Can Cow Backpacks Reduce Global Methane Emissions? (bloomberg.com) 190
Slashdot reader schwit1 shares an article from Bloomberg which argues "It's time to have a conversation about flatulent cows."
"Enteric fermentation," or livestock's digestive process, accounts for 22 percent of all U.S. methane emissions, and the manure they produce makes up eight percent more, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency... Methane, like carbon, is a greenhouse gas, but methane's global warming impact per molecule is 25 times greater than carbon's, according to the EPA.
Cargill has tried capturing some of the methane released from cow manure by using domed lagoons, while researchers at Danone yogurt discovered they could reduce methane emissions up to 30% by feeding cows a diet rich in Omega-3 fatty acids (mostly from flax seed). But now Argentina researchers are testing plastic "methane backpacks" which they strap on to the back of cows, and according to the article "have been able to extract 300 liters of methane a day, enough to power a car or refrigerator."
Cargill has tried capturing some of the methane released from cow manure by using domed lagoons, while researchers at Danone yogurt discovered they could reduce methane emissions up to 30% by feeding cows a diet rich in Omega-3 fatty acids (mostly from flax seed). But now Argentina researchers are testing plastic "methane backpacks" which they strap on to the back of cows, and according to the article "have been able to extract 300 liters of methane a day, enough to power a car or refrigerator."
Just call it what it is (Score:2)
I'm not proud of this comment, but there it is.
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More like burp into a bag.
Too late. (Score:2)
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Want to make fake meat a success? Make it better than real meat. And stop calling it "meat", when it isn't. It needs to be it's own thing, not an imitation of something else.
I agree completely with this but imitating the real thing first is a useful step. Once you know the "formula" for beef and how it differs from pork, it should give you the ability to tweak it to make it better than beef.
We've done this quite a bit where we imitated nature until we surpassed it. They even did that in the movie Nemo. First, they recreated a scene as realistically as possible then they backed up and made it less realistic but more fantastical.
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Yeah, its where "about to" = "maybe 50 years off".
Though I can see this actually happening.
700 million metric tons of CO2 Equivalent (Score:2, Interesting)
EPA "Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions"
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#agriculture
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ha ha..nice. The next post asks how these amounts can actually power anything - like, what fridge uses as much electricity as a car?? By their math, the gas from a day would power a car maybe 5km. On a serious note, the article doesn't discuss how the backpack works...I see some tubes, is there surgery involved? That adds another few layers of impracticality to it all as well.
The cows have to live with tubes inserted in their intestines, and god knows where else. Don't worry though, the researchers assure the public that this vivisection is "painless" for the cows!
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My thought as well. Even in very clean environments having a catheter inserted through one's skin is quite likely to lead to a life threatening infection. And that doesn't describe any barn or pasture I've ever seen.
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You're making the common mistake of comparing against a nonexistent zero base state. If people stopped eating meat, we'd still need to raise cattle. They provide lots of useful byproducts like lubricants, waxes, insulin, gelatin, glue, leather, etc. If we got rid of all cattle, we'd have to find other means of producing these things, which would incur other energy and material costs, perhaps higher than the costs we pay with cattle.
Even if you were
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You're making the common mistake of comparing against a nonexistent zero base state. If people stopped eating meat, we'd still need to raise cattle. They provide lots of useful byproducts like lubricants, waxes, insulin, gelatin, glue, leather, etc. If we got rid of all cattle, we'd have to find other means of producing these things, which would incur other energy and material costs, perhaps higher than the costs we pay with cattle. Even if you were able to find a zero net-cost substitute for all these materials, eliminating cattle would not necessarily decrease methane production. You have to consider the entire ecosystem, not just the cows. Without cattle, grasses would grow longer, die, and decompose naturally. Some of the byproducts of that decomposition are (drumroll...) methane and CO2. Remember, this is a closed-loop system. Just because that final step of breaking down the cellulose to extract the stored solar energy happens in a compost heap instead of inside a ruminant's digestive tract doesn't necessarily mean you've improved things.
