No, all text and images are 100% man-made. It's always astonishing how many people don't understand the crucial role of (open source) software and climate change. Just look at the massive greenwashing that has taken place in recent years with manipulated CO2 offsetting figures. If we want to trust numbers about the impact on our environment and their part of our prices, there is no way around making these numbers traceable using open source / open science methods. And LLMs are not traceable.
This is intentional, as the podcast is a collaboration between two communities: OpenSustain.tech with a focus on how to sustain the environment with open source and SustainOSS with a focus on how to sustain open source as a movement.
+1 yes we need a way to export and analyze data to get the insights we want. Would be great if we can share through Datasette which is tailor made for such applications
The heatpump performance data looks crowd sourced. If the website and DB are run with open source software, that's a different thing and seems secondary.
I use Feedblocker for all social media and have to say it is a real relief. I can still participate when I'm mentioned, but I can now focus on what I think is relevant to me instead of letting big companies decide what might be relevant to me or how best to capture my attention span. This is how I was able to finally finish my PhD.
The examples and tutorials for these libraries were an ideal introduction to me in astronomy, astrodynamics and satellite orbits. As part of my Ph.D., I was able to build a multiple orbit simulation and validation tools for smaller satellite missions thanks to Skyfield.
That's exactly why I'm also very interested in using Grist. Embedding spreadsheets into web pages has never satisfied me and has resulted in unacceptable load times.
Embedding spreadsheets especially with iframes seems alien in websites. I've used retable.io feature to get the data in json or html. It works great with wordpress
LF Energy, the open source foundation focused on harnessing the power of collaborative software and hardware technologies to decarbonize our global economies, and Protontypes, an open community accelerating free and sustainable technology, today released “The Open Source Sustainability Ecosystem”. The report provides qualitative and quantitative insights into the landscape of open source sustainability projects, identifies those having the biggest impact, as well as gaps that stakeholders across the energy industry should look to fill.
A total of 1,339 active projects were analyzed and grouped into fields by their primary areas of focus. Projects were then analyzed based on their popularity, longevity, programming languages, licenses, number of contributors, organizational diversity, and other factors.
Unfortunately, UNEP does not address the unpleasant truth here either. The biggest destroyer of nature is intensive livestock farming, especially for meat production. Today, about 40% of the inhabitable land is used for feeding livestock. Removing subsidies in this area could very quickly bring back biodiversity, fight climate change and increase food security worldwide. Unfortunately, for many, eating meat has become like a fetish and such measures are politically almost impossible to implement. Here some more data about this: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use#half-of-the-world-s-habi...
Any of these types of things said about factory farmed meat is correct. For free-range meat, some of the production does cause habitat destruction. However, most animals are raised on land that is not highly productive for crop agriculture. For example dry areas where most crops will deplete water resources or very hilly areas that are more prone to erosion and harder to operate tractors on, etc (this is even mentioned in the our world in data link). So meat and crop production are not a zero sum game and can even be complementary (crop farmers used to always have chickens, etc).
In a grassland environment one can maintain a close to natural environment with the birds and bees with the difference being that cattle are the only megafauna and cattle predators will be killed. Raising crops means completely altering the environment to an unnatural state that then this report tries to amend and killing all the gophers and other pests along with using pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and other chemicals (yes organic farming can reduce this harm).
This reply feels a bit tangential. The amount of land taken to raise livestock is a small fraction of the land used to grow their feed. You discuss the lack of nuance with respect to the former, but OP was talking about the latter. The land taken for raising animals hadn't even entered OP's equation yet, and can only strengthen their point.
I think the confusion comes from the term free-range meat, which (at least in the US) is a marketing term far removed from what any normal person would consider "free range". It could be -- and often is -- just a barn with a fenced outdoor opening small enough that it amortizes to a few square inches of "free range" land per animal. Many of whom will never get there because they die of various kinds of nastiness before they make it to the opening.
