How to Fight Global Warming at Dinner – Yahoo! News –I’ve been noticing more and more of the “eating red meat” causes global warming argument. It stood out like a sore thumb when Bill Maher spewed it out-of-the-blue on his HBO show. Please send me these when you find them. This report which they say was funded by the EPA is particularly troubling since it condemns the important “eat local” sub-trend.
Environmental advocates and retailers urge customers to purchase goods from local sources to minimize environmental impacts. The idea is that food grown locally requires less fuel for shipping to the store. The new study does not argue that point. Yet few studies have compared greenhouse gas emissions from food production to those of transportation.
The production phase is responsible for 83 percent of the average U.S. household’s greenhouse-gas burden with regard to food, while transportation accounts for only 11 percent, the new study found. The production of red meat, the researchers conclude, is almost 150 percent more greenhouse-gas-intensive than chicken or fish.
The study, by Christopher L. Weber and H. Scott Matthews of at Carnegie Mellon University, was funded by the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation.
Found by Jason Baker.
>>Environmentalist’s like most of their wacky
>>kin, are hypocrite’s of the worst kind.
Pat, I hate to have to be the one to break this to you, but you’re full of shit.
And work on your punctuation. Please.
#24–Ben & #25–Scott==
It doesn’t have to be “turtles all the way down.” I’m talking “free market” at the retail level and by my example and discussion, that was quite clear. I’ll restate.
You are in the grocery store looking for some food. You want to stay in the “Zone” yet still eat tasty food that has 30% protein in total.
Should you by 20 grams of tofu, the “green food” at $2.50 per pound or pollution causing round steak on sale for $1.90 or should you sacrifice and buy bulk grain at 40 cents a pound?
I say let the free market rule and the consumer buy whatever food they want and can afford. How food may be subsidized or tax prior to the retail sale is IRRELEVANT in this context.
#32, Other than my early morning typos, what data do you disagree with? Was it the FACT that 80% of the attendees drove HUGE gas guzzling SUVs? Hmmm?
That wouldn’t make them hypocrites. LOL!
Waiting for an intelligent response. BTW, I’m middle age so I don’t want to die of old age before you gather a cogent thought…
#34–Pat==you are equating those who drive SVU’s with those who made the commercials? I’ll bet none of them did.
I can’t believe it goes as “critique” of Al Gore’s plan for carbon trading that he’s a hypocrite because he has a large house and flies in private jets.
Yes, charge everyone with hypocricy that does not weave their own cotton cloth and begs for foood. Is that what you call “objective” bunky?
#32. Bzzzzt. We’re sorry. Times up. You lose. Join us next time for, “Create a Logical Response”
Our non-winning contestants will receive a box of Rice-a-Roni.
Environmentalism is a religion. Global warming is another aspect of that, and it is the least religious that are the most insistent on doing things a certain way with regards to global warming. That’s why Europe is on board in such a big way, and they see it as a moral issue, all the while failing to meet their targets.
#33 – bobbo,
How can the existence or non-existence of a free market be irrelevant at this point. If not for the externalities, that ground beef might be $10/lb. Who knows how expensive it would really be if not for subsidies of both the beef industry and the fossil fuel for all of the energy used in production? I have no idea. It might be twice the price it might be 10 times the price. I haven’t a clue.
If we had deep accounting that would really figure in all costs, then people would make correct decisions based on the fair market. With subsidies and externalized costs, all bets are off.
>>Environmentalism is a religion.
Heh. Heh heh. Cackle cackle cackle.
Al Gore lied, he has admitted it. Let’s go on to the next crisis please.
#38–Scott==after careful consideration of your posting, I think you have the better argument. Why quibble when we have Nustard once again equating things that are not religion with religion?
Food should be free market as much as possible–beyond those programs to assure a smoothing of the long term supply and a guarantee that “basics” are available for all. Those valid goals get subverted by earmarks passed under such rational, but that’s the tradeoff to be regulated/exposed as much as possible.
Does take me back to just putting a tax on what we don’t want (foreign oil) and letting the market decide how to respond (no corn based ethanol as it is non-competitive in a free market).
thanks for keeping me straight.
#41 – bobbo,
That works. I’d personally go for either a carbon tax or a cap and trade. A tax is simpler and is revenue neutral. Cap and trade allows for setting a fixed limit and creates a financial market for the wall street crowd, for good and bad.
If the carbon is taxed or regulated at the source, e.g. when oil is pumped from the ground, corn ethanol will go away very quickly.
I would personally still avoid the term free market solely because there hasn’t been one in my lifetime or probably for generations before me. How about the term “fair market” or better yet “fairER market”? (We probably haven’t had anything resembling a fair market in generations either, but could at least try for improvements along the fair scale. FreER market might also be an acceptable term to me. I think better on the fair scale is more important to me personally than better on the free scale, if I had to choose between them.)
>>Why quibble when we have Nustard once
>>again equating things that are not religion
>>with religion?
Uh, Bombo: It was not I who equated things that are not religion with religion. I was merely quoting (copy ‘n’ paste) MikeN in #37. Nustard thanks you for your attention to this matter.
#43, 39 – Mister Mustard,
So, what did your comment on the subject mean? Do you think environmentalism is a religion? It’s not out of the realm of possibility since you equate at least one other nondeology with religion.
Would love to eat some local oranges here in my native SoCal, but due to protectionist concerns on smudge pots, we have to buy substandard oranges from South Africa and other far-flung regions. Nice going!
