co2 in order to grow. They don't eat coal. Therefore their net impact has to be very small. You can try and argue the 'methane more impact than c02' line, but the sensitivity of both methane and c02 forms the basis of most of the argument around the global warming theory.

I think it would be better with another, more relevant factor for that one of your choices. The comments here say six isn't enough and the beef link is very tenuous. To me it comes across as veganism dressed up as global warming.

We're open to suggestions for a better sixth question. Right you are, the beef one was suggested to us by a vegan, who pointed to some articles suggesting that red meat was a major cause of global warming. Our research hasn't confirmed this, and that is obviously coming through in the survey.

I should mention that the main emissions issues with cows that we are aware of are from methane and nitrous oxide. The former comes both from the cow itself and its manure; the latter from its manure and from the fertilizer used to make its food. There's some issue with CO2 and land use changes (e.g. cutting down forest for cows to graze), but that's not as big. Methane and nitrous oxide are 20 and 300 or so times as strong greenhouse gas as CO2 on a 100-year time scale. However, we clearly didn't find it to be nearly as significant as the other categories.

We wanted to include some question about a type of consumption that wasn't about home energy or transportation, because a significant part of one's emissions does come from the supply chains that lead to one's purchases. It may be that there is no one question that would be very useful in this regard. Perhaps we should ask something about which car you drive, or something else to help refine one of the already mentioned questions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com