There is no fallacy to the logic behind eliminating animal agriculture for environmental reasons. If cattle ceased to be raised, you wouldn't need to produce and transport billions of pounds of corn across the continent (Cattle are not raised on grass). You also wouldn't need to water that corn or the cattle themselves. The pasture would either be returned to nature (unlikely) or used for more efficient food production. Instead of feeding cows 10-20 pounds of grain to get one pound of their flesh, you could
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The only solution is to cut back on meat consumption, but Cargill won't be issuing that in a press release any time soon.
One way to make massive improvements would be to return much of middle america to its prior state:
That's right, when there was so much food running around the country that it was considered a nuisance, they actually farted out less methane than what we see now. Most of the nation's food is g
NOT "enough to power a car" (Score:5, Informative)
In what world is 300 litres (presumed at STP) per day of natural gas enough to power a car? Even in something rather efficient like a Honda Civic, that's still only enough for about 5 km per day, or ~2000 km per year.
[300 L/d of methane] * [0.0364 MJ/L of methane] / [34.2 MJ/L of gasoline] = [0.319 L/d of gasoline equivalent]
[0.319 L/d of gasoline] / [6 L / 100 km (fuel economy of a modern compact sedan)] = [5.32 km/d]
Re:NOT "enough to power a car" (Score:5, Funny)
In what world is 300 litres (presumed at STP) per day of natural gas enough to power a car? Even in something rather efficient like a Honda Civic, that's still only enough for about 5 km per day, or ~2000 km per year.
[300 L/d of methane] * [0.0364 MJ/L of methane] / [34.2 MJ/L of gasoline] = [0.319 L/d of gasoline equivalent]
[0.319 L/d of gasoline] / [6 L / 100 km (fuel economy of a modern compact sedan)] = [5.32 km/d]
One wonders if they may have been better off instituting a new measurement of the relative GHG output of cars vs cows in 'cows per mile'.
I even have a spiffy abbreviation for this metric that's sure to be a hit among programmers: CP/M!
Strat
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Assume a spherical cow in a vacuum...
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It's enough to power a car (for a short distance).
I know where this is headed (Score:2)
Mecha-Cow [blogspot.com] is the only result of the path they are trampling down in a panicked herd.
Can I 'gift' one of these (Score:3)
to the guy in the adjoining cubicle? Billable to the taco truck.
Sheep (Score:4, Interesting)
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Interesting from a grazing efficiency standpoint. I do wonder what it does to total gut balance and mortality in the event of scours or other pathogenic processes.
But as to the nominal topic... in North America, there used to be about 20% more bison than there are cattle today. Bison mass about double what cattle do, and eat proportionately more -- therefore farted more, probably producing about twice as much methane in total. Somehow this failed to cause global warming.
A steep eco-tax on meat would be better. (Score:2)
How about paying for the abysmal eco-balance of meat production with a tax on meat instead of such harebrained ideas.
After all, we tax gas and cars, don't we?
Distraction (Score:2)
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I agree, it's something that is driven by green party fanatics that don't have a clue at all about reality. Humans have been farming for a long time, and we have a lot fewer wetlands today than we had a millennium ago. Wetlands are a primary source for methane. So it all evens out on that side.
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You are looking in the wrong place. Despite being a very radical thing to do the people pushing this distraction call themselves "conservatives" - big city based right wing assholes.
Is there a gaseous form of carbon? (Score:3)
From the summary:
Methane, like carbon, is a greenhouse gas
Carbon is a solid, not a gas.
A molecule of methane includes carbon.
Or, is carbon now synonymous with carbon dioxide?
putting indians to shame (Score:3)
You know how they say that in ancient times, hunter-gatherer societies used all the parts of an animal? Very soon we can put them to shame. :-)
Carbon is a gas now? (Score:2)
Methane, like carbon, is a greenhouse gas, but methane's global warming impact per molecule is 25 times greater than carbon's, according to the EPA.
I assume they mean carbon dioxide, right? Because if they're talking about pure carbon, I can't imagine it stays airborne for long enough to have much of an impact.
Maybe that's why it's so much less effective than methane.
Not Hooking Up That Hose! (Score:2)
Not me, you have to hook up the hose that connects the cow to the backpack.
