Knightfox

Great post, but just throwing this out there. Teflon was invented in 1938 and brought to the commercial market in 1948. PFOA is one of the top 2 legacy PFAS chemicals under scrutiny and is a chief ingredient in the manufacture of PTFE (Teflon). PFOA wasn't noticed at all until 1968 and links to health impacts weren't noticed until 1999.

This specific chemical existed before many of the consumer protection laws we have today, but even if those laws had been in place it would have likely been decades before we had made the connection. 20 - 60 years to test a new chemical is a long long time.

I started this off as one post, but Lemmy didn’t like it so I’m breaking it into two:

PART 2

Next Article

Let's start off by observing how this writer subtly plugs their new book.......

One of the first articles this writer uses is for this statement:

A review of evidence from over 100 studies found that when livestock are removed from the land, the abundance and diversity of almost all groups of wild animals increases

Looking at the article they reference the conclusion states: (I had to do a lot of manual typing and editing as the source I found did not easily allow copy paste, so please forgive any typos)

Livestock exclusion can benefit the abundance and diversity of multiple trophic levels. However, abandoning grazing in certain environments may not result in an increase to biodiversity and in some instances can cause further loss. For instance, we observed grazing having a positive effect on plant diversity and four studies within our meta-analysis where animal diversity increased with livestock grazing, contradicting the general trend. In all four studies, livestock grazing maintained grassland structure by suppressing woody encroachment, which supports specific animal species. Although the conversion of grasslands to shrublands has been attributed to overgrazing, continued grazing in these systems might be required to minimize shrub cover. In other ecosystems, such as forests, livestock production is some-times described as causing habitat loss because the generated rangelands do not provide the same ecosystem services or functions as the previous native habitat. If there are persistent effects of grazing, restoration to previous conditions can be impractical and instead these rangelands represent novel ecosystems with a different set of species composition and functions..... When examined at the species-level the effects of grazing can be significantly magnified relative to community measures. For instance, at risk species may be especially sensitive to livestock relative to other species if grazing reduces the abundance of plant species that they are dependent. The impacts of livestock grazing on conservation are thus dependent on target organism (plants, primary consumers, predators) and goals set by land managers (improving diversity or productivity). The production of livestock has increased significantly in spatial extent since the 1960s and is projected to continue to expand in developing countries, potentially threatening indigenous animal diversity on a global scale. Future increases in climate variability is also expected to threaten food security and increase conversion of land into rangelands. To meet this demand, livestock grazers will continue to be placed on land shared by indigenous animal species, thereby potentially threatening the global biodiversity of herbivores and pollinators. These impacts are expected to be most pronounced in mild climates, such as temperate ecosystems, and are likely to persist after grazers are removed. Identifying the aspects of grazing that most impact animal biodiversity could be used to further develop more effective management practices. For example, some forms of rotational grazing are effective in environments with low abiotic stress and when precipitation less variable. Techniques for mitigation will not erase all the effects of livestock grazing and these negative cascading effects may be an inevitable consequence that society will need to balance with the socioeconomic benefits.

This article while supporting the argument that livestock grazing is not as good as whatever native environment was there before the grazing, for the most part, it's hardly the glaring result that the writer claims it is and the writers of the academic article even point out that it's not universally the case. This portion of the article also discusses how a certain amount of grazing can cause an ecosystem to shift from it's historic setting and create a novel new setting, implying that if grazing ceased the preexisting ecosystem wouldn't return and instead you would simply destroy what is currently working.

I'm not going to get into the rest of this article as I started to cringe at the discussion of cyanide land mines.

Conclusion: When it comes to environmental journalism too often the people fail to use the articles they reference accurately and instead use the appeal to authority logical fallacy to make their biased, opinion based, points appear more valid. Often times a nugget of their argument is accurate, but as with much of journalism the goal is views, ratings, and book sales rather than a fair and accurate representation of science.

I started this off as one post, but Lemmy didn't like it so I'm breaking it into two:

PART 1

I want to preface that while I'm not a vegetarian and am ok with eating meat, I'm not fundamentally opposed to the ideas and arguments. My discussion here is to highlight poor journalism and point out very obvious bias. In essence, I'm on you're side for environmentalism but these articles are terrible.

