If you read my other reply two posts up, it's clear that I'm not left leaning.

Your linked slaughter statistics are for the USA alone, and as far as I know GLOBAL warming affects the whole globe....so we should count the global amount of farmed animals.

Your statistics also only count slaughtered animals, and not farmed animals like dairy cows, which there are more of at any one time. Around 9 billion dairy cows in the USA. So already in the US alone we have 13.9 billion farmed animals(4.9b slaughtered + 9b dairy cows). It's not hard to see worldwide that figure reaching 50 billion.
And that's still not counting a bunch of animals (read the small print of your link).

The thing with methane too, it traps over 29 times more heat that co2....and most trees don't absorb methane. So even if we had enough trees to absorb co2 (which we don't) then all of methane from farmed animals would remain up there anyway.


80% of tree's aren't gone, 80 % of forests are gone:
https://www.google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=how%20much%20of%20the%20world%27s%20forests%20have%20been%20destroyed


How much renewable energy tax do you pay BTW? Where I live I pay $0. But the government does give some $4 billion of our tax money to the coal industry. So if anything the big tax scheme is from non-renewable.


EDIT:
Oh I forgot the most important bit. Scientists can tell between natural co2 and man-made co2. They have differing amounts of carbon. So it's actually really easy to tell between how much carbon dioxide humans have put into the atmosphere vs naturally occurring carbon dioxide.


Also lions and bears are going to live in nature regardless of human activity - we've added 50 billion large, methane producing animals to the world that wouldn't be there otherwise. Granted the destruction of habitats might have reduced the lion and bear populations, but not by 50 billion. Perhaps a few million at most.

@ahimsa

seriously?
quoting to rebutt an obvious sarcastic comment?
is it that hard to even attempt to be even a tad original?
do you REALLY think i am promoting actual violence?
really?
and you respond with a level of pretentious twattery that you should be ashamed of.

are you even remotely aware you literally made my point on how some vegans lack the basic self-awareness to realize they are being massive hypocrites and tools?

you trot out those tired,and boring,self-effacing morality/ethics tropes as if they were written on mount sinai,and then have the audacity to not even own your own egocentric bullshit.

jesus..vegans are such intolerable pussies.

because YOUR vegan philosophy is egocentricism on narcissistic steroids,and you lack the basic self-awareness to even have the skills to acknowledge that you are literally smelling your own farts,and calling it wisdom.

there is another vegan on this site that i really wish would put his two cents in,because he at least is aware of the hypocrisy and is an absolute delight to engage with.

but YOU...
self-awareness may be too tall an order it seems.
as you rant and rail against the inhumanity and suffering of the agri-animal on a fucking machine that 10 yr olds assembled to put together in a country where they dont even have the most basic of necessities met.

sitting at a desk dressed in clothes that ANOTHER 8 yr old sewed together,working 18 hr days at 23 cents an hr and is beaten if she slacks,is late..or complains.

the list of human oppression,slave labor and human trafficking that YOU benefit from is legion,and your lack of your own hubris,privilege and hypocrisy is,quite frankly,offensive.

so you can sit there in your own little smug fart cloud and self-righteously condemn the rest of us for choosing to enjoy bacon and convince yourself of your own superior morality and purity of ethics,but the reality is this:

you don't give two fucks.
you are an over-privileged,over indulged little shit and is no better nor worse than the rest of who travel through this life..making our own choices and being responsible for them.

the ONLY thing you truly care about is your little habitat and how others behavior affects your tiny,precious little world.so you go ahead an be a vegan for "moral" and "ethical" reasons,because it gives you the "feel goods".

and i say this with all humanity and honesty:
if you are vegan for moral and ethical reasons,then good for you mate.you made a conscious choice and have stuck to it.bravo my friend.

but don't try to push your own little inane philosophy on the rest of us.we may be assholes for eating meat,but at least we are not hypocritical,contradictory assholes.

now if you want to discuss the benefits of a vegan diet.
great...i am down.
if you wish to share why being a vegan for YOU is a philosophy that works for YOU and is a choice YOU made...then great.i love understanding why people chose to do what they do.

but if you keep attempting to make this purely a morality and ethical dilemma,while ignoring YOUR own philosophical and moral inconsistencies.

well..then we have nothing more to speak about.
enjoy the smell of your own farts.

/cockpunched

Why is there so much nuclear waste? Because we have so many people living in artificial environments that require tons of power.

