We might be able to save the planet via artificial meat, but for some reason…
In a typical Malthusian-panic green response, one group recommends going vegan to save the planet. But Dr. Mironov has another approach: grow the stuff in labs without all the methane. I have no idea whether this will work at all or whether the meat produced that way will taste more like Kobe beef than like the anonymous gray ‘mystery meat’ they used to feed us when I was a promising young sprout back in pundit school. But if Dr. Mironov is even partly right, the dynamics of the world’s food supply, energy use and atmospheric composition are very, very different from what the greens say.
You would think that smart greens genuinely interested in saving the planet would be all over Dr. Mironov’s work like white on rice. You would think that the vast and well organized enviro-agricultural lobbies like the ones that brought us ethanol and the enviro-industrial lobbies like the ones bringing us bad electric cars and expensively subsidized alternative energy sources would be pumping billions or at least hundreds of millions into a relatively simple scientific concept that, if successful, would make the world cleaner while dramatically raising the living standards of much of the world’s population by making a high protein diet more accessible and sustainable.
It’s almost as though they had a different agenda than the one they claim.
The ammonia thing is bizarre. We have a UN report claiming that ammonia contributes to acid rain, even though ammonia (when tied to water as ammonium hydroxide) is a strong base. A commenter even finds rival research that confirms that initial impression that ammonia would counter acid rain. It’s like the UN isn’t even trying.
Basic rain doesn’t sound scary. Alkaline rain may have worked.
Most people into veganism and other stuff like that are also into New Age hippie bullshit, which is the opposite of science. Science is cold, mean, rational, and uses a bunch of boring math and scary chemicals. New Age hippie vegan bullshit is warm, comfy, untaxing of the brain pan. Really, anyone who says they’re a vegan should just be ignored, the way we ignore children. Oh, wait…
First thing I thought. Ammonia is used to raise pH for water treatment to conter Acid Mine Drainage. (AMD)
Andrea, there is a cure for Veganism: bacon.
Don’t worry. If producing meat artificially ever succeeds on a mass scale, the vegan enthusiasts can simply switch to crying for all the endangered species of cow. With no need for them as a food source, how long would they last?
At some point in the future, people like Barry O’bama and Ted Kennedy will be abhorred by leftists as barbarian criminals because they ate the flesh of dead animals and supported raising innocent creatures in death factory farms just to kill and consume them.
=Arthur C. Clark – “Food of the Gods”.
Um… “Bacon Is A Gateway to Meat…” Erm, didn’t they tell the people at NPR that bacon is meat?
Karl, it so happens that ammonia often gets converted into nitrates and in particular nitric acid.
If meat can be grown in vitro without ever having been an actual animal, think of what that would mean for long-duration space travel: a continuing supply of fresh meat without the volume required for animals or the plants required to keep animals fed and breathing, nor the smells associated with raising and butchering livestock.
If you take the (nonhuman) animals out of the ECLSS equation but still have a steady supply of high-protein meat for your people, then the logistics of extended-duration missions becomes marginally easier.
Fletcher, nitric acid is very volatile, and in the presence of ammonium hydroxide will react to produce nitrogen gas and water.
I’m reminded of a SF story where the aliens used a monofilament slicer on the artificial meat produced on their ship. An alien used the slicer to take off a human friends leg (not knowing it would result in death.) It was all just a big misunderstanding ya know.
Ed, I don’t have to imagine.. Peter F. Hamilton’s “Fallen Dragon”. It even has an annoying “OMG I can’t believe I ate a real animal” chapter in it.