First off, both articles you linked suffer the same problem as the Vox article. All three are biased and agenda led opinion pieces which the authors filled with journal articles which either have problems of their own or sound like they support their argument, but don't if you read their sources.

The first article you linked is from a Website called Sentient Media and their about section clearly states their bias, which isn't inherently bad here. At the beginning they describe regenerative grazing and refute it while linking to various articles about the subject and why it's stupid. Looking into the sources here it quickly becomes apparent that what they are talking about is the snake oil equivalent of environmental agriculture (essentially Regenerative Grazing is the claim that you can reverse climate change and desertification with a specific style of livestock grazing).

Next this article goes into a discussion attacking biodiversity claims, but doesn't really seem to understand how biodiversity works.

But one regenerative grazing notion continues to linger — the idea that cattle ranching is a fundamental part of biodiversity, that grasslands across the world and especially in the U.S. need livestock in order to thrive. The presence of livestock and other domesticated animals trampling across grasslands, the argument goes, enhances biodiversity rather than destroys it.

When it comes to biodiversity there are primary, secondary, and tertiary species. When an environment is upset the primary species are the first to rebound but are generally more fragile in the long term while secondary and tertiary are slower, but hardier. For example, if a forest burns down pine trees are a primary succession species which quickly rebounds in just a few years, but oak trees are a secondary or tertiary species which take longer to grow and with enough time will outlast the pines and eventually crowd them out. By this logic the disturbance of an environment increases biodiversity, because it literally makes the environment more diverse. What is lost is that biodiversity is different between ecosystems, for example, the pine forests on the east coast of the US were historically a high biodiversity location because of frequent hurricanes and fires. The fires in these areas were actually essential for the long leaf pine, because the seeds do not sprout until they are heated by a fire. In this sense, these forests are meant to be regularly destroyed by fires and hurricanes to keep their ecosystem the way it is. In recent times humans have fought to prevent these wildfires which has hurt the long leaf pine forests.

Another example here would be an old growth oak forest which hasn't seen flame or axe for 2000 years. Introducing biodiversity here would utterly destroy the historic ecosystem.

The article later goes on to talk about this topic themselves and how some ecosystems need disturbances for maintaining their biodiversity, but they get a bit... ¿Strange? with it:

The right balance of biodiversity helps an ecosystem regulate itself — keeping itself in balance even when exposed to natural disturbances like windstorms and fires, or droughts and insect infestations. Functioning biodiverse ecosystems can even thrive in the face of some natural disturbances, like periodic fires. Many plant species depend on these fires for reproduction and growth.

Biodiversity isn't magical, it's a variable slider dependent on whatever desired ecosystem outcome is. If the desired outcome is an 1900 version of the Great Plains then reduced livestock is a great way to do that. If the desired outcome is a 1600 version of the Great Plains it definitely isn't. Just like reintroducing wolves to Yellow Stone, it's all about what the desired outcome is.

The article also brings up a study further refuting the regenerative grazing which discusses the grazing and livestock from the point of climate change, not from keeping the ecosystem healthy. This article, "Livestock Use on Public Lands in the Western USA Exacerbates Climate Change: Implications for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation," makes no statement about maintaining the ecosystem with the bison in mind and is singularly focused on emissions. So the argument which uses this article is at odds with the one they used earlier for biodiversity. One could argue that if the purpose is the eliminate emissions then you also wouldn't want 60 million free ranging bison in this area either.

Later the article talks about the difference between Bison and Cows as you quoted. The article they link is actually really good, but it's hard to find a full version of it (paywalls). I read what I could of the conclusion (part of it was clipped off). The take away from what I could read and what others said about this article is that Bison are definitely different and arguably better, but the downsides of cattle grazing are more to do with how cattle grazing is done, not the grazing itself. If cattle were forced to move around the pasture more, forced to be away from water sources and trees (which they seem to prefer unlike bison), and if you forced them to move along more, then as the original article says:

If increased biological diversity facilitated by vegetation heterogeneity is an objective (Fuhlendorf et al. 2006) and domestic livestock are used as the dominant grazer, then the cumulative result of grazing alterations across many pasture units may reduce the impact of increased grazing periods and localized use areas by livestock, thus increasing biological diversity at a landscape scale (Fuhlendorf and Engle 2001).

