Alarming aspirations from latest climate report...

[Suffolk Serf]

Isn’t the chairman of it one Lord Deben, formerly known as John Seldom Glummer (or even Selwyn Gummer)?
If so we can guarantee that every word of it is complete tripe.
Thank goodness the media appears to have mostly ignored the report.

 

[Yale]

All aboard the zero carbon gravy train.....

About the Climate Change Committee - Climate Change Committee

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) was set up under the Climate Change Act (2008).

www.theccc.org.uk

 

[Donkey Oaty]

Will it matter if meat consumption drops by 50% per person if there are twice as many people on the planet by 2050?

 

[delilah]

Some of you have clearly got a good handle on these people.
Do they provide figures to back up their projections ?
For example:
'20% cut in meat and dairy by 2030'
That's quite a precise target. Why not a 10% reduction, or 30% ?
What are the numbers that back that target up ? What do they say would be the reduction in emissions as a result of meeting that target ?
We will know what current consumption levels per person for meat and dairy are.
I would like to know what they say the co2 emission reduction would be for every less bullock eaten. To try and put it into a context we can relate to.

 

[delilah]

All aboard the zero carbon gravy train.....

About the Climate Change Committee - Climate Change Committee

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) was set up under the Climate Change Act (2008).

www.theccc.org.uk

That's very interesting. They are all civil engineers, or researchers, or economists. Unless I missed it, the words 'biologist' or 'ecologist' don't appear once, never mind 'food producer'.

 

[marco]

Red meat consumption is on a downward plane, sugars carbohydrates and processed oils are replacing them. Yet diabetes insulin resistance and cancer are increasing at a frightening rate. Coincidence? I think not.....

 

[Ffermer Bach]

They don't need more land, they're going to move it indoors...

Extract from the report:

Moving horticulture indoors
Horticultural products such as fruit, vegetables and salad crops are grown on 163,000 hectares, or 3% of cropland in the UK. There is considerable scope to improve grassland utilisation, improve productivity and enable land to be used for other uses. Indoor horticulture can raise productivity while reducing nutrient, land and water footprints. 19 Indoor systems such as vertical farming, where crops are grown in stacks in a controlled environment, can raise productivity while reducing the nutrient, land and water footprint. Indoor horticulture in the UK is mainly for high value salad crops and is currently small scale. Some systems are based on hydroponic and vertical production systems using LEDs. Our analysis assumes that this system could be applied to 10– 50% of current horticultural production. Given the small area of land currently used for horticulture, moving production indoors has a limited impact on land area and carbon impacts. More significant emissions savings would come from moving horticultural production from lowland peat, although we have not included this in our analysis.
Greater benefits could accrue from shifting arable crop production indoors. The controlled environment could allow for quicker and multiple harvests each year. Estimates suggest that combined with a ten-tier stacking system, yields could be 220 to 600 times higher than the current global average annual wheat yield of 3.2 tonnes/hectare.11 However, this production method is still at the experimental stage, with trials on-going at Rothamsted Research, while the costs of energy (e.g. LED lighting) would also have to reduce to make this a cost-effective option. Indoor wheat production is not included in our scenarios.

and I have a hunch, that eating all this hydroponic food will accelerate metabolic syndrome and other health problems throughout the West, but hey ho, pharmaceutical companies will also benefit (and length of pension payments will decrease too) so there is always an upside to everything !!

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

That's very interesting. They are all civil engineers, or researchers, or economists. Unless I missed it, the words 'biologist' or 'ecologist' don't appear once, never mind 'food producer'.

Or even "Environmental scientist" or "Climate scientist"

I strongly suspect they are still using Poore and Nemcek 2019 data from their heavily biased EAT-Lancet study

There's a piece on why we should all eat less red meat in today's Consumers Association newsletter/magazine by their "dietician" which quotes the same data.

 

[delilah]

Or even "Environmental scientist" or "Climate scientist"

I strongly suspect they are still using Poore and Nemcek 2019 data from their heavily biased EAT-Lancet study

There's a piece on why we should all eat less red meat in today's Consumers Association newsletter/magazine by their "dietician" which quotes the same data.

just googled them, came up with this:

the calculator can determine that if a person eats beef once or twice a week for a year, they are contributing 604kg to annual GHGs.

and this

75g, equivalent to one typical fast food hamburger, per servingOver an entire year your consumption of beef is contributing 604kg to your annual greenhouse gas emissions.

That's the equivalent of driving a regular petrol car 1,542 miles (2,482km).

If I read that correctly then, eating a 75g burger once a week contributes 604kg a year to an individuals emissions. Have I got that right that far ?

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

just googled them, came up with this:

the calculator can determine that if a person eats beef once or twice a week for a year, they are contributing 604kg to annual GHGs.

and this

75g, equivalent to one typical fast food hamburger, per servingOver an entire year your consumption of beef is contributing 604kg to your annual greenhouse gas emissions.

That's the equivalent of driving a regular petrol car 1,542 miles (2,482km).

If I read that correctly then, eating a 75g burger once a week contributes 604kg a year to an individuals emissions. Have I got that right that far ?

It appears so. A shame that's based on global average figures for beef production heavily distorted by the USA and South American grazing deforestation.

