this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
166 points (83.2% liked)

Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

5393 readers
171 users here now

Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
166
New study: 12% of individuals are responsible for 50% of US beef consumption (www.mdpi.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
30 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Enkers 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's not that the study methods are bogus, but that they don't actually tell us what the headline says, which, incidentally, is not the title of the study. The actual title of the study is: "Demographic and Socioeconomic Correlates of Disproportionate Beef Consumption among US Adults in an Age of Global Warming"

And from the abstract:

The objective of this study was to identify the demographic, socioeconomic, and behavioral correlates of disproportionate beef consumption in the United States.

So the study actually does do a good job of that, because 24-hr recall is sufficient to tell us the relative rates of high beef consumption in different population segments.

What it's not good at differentiating is determining whether it is fewer individuals consuming beef more frequently or a greater number of individuals consuming beef less frequently.

That is to say, 10% of the population consuming >4oz of beef every day compared to 20% of the population consuming >4oz of beef every 2nd day would appear the same. It still does tell us how much beef is being consumed by the population, however, so the data isn't useless.