Why is the Colorado river becoming almost drained and getting worse each year? Because of climate change, yes, but primarily because we have millions of people living in desert regions and agricultural crops like almonds that require laughable tons of water. Most of those almonds are turned into flour and milk products because people refuse to eat other food, or can't because they should be dead due to allergies.

Why are we overfishing and using such harmful methods as trawling? Because we have too many people that want a specific kind of food or can't afford a different type of food.

Could we switch everyone to insect proteins or other radical foods like spirulina? Yes, if you want riots. The technology doesn't exist that can make sustainable foods taste the same and people would go apeshit.

So to sum up, yes, we could feed people without damaging the environment, if you could get people to agree to it. Think of trying to force vegans to chomp on insects. As far as habitats, not so much. We don't have the room for the sheer numbers of people without either doing away with food producing land, destroying existing ecosystems like the rainforest, or putting them in artificially sustained areas like large cities or hot/cold desert terrain.

Nature used to take care of these situations via epidemics or natural selection. We have adapted to the point where we can beat most epidemics (although soon we will be hit with something bad if we look at the super bacteria we are creating) and we protect the people who should be dead against their own stupidity.

Climate change isn't going to kill this planet first, the sheer population rise will wipe it out much sooner than that. By 2030 it is estimated we will have 8+ billion people, by 2050 close to 10 billion. Exponential growth is going to suck this planet dry as a bone. The day is coming when we will HAVE to start supplementing food with non-standard food types and soon after that we will wipe out most of the living food items on this planet like a horde of locusts.

No. There are MANY ways to stop it. Eating only non-factory farmed, humanely euthanized meats, for instance, makes one non-complicit in the (admittedly terrible) factory farming techniques.
Not all farms are factory farms, and not all use those techniques.
Wrong. Those things you list are valuable things. Slaves, valuable. Food, valuable.
There are humane ways to treat animals. Animals don't all have the need for 'freedom' that human beings do....some do, but those animals were not domesticated.
nutritionfacts.org is a propaganda site created by a vocal vegan who's been ostracized from the scientific community for massive exaggeration and cherry picking data to make his claims. It's not scientific, it has no affiliations with other science organizations, it misuses scientific data to make a pre-conceived point.
Nice, so at least you admit that humans are more healthy (full-body strong) if they eat meat. Thanks 300lbvegan!

EDIT: The best way to get fewer people to eat meat...STOP MAKING SO MANY MORE DAMN PEOPLE! If there was a reasonable population of humans, there would have never have been the 'need' for factory farms or other animal/ecology abuse. My progeny will NEVER eat a smidgen of meat, 100% certain, can you say the same?
Do you realize that, in order to farm enough food for all humans to be vegetarian, you have to create far more farmable land, which in turn removes habitat and kills millions of native animals in ways more painful than execution, right? yes, meat production does too, but the point is that you also kill animals to get your vegis, but you just let those dead animals go to waste.

You do understand that he and others like him are a large part of why there isn't a salmon fishery in the East anymore, right? Well, overfishing, and loss of habitat. Now we're quickly doing that here in the West. Lose the salmon, you'll lose the forest.

That's certainly your choice. I'll roll the dice any day if it means bacon. I respect your right to take or avoid the risks you wish until you try to remove my right to make my own choice.

It would be nice, but no, wild boar are notoriously dangerous and aggressive, and also incredibly destructive and fertile, I don't think a sterilization program would work for many reasons. What they really need is a huge, repeating, mass hunt with big prizes (to get enough people to join for a clean sweep) so they actually eradicate them. Leaving them alive in the wild, even if neutered (which I don't think could work on pigs, since one missed female can repopulate so quickly) means years of horrendous destruction of the already endangered habitats in Hawaii.
BUSTED!!! I knew it. I've wanted to ask one of you...do pigs know what to say to someone who says to them "When pigs fly"?
.
.
.
A: 2009 buddy....swine flu.

My Uncle used to work at the animal control facility at Mirabel International Airport North of Montreal. I visited him when I was young and he would have all manner of exotic animals at his house (parrots, a chimp, etc).

At one point someone, I kid you not, tried to smuggle in a cub Mountain Cougar. Algernon was confiscated and put into my Uncles care.

He ultimately took on ownership of Algernon. When I was just 7 years old I remember visiting him and being chased down and scratched by young Algernon. He was cute, but those claws let you know what he would grow into.