It's like saying average car economy is 20mpg based on American gas -guzzlers.

 

[delilah]

A 75g burger once a week is 3.75kg of beef mince a year.
A bullock will yield - guess here - 250kg of useable mince.
Multiply 604kg by 66.
40 tonnes of emissions.
A bullock is responsible for 40 tonnes of climate change contributing emissions.
Is that what they are saying ? Have I done the maths correctly ?

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

just googled them, came up with this:

the calculator can determine that if a person eats beef once or twice a week for a year, they are contributing 604kg to annual GHGs.

and this

75g, equivalent to one typical fast food hamburger, per servingOver an entire year your consumption of beef is contributing 604kg to your annual greenhouse gas emissions.

That's the equivalent of driving a regular petrol car 1,542 miles (2,482km).

If I read that correctly then, eating a 75g burger once a week contributes 604kg a year to an individuals emissions. Have I got that right that far ?

"Once or twice a week"

Do they mean once a week or twice a week?

Or do they mean 3 times in 2 weeks?

It changes the maths significantly!

Fills me with suspicion of what they are saying.

 

[Poorbuthappy]

"Once or twice a week"

Do they mean once a week or twice a week?

Or do they mean 3 times in 2 weeks?

It changes the maths significantly!

Fills me with suspicion of what they are saying.

As usual its just made up figures with the occasional bit of bad science thrown in.

 

[delilah]

"Once or twice a week"

Do they mean once a week or twice a week?

Or do they mean 3 times in 2 weeks?

It changes the maths significantly!

Fills me with suspicion of what they are saying.

sure, but running with their 75g per week, is my maths correct ?
We can't just keep shouting "bollox" at them without knowing what we are shouting bollox at. Well, we can, but it would be more interesting and have more weight behind it if we knew what it is they are saying.

 

[Swarfmonkey]

If I read that correctly then, eating a 75g burger once a week contributes 604kg a year to an individuals emissions. Have I got that right that far ?

OK, using your figures that works out as 3.9kg of beef a year producing 604kg of CO2e.

Now, according to the NBA, the UK produced 922,000 tonnes of beef in 2018. Using the figures above that would equate to 142,791,794,871kg of CO2e. That's 142.79Mt of CO2e. This is where it starts to look like that emissions calculator is seriously ropey. According to the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy the UK, in the same year, produced 364.1Mt of CO2e.

Does anyone honestly believe that 39.2% of the UK's GHGe in 2018 was solely down to the consumption of beef? Nah, me neither. Especially when the same BEIS report states that agriculture (all of it) was responsible for just 5.6mt CO2e out of a total emissions of 364.1mt CO2e.

 

[kiwi pom]

People really don’t think in joined up systems or complete cycles. They home in on one fact and don’t see the bigger picture. “Replace meat with food from plants” they say? But where does extra land and fertiliser come from to grow these plants, the chemical usage, the harvesting, transportation and processing resources?
And while air travel and needless consumption continues unabated, why tinker with agriculture?

I'm not saying I agree with it but I think the argument is that beef and other meat is inefficient in a calorie per acre system.
Take these ultra efficient contract farming systems. They make money over huge acres but don't produce much food, a lot of what they produce is feed wheat which is used to produce livestock. They argue (i think) that, that land should be used to grow other food that can be fed directly to us humans, so reducing the amount of land used for food production allowing more of it to be used to "fix" climate change.

My guess is the numbers work on paper in a study, just not in the real world.
It wont stop them trying though.

 

[delilah]

Does anyone honestly believe that 39.2% of the UK's GHGe in 2018 was solely down to the consumption of beef? Nah, me neither. Especially when the same BEIS report states that agriculture (all of it) was responsible for just 5.6mt CO2e out of a total emissions of 364.1mt CO2e.

OK, lets call them out.
Who has contact details for either of those scientists ?

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

I'm not saying I agree with it but I think the argument is that beef and other meat is inefficient in a calorie per acre system.
Take these ultra efficient contract farming systems. They make money over huge acres but don't produce much food, a lot of what they produce is feed wheat which is used to produce livestock. They argue (i think) that, that land should be used to grow other food that can be fed directly to us humans, so reducing the amount of land used for food production allowing more of it to be used to "fix" climate change.

My guess is the numbers work on paper in a study, just not in the real world.
It wont stop them trying though.

They ignore (or know nothing of) the inconvenient fact that the specifications for milling wheat are way harder to grow than for feed wheat, that's why feed wheat is the fallback option. The yields of milling grade wheat on moderate cereal land would not be anywhere near what they expect, utterly ruining their "efficiency" calculations.

 

[delilah]

On our fag packet maths then, the Governments official advisers are making two easy to remember statements:
One bullock produces 40t of GHG.
40% of UK GHG emissions are due to eating beef.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

If they are saying that 75g per week of burger (many burgers are not 100% beef btw) causes 604kg CO2e per year then that's 158kg per kg beef.

If they meant twice a week ie 150g per week then it's 79 kg CO2e pet kg of beef.

I read a report earlier this week of a detailed study of 12 beef farms in Wales which were subjected to detailed carbon audits over several years and they averaged, IIRC, around 30kg CO2e per kg beef.

A very wide difference!