Global Silliness
Now I see that breakfast cereal has been condemned as an evil, carbon-producing creation, worse than driving your SUV to work.
“Ecotrust ecological economist Astrid Scholz, who calculates food production carbon emissions using “equivalence CO2 emissions”, says a bowl of cereal with milk has emitted as much greenhouse gas to get to your table as a 6km drive in an SUV would produce.”
I suspect strongly that her methodology can be filed under that commonest of all econometrist headings – crap. With the recent silliness of suggesting that the whole world goes vegetarian – to reduce our carbon footprint – one has to conclude that there are a lot of people in the the environment industry who bear a passing resemblance to Winnie the Pooh, who was “a bear of very little brain”. Sooner or later, some idiot is going to suggest that we can drive our carbon footprint still lower by wiping out the entire human race. Then we will have “saved the planet”
Besides the enormous ethical deficit, there is only one other thing wrong with this reasoning. The planet does not need saving at all. It is a planet. Earth’s environment is almost entirely self-regulating. The very worse that man can do is render the environment toxic for humans. This, in itself, is completely self-regulating. The sheer arrogance of people who think that the planet is effected by us any more than a dog is effected by a brief bout of mange, is breathtaking.
It does not matter whether the theory of man-made global warming is true or not. The catastrophe that global warming enthusiasts predict is a catastrophe only for man and possibly a few species who will be driven to extinction. The planet does not give a toss for how much arctic ice it has, or the height of it’s sea level. Therefore, if the solution to global warming is to destroy ourselves economically and starve 80 – 90% of the world’s population to death, I can’t see the point of it. If we can’t make a difference unless we kill three quarters or more of our population, then we are certainly better off retaining our economies and trying to adapt to the changing circumstance.
In the meantime, I will keep eating breakfast cereal and red meat in moderation.
I might buy a boat…
Additional:
Poneke has an interesting discussion going on this.
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- Climate change nutters strike again « The Inquiring Mind — [...] applies his mind to the stupidity of someone suggesting we give up breakfast cereal because of the carbon footprint ...
Sep 21 08 8:18 pm
Whether you think global warming/climate change is true or not, you have to admit, the habit of people discharging toxic gases into the air and polluting our atmosphere is a bad thing. As a doctor, you should know better, having to deal with the associated prevalence of respitory illnesses. How should we ‘adapt’ Doctor? By buying a gas mask? I dont know about you, but I like to go to go to work looking at the blue sky and breathing fresh air. And if that means not making as much money, then so be it…
Sep 21 08 9:50 pm
Millsy: You are confusing pollution with global warming. I have no quarrel at all with restricting the amount of poison being discharged into the atmosphere. The economic cost of pollution far outweighs the small cost of preventing it.
Carbon dioxide, unfortunately, is a different kettle of fish. It is not a toxin – it is actually essential for life. It is discharged into the atmosphere in copious amounts as a side effect of energy creation. To restrict it’s production in any significant way would completely cripple our economy and annihilate our current way of life. You only have to look at the economic consequences of the ETS to see this. And the ETS will do virtually nothing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
I note that the confusion between pollution and carbon dioxide is rarely adequately addressed. I suspect this is because the global warming industry gets most of its support from people who confuse the two.
Sep 22 08 8:39 pm
“Carbon dioxide, unfortunately, is a different kettle of fish. It is not a toxin – it is actually essential for life.”
Sure, like phosphates, nitrates and many other chemicals it’s essential to life, but like CO2, these chemicals are also toxic at high concentrations, and like CO2 those concentrations do not have to reach toxic levels before they’re environmentally damaging.
You clearly have understood nothing of my post. It is the cost of eliminating CO2 that is at issue. The reason why it is at issue is that CO2 is not toxic at levels that humans can produce. We cannot poison the planet with it. We may be at risk from environmental damage from global warming, but the cost of addressing this properly is absurdly high and will cause untold human misery. Knee-jerk reactions to environmental problems (like biofuels) usually have massive unintended consequences.
Sep 22 08 10:02 pm
MacDoctor, I understand the points you’re making in your post, but the conclusions you’ve reached ie. that adaptation is cheaper than mitigation, cannot possibly be reached with any degree of certainty as the available data, both in terms of the cost of adaptation and the cost of mitigation is still open to debate eg. one aspect is the cost of future “green” energy option, this is dependent on changing technology, and the possibility of tech break-throughs. But even without such break-throughs other low carbon options, eg nuclear, geothermal, along with more efficient systems do offer the opportunity of reducing CO2 emissions at minimal economic cost.
Nicholas Stern’s report claimed mitigation was the cheaper option, no doubt you can find other reports that claim the opposite.
It all comes down to how you crunch the numbers, and most of those doing the number crunching – on both sides of the debate – probably aren’t free from political bias.
Regarding the debate over what foods we’re supposed to eat to have a low carbon footprint, as you say, this aspect of the debate is silliness, as is the “CO2 can’t be a pollutant because it’s essential to life” claim.
Fertilisers can be pollutants, check out a few rivers.