There is some interesting analogies to water. You can have say an amount $1000 in a community. If that money circulates many times, many more services happen in the community. If it circulates a lot less less services happen. So its not the total amount of money that matters, its the way it circulates. Same with water, its how much it circulates that matters. If you are using it more, but it circulates back more quickly, then its different than if you use a lot, but that water is not in circulation to come back. Thats why precipitation recycling aka small water cycle is important. You want to increase that recycling ratio. Thats green water, as contrasted with blue water.
This essay is really interesting and I learned a lot. It also adds fuel to my skepticism about the media. You've successfully debunked the 1800 gal/lb number here, and in another recent piece you explained why the latest hurricane really was not the biggest and most destructive hurricane in history. What is going on with the media? Do they intentionally exaggerate things in order to modify behavior? If so, it would make for a gigantic conspiracy, and that's a little hard to believe. I wonder if this continuous overstating of negatives (the market is ever bullish on the worst, most scary things) is a consequence of the too-easy access to information, which almost everyone thinks is among the most wonderful benefits of our times. The internet is not vetted. Anybody can say anything. If I'm a journalist assigned to a news story about water waste in the meat industry I could, to your point, go talk to cattle ranchers in various regions. Or, I could simply google it.
You could look at it that way I guess. I see it like this: news stories and the advertisements that accompanied them used to be distinguishable from each other. Now you can't tell them apart. We're constantly viewing ads for a belief system, disguised as news. Once the truths of that belief system get entrenched, they become common knowledge and are repeated in more news stories until they are all you see.
The loss of water to evaporation from land should be factored in as well. A pasture with one shade tree surely has higher soil evaporation than a forest. Is this factored in? It seems like a way to get the number closer to 1800. Having owned chickens, I genuinely do not see how someone could use more than 50 gallons on a factory farmed chicken, especially with an efficient waterer.
I think evaporation would be less from a pasture, but only because it would be holding less than a forest (assuming the land was originally forest.) You bring up an excellent point: If forest was converted to pasture it would have caused enormous changes locally in the moisture present. This is more of a one-time catastrophic event, rather than an ongoing usage, so to speak. This makes it very difficult to factor it into a calculation like gallons of water per animal raised, but that doesn't make it less important to consider.
There is some interesting analogies to water. You can have say an amount $1000 in a community. If that money circulates many times, many more services happen in the community. If it circulates a lot less less services happen. So its not the total amount of money that matters, its the way it circulates. Same with water, its how much it circulates that matters. If you are using it more, but it circulates back more quickly, then its different than if you use a lot, but that water is not in circulation to come back. Thats why precipitation recycling aka small water cycle is important. You want to increase that recycling ratio. Thats green water, as contrasted with blue water.
Great analogy! Thanks for this insight.
This essay is really interesting and I learned a lot. It also adds fuel to my skepticism about the media. You've successfully debunked the 1800 gal/lb number here, and in another recent piece you explained why the latest hurricane really was not the biggest and most destructive hurricane in history. What is going on with the media? Do they intentionally exaggerate things in order to modify behavior? If so, it would make for a gigantic conspiracy, and that's a little hard to believe. I wonder if this continuous overstating of negatives (the market is ever bullish on the worst, most scary things) is a consequence of the too-easy access to information, which almost everyone thinks is among the most wonderful benefits of our times. The internet is not vetted. Anybody can say anything. If I'm a journalist assigned to a news story about water waste in the meat industry I could, to your point, go talk to cattle ranchers in various regions. Or, I could simply google it.
They're not intentionally exaggerating as much as following the pre-approved narrative.
It's a conspiracy then?
You could look at it that way I guess. I see it like this: news stories and the advertisements that accompanied them used to be distinguishable from each other. Now you can't tell them apart. We're constantly viewing ads for a belief system, disguised as news. Once the truths of that belief system get entrenched, they become common knowledge and are repeated in more news stories until they are all you see.
Makes me want to pull out my old book about urban legends... things everybody repeats as true but can never be traced to an original source...
The loss of water to evaporation from land should be factored in as well. A pasture with one shade tree surely has higher soil evaporation than a forest. Is this factored in? It seems like a way to get the number closer to 1800. Having owned chickens, I genuinely do not see how someone could use more than 50 gallons on a factory farmed chicken, especially with an efficient waterer.
I think evaporation would be less from a pasture, but only because it would be holding less than a forest (assuming the land was originally forest.) You bring up an excellent point: If forest was converted to pasture it would have caused enormous changes locally in the moisture present. This is more of a one-time catastrophic event, rather than an ongoing usage, so to speak. This makes it very difficult to factor it into a calculation like gallons of water per animal raised, but that doesn't make it less important to consider.