commie @ commie @lemmy.dbzer0.com

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2 yr. ago

I strongly prefer to keep each comment to one idea. it helps break up Gish gallops. if you don't like my style, you're free to block me and remove me from you Lemmy experience.

your personal attacks are inappropriate.

your accusation of bad faith is, itself, bad faith

that doesn't make their methodology any good.

they were honest enough to acknowledge that these studies varied so widely in methodology that combining them would be bad science, but went on to do it anyway. poore-nemecek doesn't even acknowledge their faux pas.

your characterization of my expertise is bare ad hominem. what I'm saying is true or false regardless of your opinion of me and my expertise.

First, it is often cited that LCA results should not be compared (Desjardins et al., 2012; Foster et al., 2006; McAuliffe et al., 2016; Röös et al., 2013) due to variation in methodology choices, functional units, as well as temporal and regional differences2. Second, no single comprehensive review was identified that adequately covers the breadth of fresh foods available to consumers and caterers. As Helle et al. (2013, p.12643) state ‘data availability and quality remain primary obstacles in diet-level environmental impact assessment’, while Pulkkinen et al. (2015) calls for the creation of a database that communicates data quality, uncertainty and variability to reliably differentiate between the GWP of food types. Previous studies have compiled LCA data to compare different foods (e.g. Audsley et al., 2009; Berners-Lee et al., 2012; Bradbear and Friel, 2011; de Vries and de Boer, 2010; Foster et al., 2006; Nijdam et al., 2012; Sonesson et al., 2010; Roy et al., 2009). While these are useful attempts, the identified studies are inadequate in the coverage of fresh foods available. Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) attempt to inform consumers of the environmental impacts (carbon, water and ecological footprint) of specific foods, however they also fall short in breadth of items covered at present. The most comprehensive attempt at carbon footprint labelling was performed by Tesco (2012), however failed to label key categories such as fresh fish, pork, lamb or beef before finishing in 2012 due to the scale of the labelling scheme and a lack of participation from other retailers (Head et al., 2013). Third, studies that do compare results may often present singular figures. Peters et al. (2010) and Röös et al. (2011) argue that a range of impacts should be reported from LCA’s to better represent the variety of environmental impacts, as opposed to a singular figure. Finally, there is a lack of synthesised open access LCA data in the public domain available to consumers to inform decision-making.

LCA results can have high uncertainties because of the large amounts of measured and simulated data and the simplified modeling of complex en- vironmental cause-effect chains. Recent studies have highlighted the contribution that system as- sumptions and value choices can also make to overall uncertainty (36, 37). A number of quantita- tive uncertainty assessments are available (38) butare rarely used in practice. One of the key questions is, how much uncertainty is acceptable, depending on the application? In some cases, rough estimates of input values can be enough to identify supply- chain hotspots (39), but for other applications, such as product comparisons (37), the demands for more accurate values are higher. For some im- pact categories such as toxicity, very large differ- ences in inventory results are needed to statistically differentiate product systems, whereas for other categories, differences of a factor of two or less may be enough (40). LCA practitioners should al- ways attempt to manage the decision-maker’s expectations and clarify that LCA is not always a tool to provide a single answer, but rather one that permits comprehensive understanding of a problem and its possible solutions.

calling me a liar and appealing to authority doesn't change the truth of what I'm saying.

I've asked you before to point to even a single paper responding to this extremely high-profile meta-analysis with something even resembling this vague concern;

the references themselves say this explicitly.

it is not compelling, because the LCA references explicitly say that they cannot be combined with other LCA studies. poore-nemecek ignores this guidance and draws hyperbolic conclusions.

unsurprisingly, this "research" is also infected by poore-nemecek 2018

we feed them parts of plants we can't or don't want to eat. they help us conserve those resources.

industrial waste, crop seconds, and grazed grass, mostly

7% is fed directly to livestock. 85% is pressed for oil. the byproduct is the vast majority of what is fed to livestock.

69% is a byproduct of soybean oil production. most people don't want to eat soy cake. some people already do, but not enough to eat the entire crop. giving that to livestock is a conservation of resources.

here is soy !

you see the "soy cake" bit? that's the byproduct of soybean oil.

a large portion of the land used to raise livestock are grasslands. what portion of feed they are given is also, largely, crop seconds or industrial byproduct. the source for your owid link is largely poore-nemecek, a paper I would trust to tell me the co2e of co2

it's not clear that grasslands could (or should) be converted to human crops.