And so it begins: Eat less meat or we’ll make you.

Roller said:

Carbon dioxide is an inert gas. Yes. And there is more of it in the Earths atmosphere than at any time over some millions of years, before man arrived on the planet. The CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere was deposited many millions of years ago as another form of carbon, over the course of millions of years. This is not really disputable. Man has consumed half of that accumulation almost in the “blink of an eye”. Given that it is an awful lot of carbon that we are talking about, that’s a lot of CO2 that we have pumped into the atmosphere. To get our heads around that we have to appreciate the deep time ( many millions ) involved in the original accumulation and then compare with the relatively short time (100 or so years) that we have blown it away into the atmosphere.

We know when the carbon was accumulated, how long it took to accumulate and how long it has been sitting around under the ground,until unleashed by man. It is common knowledge in scientific circles.

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CARBON is an element, NOT a gas. THAT'S irrefutable basic science. We would not exist without CO2

Nor has anyone proven that CO2 presents any danger to life on earth. Quite the opposite. Discussion over

Mike D said:

CARBON is an element, NOT a gas. THAT'S irrefutable basic science. We would not exist without CO2

Nor has anyone proven that CO2 presents any danger to life on earth. Quite the opposite. Discussion over

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Well you would die in room full of CO2 but that's not the point. CO2 in the upper atmosphere acts like the glass in a greenhouse and causes global warming. What causes the increase in CO2 and what to do about it, including doing nothing, is the part that is debatable.

Can we get back to discussing food and diabetes and the new legislation please?

Mike D said:

Discussion over

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Its a forum.....and, apparently, every ones entitled to an opinion

To add to the topic
I notice there is no mention of makeup and beauty products that use palm oils. Palmoil is in amost everything we use and is heavily used to provide ersatz vegan friendly meals by replacing dairy. It is also largely responsible for the forest clearance in the Phillipines, and now taking over vast tracts of land in the South American continent, It is palm oil that is causing the amazon to be razed that and logging and mining on an industrial scale. But the vegans want the blame placed on cows because then they can hide behind that for their palm oil. Why is there no mention of palm oil or sugar cane from the environmentalists. Apparently some 40% of Brazils cars run on ethanol or palm oil that they are growing as part of their government decree. It is mandated that they use ethanol in all cars and even in aeroplanes (*Embraer). This is why the Brazil amazon is burning, and also because the Amazon basin is rich in Lithium deposits that are needed for batteries.

Ethanol is what started of civilization - in the form of lets all get together, organize growing grain and making it into beer.
I'd have thought that having so much stuff which could be changed into ethanol - the technology has been around for millennia, it would be obvious what to do - not go with a high tech solution such as battery driven cars or bicycles.
There is also the option of using oils - yes palm oil is causing the destruction of the rain forest, but to change to another oil would require more land, more water and pesticides and fertilizers, so rather than stopping the use of palm oil, why not find places to grow the palms which are not precious habitat but empty desert - just add water?

Resurgam said:

Ethanol is what started of civilization - in the form of lets all get together, organize growing grain and making it into beer.
I'd have thought that having so much stuff which could be changed into ethanol - the technology has been around for millennia, it would be obvious what to do - not go with a high tech solution such as battery driven cars or bicycles.
There is also the option of using oils - yes palm oil is causing the destruction of the rain forest, but to change to another oil would require more land, more water and pesticides and fertilizers, so rather than stopping the use of palm oil, why not find places to grow the palms which are not precious habitat but empty desert - just add water?

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Where would this water come from that you could "just" add to deserts, they are deserts because there isn't any water. Also ethanol production is not without environmental cost.
https://foe.org/2010-05-how-does-ethanol-contribute-to-global-warming/

A number of posts have been deleted for bickering, belittling others and derailing the thread. Please stick to discussing the original topic.

Just a thought. Given that methane is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2 how much Methane would humans produce if we all went vegetarian? I wouldn't mind betting that its similar what is produced by farm animals!! so net zero change. Just another example of the law of unintended consequences? And just how much more land would be needed to produce the required 'veg'.
The real solution is a lower world population = less consumption of everything. Perhaps Nature is already on the case - HIV, Sars, Corona virus etc.

Oldvatr said:

Agree that fossil fuels should not be wasted like they are today. However, it is an oversmplification since once again the earth has natural non anthropogenically caused events that do the same on a large scale too. For GHG there is the natural growth / decay cycle of vegetation that starts off capturing carbon. but then releases it all again as GHG and ash. Forest fires are a natural event that spews vast tonnage of GHG into the atmosphere. Volcanoes do the same. marshland and lakes and stagnant water all contribute too. Now these do not involve mans activity, but we are not helping at the moment, In my lifetime farmers and forest rangers used sensible practices to contain nature such as putting in firebreaks, draining swampland, controlling watersupply with dykes and drainage etc, and using controlled burns and stubble removal to reduce undergrowth. Howerev in the last couple of decades, factory farming has caused the Great Depression and its dustbowl, and then we built houses and factories on floodplains. We have stopped dredging our rivers, we put water streams underground into culverts that block. We stop the aborigines doing their annual land maintenance rituals to burn off scrubland.

