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"A meat-eater with a bicycle is much more environmentally unfriendly than a vegetarian with a Hummer."
--Dr Mark Post
The world's largest food concern, Unilever, has opened a new research lab at the world's most prestigious agricultural university, the University of Wageningen (the Netherlands). Unilever will locate all elements of its foods R&D there. A spokeswoman on Dutch radio stressed plant-based meat alternatives as an important research subject.
Wageningen University has strong credentials in that respect, with the development of shear cell technology.
Shear cell technology strings plant proteins together in tightly controlled fibers, resulting in a meat substitute where texture (fibrousness, bite, mouthfeel) can easily be controlled, and changed at will. This, combined with 3D food printing, offers the possibility of creating multiple meat (substitute) variations in future.
Unilever's food campus is open to startups, innovators and partners. One of the first to have build its own lab on the same grounds is Symrise, an industrial flavours and scents group.
About half of Dutch people call themselves 'flexitarians'. This means that they don't eat meat with their main meal at least three times a week. The proportion of vegetarians is stable, at just under five percent of the Dutch population.
Wageningen researchers believe, however, that feeding 9 billion people with animal meat will not be sustainable for the planet.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @03:26PM (23 children)
Are these the same researchers that believed there would be snowless winters in NY by year 2000, when actually sea ice is at record maximums in 2019? http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-new-record-maximum [nasa.gov]
It is time for the general public to accept that the US academic community is simply no longer good at their jobs, for whatever reason.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @03:34PM (6 children)
> "Antarctic sea-ice extent has been slowly increasing in the satellite record that began in 19791,2. Since the late 1990s, the increase has accelerated, but the average of all climate models shows a decline3."
https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2751 [nature.com]
When the models predict the opposite of reality, that means you should not rely on their other as yet untested predictions. It means they are derived using at least one drastically wrong assumption.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @04:13PM (5 children)
No, it just means that you do not understand the point of that paper. Please reread it (or actually, read it for the first time) and don't cherry pick a sentence out and claim it means what it doesn't. Here's a hint: it has to do with convection.
I'll give you another hint (because I'm a nice guy that way), but it would apparently VERY much surprise you that when you put a pot of water on the burner, there are regions in that water that are not all the same temperature!! Even when it is boiling! I know, crazy shit. And you'd completely lose your shit if I described how a thunderstorm forms, but I don't want to ruin your weekend so check back here on Monday.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @04:19PM (4 children)
I understood the paper just fine, they came up with a post hoc explanation for why all the models predict the opposite of reality. Coming up with plausible post hoc mechanisms is not something impressive or hard to do. Wake me up when the models predict reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @05:38PM (1 child)
RING RING!!
This is your wake up call [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @05:45PM
They clearly are not accurate since they predict shrinking Antarctic sea ice. So your link is just a lie or weasel use of the term "accurate". If you measure dozens of things any model will happen to be accurate on a few that you can cherry-pick.
But predicting the giant ice sheet at the south pole should be shrinking when actually its growth is accelerating? Seems like eency weency itty bitty little problem there.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday December 06 2019, @06:52PM (1 child)
Show us where the model predicts snowfall in specific areas. (hint: it doesn't)
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @08:03PM
Show us where on the climate model the bad CO2 molecule touched you.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @03:37PM (4 children)
> US academic community is simply no longer good at their jobs
Climate science is not a US-only thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @03:45PM
The US government is by far the biggest funder of "science", so whatever conventions and customs are supported by it get applied all around the (flat?) globe. For a bit the USSR was largely independent, but as we saw that government mucked up science even worse.
Really what we want is a return to pre WWII state where science was funded by competing universities. Progress occurs in a diverse environment, not a monoculture.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday December 06 2019, @06:58PM (2 children)
Pretending its fake is, though!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday December 06 2019, @07:56PM
Not entirely, though: Brazil seems to also be pretending it's fake, for instance.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 06 2019, @11:52PM
Yes. Right. Let's pretend that other societies base their policies on facts instead of feelings. They don't, though.
Travel to any country in the world. Any. Then absorb a local paper and then ask yourself how independent they are.
We should all do this. Then we can quickly dispel the illusion that one place is remarkably better than another.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @04:06PM (6 children)
Hey Sean, I know you are the master of misrepresenting things, but from that very damning link YOU provided:
Not to mention that you provided a link that is almost 6 years old, so we have the benefit of that many more years of data. Hey, look, the story still holds up: Arctic [nasa.gov] and Antarctic [nasa.gov]. You're either an outright liar, or a useful idiot. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and figure you for the idiot, but if that is the case, you really need to realize that you are far from being the smartest guy in the room, particularly on this issue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @04:23PM (5 children)
Sean?
And obviously you have never been in academia, every publication needs to include phrases like that to toe the line. In fact someone who didn't say that probably couldn't get funding.
But anyway, I moved to the coast, waiting for people to sell all their coastfront property out of fear of "climate change". There is at least a 50% chance that the opposite of what these models predict happens so its a good bet against people who are 100% certain like you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @05:41PM (4 children)
Good luck with that. Maybe you can turn it into oyster farms or something. Just do us all a favor and show some integrity by not clamoring for FEMA assistance when you get flooded out. You're going in with fair warning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @06:01PM
The federal government you are waiting for to save you from climate change literally encouraged me to move to a flood plain. So you are subsidizing the risk!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @06:17PM (2 children)
Also, btw... Where I live the water level already rose 6 meters since ~1900. During that time the area thrived and flourished. So when the most extreme climate models predict a rise of 3 meters per century, that would mean a halving in the rate of rise.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday December 06 2019, @07:35PM (1 child)
You didn't say where you live, so quite plausibly. The sea level rise isn't evenly distributed, and, IIUC, in the Northern Atlantic it will go down as Greenland melts due to the decreasing gravitational attraction. In other places it's rising more than the average. And the more detailed a model you want the more expensive it is to compute (and the more likely it will be in error in some places).
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @08:13PM
Its just due to people building dams and levees upstream, that raises the water level downstream:
https://web.mst.edu/~rogersda/levees/Evolution%20of%20the%20Levee%20System%20Along%20the%20Mississippi.pdf [mst.edu]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @08:57PM (3 children)
Nice cherry picking you have there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @11:08PM
What cherry picking? The climate models predict the antartic ice sheet should be shrinking, the opposite is happening. It is growing, and faster every year. It takes some time for the H20 frozen on the opposite pole to traverse the globe apparently.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 07 2019, @05:18AM (1 child)
Lying with % statistics is fun isn't it. Size matters.
If the Antarctic ice grew at 0.1% it would outweigh a 10% reduction in the Arctic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 07 2019, @02:45PM
No, it's just irrelevant to the point. Basically it comes down to people like you not understanding how science works, and yeah most people trained in science these days are in the same boat.