The percentage of human-raised animals who are truly "free range" and roam grasslands in any meaningful sense begins with a decimal point. Cut the per-head subsidies and you cut the incentive to singularly maximize body count at the expense of all potential benefits of free-roaming animals.
> However, most animals are raised on land that is not highly productive for crop agriculture. For example dry areas where most crops will deplete water resources or very hilly areas that are more prone to erosion and harder to operate tractors on
But a key point is around crop diversity, and the monoculture mode of production. From the original page:
> The world has over 50,000 edible plants. However, just three of them, rice, maize, and wheat, provide over 50 per cent of the world's food energy intake.
So for any dry hilly area being used as pasture, and which is sufficient to support grazing animals _without additional feed_, is it really the case that there are _no_ crops, or combinations of crops which could work there? Or is it just that we should do a better job of supporting farmers discovering other ways of making their land productive?
> Raising crops means completely altering the environment to an unnatural state
Raising crops _can_ mean that, but regenerative agriculture can instead focus on working with the environment. Certainly beyond organic, no-till methods, permaculture, "natural farming" are on a spectrum that can deliberately involve and support more complex ecosystems.
I think it's in kind of bad faith to respond with "but agriculture as most commonly practiced can be harmful and ineffective on some pasture land" in the context of an article arguing that we should radically shift how we practice agriculture.
> So meat and crop production are not a zero sum game and can even be complementary (crop farmers used to always have chickens, etc).
100%. And, based on the design, it can not only be complementary, there can be synesthetic effects that end up making even better use of the land.
Another example besides chickens might be, adding water-harvesting features on hilly uplands (that livestock grazes), which replenishes the ground water that are made available to the crop lands.
The pro-meat take is (as always) lacking scientific basis for their claims, and ignores the biggest problems of the field, like biodiversity loss, deforestation, eutrophication/pollution, pesticide/herbicide use, ethical concerns etc. All science points in opposite direction from yours, no science exists supporting your claims.
For scientific rebutal of your opinion see relevant part of the debate "Is livestock grazing essential to mitigating climate change?" between Alan Savory (a big proponent of rotational "regenerative" grazing) and George Monbiot.
I watched it all, but am linking directly to the most relevant part.
How Compatible Are Western European Dietary Patterns to Climate Targets? Accounting for Uncertainty of Life Cycle Assessments by Applying a Probabilistic Approach
Coming from farm country in Iowa, I'm glad to see Allan Savory's work getting more publicity. Regenerative grazing definitely works. The problem is restoring a distressed ecosystem (typically soils) back to its natural state after desertification has already occurred in an area that livestock continually grazes. There are a few agTech companies looking at doing just that via different GMO seeding products of native grasses and plants, but the cost is still far too high economically coming in at around $50/acre. I don't think any farmer or rancher would argue that we need more free-range livestock and less confinements/stockyards, but it's a slow process.
It strikes me that this post is opinionated and exactly lacking the nuance described in the previous post.
Nobody argues in favor of the meat industry at large. This is about the difference between localized, grass-fed beef which can be raised where crops cannot.
The single largest issue with industrialized meat production is the environmental impact of the feed, which is a non issue if it is provided locally and organic. In fact, organically raised meat and animal products provide benefits to the local biodiversity.
Note: I’m from the EU where you have strict laws on organic production and farm animals have to be almost exclusively fed with grass.
Please look into the effects of manure on the environnement - like the death zone in the Gulf of mexico.
Everyone is arguing for the industrial meat industry at large.
Free range meat will not produce anywhere near the same amount as the industrial industry.
Please go look into L214 and 269 if you want to see how regulation is not respected in farms in the EU.
Manure produced by pasture-raised livestock is great! When the herd moves across the grasslands, it is similar to how the vast bison herds contribute back to the grasslands. That manure gets trampled back down into the grassland, where it helps restore the soil. When the grassy area is eaten to a certain point, you move the herd to a new area and let the old one rest.
