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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: 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.