Fast forward another 7 years and my Uncle moved to Ontario close to our town. We would visit every now and then and see Algernon. At his maturity he was 15 foot from head to tail. He would live inside the house in a converted room for his needs with a huge cage door. He would spend time outside on a very long, very fortified run. To feed Algernon my Uncle would open the door to his room, close it behind him and deliver the food. My Uncle is all 5' 4" tall, but you wouldn't know it. Algernon would put his front paws up on my Uncles shoulders and you would just hear my Uncle in a slightly annoyed voice "shoo" Algernon off like he was a pesky kitten trying to jump on him for dinner.

I remember sitting at the foot of his cage door looking into his eyes. A few things I learned... never look directly into a large cats eyes and never... never turn your back to a large cat.

Algernon eventually went on to a wildlife preserve that took great care of him until end of life... although not lucky to be taken out of his habitat he sure was well kept post smuggling.

agreed,to a point.the narrator didnt bother me that much,and i felt the content far more important than some random youtube channel owner.

this new overly sensitive,overly privileged with a healthy dollop of self importance being placed on the individual really needs to be addressed.

this new trend to silence dissenting opinions and demanding respect for our own,tiny and insubstantial habitats.while simultaneously disrespecting those who happen to disagree is hypocrisy on steroids.

to scream at the top of your lungs to the dean of students that his job is NOT to create and intellectual space but rather to create a home,and NOT be aware of the incredible disconnect to reality is quite disturbing.

there is REAL danger in demanding a space where only ideas YOU agree with,opinions YOU agree with are allowed,and all dissention needs to be either protected from or compartmentalized.

the reason why the free market of ideas is so brilliant and VITAL,is because this is the place where bad ideas come to die.bad ideas are challenged,scrutinized and criticized.when you remove this free flow of thought,then bad ideas can find homes in these small "safe spaces" and are allowed to breed and fester.

the new form of social censorship must be completely,and utterly destroyed.

lets get some fingers snapping shall we?

yeah..i am with @VoodooV on this one.

the man was not working.
was not wearing any company logos or identification,yet loses his job.

for what?
being an insensitive racist idiot?

public shaming?
all for it,and it might even change a few hearts and minds.inject a little empathy in an otherwise rigid and narrow worldview.

losing his job?
eeeeeeh..i think some people are taking the social warrior thing a tad too far,and are not being far sighted in their execution.

sure..we can hate on this racist asshole and ridicule him for his idiocy,but what happens when the PC police find something that YOU do offensive or inappropriate?

would you still be as confident in losing your livelihood?

i have been following this case in canada where this graphic designer is facing 6 months in jail for criticizing and disagreeing with two feminists.these women are trying to make the case that his criticisms,in the form of tweets,constitutes harrassment.

he lost his job.
is 80k in the hole,and the case has been ongoing for three years.

so there is already a frightening amount of this PC police,social warrior fascism having actually consequences.

so where do we draw the line?
who is going to arbitrarily monitor that line?
who decides what is offensive and what is not?

you start going down this road and that line will become more and more blurred until the first amendment is toast.

i am finding it more and more disturbing that people are beginning to think that being offended somehow equates to a right.that their little world,their minute and tiny habitat should be protected from offensive language.

unless you are ok with destroying peoples lives for being an idiot or an asshole.

social warriors:morality police concerned with their own little habitat,but they have your best interest as well.

oh goodie....

Owls seldom get over Mach 2.5 completely different habitat requirements.

"Here we see the motorbike in its natural habitat..."

What part of "do not have a choice" do I not understand? How about the subject of the 'choice' you are denied. Now that you have clarified that you don't have a choice about how the electric company pays you, or how solar works, I'll reiterate, you still DO have a choice about how to use the power you generate. Making better use of that choice would serve you well, but you seem intent on claiming it's all out of your control (and that you're forced 'at gunpoint' to sell all your production cheap and buy it back expensive rather than find a way to use it directly). I'm intent on making the best use of the choices available to me (and I bet to you) in order to make intelligent choices about my energy, choices that have saved me thousands to date, and should save me tens of thousands in the long run, and save uncounted tons of CO2 from being produced. You have instead invested in a system that now serves your needs terribly, and now want to tell others how solar is not economically viable or green, both of which are absolutely backwards from my experience and research.

You were not kidnapped, you walked into that guys home and put his gun to your own head. I wonder if you've even investigated 'net metering' in your area, it could make your system work for even you.

