In Alaska, Starving Seabirds and Empty Colonies Signal a Broken Ecosystem

The Arctic environment is warming up several times faster than the earth as whole.

It looks as if at least one ecological niche has vanished. Something like this happens at the end of every ice age, and at the start of every new one.

The ecosystem is changing, as has frequently done through the planet's history.

It isn't broken, merely changing. The changes are probably going to inconvenience us too, but if we pay attention and react sensibly - which doesn't seem to be happening yet - we should be okay.

Places without much spare agricultural capacity may lose quite a bit of population to starvation if we don't get our act together soon, but the meat-eating first world has quite a lot of room to adapt.

It's downright ghoulish to wallow in that sort of stuff.

But the beans and the fog are better than ever.

and people keep making cool parts:

On Friday, September 28, 2018 at 10:42:33 AM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org wrote :

owing, little fat on their bodies, and nothing in their stomach or intestin es."

as whole.

this happens at the end of every ice age, and at the start of every new on e.

The difference with this one is the change is occurring at least 100x faste r than in the past.

story.

venience us too, but if we pay attention and react sensibly - which doesn't seem to be happening yet - we should be okay.

I'm starting to suspect it's global conspiracy to depopulate most of the pl anet.

opulation to starvation if we don't get our act together soon, but the meat

-eating first world has quite a lot of room to adapt.

A Stanford biochem professor has developed a new food technology to replace meat products. He claims that over 90% of land used by man, for any purpos e, is consumed growing feed for animal production. Seems he's really taking his time with acceptance testing.

te:

showing, little fat on their bodies, and nothing in their stomach or intest ines."

h as whole.

ke this happens at the end of every ice age, and at the start of every new one.

ter than in the past.

Almost true.

"However, the amount of released carbon, according to a recent study, sugge st a modest 0.2 gigatonnes per year (at peaks 0.58 gigatonnes); humans toda y add about 10 gigatonnes per year."

So we are changing the climate fifty times faster than nature did back then .

history.

onvenience us too, but if we pay attention and react sensibly - which doesn 't seem to be happening yet - we should be okay.

planet.

The people who conspiring to keep it changing rapidly - pretty much the peo ple who get money out of extacting fossil carbon and selling it as fuel - m ostly don't live in places that would face a population crash if the local agriculture stopped working as it had in the (cooler) past.

population to starvation if we don't get our act together soon, but the me at-eating first world has quite a lot of room to adapt.

ce meat products. He claims that over 90% of land used by man, for any purp ose, is consumed growing feed for animal production. Seems he's really taki ng his time with acceptance testing.

The grazing lobby has an interest in keeping their income stream flowing.

You forgot to mention that permafrost no longer is. Becoming more extinct.

owing, little fat on their bodies, and nothing in their stomach or intestin es."

Permafrost is not an organism, and can't become extinct. There's less of it than there used to be, and there seem to have been long periods in the geo logical past when there wouldn't have been any at all, so it does seem to b e able to come back from non-existence, like ice caps at the poles.

On Friday, September 28, 2018 at 11:08:38 PM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org wrote :

rote:

s showing, little fat on their bodies, and nothing in their stomach or inte stines."

rth as whole.

like this happens at the end of every ice age, and at the start of every ne w one.

aster than in the past.

gest a modest 0.2 gigatonnes per year (at peaks 0.58 gigatonnes); humans to day add about 10 gigatonnes per year."

en.

s history.

nconvenience us too, but if we pay attention and react sensibly - which doe sn't seem to be happening yet - we should be okay.

e planet.

eople who get money out of extacting fossil carbon and selling it as fuel - mostly don't live in places that would face a population crash if the loca l agriculture stopped working as it had in the (cooler) past.

of population to starvation if we don't get our act together soon, but the meat-eating first world has quite a lot of room to adapt.

lace meat products. He claims that over 90% of land used by man, for any pu rpose, is consumed growing feed for animal production. Seems he's really ta king his time with acceptance testing.

Some of their simple minded circular reasoning for the masses:

-plants/

It would appear that he already has a large number of competitors for meat substitutes: I've tried some of these and find them rather dull and boring. What's missing is the blood (juices). I don't care if it's real or fake blood, but please hold the garlic:

That's what his heme molecule is all about, it substitutes for the blood ve ry well. They just got FDA approval of its safety only recently, not becaus e FDA took so long, but because they waited so long to apply.

"Heme is an iron-containing molecule that occurs naturally in every single plant and animal. It?s an essential molecular building block of lif e. Heme gives your blood its ability to carry oxygen. It?s found in all living organisms, and it's been consumed every day?heck, every second?for hundreds of thousands of years..

"Heme is super abundant in animal muscle, and that's what makes a burger so flavorful. It's also why meat is a particularly good source of iron. The h eme found in animal muscle is carried by a protein called myoglobin.

Plants, particularly nitrogen-fixing plants and legumes, also have heme. Th e heme found in these plants is carried by leghemoglobin, which is closely related to myoglobin. Leghemoglobin in the soy plant is called soy leghemog lobin. The heme molecule in plant-based heme is atom-for-atom identical to the heme molecule found in meat. It?s what makes the Impossible Bur ger so rich and decadent."

Thanks. I'm not sure if artificial plant blood will work for those with a chronic nocturnal taste for blood, but it's worth a try, especially if it's served at body temperature. Popping an Impossible Burger into the microwave would certainly be an improvement over stalking prospective blood donors under cover of darkness: Looks like there are two prospective locations within driving distance.

te:

showing, little fat on their bodies, and nothing in their stomach or intest ines."

h as whole.

ke this happens at the end of every ice age, and at the start of every new one.

ter than in the past.

history.

onvenience us too, but if we pay attention and react sensibly - which doesn 't seem to be happening yet - we should be okay.

planet.

population to starvation if we don't get our act together soon, but the me at-eating first world has quite a lot of room to adapt.

ce meat products. He claims that over 90% of land used by man, for any purp ose, is consumed growing feed for animal production. Seems he's really taki ng his time with acceptance testing.