This journalist opinion piece (https://modernfarmer.com/2016/09/bison-vs-cattle-environment/) seems to reference the article (but their links are dead so I couldn't confirm), but I liked their point:

So are bison better for the environment? As it stands, often, yes – but that’s less an indictment of ranching cattle than an indictment of the way the cattle industry works.

I'm actually part of a credit union and would recommend it to many people. The credit union didn't get interest rates as low as what the big banks did a few years ago, but they're also not as high as the big banks are currently.

One thing I really liked about the credit union was that they didn't use my credit score when deciding my interest rate, they only checked it to make sure it didn't have any glaring issues. Also I like that the credit union doesn't sell my mortgage to a third party.

I looked through the article and didn't see any map, so I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about. My assumption is that this is referring to the Great Plains. The Great Plains is a mix of Prairie, Steppe, and Grassland. All three are arable in the sense that they can grow grass and small vegetation, but would need lots of irrigation and most of this area isn't close to a water source. You could always drill wells, but that has other problems. The land is good for grazing because the land is only really good at growing small spindly grasses that themselves are mostly dry.

As for eliminating the livestock grazing I would like to point out some figures from the article.

About 2 million cattle, or around just 6 percent of the US herd, graze on public lands. By one estimate, the land provides 1.6 percent of forage eaten by US cattle.

So by this article there are 2 million cattle ranched on this land, or approximately 33 million in the entire US. Prior to 1870, before their mass slaughter, there was an estimated 60 million Bison in the US and Canada. I don't know much about the differences in Bison and Cows, but they seem like they would serve a pretty similar function in the ecosystem. You could make an argument that they need to be rotated and cycled over the lands better, but removing them would probably be pretty bad as well.

As to rewilding the area, it is rewilded, the article is about public lands which the government isn't allowing to be used. The wild state of these lands is that it is dry with a sea of grass.

EDIT: I also took a look at several of the sources used, at least in the beginning of the article. The writer is using an appeal to authority logical fallacy to make their argument look more valid, but the sources they are pulling are really not related or are heavily biased as well.

The first link is made in relation to the size of the land being used and is just a document about the raw statistics on the land.

The second link is associated with a comment that the land is leased at "bargin bin prices" and is an opinion piece about how the land is leased too cheaply in that person's opinion (it really has no other supporting information).

The third link is associated with a comment that the cattle eat or destroy plants consumed by native species. The link leads to an academic article which is a literature review of livestock impacts around the world and the conclusion doesn't really support what the writer of this article is saying. It looks like they googled something that looked like it would support their opinion and then slapped it in there.

I generally agree. The links to cancer are a bit tenuous to be honest. We know at high levels they definitely are bad, but at low levels we aren't really sure. Looking at the effects to people living downstream of the DuPont plants, and who were drinking high quantities of it in their source water, we known it's bad. The problem is that it bioaccumulates and we suspect that at low levels, over long enough, it'll be bad. The low levels we're talking about are in the single digit part per trillion. It's really hard to put into context how small 1 ppt is. If we took Lake Superior as an example, 1 ppt would be 32 gallons in the whole lake. Loch ness lake would be 1.95 gallons.

NYC generates approximately 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater per day, that means 1 ppt would be about 5 mL per day in the whole city.

We know that PFAS is bad at high levels, but because the low levels are so low we are having a hard time proving it's bad. Most studies will say that there are links or that it's a likely carcinogen.

We definitely need to cut this stuff out, but doing so is going to seriously cripple most peoples way of life or we'll find a replacement which might not be as safe as we think it is.

It's not even a dent in the list of all effected products. For the no known replacement there should be a preface, we can generally make things without PFAS still, but PFAS is a major reason why the item is desirable.

