Comment by johnmorrison | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnmorrison | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> deforestation

There isn't net deforestation globally, though.

> ruminant methane

Yeah, this is one of the hardest ones to fix, but I think lab grown meat will get there eventually. Like I said, I'm not optimistic animal agriculture will have sufficient technology to eliminate most of its emissions in time - that's why we need CCS in the meantime.

My point is, the energy industry will be ready with extra capacity to power clean agriculture solutions when they are ready.

> It's not like we can solve our problems by electrifying tractors.

I don't think that's the route we should go.

Primarily indoor farming seems to be a much better long term route for plants, I prefer if we eventually get rid of most rural farmland and slowly shift it back to nature.

Cover our flat city rooftops with small farms and trees, and produce most plant agriculture indoor very close to the consumer in indoor vertical farms. Controlled environment + indoor climate, more resource efficiency, almost no risk of infections, no need for most of the chemicals we use today.

Indoor farms only work for greens and veggies, not for calorie crops. It's hard to beat free sunlight. Rooftops are not sufficient area, difficult to access and also compete for space with PV.

> There isn't net deforestation globally, though.

That would be news to me, afaik this is just a goal and hasn't been achieved yet. And as far as carbon footprint goes net zero deforestation still can release carbon overall since new forests won't be as good a carbon store as old growth forest is for a long time.

> lab grown meat

That may be useful from an ethical point of view, but has anyone shown that this can be done with a lower GHG footprint? After all those cell cultures need to be supplied with nutrients too.

If you want meat then switching from bovines to chicken is a thing you can do today. Chicken doesn't release methane, has a lower overall land and carbon footprint. Still less efficient than staple crops of course.

> compete for space with PV

PV << Fission in cities, so this doesn't matter. My hope is all green rooftops whenever possible. (I should note that this isn't trying to replace actual agriculture - it would be a small minority, the main purpose is to make cities nicer and do something with the wasted surface area.)

> That would be news to me

It's actually not news at all, we've been having net forest cover growth since we began recording it centuries ago. There's never been any long term deforestation trends on net.

(This is not to say that there haven't been awful local deforestation periods, and you're right about old forest vs. new forest, but globally it has always gone up since pre-industrial time)

> has anyone shown that this can be done with a lower GHG footprint?

It's a more physically efficient process. Why grow the whole cow and have it run around losing heat for months when you can just grow the meat you want in the end?

> Chicken doesn't release methane, has a lower overall land and carbon footprint. Still less efficient than staple crops of course.

This is all true but you can't really just replace red meat with white meat or vegetarian diet. Some try but it will never work globally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com