BTW, you’ve all go it wrong…one of the largest CO2 polluters is cell phone towers…
PUT THE CELL PHONE DOWN NOW. I DON’T NEED TO KNOW YOU ARE 5 MINUTES AWAY FROM THE HOUSE/OFFICE/WHEREVER!
I’m with #20. I’ve been “mostly” vegetarian for 37 criminy years. Not strict or religious. On the ethical grounds that we’d get better use out of our land by eating less meat. Never said “no meat” and never said that anybody else should do like I do. And it certainly wasn’t a new idea 37 years ago.
Well Scott and I agree on eliminating food subsidies. He’s also spot on about how it puts corn into everything. I’ll go a step further and say that this subsidy is a big factor in obesity, along with overall economic growth basically eliminating hunger.
You also have rice subsidies to the tune of cheap water in the Northwest. If they want to grow rice, why can’t they just move to Mississippi?
I doubt beef subsidies are having much of an effect on the price. Steak is cheap in India, where it is definitely not subsidized.
#47 – MikeN,
Have you been to India? Few states allow slaughter of cattle. It’s against their religion. Some do. Most don’t. Are you sure you didn’t mean some other location?
#18 – Peer review is often touted by the scientific “party line” because can be so easily used to squelch dissent. In fact, good research is often ignored or subverted because it doesn’t match the current agreed response. I’m reminded of the Australian doctor, Barry Marshall, who had to induce stomach ulcers in himself by drinking Helicobacter pylori to prove his assertion the bacteria was the root cause of the condition. Why did he have to take such a drastic step? His peers categorically rejected his research for the more popular, and established, scientific conclusion ulcers were induced by stress.
#50 – benji,
There actually are a small but significant number of peer reviewed papers disputing anthropogenic climate change. It is simply that the vast majority of climatology papers support it. However, the existence of the few papers in dispute proves that there is no conspiracy against their publication. In this case, it’s just that the data strongly support anthropogenic climate change.
Could it turn out false? Of course?
Should we bet the lives of every human on the planet and many many species on the long shot that this is really a natural occurrence despite the massive amount of data to the contrary?
I wouldn’t.
Perhaps I would if I thought we could kill ourselves off without taking millions of other species with us. Unfortunately, we can’t/won’t.
Scott==don’t answer this unless it is at your fingertips but it seems to me there are 3 major issues concerning the global warming models that make action based on them suspect.
1. Failure to model in the effect of water vapor which is 95% or maybe even 99% of ALL greenhouse or solar trapping gases?–as near as I have found, the IPCC model did not include water vapor at all and after criticism for this, they added it but aren’t at all confident about the net affect of this variable?
2. The historic record shows that co2 increase comes after temperature rise==meaning for whatever reason (ie–the sun) the earth heats up causing co2 to be released from the ocean. This leads to
3. Just how sensitive is the earth to increasing levels of co2? How can it be made measurable when the models are non-predictive?
4. The models are non-predictive right? What I’ve seen is the model gets it wrong so they fudge a factor to make it right==but there hasn’t been enough time to actually test it. Tweaking the formula to make it reflect past events is not predictive==its manipulation?
Like I said, too much to research as I have been doing it and not coming up with references on point==so just if you know, or have a thought.
#53 – bobbo,
You asked for at my fingertips. Well, this is off the top of my head, so don’t expect links backing it up this time.
1) The models are imperfect, true. Inaction will be fatal if they are right, however. Further, there is not one model, but many and they all seem to agree at the gross level that the warming is real and will be catastrophic. This is the reason that the uber-conservative IPCC is 90% confident that the warming is real and human caused. The differences in the models are far greater in attempting to forecast specific local conditions. This is irrelevant to me. Or, more accurately, it would be nice to know, but is not necessary to determine that we must take strong and decisive action.
2) Only once, I can’t remember exactly how long ago, possibly 800,000 years ago, but I’m not sure. All other times, the CO2 and warming were either at the same time or the CO2 was first.
3) We’ve doubled the CO2. Even if it’s not that sensitive, the effect will be huge. Here’s a post of mine regarding Hansen’s latest peer reviewed paper showing that the sensitivity is far greater than we thought and our targets may be way too high. Even our lowest targets are too high.
4) The models are designed to predict. That is exactly their purpose. To test them, they run them backwards or run them forward from an earlier time and see if they forecast prior or current conditions, respectively.
The real problem is that in this case we must act with imperfect information. Not to do so would spell catastrophe if the vast majority of the data is correct.
Unfortunately, the human psyche is such that we will sit on our asses and do nothing until we’re 100% sure. By that time, if our current information is correct, our imminent demise will already be guaranteed.
So, what to do?
Die? Or, take action? We must choose the latter but will likely choose the former. So it goes.
[split to avoid spam filter]
[continued from post #54 above]
BTW, this looks like a pretty good PDF describing why we believe global warming is real and human caused. For an answer to your first question, check page 18 which shows how closely the models agree with existing actual observations.
http://tinyurl.com/6ljga8
Also note the first section describing our actual data that lead us to believe climate change rather than just the models. The models are truly not all there is.
OK, I lied. I did provide at least a couple of links. From a quick glance, that PDF really does look good. I’d recommend at least skimming it.
(if global warmoing did excist) I personally believe that vegaterians are the cause of global warming, because we all agree that livestock is a major cause of greenhouse gasses, so i as a red meat eating person eat these animals that cause these gasses preventing them from creating more of these greenhouse gasses, and vegaterians do not eat these aanimals that cause these gasses, instead they eat the plants that take the gasses that the livestock makes and turns into oxygen, so vegaterians take away the things that are good for us and leave the animals that produce greenhouse gasses, therefor vegaterians are the cause of global warming!