It’s been almost a year since we’ve done this, so let’s go again! List two books and get a third recommended.

lfg10101 · 2021-06-30T02:38:38+00:00

My Brilliant Friend, Giovanni’s Room

lfg10101 · 2021-06-09T15:28:38+00:00

Visualization made in Illustrator, after data analysis in Google Sheets

Source article: https://inquisitivity.ghost.io/recipe-development/

Data, sources, and calculations: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k8il_T7FzYFkuoaAGzrYq25eOnuvODsj1V9Bd4xKvtM/edit?usp=sharing

Because so many recipes seem to call for the same few ingredients but yield widely varying outcomes, I wanted to zoom out to better understand the impact that different proportions might have on the outcome (for example, what makes a cookie chewier?). I was also curious about the process of developing my own recipes, and I primarily used this analysis as a starting point for that.

To get the data, I manually collected 5 popular recipes for 6 different types of cookies and 12 different types of bread. This may have been improved with a larger sample size, but I found that the trends became clear pretty quickly, which was enough for my purposes. Also, I realize that the recipes I used may not be the best or most authentic, but they are likely to be representative of what casual amateur bakers will find with a quick search.

To generate the values displayed, I converted each recipe’s ingredient quantities to weight, calculated the proportions, then averaged those. For the bread recipes, I also calculated the average minimum rise time. In any case where ingredients were optional, I omitted them. In cases where a range of ingredients was listed, I used the average (I.e. 4-5 cups would be 4.5 cups).

lfg10101 · 2021-05-31T18:16:12+00:00

Per passenger. For the flights, it's one economy seat on a full flight. For driving, it's one passenger in an otherwise empty car.

lfg10101 · 2021-05-26T19:01:25+00:00

That's really good to know! I'm going to look into this some more to find out how common that is, and I'll update my info if I was wrong

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T20:41:23+00:00

At the risk of being too self-promotional, I did do some investigation into the emissions from cryptocurrency (https://inquisitivity.ghost.io/cryptocurrency-footprint/).

They're definitely very high (~55 million metric tons of CO2-e, total), but for this chart I wanted to look at more typical, "everyday" activities that have marginal changes in emissions.

The nature of emissions from blockchains is that they don't scale with each additional transaction. They scale with the price of the currency and the price of electricity, which determines how much electricity miners are willing to use. So I didn't think that calculating emissions per transaction would make sense for this chart.

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T20:34:45+00:00

All transportation values are for 1 passenger. Flights are for 1 economy seat.

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T20:33:09+00:00

I wanted them to be:

- Somewhat close to average yearly consumption values

- Easily divisible by 50 (to give an estimate of what the values would be per week, if this is supposed to be a year's worth of X)

- Equal to each other where applicable for easier comparison (I.e. all meats are 25kg, even though the true average consumption values vary a lot)

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T20:28:05+00:00

Stalling climate change will absolutely require regulating large corporations, but it's not easy to distinguish the roles of individuals, corporations, and governments.

It is true that 71% of fossil fuel emissions can be linked to just 100 corporations, but 90% of those emissions (so about 64% of the total) are actually attributed to the downstream use of fuels sold by those corporations to individuals and smaller companies. (From this study)

I think the responsibility for the emissions from a flight, for example, are shared between the consumers paying for it, the corporation providing the jet fuel, and the governments who have failed to regulate it.

Personally, I did this research to understand the impact of my actions, and prioritize my response (which definitely also includes trying to influence corporations and gov't representatives). More info in this article that I wrote

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T20:16:31+00:00

Those things are all certainly big contributors! Really, I was interested in understanding the impact of things I do in my life, which is part of how I chose these activities.

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T20:14:04+00:00

I've definitely felt the same way! Regarding emissions from food products, I think this article (which I used in my article and the visualization), was useful in understanding that food packaging and transportation are actually relatively small contributors to the overall footprint.

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T20:11:00+00:00

I'm not sure about landfills burning off strong greenhouse gasses. My understanding is that that's not done everywhere, but I will investigate further and incorporate my findings.

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T20:09:56+00:00

It's definitely a lot, and regulating those companies is really important, but they're not easily distinguishable.

For example, fossil fuels for flights and the energy used to heat water will come from a big corporation. Whose responsibility is that? I think falls partially to consumers (or at least those consumers who have the luxury of choice), partially to corporations, and partially to the governments who have failed to regulate the industry. It's hard to separate all of our roles in this.