I guess I get that people don't want to give up the foods they love. I use d to like burgers and I was pretty gung-ho about chicken prepared just abou t any way. But I don't miss any of it at all. The only issue I have with eating meatless is that in most restaurants it relegates me to a very small portion of the menu. In fact, the last couple of years I have come to ful ly appreciate just how meat centric most people's tastes are.

Oh well, in 100 years when there is too little land and too many people for any significant proportion to be able to eat meat it will be like a chapte r out of Soylent Green. Unlike AGW, eating meat doesn't have potential to impact our way of living long term. When we no longer can raise animals to eat, we simply won't.

Rick C.

The whole meat substitute thing is almost as unappealing to me as meat. It always bugs me when restaurants feel that rather than just preparing good vegetarian meals they have to use tofu in place of meat. Yuk!

I remember finding a pretty good frozen meal at the supermarket with chicke n, but couldn't find what would have been a great vegetarian meal without i t. Everything vegie either is full of cheese, heavy cream sauce or otherwi se junked up rather than just making them good. Obviously the meat enthusi asts preferences if they are not eating meat.

Rick C.

"Why are veggie burgers more expensive than beef patties?" "The sad reality is, you cannot feed 7 billion people without a system that requires large tracts of land and releases boatloads of CO2 into the atmosphere.

the same silly thing."

I guess the next fad will be eating bugs (entomophagy):

"U.N. Urges Eating Insects; 8 Popular Bugs to Try"

I've been into occasional baked crickets and chocolate covered ants for many years. Good stuff once you get past the western cultural aversion to eating bugs.

Nonsense.

True.

True.

Clearly the author is not a cook and does not understand the processes involved in cooking.

Precisely.

Agreed, but it is getting better over here, especially if you look in the Indian/SEAsian sections.

I'm a confirmed omnivore, but I do like the *South* Indian food. It has a lot of flavour (esp. tamarind, coconut, vinegar) and not very much chilli.

Gordon Ramsay (Michelin award chef and TV restaurant rescuerer), who is scathing about veggies, did a "foodie" tour of S India (Kerala and Tamil Nadu). It was entertaining to see him surprised to the extent he very begrudgingly said it was delicious.

Do you really believe this??? The point is that it takes some large multip lier to feed animals for us to eat compared to just growing crops to feed p eople. The only mitigating factor is that they feed nearly every part of t he plant to animals while humans only eat a portion of the plants that are grown. But even with that factored in there is a significant multiplier to grow animals to eat.

In other words, it will take a *lot* less land, water, fertilizer and will produce a *lot* less CO2 and other by-products such as runoff into the wate rways.

I'm surprised you posted a link to such bull.

Rick C.

te:

very well. They just got FDA approval of its safety only recently, not bec ause FDA took so long, but because they waited so long to apply.

le plant and animal. It?s an essential molecular building block of life. Heme gives your blood its ability to carry oxygen. It?s found in all living organisms, and it's been consumed every day?heck, ev ery second?for hundreds of thousands of years..

so flavorful. It's also why meat is a particularly good source of iron. Th e heme found in animal muscle is carried by a protein called myoglobin.

The heme found in these plants is carried by leghemoglobin, which is close ly related to myoglobin. Leghemoglobin in the soy plant is called soy leghe moglobin. The heme molecule in plant-based heme is atom-for-atom identical to the heme molecule found in meat. It?s what makes the Impossible Burger so rich and decadent."

More info

Yep. I suspect that much of the flavor is either in the fat or carried by the fat: "The Science Behind Why Fat Tastes So Good"

I sometimes cook on cast iron. I get my daily dose of iron from the skillet, not from meat: "Cast Iron Pans Are a Reliable Source of Dietary Iron" "Are cast iron pans unsafe?"

Possibly, but he's doing quite well doing public relations for Impossible Foods. Methinks the author can be forgiven if he cuts some corners and provides some generalities instead of inundating the reader with more accurate, but voluminous, details.

I'm not sure, but it seems possible depending on what is being compared. Is it calories per acre? Does it include the 40% of food that is tossed into the landfill? Are we including "novelty" foods, junk food, snacks, etc? Does the expense include processing, storage, refrigeration, pest control, and government farm subsidies? I don't know how the quora author reached his conclusion, but I do know that I swing the calculations to favor either beef or veggie depending on which parts of the food supply and consumption chain I include in those calculations.

I suspect that given equal calories supplied by veggies and meat, the average consumer will prefer meat. It's rather odd that we have a wide selection of simulated beef products made from plant sources, while we don't have any plant substitutes made from meat. To the best of my knowledge, the imitation food products are invariably meat substitutes. Changing the buying public from meat to veggies is going to be painful without cosmetic reconstitution into something resembling the meat that most everyone seems to want. So, the cost of switching to a veggie based diet will involve considerable expense in making the stuff look, taste, smell, feel, and handle like meat. I call to your attention that veggie burgers are more expensive at the supermarket than hamburgers as a clue.

Fine. It will also take a fair amount of effort, chemistry, and labor to convert veggies into fake meat. The longer and more complex the conversion chain, the profit will be extracted from it. I don't have any numbers, but suspect the consumer prices will be similar for processing veggies and for processing beef (both without subsidies).

Don't be surprised. It doesn't matter what point of view I express or advocate, I can usually find an article, blog, or rant that supports that position. I post such URL's not so much to substantiate my point, but rather to provide additional reading material for anyone who wants more detail or wants to research the topic.