Re:Ignorant fools (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe you should learn not to jump to conclusions lest you show yourself to be the moron.
The backpack manages to capture and collect the gases emitted through the cow’s mouth or intestinal tract via a tube inserted through the cow’s skin (which the researchers claim is painless).
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Maybe you should learn not to jump to conclusions lest you show yourself to be the moron.
The backpack manages to capture and collect the gases emitted through the cow’s mouth or intestinal tract via a tube inserted through the cow’s skin (which the researchers claim is painless).
It still sounds like a lot of stress for the cows. Their lives are miserable enough, adding this stuff would only make matters worse for them. Stress for a cow probably means less milk yield, and a longer growth period before it is ripe for McDonald's. Hell, it's like developing colostomy bags for cows.
Re:Ignorant fools (Score:5, Funny)
... and a longer growth period before it is ripe for McDonald's.
What would McDonalds want with a cow?
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My guess would be the hide.
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But then, Cargill doesn't want you to stop eating meat. Just trust that they are working on a solution to the environmental catastrophe that is animal agriculture. If you've read anything at all
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You might want to read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
On the other hand . . . good old Jacob Bronowski taught us the eating meat was a very important step in the Ascent of Man. Meat is a more concentrated form of protein, and freed up time to work on other stuff, besides food collection in the stone ages.
Re:Ignorant fools (Score:4, Informative)
You might want to read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
On the other hand . . . good old Jacob Bronowski taught us the eating meat was a very important step in the Ascent of Man. Meat is a more concentrated form of protein, and freed up time to work on other stuff, besides food collection in the stone ages.
That is a pretty outdated view in paleoanthropology. It's up there with "Man the Hunter" and "Meat Made us Human". To spare you the mountain of scientific articles, books, and studies on paleonutrition conducted by archaeologists (not those insane popular "paleo" journalistic writers), here is a Scientific American article explaining how your ancient "man" most likely arose from the ability to cook food and consume starches:
"Human Ancestors Were Nearly All Vegetarians" http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-ancestors-were-nearly-all-vegetarians/ [scientificamerican.com]
You only need to look at any studies of ancient fiber consumption (derived from coprolite data) to arrive at the conclusion that our ancestors (recent and in the deep past) ate a shit-load of plants. Something like 10 times what the average westerner would eat on average.
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The fuck is a plant? Cabbage? Cornflower? Apples? Grains? Weed roots?
I admit i skimmed the link, but it doesn't really say anything. "So humans don't get full benefit from eating cellulose, but they can still eat it", or at the least that is what it seems to be talking about.
I understand that we live in a era where the knowledge of what weeds is edible is resurrecting slowly, but one needs to be more specific.
I.E What ancestors of plants is eaten? What has been domesticated? What weeds did we eat back then,
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You only need to look at any studies of ancient fiber consumption (derived from coprolite data) to arrive at the conclusion that our ancestors (recent and in the deep past) ate a shit-load of plants. Something like 10 times what the average westerner would eat on average.
They did that because they had to. We also know that virtually nothing in nature is actually a vegetarian. Almost everything is either carnivorous or omnivorous. Deer eat whole nests full of baby birds, for example. Dee-lish! I'm a vegetarian except for baby birds is the new I'm a vegan except for blue cheese and bacon. Meat is efficient and there are no vegetarian indigenous peoples. There may have been some, but they were probably eaten by some meat eaters in their cannibal phase.
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Almost everything is either carnivorous or omnivorous.
You honestly don't know what an herbivore is?.... I mean, I'd love to talk about frugivores (every one of our closest relatives) and ruminants but if you can't wrap your mind around one of the most basic concepts in all of biology, it's going to be difficult.
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You honestly don't know what an herbivore is?
It's a near-mythical kind of creature that you've mostly imagined.
I mean, I'd love to talk about frugivores (every one of our closest relatives)
Which kind of ape hasn't been shown to occasionally eat at least insects if not actual meat?
but if you can't wrap your mind around one of the most basic concepts in all of biology, it's going to be difficult.
