Freethoughtblogs/Patheos and Veganism

[garrethdsouza]

I had come across some pro and somewhat anti animal issues related articles/blog posts on ftb and patheos.


This one by Richard Carrier, seemed trying to give justifications against veganism/vegetarianism. To what extent are they accurate/inaccurate?

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/87

I felt it was kind of ironic considering his stance on problems in the atheist community and about being also pro other social justice issues, atheism plus, etc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=au2i3xxgv7U while having what would seem to be carnist apologia in his ftb article. (Is any of it accurate though?). Even Dawkins and Harris have acknowledged animal issues.


Others have been better or at least steps in the right direction.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nonprophet ... be-vegans/
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonab ... egetarian/
http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2013/ ... r-a-month/

[garrethdsouza]

Has anyone been through the MEAT NOT BAD article? http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/87

Still looking for rebuttals, especially to the environmental criticisms raised in there or to what extent are they valid? TY!

[brimstoneSalad]

Social justice warriors are ultimately selfish and lazy too, and still want to eat meat. They don't want to be inconvenienced to be consistent, so this is cognitive dissonance in action. This is one among many reasons I'm so against intersectionality: other "causes" of significantly less importance take without giving, because nobody really wants to do what's necessary to stop contributing to animal suffering and environmental destruction.

Carrier's talk on the problems in academic philosophy was pretty good, both otherwise he seems to be a moron and a hypocrite.

[garrethdsouza]

His health argument can be dismissed at least in regard to regular meat eating diets.
For instance, http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/dxrates

But what about the environmental arguments he's made in the article?

[brimstoneSalad]

But what about the environmental arguments he's made in the article?

Can you summarize them? He's too irritating to read, and I don't have the time now (very busy today).

I saw the image of cows vs. grass. Look into the assumptions he's making; it's a false dichotomy, and a bad comparison even if it wasn't.

[garrethdsouza]

Any chance you've gone through the environmental arguments yet in the meat not bad article?

[brimstoneSalad]

I haven't, since I don't think it's a productive use of time, and I don't have enough respect for him to give my time to him. I'm quite sure he's not intellectually honest enough to be making any novel or good arguments. It's a shame when somebody reaches that point that I'm not even curious that he could have a worthwhile argument to make.

If you can summarize them, though, and/or represent them as a devil's advocate, I can address them for you.

Pretty much nobody really likes him [Carrier] or takes him seriously as far as I know, and the way he wrote that article was too pseudo-intellectual for most people to read more than a few sentences of.

Good writers in the media or with popular blogs, and popular public figures are far more threatening than little cretins like Carrier.

If he came here to debate it, I guess I would (since I'd be obligated to, in some sense). But not sure it's productive to address every little anti-vegan out there blogging their carnist apologia no matter how insignificant or impotent they are. Much like I'd be disinclined to tackle every dumb Paleo/Weston Price fan blog out there.

I'm not trying to say we're up on some pedestal, but there are just better things that we should focus on and I don't trust Carrier enough to be curious about his claims, or think we'd have anything to gain from his article. He's probably just being intellectually dishonest. and the whole lot of it is bullshit.

I know that doesn't sound very open minded, but after you've heard enough lies and bullshit from somebody, eventually you have to be pragmatic about what claims you look into and what arguments you listen to. Carrier has lost all respect and credibility, so he's not a threat no matter what he makes up. Might as well be Josef Fritzl making these claims for as much as anybody knows about him, and for as much as those who do like him.

This basic pragmatism is one of the reasons it's so important to keep the vegan movement rational, so carnists have no excuse to turn away when we convey legitimate information.

[garrethdsouza]

I have no idea what your issue is with Carrier but anyway IMO the health argument can be somewhat easily dismissed. Sure if you're a reducetarian it might not be all that much different from a vegan health wise or in environmental impact. But that's hardly the case for most people.

In any case what of the environmental arguments raised here?

- Rain
As just one example of bad math: much is made of how much water is used to make meat. Yet almost all of that is actually the water used to grow grain. The grain used to feed cattle, for instance, amounts to 98% of the water consumption involved in beef and dairy production (or more, depending on where we are geographically). And almost all of that is rain water (over 87%) which falls naturally and would have been wasted anyway were it not put to some use–and likely we’d always be putting it to some use (whether growing grain, generating electricity, manufacturing, drinking, showering) so there would be little net effect on water consumption if we abandoned the meat industry. We’d just use that water for something else. Or not use it at all. So even at its worst (and beef production is the worst) meat production is really only negligibly more water intensive than agriculture.


- Grain byproduct for feed
most of the grain we feed cows (and other farmed animals), people couldn’t eat. It’s called roughage, a waste product. Over 80% of what even factory farmed animals eat is actually recycled waste product from the production of grain humans are already eating. Whenever you see stats like “22% of [U.S. grown wheat] is used for animal feed and residuals,” that word residuals means agrowaste fed to livestock–so this is not “22% of human edible wheat product” that’s going to animals, but 22% of the wheat product sold, whether humans could eat it or not. In fact most stats you’ll see for tonnage of crops parceled by use don’t distinguish residuals from edible quantity, thus badly skewing what a naive reader might think such numbers mean. Animal farming is not taking grain away from people, but making the grain people eat more efficient, by converting its waste product into more food. And hundreds of other products besides food.