The problem with feedlots is that the manure accumulates. The ground is eaten until it is nothing (because you have the feed), and then the grass dies. Then the soil gets compacted. Meanwhile, since there is nowhere for the manure to go, and it is not being consumed by the grasses, it ends up become sludge, a source of health problems.
> Everyone is arguing for the industrial meat industry at large. Free range meat will not produce anywhere near the same amount as the industrial industry.
If the meat supply is reduced then so be it. And remember, the higher the quality of the meat, the less of it you need in your diet. But that's far different from a policy stance of zero-tolerance for meat, anywhere and everywhere.
> this is about the difference between localized, grass-fed beef which can be raised where crops cannot
Sure, that's obvious. But we don't need those calories to sustain ourselves.
> the environmental impact of the feed, which is a non issue if it is provided locally and organic. In fact, organically raised meat and animal products provide benefits to the local biodiversity.
Sources?
> strict laws on organic production and farm animals have to be almost exclusively fed with grass
EU is one of the largest importers of soy from deforested Amazon. What part of EU grown beef is organic & exclusively fed with grass?
> Sure, that's obvious. But we don't need those calories to sustain ourselves.
This is completely different topic. You won't change people's habits. I for one would be in great favour of large-scale insect farming as they are way more efficient sources of protein but you are not going to change anybody's habit just by arguing from such a perspective.
> Sources?
On the one hand, most models fail to capture carbon sequestration and purely assess carbon exhaust. This is a fair approximation if your source of feed is based upon the deforestation of the Amazon.
However, for grazing animals decomposing gras will just emit the carbon it has captured throughout its lifetime. And most of all, it will regrow rather swiftly.
A recent paper which I could find that took this into account is here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965262...
Quote: "However, although the environmental impacts are well defined in LCAs, most of them do not include carbon sequestration, which is an important limitation when studying real emissions in more sustainable animal production systems. In this context, compensated CF -including carbon sequestration-implies a greater reduction in those systems that are more linked to the territory."
> EU is one of the largest importers of soy from deforested Amazon.
Again, there is a categoric difference between typical highly processed industrial agriculture and organic. Especially Spain has a powerful agriculture lobby with vast lands which only produce crops and meat. Certainly, a lot of things are going wrong and due to subsidies there is so much overproduction that European products are dumping the African market. Destroying the local competition.
On the other hand, the US loves to make people fat by subsidising big Corn. In fact, it is subsidised so much that creating high fructose corn syrup is cheaper than buying sugar canes from abroad. Too bad that the sugar in corn is fructose, which promotes fatty liver disease.
> What part of EU grown beef is organic & exclusively fed with grass?
There is the official EU organic label, which has hard criteria. However, there are many other labels which go even further.
All the arguments in favor of regenerative meat production that I have heard consider, and in fact stress all these issues. Your link was a technical debate about soil carbon storage, (which I suspect regenerative ag proponents would dispute the details of, which would be an interesting thing to get to the bottom of). It doesn't at all cover any of those other more important topics you brought up in this quote. Anyway, a smart guy citing his chosen evidence in a public debate hardly settles any issue either way.
>> no science exists supporting your claims
this is hyperbole, and easily disproved by a quick google search.
which says also:
"The new peer-reviewed study looks at the multi-species rotational grazing done on the ranch and found that White Oak’s approach reduced net greenhouse gas emissions of the grazing system by 80 percent. Regenerative practices helped sequester 2.29 megagrams of carbon per hectare annually. To put that into context, sequestering just 1 Mg of carbon per hectare each year on half the rangeland area in California would offset 42 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, roughly the annual emissions from energy use for the state’s commercial and residential sectors."
Just for context for the reader, "free range meat" costs orders of magnitude more to make and takes so much more room that if industrial farming had to move to free range, I doubt most people could afford it more than once in a blue moon.
So they use 77% of their available land to produce 37% of their protein and 18% of their calories. Imagine how much cheaper calories would be if the land dedicated to plants were simply doubled. Thus eliminating a huge amount of starvation.