The fact is that most of those things which "never" eat meat occasionally eat meat, just like the average vegan.
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Read the article instead of just the headline. As I skimmed it I found *NO* assertion that our ancestors were vegetarian. Not any of them. Instead the assertion was that many of them ate more vegetables that had been previously presumed. This is a quite different assertion.
There's also nothing outdated about assuming that in increase in the amount of meat eaten "was a very important step in the Ascent of Man". There's some argument about how much of that was fish or shell-fish, with some arguing that i
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There's also nothing outdated about assuming that in increase in the amount of meat eaten "was a very important step in the Ascent of Man". There's some argument about how much of that was fish or shell-fish, with some arguing that it was the shell-fish and similar dense calorie and protein resources that fostered tribal defense of territory...AFAIK the evidence for that is quite minimal, but the argument is reasonable.
Please note that meat eating became less important once cooking was developed. Cooking made vegetable calories much more digestible. But cooking was a relatively late accomplishment. (It also had other effects, e.g. it made meat much less likely to harbor parasites.)
That said, there is little reason to doubt that hunter-gatherers got most of their calories from vegetables, but ate as much meat as they could. (Well, not literally. People might eat, e.g., enough hippo to get sick, but they wouldn't really try to eat the whole thing.)
That is a very linear view of the development of our species and reads like an amateur paper for Anthropology 100. You've combined an outdated view of cultural evolution with and outdated model of biological adaptation and reached a 1950/1960's style conclusion. Garbage in, garbage out.
My suggestion is for you to look into modern studies of: ancient coprolite analysis, dental calculus analysis, studies of the consumption of starches like tubers, bone chemistry, the "meat made us human" myth, "man the hunt
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On the other hand . . . good old Jacob Bronowski taught us the eating meat was a very important step in the Ascent of Man. Meat is a more concentrated form of protein, and freed up time to work on other stuff, besides food collection in the stone ages.
Meat is great for the hunter/gatherer who has the scrounge for food because you can eat the bird that found and ate the berries without having to find the berries yourself. Per calorie, hunting meat gives you more calories per calorie expended than hunting berries. So yes, it gave us slightly more time but the real time saving was agriculture. Raising crops gave us ton more calories per time expended. Raising almost any type of edible crop is far more efficient that raising or hunting for meat. If you
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Meat is great for the hunter/gatherer who has the scrounge for food because you can eat the bird that found and ate the berries without having to find the berries yourself. Per calorie, hunting meat gives you more calories per calorie expended than hunting berries. So yes, it gave us slightly more time but the real time saving was agriculture. Raising crops gave us ton more calories per time expended. Raising almost any type of edible crop is far more efficient that raising or hunting for meat. If you look at modern humans, most modern humans ate primarily grains and supplemented here and there with meat and they have been doing this 20k+ years. You would have to go back further than written history to get to primarily meat eating ancestors. There are obviously exceptions but these exceptions are not in the areas that grew into modern society. Modern society grew out of a stable, stay in one place agricultural society. It was the agricultural society that gave us the extra manpower to advance.
The problem with this view is that it is all based on incomplete 1950's paleoanthropology. The research of that time was heavily biased by the weight of animal bone remains, which made it look like humans were evolving almost completely on meat. This view is considered laughable today in light of the fact that we understand that bones are the only macroscopic evidence that survives for millions of years, and hence it was obviously going to bias their view.
If you look at their dental calculus (reflecting t
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The backpack manages to capture and collect the gases emitted through the cow’s mouth or intestinal tract via a tube inserted through the cow’s skin (which the researchers claim is painless).
Translation: Vivisection is entirely painless. Animals love to live with tubes inserted into their skin, and those pathogens coating the wounds just add to their pleasureful experience. Trust us, we're industry-funded "researchers"!
What financial incentives could CARGILL possibly in having us believe that vivisection is painless? They're practically independent, right?
Buffalo (Score:2)
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I'm also wondering if we'll eventually be eating modified cow-carcass torsos raised in an enclosed factory and connected to input and output tubes, making veal-raising look like organic farming.
