this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 117 points 1 year ago (6 children)

This is the same study posted somewhere else. The survey is flawed in that they asked what people ate in the last 24 hours.

That simply means that those people ate a lot in the last 24 hours. Should have been over a week or a month to get a better distribution.

“We analyzed 24-h dietary recall data from adults (n = 10,248) in the 2015–2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).”

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Exactly. In a world where people at a big steak dinner once a week, you’d see a similar result.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Why would everyone be eating the big steak dinner the day before they were asked this survey question though?

[–] Enkers 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I responded to your comment before, but didn't sufficiently think it through, so I deleted my previous response.

You raise a good point, and they do indeed acknowledge this flaw in the study:

One limitation of this work is that it was based on 1-day diet recalls, so our results do not represent usual intake. Averaging both days of data available on the NHANES would not address this problem, would reduce our sample size by 15%, and would mix recall methods between an in-person interview (day 1) and one done on the phone (day 2). Still, as a check, we examined day 2 and found the same associations with gender and MyPlate guidance.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I feel this is an early report to decide if a larger study is warranted

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't totally agree. I'd be interested in grouping the data by "response day of the week", but given that the sample size is 10k (which is huge in nutrition science) and that they didn't all respond at the same time, there's definitely enough response time variability to reduce short term seasonality.

Honestly if you asked over the previous week or month you'd probably just get less accurate responses and it'd skew the data even more.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

That's such a leading method for gathering the data. You just ate the one cheeseburger you have every couple of months right before the study? Welp, I guess you're the person responsible for all the beef purchases now!

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If that was all that was flawed... who actually takes time to do nutritional surveys? People who care about nutrition. And the current fad is that you should eat less meat. So a disproportionate number of them are going to under represent how much meat they eat. So it should say, only 12% of people who answered this survey were honest.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@pizzaiolo I first read this as 12 individuals. Thought that seemed excessive then remembered some eating contests I've seen in Texas...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Glad I’m not the only one that read it that way. Shame on me for reading the internet before the coffee kicks in.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

Burgers Georg, who lives in a cave and eats over 10000 burgers a day, is an outlier and should not have been counted.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

FWIW, I'm not a huge fan of MDPI; they've got something of a reputation for being shoddier on peer review than some other journals. I'd look for replication elsewhere before fully trusting this.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This just sounds like another version of the 80:20 rule or the Pareto principle.

"The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes"

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago

It is. This sounds like a hit piece. You could use this argument to make anything sound bad.

[–] idkwhatimdoing 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Most surprising here, imo, is that only 12% of the population eats more than 4oz. of beef per day. That honestly feels low to me.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You might be one of the 12%.

[–] idkwhatimdoing 2 points 1 year ago

Running the math on my own habits, I don't think so, but I just figured some people are enough burgers alone to push the numbers higher than that

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Dude that's so SO much beef WTF you mean that you're surprised?

[–] idkwhatimdoing 1 points 1 year ago

I wouldn't have been surprised to hear that 10% of the population ate a 4oz burger for lunch every single day. Not saying it's good or not a lot, but just thought more people did it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

@idkwhatimdoing @pizzaiolo European here. I doubt if I average more than 4oz of beef per fortnight. And yes, I have the occasional steak.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I think it's because people also have preferences for other types of meat. E.g. I always prefer chicken, but it's uncommon here so usually I go with the cheapest option: pork. I'm appalled at how high I've let my meat consumption slip, but this paper would still classify me as not excessive beef consumption.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Does guys eat beef for breakfast