Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Although my usual reaction to cultured meat is "that can't *possibly* be the right answer," I don't think that Telegraph article accurately describes where the current scientific consensus is.  I have a close colleague who does LCA research on cultured meat and she's said that the case that cultured meat is environmentally preferable to beef is pretty easy to make, and that it's only when compared to intensively produced poultry that the relative sustainability starts to look like a wash.  

Against that backdrop, the idea that it would be *25 times* worse than beef is staggering.  It might match my intuition, but the cited unpublished study seems to be an outlier in the very limited scientific literature on the sustainability of cultured meat.

I did a search for Raymond Pierrehumbert, who is mentioned in the last paragraph, and he seems to have published a 2019 LCA paper (#^https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31535087/) that takes a decidedly softer tone:

"Under continuous high global consumption, cultured meat results in less warming than cattle initially, but this gap narrows in the long term and in some cases cattle production causes far less warming, as CH4 emissions do not accumulate, unlike CO2."

Digging into his paper a bit more, the really striking difference appears to be when comparing meat sourcing in the present while assuming that all meat consumption is subsequently and rapidly *phased out* entirely, which produces the graph in Figure 2e (attached).



Even then, the idea that cellular meat climate impacts are many times higher than beef production depends on the specific scenario considered.  Only one estimated of heating from cultured meat remains higher than Western U.S. beef production by 1000 years in the future, and there is at least one cultured meat scenario that is comparable to the lower long term heating of Brazilian and Swedish beef production.

Whether "cellular agriculture" makes *economic* sense is a different question, and on that question I think the scientific consensus is much closer to the ideas put forward in the Telegraph article.

I think the bottom line (which most scientists would agree on) is that meat consumption needs to decrease.  

My own view is that animals can play a functional role in diversified farms, something that vat-grown meat can never do, and the tradeoffs also change if meat is treated as a secondary product of other animal products (e.g. milk and eggs, see #^https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxy.library.tufts.edu/science/article/pii/S0308521X16308034), but when animals are not primarily grown for meat, we end up with a lot less meat regardless.

"Enshittification isn’t merely the result of greed or foolishness — it is the inevitable consequence of a captive userbase.

A service that isn’t federated is unfit for purpose, and the managers who decided not to federate it demonstrate by their acts that they are not worthy of our trust."

#CoryDoctorow, August 2023

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/06/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again

#enshittification #federation

I wonder how much organisations who've invested in software development to integrate generative LLM services into their products and services will be willing to fork out when #bigtech starts to recoup the massive (eye watering) cost of those services? Clearly, bigtech is expecting that some will end up paying a LOT, and bigtech has a LOT of experience of how much they can mint with lock-in.

Big Tech is borrowing a page from Big Tobacco's playbook to wage war on your privacy, according Jake Snow of ACLU of Northern California . We agree—but there’s still time to stop them. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/10/preemption-playbook-big-techs-blueprint-comes-straight-big-tobacco

Just updated a couple Gitlabs and upgraded my Forgejo from 8.0.3 to 9.0.0. Every day with #libre software makes me feel like a kid in a candy store. This stuff just keeps getting better.

For those still wondering about why they were "not allowed" to scan the other QR code: I suspect this is related to potential abuse vectors via QR codes (yes, we know, requiring the hacker to spoof it via a fake app instead of an ebook is not the answer).

Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIcbAMO6sxo or read https://www.revk.uk/2020/01/eicar-test-qr.html for some background.

~f

We’re hiring a full-time Senior IT/Infrastructure Engineer based in New York. You’ll respond to IT/infrastructure needs for our small Brooklyn office and our remote workers, and help with general infrastructure maintenance tasks.

If you’re based in NY, or willing to relocate from within the U.S., please consider applying.

https://grnh.se/2a150e355us

Marge's Wacky Weather Forecast, with scattered showers of batshit libel. https://brianmcfadden.org/2024/10/11/congresss-climate-quack/

Revealed: International ‘race science’ network secretly funded by US tech boss | #Race | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/16/revealed-international-race-science-network-secretly-funded-by-us-tech-boss

#Germany #Ethnicity #Politics #Pseudoscience

A note to lefty tech people, especially those selling their services to small non-profits: don't promise to deliver something that you can't, whether due to technical or knowledge limitations. Because when you tell us you can do something, and then we pay you to do it, but you don't deliver what you said you would, you're just harming the people you claim to want to help. And if you're going to browbeat ppl into not using corporate tools, you better be damn sure you can actually replace them.

Gee, who coulda seen this one coming? Oh right, me. It was me.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/14/lab-grown-meat-is-proving-to-be-a-grotesque-misadventure/

What are we up to for today? What makes nerds get up early? Some journey ahead ...

#trainstory

Is #Starlink designed to provide only a small number of users satellite internet at a steep premium? Yes.

Is #Starlink making a mess of low orbit and the upper atmosphere? Yes.

Is #Starlink incompetently designed and being hacked by organized crime? Also yes.

QT UNODC

"Despite Starlink use being strictly monitored and, in some cases, restricted through geofencing, organized crime groups appear to have found ways around existing security protocols"

https://www.unodc.org/roseap/uploads/documents/Publications/2024/TOC_Convergence_Report_2024.pdf

I just emailed my senators asking them to vote in favor of Bernie Sanders' resolution to halt $20 billion of weapons from being sent to Israel.

Here's the form if you want to do the same

https://act.newmode.net/action/ifnotnow/tell-your-senator-say-no-20-billion-weapons-israel

#CeasefireNow #NotAnotherBomb #Israel #Gaza #Lebanon

"Given that much—perhaps, most—of political media will not adequately report on this and inform voters of what Vice President Harris plans to do for Rural America, I’m gonna take the rare step of publishing her plan, in full, as a blog post."

https://charlotteclymer.substack.com/p/kamala-harris-has-a-great-plan-for

@RadioAddition ... really?

(Some) screen readers can’t read password hidden text,
Some people may have memory or cognitive issues,
Those experiencing hand tremors are more likely to make typing mistakes,

^ quick google search

add to that:
long passwords
slowly dying keyboards
confirming that is what you typed

It's a problem every morning I log in to work.

AI really is the new bitcoin: Google and Facebook extend coal burning in Omaha

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/10/14/ai-really-is-the-new-bitcoin-google-and-facebook-extend-coal-burning-in-omaha/

The question we should be asking of every new technology : is it worth the resources that it costs?

(one of the resources, in this case, being our rapidly diminishing global carbon budget)

Billionaires are *pretty confident* that they can't be taxed - not just that they *shouldn't* be taxed, but rather, that it is *technically impossible* to tax the ultra-rich. They're not shy about explaining why, either - and neither is their army of lickspittles.

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/15/piketty-pilled/#tax-justice

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