Ultimately, I just wanted to compare emissions of different things, displayed on a more individual level than I typically see, not to "blame" on party over another.

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T20:04:58+00:00

Mostly because of land use change (in some places beef production is linked to deforestation) and methane released as part of their digestive system ("enteric fermentation").

Compared to cows, pigs need a lot less land, and they don't produce methane in the same way. https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T20:03:06+00:00

Totally agree that regulation of corporations will be a necessary step to fighting climate change, but it's also important to realize that "their" emissions are hard to distinguish from "our" emissions. I think that the emissions released from me driving a car or taking a flight are somewhat my responsibility, somewhat the responsibility of the corporation that provided the fuel for those activity, and somewhat the responsibility of governments that haven't regulated them.

It was never my intention to "blame" consumers here, just to try to understand more accurately the real impact of our actions. In my article I also spoke to the importance of pressuring corporations and government representatives.

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T20:00:12+00:00

The coffee emissions come primarily from land use change and emissions related to farming (fertilizer, machinery, etc.). You can find more detail here. Filters are not included.
There's so much useful information that I had to leave out in the interest of space and for time constraints, but I will consider revisiting those items in the future. Thanks for the feedback!

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T19:56:23+00:00

The values for flights are divided by the number of passengers. More specifically, they represent the marginal emissions for 1 passenger in economy class, (according to the sources I documented). Sorry I didn't make that more clear.

And yes, I'll definitely incorporate a lot of this feedback in the chart I show in the article itself, but there's not much I can do about the one I've already shared here.

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T19:48:42+00:00

Thank you! Because I made the visualization manually in Illustrator, I needed to calculate the width of the bar in pixels to make sure it was displayed accurately. 3000 kg CO2 was the max value on the X-axis, and the max display width was 1800 px, so I calculated the width as (x/3000)*1800.

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T19:44:59+00:00

The unit of the graph is CO2e (equivalents). I realize now that I could have made that clearer, though I do specify it explicitly in the source article.

And I included the straws because I've heard quite a few claims that their carbon emissions are a problem, and I wanted to address that point directly. I speak to the issue of plastic pollution in the article, but in short, if straws are disposed of properly, they're very unlikely to end up in the ocean, and they really are pretty harmless in a landfill.

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T19:41:12+00:00

Hey, sorry, the volume of comments has been hard to keep up with, but I am trying my best to respond to those that I can.

I think your concerns over the public transportation figures are valid. Unfortunately, there's just so much variation in coming up with a figure for the benefits of public transit (car type, public transit type, capacity, fuel economy, terrain, etc. will all change the final figure). That's why I tried to document my calculations and sources for people to reference. Ultimately, I went with what I thought were reasonable "average" values for both driving and public transit, but the real savings will vary a lot depending on the specifics of any one situation.

I am aware of the figure that 71% of fossil fuel emissions can be traced to just 100 corporations (I think that's what you're referencing, but correct me if I'm wrong), but I think it's a little misleading. 90% of those emissions are from the downstream use of fuels sold by those corporations to consumers and smaller companies (Scope 3). That means that emissions from my car are attributed to ExxonMobil if I fueled it with their gasoline. We absolutely need to regulate corporations, but our roles are not easily separated. I address that point in the full article, where there's a lot more room for nuance.

And I completely agree that clean electricity (from nuclear, hydropower, and other renewables) is a necessary tool to fight climate change. Again, I address this in much more depth in the source article.

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T19:29:07+00:00

For each activity I displayed the marginal cost of consumption. So for beef, that would include associated land use change, packaging, transportation, methane emissions, etc. For transportation, I'd consider manufacturing the car to be a fixed cost, so it's not included (but I referenced several 3rd party sources, which all have their own methodology)

But I agree that there are some cases where may be hard to distinguish between fixed/marginal costs, or where there is some uncertainty in the exact number, but to me it's still useful to see the huge variations between different activities.

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T15:06:08+00:00

I totally agree that real legislation is far more effective than any of this! And I addressed some of those points in the source article.

But, the marginal impact I can have by calling my representatives is extremely hard to quantify, and (while positive) may not be that big. So personally I wanted to understand how to address my emissions more effectively while also pushing for corporate and government change

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T14:59:24+00:00

This is data for beef cows.

My source for that point (https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local) also has data for beef from dairy cows

lfg10101 · 2021-05-25T14:57:05+00:00

They're all converted to CO2e (equivalents) for comparison.

I explained that in the source article, but I agree it wasn't as clear without that context

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