If we had the technology to turn all that grazing land into farmable land, we could support a global population in the tens of billions.
The whole point of livestock is that they can be raised on land that isn't farmable (i.e., cattle for meat or milk), or food that isn't otherwise edible (i.e., pigs and chickens). For most of their lives cattle in the U.S. are raised on land that isn't suitable for farming, and only get fed soy or corn-based feed in their last few weeks to fatten them prior to slaughter.
> For most of their lives cattle in the U.S. are raised on land that isn't suitable for farming, and only get fed soy or corn-based feed in their last few weeks to fatten them prior to slaughter.
Can the land that is used to grow feed crop (soy, corn) be used to be used to grow other things that humans can eat directly? Or can the soy or corn be used by humans directly as opposed to the 'intermediary' of cattle?
If the 'cattle land' be used for other animals that are more efficient (?) in turning plants into protein? (Chicken, pigs, goats, sheep, etc.)
Feed crop is only used to feed cattle during the last few weeks of their life; the majority of their weight comes from grazing on unfarmable pasture land.
Can the land that is used to grow feed crop (soy, corn) be used to be used to grow other things that humans can eat directly?
Humans can eat corn and soy directly...
If the 'cattle land' be used for other animals that are more efficient (?) in turning plants into protein?
Not unless you can genetically engineer chicken and pigs to eat grass and weeds. Goats and sheep are less efficient at turning plants into protein, which is why the bulk of our mammalian meat production is cattle and not sheep or goat.
And that "unproductive dry grassland" used to be natural habitat for wildlife, until we took it from them, and more often than not used to be forested.
The potential for carbon storage afforesting those areas is huge, so huge that we could store our entire 1.5˚C carbon budget in them.
Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO2 emissions this century
The key word you used is "intensive". Livestock are animals in too, and we can use techniques to harvest animal products while maintaining a balance in the ecosystem. You can see this in grazing management to turn desert back into grasslands in Africa. And instead of spraying insecticide that runs off and kills things downstream, we can pasture chickens in the same fields we grow crops and they'll happily turn those insects into eggs and meat.
Intensive agriculture is fighting nature. We can work with nature instead for both crops and animal products and still get great yield.
There are ways to fix this of course without moving to not eating meat of course. Meat eating is not a 'fetish' in any significant way, much as it suits some agendas to make it seem so. I could claim that about any product or food...
I agree on removing subsidies though, they encourage the wrong kind of outcomes and shortcuts.
> There are ways to fix this of course without moving to not eating meat of course.
There are ways to avoid discomfort while walking with a thorn in your toe that don't involve removing the thorn, but why would you do them if you didn't have an irrational love for thorns?
Silly analogy. If you're going to remove grazing animals, you might need to figure out how many new fields you'll need for the extra veg required and it's transport, figure out where wool and leather are going to come from, along with the dairy, pet food and all the other derivative products. But sure, we'll just magically stop meat (I think there are ways to easily reduce the need for so much feed without removing meat production) and go to meat free without causing any other issues. Environmental win-win to keep the population Ponzi growing
if we're talking about the switch to lab-grown meat using plant proteins, lab-grown meat can be grown anywhere, it doesnt need wide horizontal pastures or grazing lands
vertical vegetable farming didn't take off because of margins, but vertical meat farming might be possible, as the premium on meat might make the economic equation of growing soy on level three to feed cells on level two before shipping them out in trucks on level one attainable
Switching to plant based alternatives won’t really fix the large fields of soy and corn that are the issue. We may need less to feed cattle then, but then we will need to produce more plant protein for direct human consumption or even bioreactors.
"More than three-quarters (77%) of global soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. Most of the rest is used for biofuels, industry or vegetable oils. Just 7% of soy is used directly for human food products such as tofu, soy milk, edamame beans, and tempeh"
> fields of ... corn that are the issue
Corn crop is mainly used for biofuels (40%) and as animal feed (36%)