We have lost the skills that our forebears used to control the land, and we greedily join into the throw away society. We use plastic daipers instead of the terry nappies, then wonder why our wetwipes cause fatbergs. We ignore the way it used to be done, and we create speedy one off solutions that make life easier, but at the same time make life unsustainable.

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No not an oversimplification. The main contributor to global warming as we describe is most definitely not down to animal farming. Okay. So let’s put it another way.

Approximately 175 million years ago there was no ice at the poles. There was a larger percentage of seawater on the planet than there is today. (Antarctica was enjoying a more temperate climate for example). The Atlantic Ocean did not yet exist and there was a large Ocean known as the Tethys Ocean straddling the globe from east to west. The world was considerably warmer, the atmosphere was far more fuller of CO2 than it is now. The seas were teaming with phytoplankton which gorged on the sun and CO2 like had not been seen for a long time. This went on for millions of years. The phytoplankton not eaten, of which there was a colossal amount, then eventually died and settled on the bottom of the seabed where layer upon layer was buried in thick layers, and eventually baked at depth by a process known as catagenesis to form hydrocarbon liquid and gas. There it stayed for millions of years, locked under the surface of the earth until 20th century, where man intervened and brought the carbon in its combustible form to the surface where in only 100years half of those resources has been burnt by the petrol engine etc etc leading to millions of years worth of the carbon compound CO2 being pumped into the earths atmosphere in just one century.

Get that. Millions of years worth of hydrocarbons being consumed in 100 years only. Given the source, i.e. C02 from the earths atmosphere 175 million years ago, over millions of years, that is a lot of CO2 that we have pumped into our atmosphere in recent times.

The whole process has gone into reverse. So by far the biggest contributor to global warming is exactly as described above and not cow farts. So don’t worry guys about your sources of food.

Tipetoo said:

Food for thought, on what can be achieved...

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Mr_Pot said:

Where would this water come from that you could "just" add to deserts, they are deserts because there isn't any water. Also ethanol production is not without environmental cost.
https://foe.org/2010-05-how-does-ethanol-contribute-to-global-warming/

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I think the deserts are there because there isn't enough rain - with desalination, water storage, pipelines and irrigation whatever it takes, really - I am sure something could be done.
I was not proposing growing corn for the production of ethanol, but using the waste which is a problem to dispose of at the moment. Burning ethanol produces only water and carbon dioxide - if done properly.

Resurgam said:

I think the deserts are there because there isn't enough rain - with desalination, water storage, pipelines and irrigation whatever it takes, really - I am sure something could be done.
I was not proposing growing corn for the production of ethanol, but using the waste which is a problem to dispose of at the moment. Burning ethanol produces only water and carbon dioxide - if done properly.

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Yes. There is still water in the desert, it’s just that the water table can be quite low. Colonel Gadaffi was exploiting subsurface water resources in the Sahara desert by drilling water wells.

The Eighth Wonder of the World.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man-Made_River

Climate change has existed since the world began, it will continue to do so, it will continue to evolve and change. Animals, plants had to adapt or die and that was before humans existed.
Humans had to evolve and adapt to the ever changing climate. Apparently it has been 1 or 2 degree warmer than it is today, also much colder. thats how the world works, same as the tide. Remember, Britain has never always been an island, Ancient Britain was once upon a time, attached to Europe (Doggerland)
Photosynthesis is needed for our survival, cannot be completely carbon neutral.
Humans cannot completely become vegans, our digestion system would need to adapt for hundreds of years for that to happen. Our digestive is not the same as gorillas, look how much they have to eat and do very little not as active as humans, At the end of the day, they need their protein as well, from insects, not exactly vegan.
Humans need whole proteins which meat gives and other essential stuff which plant based diet cannot give us, if it can then supplements would not be necessary..

High intense farming animal husbandry in America produce sub standard meat which is not good. People are confusing this with proper good practice animal husbandry which produce good quality meat. It's such a poor reason to demonize meat and dairy products , we know how important this is.

pixie1 said:

Climate change has existed since the world began, it will continue to do so, it will continue to evolve and change. Animals, plants had to adapt or die and that was before humans existed.
Humans had to evolve and adapt to the ever changing climate. Apparently it has been 1 or 2 degree warmer than it is today, also much colder. thats how the world works, same as the tide. Remember, Britain has never always been an island, Ancient Britain was once upon a time, attached to Europe (Doggerland)
Photosynthesis is needed for our survival, cannot be completely carbon neutral.
Humans cannot completely become vegans, our digestion system would need to adapt for hundreds of years for that to happen. Our digestive is not the same as gorillas, look how much they have to eat and do very little not as active as humans, At the end of the day, they need their protein as well, from insects, not exactly vegan.
Humans need whole proteins which meat gives and other essential stuff which plant based diet cannot give us, if it can then supplements would not be necessary..