When you do all the math for industrial cattle farming, for example, feed conversion efficiency for non-roughage grain input is better than 4:1 (4 kg non-waste input for every 1 kg usable output), which is not bad considering what you get for it (which is again, a lot more than just food–it’s also all those other animal products that grease our economy, literally and figuratively). For industrial dairy farming this efficiency is actually 1:4, i.e. we get 4 kgs of usable product for every 1 kg of usable product we put in. Which makes industrial dairy farming one of the smartest things we ever thought of (so it’s too bad I can’t digest dairy, but even I benefit from this industry, as dairy products are in things even I and many vegetarians eat, like bread). The numbers come out a little different if you compare food energy input and output (for dairy it’s close to 1:1; yet for beef it’s 1:0.65, which is better than 2:1, either way at near parity)


- 18% ghg contribution is inaccurate, it's actually 6%

the claim that “factory farming (specifically for meat) is one of the greatest contributors to global warming.” That’s simply not true. It’s based on an FAO report that has led websites and wonks to say things like that the “animal agriculture sector is responsible for 18%, or nearly one-fifth, of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, greater than the share contributed by the transportation sector,” but that’s hopelessly misleading. A third of that figure is based not on the farming, but on the clearing of forests to expand ranches in developing countries, which is a one-time cost and not an actual ongoing effect of the ranch, and is not terminal. they are just going through the phase we went through a hundred years ago, claiming for industry land that was effectively fallow, and gradually learning to balance that process with national preserves and biodiversity). Nor is this a significant factor in first world animal farming (no one burned down a forest to feed you Iowa beef).

- Fertilizer contribution to the global warming number
Another one third of that figure consists of fertilizer production and use, most of which actually gets used in the agriculture industry (and would thus simply be replaced with some other emissions-producing fertilizer), and what gets used for animal husbandry (e.g. fertilizing pastures) would still be used if the same land were used for crops (in fact crops are more fertilizer intensive), so this is not in fact anything we’d get back if we stopped animal farming. And when you subtract that element, too, now you end up with just 6% of manmade emissions coming from actual animal farming that would go away if we stopped. But that’s including inefficient animal husbandry in third world countries. How much of total manmade emissions comes from actual modernized industrial animal farming? Less than 2%.

[brimstoneSalad]

Which of these does he actually provide sources for? All of these arguments seem to be based on lies and ignorance; things he picked up here or there based on misconceptions and decided were true without researching them.

[brimstoneSalad]

I'll try to respond to a little bit of this, but understand that my loathing for Carrier is impossible to conceal.

- Rain
As just one example of bad math: much is made of how much water is used to make meat.

Just one example of Carrier being an idiot and failing to have even an elementary school understanding of the water cycle.

Oh, wait:

And almost all of that is rain water (over 87%) which falls naturally and would have been wasted anyway were it not put to some use–and likely we’d always be putting it to some use (whether growing grain, generating electricity, manufacturing, drinking, showering)

Oh, so he DOES understand that we would have used the water for something else if it weren't wasted on animal agriculture. Just because it came from the rain doesn't make it magically unavailable for other uses.

So, then he's just a fucking liar.

This "green water" bullshit was going around with some loon Gates was associating with too.

Water comes down, it goes in the ground, it enters the water table, from where it is tapped by wells. OR it gets soaked up by crops and mainly evaporated and pissed out by cows (where it is no longer immediately available for use).
All water eventually comes back, even piss and shower water, but it's something we have to wait on, and draining the water table faster than it can refill with fresh water is a serious issue today in some regions.

This is why it's actually illegal in some regions to harvest rain water; you're stealing from the collective pool of the water table.

so there would be little net effect on water consumption if we abandoned the meat industry.

In other words "Let's not bother saving water, because then people will just waste more water on silly things like showers, drinking, and growing actual healthy human food".
Fucking asshole.

Did I mention I hate Carrier?

We’d just use that water for something else. Or not use it at all. So even at its worst (and beef production is the worst) meat production is really only negligibly more water intensive than agriculture.

If it weren't for the holocaust, we'd have just found some other way to kill each other. So even at its worst (and the Holocaust is the worst), genocide is really only negligibly more harmful to human beings than business as usual.

Let's just do the worst thing then, since nothing matters!

Carrier is an evil fucking asshole who knows his arguments are shit and he presents them anyway... because he's an evil asshole.

People who should know better but choose to be wicked instead -- rationalizing bad behavior with the same arguments they have plenty of experience debunking when they come from positions they don't like -- and try to represent themselves as up on moral high grounds are the most sickening to me.

...I'll try to get to the rest later. I might take a few days.