Most methane comes from Dams not Cows (Score:3, Interesting)
According to the estimates of the INPE researchers, dams are the largest single anthropogenic source of methane, being responsible for 23% of all methane emissions due to human activities.
https://www.internationalriver... [internationalrivers.org]
Thus irrigation for crops is worse on the environment than cows.
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More people should eat goat or lamb or chicken or rabbit. All of which ate many times more efficient at meat production than any amount of beef.
I've been eating a lot more pork and chicken lately partly because it is cheaper than beef. I would have no problem buying lamb, goat, or rabbit if I saw it in the store. I occasionally do see lamb but it's always considerably more expensive than even beef. If it's really more efficient, you would think you would see it more often and at a lower price point. I really like the taste of lamb and would gladly buy it if available. I've never had goat or chicken because I've never seen it. I've seen goat m
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I occasionally do see lamb but it's always considerably more expensive than even beef. If it's really more efficient, you would think you would see it more often and at a lower price point. I really like the taste of lamb and would gladly buy it if available.
Supply/demand. We often buy it cheaply at Grocery Outlet, however. They also often have Bison.
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Why not switch to eating humans?
That would both reduce methane emissions and stop overpopulation.
It's a win win scenario.
Re:No such thing as 'global warming' (Score:4, Informative)
So please tell us what happened to the 2 quadrillion pounds of ice that melted from JUST Greenland in JUST 3 years.
https://weather.com/news/clima... [weather.com]
Re: No such thing as 'global warming' (Score:2)
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Duh. But the deniers can't even admit that.
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It evaporated, blew to the south pole, and snowed on Antarctica.
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Re:Just stop raising cows (Score:4, Informative)
That's been pretty much disproved. The real culprits seem to be flour and sugar. Enjoy your vegetarian diet.
"Disproved"? If you don't believe in science, then perhaps the evidence isn't very strong. If you read newspapers and industry sponsored "scientific journalism", you might also think there are health benefits to eating meat. For everyone who does believe in science however, start your investigation here:
Diet Patterns and Mortality: Common Threads and Consistent Results Marjorie L. McCullough Epidemiology Research Program, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, GA J. Nutr. June 1, 2014. vol. 144 no. 6 795-796 http://jn.nutrition.org/conten... [nutrition.org]
Below are a handful more studies (with lifestyle, age, location, and income adjustments included) that all suggest that meat/dairy is the primary cause of the major diseases we are discussing. Even when you adjust to include "junk-food vegans", you see that they come out ahead. It's not just processed foods that are to blame, although an increased consumption of processed foods is linked to elevated heart disease in all populations.
M L McCullough. Diet patterns and mortality: common threads and consistent results. J Nutr. 2014 Jun;144(6):795-6.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24717365
M A Martinez-Gonzalez, A Sanchez-Tainta, D Corella, J Salas-Salvado, E Ros, F Aros, E Gomez-Gracia, M Fiol, R M Lamuela-Raventos, H Schroder, J Lapetra, L Serra-Majem, X Pinto, V Ruiz-Gutierrez, Ramon Estruch for the PREDIMED Group. A provegetarian food pattern and reduction in total mortality in the Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea (PREDIMED) study. Am J Clin Nutr. 2014 May 28;100(Supplement 1):320S-328S.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24871477
J Reedy, S M Krebs-Smith, P E Miller, A D Liese, L L Kahle, Y Park, A F Subar. Higher diet quality is associated with decreased risk of all-cause, cardiovascular disease, and cancer mortality among older adults. J Nutr. 2014 Jun;144(6):881-9.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24572039
G E Fraser, D J Shavlik. Ten years of life: Is it a matter of choice? Arch Intern Med. 2001 Jul 9;161(13):1645-52.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11434797
Thousands of peer-reviewed papers based on the large-scale studies below support the treating of lifestyle diseases by reducing or eliminating animal product consumption, paired with an increased consumption of whole plant-based foods. These are clinically valid paths to eliminating the diseases, which are most often more effective than prescription drugs, which are geared toward relieving symptoms (e.g. statins) but not the underlying causes of disease.