High intense farming animal husbandry in America produce sub standard meat which is not good. People are confusing this with proper good practice animal husbandry which produce good quality meat. It's such a poor reason to demonize meat and dairy products , we know how important this is.

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Add to the intensive livestock farming of today the economic conditions that make it cheaper to ship out live animals to Poland (say) for slaughter, ship carcasses to Belgium (say) for cleaning cutting and packaging in plastic. then shipping back to the supermarket down the road from the farm makes unecessary environmental impact. Stopping hat could help save the planet. We discovered what a web of networks existed during thr horsemeat scam a few years ago, so these ploys exist. together with the scams that crossing trading boundaries levies and grants that support it. At least Brexit will help in this respect.

Seeing that the UK was 2 degrees hotter than now in the Roman times shows that we can survive those conditions and thrive. Seeing paintings of bonfires and parties on the Thames in the 1800's shows that climate is quite variable naturally before the Industrial revolution.

The corals used to be thought of being killed off by acidity rising in the oceans, but that theory seems to have gone away now in favour of the heating causing bleaching (?) I was taught that acidity does that chemically, and I have seen no explanation to date as to what the mechanism is for a 1 degree rise in temp doing this. I also dispute that CO2 causes rise in acidity of the oceans - simply because CO2 in an acid environmenrt in seawater creates calcium carbonate and aodium hydroxide both of which are alkali, not an acid. and it is actually neurtralising the acid in the sea instead.

In fact, no one seems to have identified what the acid in the oceona is. I suspect it is acid run off from industrial activity and burning fossil fuels. I would think Sulphuric acid is a possible candidate since it is definitely causing acid erosion. but Nitric acid is possible due to the rise in NOX from petrol and diesel use. Of course, us humans expel hysdochloric acid in abundance since that is what stomach acid is. but then so do animals.

Oldvatr said:

Add to the intensive livestock farming of today the economic conditions that make it cheaper to ship out live animals to Poland (say) for slaughter, ship carcasses to Belgium (say) for cleaning cutting and packaging in plastic. then shipping back to the supermarket down the road from the farm makes unecessary environmental impact. Stopping hat could help save the planet. We discovered what a web of networks existed during thr horsemeat scam a few years ago, so these ploys exist. together with the scams that crossing trading boundaries levies and grants that support it. At least Brexit will help in this respect.

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That was not my rationale. America have I think 3 different farming technique, the worse is high intense, grain fed beef industry, which produce poor quality meat. You gave additional info, which is not my point.
You brought it up, your comment is negated by supporting our dairy and beef industry, we need to, support them for our economy dairy farmers need to be paid more for their products, This country imports far too much.

Unfortunately the move away from traditional agricultural farming to intense farming, this method leeched away the nutrients from the soil, the need for heavy fertilization was essential unfortunately the usage caused pollution in the waterways, stubble burning was banned, which did put nutrients back. Slurry is important to assist with the enrichment, if both dairy and beef industry goes, Britain will be heavily reliant on imports, carbon footprint logically increase, as this country cannot rely on agriculture to feed the masses because it has very little land for high production, as it is, it has been destroyed, that's why meat and dairy flourished. Sheep are able to graze where nothing can be grown.
Heavy farming destroys the environment, it will continue to worsen, in America heavy farming turned Prairies into dust basins, in Texas, they rely on creating rain, by using flares with chemicals to create crystals for clouds to make rain.

The meddling of people's diet through recommendations seems to have increased poor health, along with the insistent of cheap foods, which produced poor quality products, along with ever increasing usage of sugar types dextrose, molasses, glucose, fructose, syrups, corn syrup cheap and nasty, along with other fillers, for those on lower income,
We all know about the eat well plate.

Trying to persuade the world population to become vegans and whole food plant based diet, spells total disaster for both health and environment. It's one way to reduce the population through malnutrition and starvation.
Just because a certain part of the world may eat tofu or vegaterian doesn't mean that the rest of the world can, It's because those few people have adapted to that diet over thousands of years through changes of adaptations. Exactly the same for those who live in high altitude, they can because of adaptation of their physiology, doesn't mean the rest of us are able to.

Natural changes happen, thats why we're all different,, as the climate changes, we will change slowly , its all down to our genes in those circumstances. for now we are omnivores not, ruminants, as we know what happens when forcing animals a diet which they are not adapted to, I'll health and disease.