Yep. The big thing is food availability. Large horse breeds can't subsist purely off grass, there just aren't enough calories in there. Supplementing with grain, however, works quite well. Even without intentional selective breeding, domestication improved their food prospects enough to enable larger and larger horses

There was copper working near the Great Lakes for a while, but it wasn't used to make very many tools; it was largely used like a precious metal.

You used the word exponential and then failed to understand that it is basically exponential and that's the exact reason technological advances didn't happen nearly as often back then. Something like a J-curve can be basically flat for a very long time before going near-vertical in a relatively short amount of time.

It took a long time to breed horses large enough to be ridden. The last remaining wild horse species is Przewalski's horse, and it's only 122-142cm at the shoulder. Light riding horses today are 142-163cm, while larger riding horses are 157-173cm; and then you have heavy draft horses, who are 163-183cm. It wasn't just a matter of some dude hopping onto a horse and going "aha!". People probably tried riding horses the moment they were domesticated, but they weren't large enough to do it reliably yet; it'd be like riding into battle on a pony or a donkey.

Just a couple hundred really. Selective breeding is typically quite quick, as evidenced by the English bulldog. Wasn't that long ago they were just a little shorter and stouter than regular dogs

The fact that the USA has been subsidizing sugar and corn since nearly the inception of the country is nutty. I am certain it stimulated growth back then, but we really don't need it now, especially when considering there are better things on which to spend that money. Hell, good luck finding any prepared foodstuff that doesn't have an unreasonable amount of added sugars and/or syrups.

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Whenever people talk to me about "what can we do about climate change"?

Any amount of "tax the corporations" or "introduce legislature to combat CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions" is met with a collective meh

So I developed a catchier "take all the govt money out of animal husbandry" because it's a snappy way to indicate that there is a lot of tax money already going to those industries - both directly and indirectly - that would barely or inadequately be compensated for by taxing them. A tax would only ever be paid for by the customer anyways, so why create the option of more loopholes that would further exacerbate the wealth disparity if we can just dry up the teat they've been suckling at for decades?

I don't have all (or any of) the answers, I'm just a vegetarian really tired of having to pay more for meals that should cost less simply because it's not a cultural norm yet.

Mods, I'm sorry if this comment isn't sciency enough. If we were good enough at self-policing there wouldn't be any need for you, and thank you for doing the necessary, uncompensated work.

plz don't delete

I had no idea they were so much smaller! Cool info

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Where is that 675 million going to come from? Whatever you answer, why not give them that, plus keep the 675million from fares and expand service. I guarantee most riders would prefer better service to zero cost fares.

Oh, we're not on the 2.7C trajectory, my dude. Check the commercial disclosures of fossil fuel extraction companies and the governments giving them permits. We're likely heading for 4+ or worse if we don't get a deus ex machina or a sufficiently large and sudden ice sheet slip. There's no sign of restraint on the extraction side.

Example.

Also check McGlade and Nature 2015, and Ekins' 2021 follow-up.

I am betting horses also pulled things before they pulled a person in a chariot.

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Yes, and if a city of 10 million can do it, it is possible. Humanity has found a way to do it. It can be implemented in other places if we actually would want it and accept that it’s possible.

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Chariots absolutely came before horseback riding. It took thousands of years of horse breeding before humans were able to breed horses large enough to ride. This is verifiable fact backed by genetic testing of horses and many many papers written by distinguished scientists.

Milk isn't THAT bad and it's so popular I think I'd leave it alone and focus on other improvements. Sometimes you just have to judge the popularity of something and find an alternative approach.

Soo maybe keep milk subsidies around but get more serious about CO2 extraction so we can tax the corporations and still have decent food.

EVs and solar panels work because they produce a superior outcome, they sell themselves. Making milk expensive without some kind of good subsite is more likely to turn people against climate reform than do much good, imo.

As much of a science and engineering problem climate change may seem like, it's mostly a human behavior problem and that's really what makes it so hard because we have to plan that people will only adapt so far ahead of time and we have to kind of lure them in when trying to prevent disaster because really only actual disaster would motivate them enough to be likely to give up meat and milk.

I think at best we can get them to mildly reduce meat and dairy intake, to be realistic about things. Otherwise you probably get voted out and get anti climate extremists.

At the end of the day reduction of emissions, lifestyle and even population really isn't enough to stop the warming, so you're going to have to use CO2 extraction and probably solar blocking/reflection. This means we should balance some of these changes against their popularity or face the rathe of human behavior.

So we should develop alternatives like we did for power generation or transit BEFORE we drive up food prices without options. Better plant based alternatives or better ways to manage the GHG from the product, but NOT high food prices.

The fastest path to global instability is high food prices, so lets no do that as much as possible please.

so if i get lung cancer be happy about it. got it

Chemical spills are not isolated incidents. We literally have entire Federal agencies that spend a huge amount of time, energy, and resources combating them.

Lack of large domesticated animals is also a fairly big factor. A big cart or wagon is great when you have creatures like horses or bulls, combined with staircases and terrain though? No big reason to make them

This is insanely speculative and baseless. Historical records aren't the only thing these estimates are based on. Pre domesticated horses were too small to be ridden like modern horses are, and the increase in size necessary to be ridden is evident in horse remains.

I mean take for example, Massachusetts, there are ~5 million tax payers and the MBTA, public transit system that collects the most fares in the state, collects ~675 million in fares. Even if you spread that equally to every tax payer that is only $135 per person for the entire year. There is zero reason to include collection systems except to punish transit users.

I wish I could logic my way out of not being able to get up in the morning on those days.

And sugar

And petroleum