OK, so energy cost VS energy produced is ALL you want to compare. Then you MUST include all energy costs to be reasonable, including the energy cost of cleanup of coal waste failures (that right there already totally tips any scale against coal, it can't come close to making the energy that cleanup takes), the energy used in upkeep of coal waste storage for centuries, the energy costs of habitat destruction/reconstruction by coal mining itself, the mining itself, transportation of the coal, power plant operation (construction, upgrading, and maintenance), and the cost of mitigating the 20-40 times the amount of CO2 pollution, health issues, loss of sunlight (solar dimming is real), etc. The list of energy costs goes on and on for coal, while the list for the energy cost of solar panel production and use in some cases is damn near zero (where it's made with leftover chip wafers in solar powered factories it barely takes any extra energy at all, but I do understand that most aren't made that way now).

Double return VS coal, because you get twice as many KWH per dollar with solar PV, or better.

Again with the 'spend more energy to produce one KWH of PV than with coal', show me some data. Everything I can find shows you're 100% wrong if you look at the lifespan of panels which become energy neutral in well under 3 years on average (some much sooner) and last 20-30 years, while coal continues to need more energy to produce more (filthy) energy. Perhaps in the extremely short term you have a point about cost/production, but any time period over 3 years puts PV ahead of coal in energy costs/energy produced, and in their 20-30 year lifetime they do much better.

Coal made power is NOT cheaper than solar made power. If it was, I would not save money with a solar system. I have already saved money with solar VS buying the same amount of coal produced power, therefore solar PV is cheaper than coal. Period. If it wasn't, our electric companies would not be 'farming solar' here as fast as possible, they would be building more coal plants.

Some people support coal because they have been misinformed about alternatives. That's why I have continued our discussion here, because your information is wrong based on my personal experience and research, and I fear you might convince someone to not even look into solar enough to see how wrong you are, how much money they could save (if they do it properly), and how much pollution they could not create.

Um...I DO grow my own vegetables in my backyard too. It's cheaper, and I get far better produce with zero carbon footprint. Another statement you've made that I take personal exception with. It's not a HUGE effort, but is some effort, but the returns are great and totally worth it. I think many people stopped subsistence farming because they're lazy, overworked, and/or live without any place to farm. I've been doing it since I was 12 and ate my first self grown corn, and I've never had reason to question that decision. I've read about people spending $50 to grow $5 in tomatoes...I'm not one of them. I spend $50 on manure to grow >$1000 in produce yearly, and have enough to give >1/2 of it away.

Not a single one of your examples are 'more viable' than PV in every situation, and private owned home solar doesn't take public dollars away from public power projects. I looked into wind-it's way more expensive for the same generation power along with numerous other issues, nuke-also far more expensive with other long term major issues, solar thermal-hardly working as hoped yet in the few, hyper expensive plants in existence, wave-not yet but fingers crossed, hydro-DISTEROUS for the environment and short lived. (You left out geothermal, which is excellent where it's possible.)
Also, most of your examples are not viable for residential use (what we're talking about here), as you said are more expensive (so are bad economic choices), and/or have other serious ecological issues that PV does not.

Money is the only reason to stick with coal or nuclear, and that's only because the companies that use it get away with not paying for most of the true long term costs, and even with that it's now FAR more expensive to buy that coal/nuke power than it is to make your own with PV, leaving NO real reason to stick with coal or nuclear....so what are you talking about?

*quality *engineering to make this work. I'm guessing this is 3d printed.
*promote

On a less positive note, it's going to be a problem when my amphibious brethren aren't there to eat the bugs and provide a few links in the food chain. I hope they get a grasp on Chytrid soon, we have enough problems with habitat depletion as it is. I'm often surprised the mass extinction of an entire CLASS of life doesn't get more attention. It's a pretty big deal (but I am biased).

Oh I under stand - Conservatives understand. Liberals don't .

Both parties have not evolved. Liberals still believe in enslavement. Republicans still believe that enslavement is bad and this idea have not changed since Lincoln.



With respect your silly EPA analogy Yes it was started by Nixon. But today they have too much overreaching power. When you can stop a Highway from starting because of a simply salamander habitat will be lost then Yes their powers do need to be greatly curtailed.

I liked the video, the questions at the end made it sound like he knows his stuff which is awesome. I don't think we're going to see the end of surfacism ever. It'd be stupid to add levels of complexity and danger to a habitat.

I'm not ruling out sky cities long into the future, but I think that the NASA concept art is to future sky cities what an 1850's flying machine is to modern day flight.