And you thought there wasn't an agenda behind global warming...

[Guest CrazyLincoln]

Meat-Eaters Aiding Global Warming?

New Research Suggests What You Eat as Important as What You Drive

Your personal impact on global warming may be influenced as much by what you eat as by what you drive.

That surprising conclusion comes from a couple of scientists who have taken an unusual look at the production of greenhouse gases from an angle that not many folks have even thought about. Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin, assistant professors of geophysics at the University of Chicago, have found that our consumption of red meat may be as bad for the planet as it is for our bodies.

If you want to help lower greenhouse gas emissions, they conclude in a report to be published in the journal Earth Interactions, become a vegetarian.

In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that both researchers are vegetarians, although they admit to cheating a little with an occasional sardine. They say their conclusions are backed up by hard data.

Eshel and Martin collected that data from a wide range of sources, and they examined the amount of fossil-fuel energy -- and thus the level of production of greenhouse gases -- required for five different diets. The vegetarian diet turned out to be the most energy efficient, followed by poultry, and what they call the "mean American diet," which consists of a little bit of everything.

There was a surprising tie for last place. In terms of energy required for harvesting and processing, fish and red meat ended up in a "virtual tie," but that's just in terms of energy consumed. When you toss in all those other factors, such as bovine flatulence and gas released by manure, red meat comes in dead last. Fish remains in fourth place, some distance behind poultry and the mean American diet, chiefly because the type of fish preferred by Americans requires a lot of energy to catch.

Eating Red Meat Like Driving an SUV?

Can changing your diet really have much of an impact?

"It is comparable to the difference between driving an SUV and driving a reasonable sedan," said Eshel, who drives a Honda Civic, and only when he has to.

Eshel, who grew up on a farm, has always been interested in ecology and the impact we have on the planet. He got into this research, he says, because "now that I'm a professor of geophysics, I have tools in my tool kit that I can apply much more quantitatively and rigorously to evaluate what we do."

2 more pages athttp://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1856817&page=1

You give them an inch they take a mile. Global warming is nothing but an agenda....

[The Rabbi]

You would think a vegetarian diet would increase green house gasses. Or some kind of gasses anyway.

[saintsfanbrian]

I'm sorry, but I think Michael Crichton wrote it best and Charlton Heston read it best.

You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time.

It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. Might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. You think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine.

When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. Hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.

Edited April 16, 2008 by saintsfanbrian

[Guest CrazyLincoln]

It's probably safe to say that both he and Martin figured the vegetarian diet would come out on top, but demonstrating that wasn't easy.

Confirmation bias anyone? Now if a vegetarian and a meat eater cooperative found this, it might have a hint of merit.

Although, the next logical step is one of two:

1) With all of the resources used to build religious facilities and the fact that those who pray, use more calories for prayer than those who don't, this study finds believing in God causes global warming

or

2) Since there are many greenhouse gases produced when creating birth control products, and since more heterosexuals eat meat than homosexuals, heterosexuality contributes greatly to global warming

Since the Global Warming folks have convinced everyone that one of the most abundant substances on earth, necessary for life, causes global warming, logically everything causes global warming, well, only things the people on that side of the fence don't like....

+1 on your quote saintsfanbrian I posted too soon

Edited April 16, 2008 by CrazyLincoln

[Guest db99wj]

+2 on sainsfanbrian's post

And opps, I just added some poisnous gas to the world...

[analog_kidd]

/begin_rant

It's always something with the GW fanatics. Remeber a few years ago, it was florocarbons, or all of our aerosols. We converted over to whatever we use now, but still global warming. Before that is was freon. Gotta get rid of it all. OK we did that, at a major expense of converting cars and houses to the new stuff. Well, what do you know, we still have global warming.

Remember back before that even, everyone was screaming that we were headed into an ice age. I think even Time Magazine did a big piece on it.

Nobody knows for sure what's going on. It's just another excuse for the politicians to seperate us from our money.

From what I read, most of the stats that they all love to quote are 10 - 20 years old, and recent studies are showing that we may be cooling again. I even saw a report that said Mars was going through a warming period. Pretty sure we didn't do that. Maybe the Sun is just a little hotter lately.

I saw a big honkin' SUV driving down the road the other day with all kind of tree hugger propaganda stickers on it. It also had a sticker that said it was OK that they were driving this beast because they had purchased carbon offset credits. Now don't get me wrong, if you have a big SUV, I'm not mad at you. If you have the money to buy it and pay for the gas, I say drive on. It's the carbon offset credit thing that gets me. Mostly they pay companies bonuses for doing stuff to save the environment, but they were already doing these things anyway. Ca-ching, extra money for them. I fear that the credits may become mandatory.

/end_rant

Whoo, I feel better now. Think I'll go to Wendy's!

[strickj]

I disagree,Those damn dirty apes destroyed the earth...

[Guest db99wj]

I disagree,Those damn dirty apes destroyed the earth...

Those damn dirty apes were also glad to hear Charleton Heston died too.

[strickj]

Damn dirty apes supporting gun control since 1968

[saintsfanbrian]

Yes, again, there is nothing we could do to this planet short of actually sending a nuclear warhead the size of a sky scraper to the core and detonating it that the Earth couldn't recover from.

These wacko's will not get it. If you want to hug a tree and save the spotted fly, great, but don't tell me I have to. I think Penn and Teller did a BS on this stuff and there is a woman in Florida (handicapped) that can't build her home because of some bird that is "endangered" that decided to live on the property she purchased. Forget the fact that 100 of them live on the next property and some store had a few acres that were home to this little guy that they got a permit to level and build on.

[creeky]

Damn dirty apes supporting gun control since 1968

Hilarious! LOL!!

[molonlabetn]

I suppose we're causing the other planets to warm up too...

Some people just can't accept the idea of a solar cycle, and that the pathetic attempts of the human race to affect the environment are just a drop in the bucket of what goes into changing the climate of this planet, not to mention the rest of them.

Enviromentalism, as it is today, is not about science or reality... it is about politics.

[saintsfanbrian]

I thought it was a religion.

[molonlabetn]

I thought it was a religion.

That too... and the new sexual orientation... (Heterosexual vs. Homosexual vs. Terrasexual)

[The Rabbi]

I thought it was a religion.

You thought correctly. It rests on unproven and unprovable assumptions. It demands sacrifices by its adherents. It labels as pagans those who disagree with it and brooks no dissent.

[Guest c_o_jones]

[strickj]

Notice theres no panties in 2000+

Guess thats why Brittney hasnt had any on....

[molonlabetn]

The panties in 2000s are on the men's clothes-line...

[strickj]

....And how many have you bought?

Me,I kinda like the lacey ones for summer carry,and the fur ones for winter carry

[Guest db99wj]

Speaking of Vice President Gore, I'm sorry to relate that he's a little bit sore at me. He's convinced that on global warming, I just don't get it. But lately with every passing day the evidence has been catching my attention. I have no doubt, none at all, that we are in the midst of aglobal warming , or, as I prefer to call it, spring. And I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but it's going to get a lot warmer before it gets cooler. [snip] But I want you to know I'm doing my part to meet the crisis by reducing my carbon footprint, big time. Every time I'm rushed to the hospital I insist on a hybrid ambulance. VP Cheney at the Radio-TV Correspondents Dinner the other night.

[Tim Nunan]

deleted

Edited April 21, 2008 by Tim Nunan
Deleted as the link wouldn't open, sorry

[Guest nj.piney]

im planning on sacrificing a steak on my grill to appease the weather gods this weekend.