The Skeptics Guide #899 - Oct 1 2022 (Ad Free)
Added 2022-10-01 16:52:24 +0000 UTCInterview with Tim Dodd the Everyday Astronaut; Forgotten Superhero of Science: Raye Jean Montague; News Items: Are Fake Meats Sustainable, Why Go Back to the Moon; Science or Fiction
Comments
First off, I absolutely love the show and I’ve been listening for a very, very long time now. I’m happy to support your efforts financially through being a Patreon and buying both books, and that is not changing due to my comments below. That said, something struck me as odd during one of your discussions in this episode so I wanted to reach out. My biases up front: I stopped consuming meat around seven years ago. From the environmental arguments to the realization that there’s no ethical way to kill something that doesn’t want to die, coupled with living in a western country where calories are overly abundant in the first place, made moving away from meat consumption a logical decision for me, personally. I just couldn’t justify all that for whatever personal pleasure consuming delicious meat brought me. Beyond that pleasure, there’s really nothing meat was giving me that I couldn’t get elsewhere. So, all that out of the way: I’m not sure if it was just the editing but Jay’s constant defense of meat consumption came across as super cringe to me. There are absolutely places in the world where calories for humans are extremely limited due to things like the lack of arable land or for financial reasons, but I’m not sure why they need this podcast’s seemingly unrelated vocal defense in the middle of an exploration of how much better “fake meat” is when it comes to greenhouse gas production than their “natural” counterparts. Are the people in those limited calorie areas feeling pressure to move away from meat consumption at all, let alone to such an extent that the brakes had to be put on in the middle of the discussion topic to point out the reality that there are people out there that can’t move away from meat at this point? What value did that really add, and how does it relate to the environmental impact of one product compared to another? It might have been interesting if it were tied to some sort of point such as the number of people in calorie deficient areas is so large that any scaling down in meat consumption by the rest of us would actually make little to no impact. However, no such point was made and, frankly, I suspect the opposite is true. Regarding the assertion that animal agriculture accounts for a large portion of our fertilizer consumption: I’m honestly not familiar with the intricacies of fertilizer and have no problem granting that artificial or other sources simply couldn’t step in to fill in the gap if animal agriculture were to go away for the sake of the argument. So, granting that, I have a few thoughts on that point. Nothing about keeping animals in the mix means that they also have to continue to be slaughtered for human consumption as they are today. Why not keep the animals around to produce fertilizer for us if they’re that essential to the system, but let them live out their lives? It’d be interesting to look into the fertilizer production of older, larger animals vs the production of fertilizer generated by animals in earlier phases of their lives. There might be a net gain in fertilizer production and/or efficiency by not constantly having to replace animals with younger versions because the older ones (that I would suspect might generate more fertilizer than younger animals) are able to hang around longer resulting in a lower required animal headcount overall. Continuing down the fertilizer thread, my understanding is that the big reason we’re using animal waste for our fertilizer is because it was already there thanks to animal agriculture for food consumption. I wonder if there other animals that perhaps people would find less palatable as food but would be as good or even more efficient in generating fertilizer. If the system wasn’t hamstrung into using the existing animal agriculture stock due to cultural consumption preferences, there may be other animals we might be able to raise instead solely for the purpose of harvesting their waste that might be more efficient in creating that waste than the cows, pigs, and chickens we seem to primarily rely upon today. At the very least, I’d be interested in learning if we currently have an over abundance of animal-based fertilizer that might allow for us to reduce animal headcount to more evenly match fertilizer demand while minimizing environmental impact. It just struck me as odd to have these seemingly disconnected interjections about how important animal waste is and how some people live in places that can’t move away from animal consumption in the middle of a conversation whose topic had to do with the relative reduction in greenhouse gases generated in the creation of two different products. It seems like the gang is very much in favor of increasing efficiency and reducing environmental impacts when it comes to most things, but meat consumption seems to require special defending when topics like this come up. I know most of you on the show are huge meat eaters, and that’s certainly your choice. As a listener and supporter, I’m happy to roll my eyes through the prolific meatball references because I believe the rest of the work you all are doing is absolutely critical to the survival and thriving of our civilization. I truly don’t think that to be an overstatement; what you all contribute to the world is essential. But the further removed I become from being a meat eater the less sense eating meat makes to me, and statements like the ones I’ve highlighted feel extremely out of place relative to all the other good you’re doing. Truly, thank you for all you do! The world is a better place as a result and I am personally grateful.
M R
2022-10-06 13:26:07 +0000 UTCIt looks like there was some sort of error where last week's episode was put up as this week's for a while. Not sure if it affected Patreon though. https://twitter.com/SkepticsGuide/status/1576282059215372288
Mikah Woodward
2022-10-02 02:39:44 +0000 UTCAfter listening to it. It appears that I thought it was a duplicate because the first several minutes are the same in the two episodes.
M. Zimmerman
2022-10-02 00:49:12 +0000 UTCThis is one of the 2 episodes they did during the 6 hour livestream they did on sep 24. I think the other one is being released as a podcast a bit later in the year. I haven't listened to this podcast version, but it looks like they cut the AI art discussion out entirely, according to the show notes. I guess that's one way to edit out Steve swearing at the rogues for not moving on to the next topic when he said to move on.
Mikah Woodward
2022-10-02 00:05:54 +0000 UTCI assume others have mentioned this. This is the Sept 24 SGU and not Oct 1.
M. Zimmerman
2022-10-01 18:51:26 +0000 UTC