Large scale, long-term studies:
PREDIMED Studies: http://www.predimed.es/publica... [predimed.es]
The Adventist Health Studies: https://publichealth.llu.edu/a... [llu.edu]
The China Studies: https://scholar.google.com/sch... [google.com]
The Nurses Health Study: http://www.nurseshealthstudy.o... [nurseshealthstudy.org]
The EPIC Study: http://epic.iarc.fr/ [epic.iarc.fr]
When humans stop eating meat and switch to whole-food plant based diets, the rates of all leading causes of death (obesity, cancer, heart disease, and pretty diseases of inflammation) drop. To anyone with a scientific mind, modern nutritional-science's data should pretty much indict animal based foods as the direct cause of obesity, along with the consumption of heavily processed foods. It's no wonder that the nations with the highest meat consumption have the highest rates of lifestyle diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc.
A
Ugh, the vegan preaching... (Score:2)
I'm blowing my chance at moderating this story, just so I can say this: There's not a damn thing you can say or scientific study you can point to that will make me stop eating meat. Even if it meant becoming a "second amendment person" (thanks, Trump) and hunting animals, I would. I could watch a PETA "Meat is Murder" propaganda video while chomping down on a burger and it wouldn't faze me in the least. Like religion and most republican policies, my decision to eat meat isn't based on reason or logic.
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Like religion and most republican policies, my decision to eat meat isn't based on reason or logic. It's based on a deep carnal desire to devour animal flesh, compounded with my belief that it's also delicious.
I could see how outsiders might think that the reaction against animal agriculture is some kind of liberal BS, but the blame for the situation should always be equally placed on both sides of the aisle. Liberals cut just as many, if not more, corrupt deals with big ag as conservatives. The disappearance of small farmers is one of the most visible results. Even Gov. Schwarzenegger is campaigning hard against big ag right now, for both environmental (water shortages in particular) and health reasons (cancer,
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In which Universe do you live where vegans are overwhelmingly vegans for health reasons? I live in a country with a relatively high per-capita count of vegans, and I've never heard one say they chose that diet for health reasons.
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In which Universe do you live where vegans are overwhelmingly vegans for health reasons? I live in a country with a relatively high per-capita count of vegans, and I've never heard one say they chose that diet for health reasons.
There usually isn't one reason that someone does anything. In the list of reasons why people go vegan, you'll find that about half choose veganism for health reasons, among other reasons, in most modern surveys.
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Would like to moderate this post with "Tasty"...
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When humans stop eating meat and switch to whole-food plant based diets, the rates of all leading causes of death (obesity, cancer, heart disease, and pretty diseases of inflammation) drop
Many of those articles like "Prevalence of obesity is low in people who do not eat meat. " is like saying "people who don't watch tv are less violent". There is a huge selection bias going on. Most people who don't eat meat or eat "whole food based diets" or almost any fad diet, yeah, they might cut out fat, or bread, or some other random bad guy but they also almost all cut out processed sugar. It's the sugar not the meat and fat that is killing us.
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It's no wonder that the nations with the highest meat consumption have the highest rates of lifestyle diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc.
And the longest life expectancies.
Don't forget that....
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It's no wonder that the nations with the highest meat consumption have the highest rates of lifestyle diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc.
And the longest life expectancies.
Don't forget that....
The longest population-based life expectancy ever observed is in the traditional Okinawans, which were almost entirely vegan. The longest life expectancy is the Americans are the Adventists, who range from vegan to vegetarian. Both groups also show an almost complete lack of modern Western lifestyle diseases like atherosclerosis, cancer (except those vegetarian Adventists eating dairy and egss), and autoimmune disease.
Shining examples of the health benefits of avoiding meat, not only for a longer life, but
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My Vegan Diet Almost Killed Me [nypost.com] talks about orthorexia, which stems from "righteous fixation on healthy eating". Lets not forget Death by Veganism [nytimes.com] where two vegan parents were convicted of murder, involuntary manslaughter, and cruelty to their 6 month old child. Anecdotally, I have a vegetarian friend whose pediatrician told her she needed to start eating meat to promote the health and g
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Right, because the healthiest looking people on the planet are the vegetarians . . .
