The Current Events Thread

[Syobon]

If something that is ridiculously energy inefficient becomes obsolete, that's a good thing. If you want to record ranching techniques in case we suffer an apocalyptic event and lose modern technology, that's fine, but don't halt technology because you needlessly cling to tradition.

What if technology makes it possible to upload a human consciousness to a digital or mechanical body - thereby alleviating all the requirements of the human body for food, water, etc. - and also negating the huge amounts of waste material the human body produces - as well as all the physical demands like space, the need for a vehicle to travel, etc. etc?

Would you resist your body being mechanised/digitised, Syobon? Even though your human body is an outdated, uneconomical, polluting, waste of space?

I would prefer to keep my own body, since a transition to mechanical/digital form will most likely always have downsides, like losing or having reduced feelings or emotions, due to the complexity of the hormonal system. If there were no such downsides, I would still keep my body since well, I like it, but I would eventually switch forms to escape death. I might still make the switch to survive if aforementioned downsides were still present, but that would be a difficult choice dependent on factors I can't predict on this moment.

I may have to clarify that the reasons to switch technologies should not solely be based on energy efficiency, but rather all positives and negatives. This might have been what Burnt meant to imply, however I don't think the economical argument is sound and I can't really think of any valid downsides to switching to "artificial" meat, provided it can be produced with the same quality as the regular stuff.
To illustrate, I still eat meat, even though I'm aware vegetarianism is superior ecologically. I do this based mostly on egotistical reasons (taste, habit, nutrition), as well as the belief that vegetarianism won't save the world regardless.

[Madican]

Actually Syobon vegetarianism kills more animals than the alternative because there needs to be space for all that soy and the only place to get it is by wrecking the habitats of existing small animals. So they die and tofu gets made but it seems worse to kill a bunch of smaller animals as compared to a few bigger ones whose only purpose is to be food.

[Stranaton]

Actually Syobon vegetarianism kills more animals than the alternative because there needs to be space for all that soy and the only place to get it is by wrecking the habitats of existing small animals. So they die and tofu gets made but it seems worse to kill a bunch of smaller animals as compared to a few bigger ones whose only purpose is to be food.

I call that "The Prius Effect"

[Syobon]

I don't care about dead animals, I care about the ecosystem. Vegetarianism is better for the ecosystem.

[Madican]

The dead animals are the ecosystem. Removing them means their prey is left unchecked and their predators die off for lack of food.

[DoNotDelete]

Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the living organisms or biotic component, in a particular area, and the nonliving, or abiotic component, with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight.

All the little animals are part of the ecosystem too, Syobon.

They all have a part to play.

[Syobon]

Yes, I mean I care for the ecosystem as a whole, not for it's individual compartments. Plants are just as much a part of that as animals. The damage a solely vegeterian food production would do to the world wide economy is smaller than the current food production.

[Madican]

Economy is not ecology. And I just said how soy does far more damage to ecology than meat-raising does.

[Syobon]

Any land that is used as farm or ranching land has had it's ecosystem completely destroyed. Farming requires less land than ranching. Thus it destroys less of the ecosystem. Whether small animals still manage to survive on those lands is irrelevant to the global ecosystem. Plant-based food also cuts a step out of the food chain, meat still needs plants to eat, which means it's also less energy efficient than plants (any conversion of energy into an other form implies a loss of energy through heat and waste).

[Stranaton]

Any land that is used as farm or ranching land has had it's ecosystem completely destroyed. Farming requires less land than ranching. Thus it destroys less of the ecosystem. Whether small animals still manage to survive on those lands is irrelevant to the global ecosystem. Plant-based food also cuts a step out of the food chain, meat still needs plants to eat, which means it's also less energy efficient than plants (any conversion of energy into an other form implies a loss of energy through heat and waste).

the human digestive tract is not good at digesting soy or fiber, so much of the nutrients are...passed.

[Syobon]

As I said, nutrition is one of the reasons why I'm not a vegetarian myself.

[BurntToShreds]

Developing meat in a laboratory would still produce waste. Chemical and biological waste from growing the meat would be an issue, and I'm not sure you can dispose of it as easily as a cow pie. That, and the electricity and water needed for the facilities. Now, imagine that there were factories like that all over America. The environmental cost would be pretty high when you take those factors into account.

[Stranaton]

Developing meat in a laboratory would still produce waste. Chemical and biological waste from growing the meat would be an issue, and I'm not sure you can dispose of it as easily as a cow pie. That, and the electricity and water needed for the facilities. Now, imagine that there were factories like that all over America. The environmental cost would be pretty high when you take those factors into account.

I woudn't speculate on the technicals of manufacturing yet
we don't even know if this food is edible yet.

[Kamak]

Keep in mind though, if meat production ever goes completely artificial/meat consumption drops off, places that were used to ranching and farming (like Brazil) would probably be switching entirely to farming. Beef nets much more cheddar per animal than a sizable area of crops (except maybe corn, but I'm not sure if they grow corn in Brazil, and if they do, they still need to make up the deficit for meat), so to make the same (meager) amount of cheddar for plant crops as they did for plants and animals, they'll have to grow even more crops than they did when they sold the crops and fed the cattle, resulting in more land destruction in the rain forest since the ground provides poor fertilizer for crops and it's cheaper to keep slashing and burning the rain forest than bringing fertilizer into the country.

[Syobon]

Burnt, you have no idea how this technique works. Don't make assumptions about the waste produced. They will likely e equivalent to the waste a cow normally produces, probably less. As for the electricity needed and water need, those would also be less than a normal cow needs, since the meat only needs minimal processing now.