For example, we can go back to lye and castile soap but we probably won't be able to have laundry or dish detergent. The alternatives exist, they just don't function well enough to be replacements. Without detergents you would need to pre-wash your dishes and laundry (or completely skip using) before using your washing machine and dish washer (hand wash everything). This says nothing about industrial usage of surfactants which is also really important.

We'd still have plastics, but we probably wouldn't have any plastics which are naturally "slippy," smooth, or soft. Hard brittle plastics only.

An example I used earlier, we could still have metal coating/plating, but it would probably look more like something from the early 1800s. PFAS is used in the process to suppress fumes and also to protect against corrosion, staining, and weathering.

I don't know enough to say how far back it would set us with computers. I have the sense they'd still exist, but we'd be set back several decades.

The big one is airplane fires, AFFF is the best foam for putting out a jet fuel fire.

The problem is that the industry has already made replacements and the replacements were bad too. Gen X was a replacement for PFOS and PFOA, all 3 are PFAS compounds. Either we have to completely abstain, greatly limit usage, find a magic way to treat it, or replace it. Odds are whatever wonder replacement we invent will be found to be the next super bad thing in 20 years.

Non stick pans, fire retardant mattresses, nonslip shoes, many forms of plastic, stain resistant shirts, water proof jackets, fume suppressants, metal coating/plating, high quality surfactants (ie lots of soaps), many types of pipe and the joining compounds used in plumbing, and the list goes on.

The list is so long you can't fathom how much it impacts. Pretty much anything with anti- or resistant used to describe it has some sort of PFAS compound. We can live without PFAS, but we would need to do like people used to do and give up a lot of creature comforts.

One thing it's commonly associated with is surfactants, so no fancy shampoo, but also probably no washing machine because it doesn't scour your clothes well enough. Plumbing uses it to join pipes. Any sort of metal finishing/coating uses so no more chrome or nickel plating unless you want it to look like you dug it up at a 500 AD site. One of the higher containing things I've seen was women's make up.

The situation is much more nuanced than that. PFAS chemicals are in (almost literally) everything. Your nonslip shoes, your water proof jacket, your stain resistant table cloth, and your fire retardant mattress. On top of that the list of PFAS chemicals that the EPA is looking at is around 70 compounds long and only scratches the surface of all the compounds. The test to detect PFAS is in its 4th draft and can't reliably detect low enough to reach the levels of concern, except in nearly pristine waters, so you can't even detect if you have it in most water. The levels of concern that are being discussed are in the single digit PPT for individual compounds or 70 PPT total PFAS for some health advisory levels. Detection levels on normal waste water are generally somewhere between 50 and 4000 because the test is so sensitive other compounds fry the machine and it has to be diluted.

Another problem is that the thresholds are so low that it's hard to draw any conclusions definitively. It's associated with so many things you could write a novel: altered immune and thyroid function, liver disease, lipid and insulin dysregulation, kidney disease, adverse reproductive and developmental outcomes, cancer, decreased birth weight for infants, infertility, and more. The thing is that the only way to make a more conclusive connection is observing high exposure areas where people were drinking it at thousand times higher than the risk levels, so interpolating down smaller values has a lot of theoretical connections, but few smoking guns.

In general industries are trying to move away from PFAS, but the areas where they can't include things like AFFF foam used for fighting jet fires. Some areas, particularly the military, are unlikely to make concessions as they want the best option available even if a close substitute is available. Your average PFAS using company; however, is moving away from PFAS in general.

EDIT: also the quantity of PFAS in most items is so small that it actually is below the threshold on an SDS for requiring it be reported, so trying to find out if a product you use has PFAS means you have to call the manufacturer. Maybe they can tell you, maybe they don't want to tell you, or maybe they don't know because it's not listed on the SDS for the raw ingredients they use. In the industry it's gotten into a near legal situation where companies are telling their suppliers and vendors to look for PFAS and certify that their products don't have it, only for the vendor to turn around and do the same for their vendors and suppliers. The portion at the end of the article captures this well, an example would be, "Well we don't use PFAS, but our machine has gaskets which probably have PFAS. This doesn't touch the final product so are we able to use it?"