Also pretty awesome that you just blamed the three things that pretty much kill anyone who dies from 'natural causes' and blamed it on cow meat. You know vegetarians die from those exact same things in pretty much the exact same numbers ... RIGHT?
Nut job much?
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Right, because the healthiest looking people on the planet are the vegetarians . . .
Also pretty awesome that you just blamed the three things that pretty much kill anyone who dies from 'natural causes' and blamed it on cow meat. You know vegetarians die from those exact same things in pretty much the exact same numbers ... RIGHT?
Nut job much?
The longest living group ever known are the traditional Okinawans, who are also primarily vegans.
You are correct however that It shouldn't surprise anyone that vegetarians would die from some of the same diseases as standard westerners. Vegetarians, in contast to vegans, get a significant portion of their calories from animal derived foods like dairy and eggs. Dairy and eggs are two of the worst offenders health-wise. They're extremely high in fat and cholesterol, thus leading to heart disease. They als
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Last time I checked, Vegans don't eat 21+kg of seafood per year (which is down from traditional amounts), 18+kg of pork, and 7kg of beef per year [stats-japan.com]
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Last time I checked, Vegans don't eat 21+kg of seafood per year (which is down from traditional amounts), 18+kg of pork, and 7kg of beef per year [stats-japan.com]
Those stats are for modern Okinawans who have adapted a Western diet... Traditional Okinawans ate the least amount of meat ever recorded for a population. Hence, modern Okinawans suffer from the same lifestyle diseases as Westerners and they lost their life-span advantage. Anthropologists once thought they must have had some genetic advantage to live so long, but this theory was abandoned as the population shifted to the Western diet and gradually began to suffer from the same health problems as the West.
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Now I KNOW you're crazy. The notion that fat and cholesterol lead to heart disease just isn't true, it's been totally debunked.
I hate to burst your bubble, but you need to start reading research performed by non-industry sponsored scientists. Bloggers, magazine writers, and journalists are paid by the industry to spread lies about the health of consumer goods. Start with this statement paper summarizing the major literature and large-scale research directly linking cholesterol intake to heart disease:
The cholesterol facts. A summary of the evidence relating dietary fats, serum cholesterol, and coronary heart disease. A joint stat
A life without steak ? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A life without steak ? (Score:4, Informative)
"Methane is 25-100 times more destructive than CO2 on a 20 year time frame"
The Journal Science: Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions
Drew T. Shindell*, Greg Faluvegi, Dorothy M. Koch, Gavin A. Schmidt, Nadine Unger, Susanne E. Bauer
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5953/716.figures-only [slashdot.org]
”Growing feed crops for livestock consumes 56% of water in the US.”
”55% of water consumed in the US is by private homes. 55% of water consumed in the US is for animal agriculture.”
Jacobson, Michael F. “More and Cleaner Water.” In Six Arguments for a Greener Diet: How a More Plant-based Diet Could save Your Health and the Environment. Washington, DC: Center for Science in the Public Interest, 2006.
http://www.cspinet.org/EatingGreen/pdf/arguments4.pdf [slashdot.org]
Livestock covers 45% of the earth’s total land.
Thornton, Phillip, Mario Herrero, and Polly Ericksen. “Livestock and Climate Change.” Livestock Exchange, no. 3 (2011).
https://cgspace.cgiar.org/bitstream/handle/10568/10601/IssueBrief3.pdf [slashdot.org]
”Livestock is responsible for 65% of all human-related emissions of nitrous oxide –a greenhouse gas with 296 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide, and which stays in the atmosphere for 150 years”
United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization
http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm [slashdot.org]
”Livestock and their byproducts account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51% of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.”
Worldwatch Institute
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294 [slashdot.org]
”1/3 of the planet is desertified, with livestock as the leading driver.”
UN, "Desertification, Drought Affect One Third of Planet, World’s Poorest People, Second Committee Told as It Continues Debate on Sustainable Development".
http://www.un.org/press/en/2012/gaef3352.doc.htm [slashdot.org]
”A farm with 2,500 dairy cows produces the same amount of waste as a city of 411,000 people.”
“Risk Assessment Evaluation for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – Office of Research and Development. 2004.
http://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPURL.cgi?Dockey=901V0100.txt [slashdot.org]
”130 times more animal waste than human waste is produced in the US – 1.4 billion tons from the meat industry annually. 5 tons of animal waste is produced per person in the US.”
Animal agriculture: waste management practices. United States General Accounting Office.
http://www.gao.gov/archive/1999/rc99205.pdf [slashdot.org]
You could read for months, or just watch Cowspiracy.
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”55% of water consumed in the US is by private homes. 55% of water consumed in the US is for animal agriculture.”
So 110% of water is consumed?
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”55% of water consumed in the US is by private homes. 55% of water consumed in the US is for animal agriculture.”
So 110% of water is consumed?
Good catch. It should read "5% of water is consumed in the US by private homes."
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It could be that 10% of people raise livestock in their bedrooms.
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It could be that 10% of people raise livestock in their bedrooms.
Raising them. Exactly!
That's what I'm doing with the sheep in the bedroom...
Re:Just stop raising cows (Score:5, Funny)
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Just stop raising humans, less humans would decrease the load on the planet even more.
Cutting down to 1/4th of the population we have today would make a much larger impact.
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Cutting down to 1/4th of the population we have today would make a much larger impact.
1/2 would probably be plenty. And they could live a lot more efficiently, e.g. proper use of insulation. With a little care which we're currently mostly not applying, the planet can probably support even more humans than we've got here now — and in luxury, not just survival. But right now things are just totally ack-basswards. Remember making hay while the sun shines? Now we make the sun shine, hey? What wankers we've turned out to be, as a species.
Re: Just stop raising cows (Score:2)
If we stopped eating cows, we could support 5 times the current population on earth.
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Cow with backpack full of gas + electric fence. Get the popcorn.
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Methane added lasts about 8 years before leaving the atmosphere. CO2 lasts orders of magnitude longer. So, while it would produce a noticeable effect to cut the methane, at this point we're just replacing 2008's methane (maybe a little more, I know the number of cows has gone up post recession, but I don't know if it fell during the recession.)
"Methane is 25-100 times more destructive than CO2 on a 20 year time frame"
"Evaluating multicomponent climate change mitigation strategies requires knowledge of the diverse direct and indirect effects of emissions. Methane, ozone, and aerosols are linked through atmospheric chemistry so that emissions of a single pollutant can affect several species. We calculated atmospheric composition changes, historical radiative forcing, and forcing per unit of emission due to aerosol and tropospheric ozone precurs
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I'm going to assume you know what you are talking about, so to clarifiy, is the article (and you) saying "a molecule of methane emitted is 25-100x as destructive over 20 years." Because that could coexist with what I was saying. It still could indicate that the CO2 is a scarier/longer term problem.
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Christ, just read the linked story, or google up which is more harmful, or do anything else to educate yourself as your nickname would imply. Methane is removed from the environment faster, but it's such a more serious GHG than CO2 that it's still better to simply burn methane than to let it be released.
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Additionally, when the methane is removed from the atmosphere it is commonly by converting it into CO2. So in addition to being a worse short term problem, it's also a long term problem.
The best apparent answer is to convert forests into peat bogs. Unfortunately, the existing peat bogs are drying out and threaten to catch on fire, returning their load of Carbon to the atmosphere.
Worse, the old peat bogs have turned into coal, which is also being returned to the atmosphere. Whoops!
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I suggest we put backpacks on politician's backs with a gas tube up their asses. That would provide energy for school buses to run on vs. cars.
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Get them a fainting couch?
The emotionally retarded should live in a colony somewhere. With family and friends forming a cordon to keep scammers etc out. They can all sing...fucking stupid animals.
They should have simply killed their own dinner at about age 10-12 and sorted this all out.
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I agree, it's a new vector for diseases and injuries. What happens when this is ripped out of the creature due to an accident?
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Maybe they could fly in the solar powered airplanes.
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actually, a single solution for bovine-generated methane (for example - a bacteria lowering emission) would have much cheaper "per unit" cost than "fixing" the next factory.