Must be a stranger human. *food.

Unhealthy human food for the dogs!

Perhaps in some minor 'unknown' areas for unknown reasons that could be true, but overall it's far from true. The rotting material creates exponentially more methane than any mechanism could trap. You and they don't even mention the mechanism that traps methane at all, the methane being released is from bacteria eating thawed organic material.

EDIT: Actually, your study quote did not say that "they've identified regions up north where the soil absorbs more methane the warmer it gets"...it said "numerical simulations predict" they exist, "but the drivers, magnitude, timing and location of methane consumption rates in High Arctic ecosystems are unclear." This means places where methane capture outpaces release, or happens at all, have not been found-'location unclear'.

OK, you did say 'if we magically remove all the CO2 we've ever produced' (ignoring methane and other greenhouse gasses) in your second post. I missed the 'magic removal' part. My mistake, but that makes it a silly argument since we can't do magic. If we could, there would be no problem....and if I crapped diamonds I would be rich.

Well, in the context of talking to a person from 1912, if you explained to them that the 'progress' (by which I guess you mean population explosion and technical advancements) of the last century comes at the cost of the environment, nature, and may destroy the planet over the next century (at least for human survival), I would bet anyone with an IQ of 90+ will say 'selling (or even gambling) our permanent future for temporary industrial progress is a terrible idea, no thanks'.

Well, you must see that some of that great 'food production' is actually corn and grain for livestock, bio fuels, palm oils, etc., not human food stuffs. In order to make that 'food', forests are destroyed, removing entire eco systems that provided 'bush taco' (natural foods) which wasn't included in the equations about overall food production. Food HARVESTS of natural foods have declined rapidly worldwide, just look at the ocean. It may be unfishable in 15-20 years at current acidification rates. Kill the base of the food web, and the web falls apart. It's a rare place today that can support a human population without industrial agriculture and food importation, both of which have failed to solve starvation issues to date.

You can only be ignoring that data about it being catastrophic. I referenced it earlier. Just to mention ONE way, by 2025 it's estimated that 2/3 of people worldwide will live in a water shortage. In most cases, there's absolutely no way to fix this. For instance, Northern India/Southern China is nearly 100% dependent on glacial melt water, glaciers that have lost 50% in the last decade, and that rate is expected to continue to accelerate. With no water, industrial agriculture fails instantly, and people die in 3 days or so. There's NO solution for this disaster, not a plan, not an idea, nothing. There are already immigration problems worldwide, how to solve that when the immigration increases exponentially everywhere?

The downvote was not for your opinion, it was for your dangerously mistaken estimations and conclusions, and insistence that, contrary to all human history and all scientific evidence, this time humans will find and implement a working solution to the problem in time (already too late IMO) that's not worse than the problem was, and so we should not be bothered by the coming massive shortages and upheaval that comes with them, because somehow in that upheaval we'll find and implement massive global solutions to currently insurmountable issues. We can't even slow down the rate of increase in CO2 emissions, it's unbelievable to think we'll turn that to a negative number in 20-30 years even if the tech is invented (which still leaves us in Mad Max times at best, IMO), much more so to think we could erase 100 years of emissions in that time. EDIT:...and I find that kind of dangerous unrealistic suggestion insulting.

From my investigation, that's incorrect.
The places in China where hand pollination is used still have bees. The reason they do hand pollination is they switched to a very few varieties of apples and pears...and apple and pear trees need a DIFFERENT apple or pear tree to pollinate, so if you only have one apple variety (the norm there) it won't self pollinate, no matter how many bees there are. Also, climate change is putting the bee cycles and the tree cycles out of synch, making natural pollination even more difficult or impossible. By hand pollinating, they are able to have less than 10% 'pollination' trees to 90% 'fruiting' trees, and pollinate on the tree's cycle. THAT'S why production was better with hand pollination, not because people could do it better, but humans could target which pollen to use on which flower/tree. Also, commercial beekeepers won't 'lend' (rent) their hives out, or require high payments for them pricing most farmers out, because farmers there still use pesticides that kill bees through the pollination seasons.

Other areas that used to do hand pollination have stopped thanks to education. Now they plant more variety (so the bees/insects/birds CAN pollinate for them) and use less pesticides (that they actually didn't realize would kill bees) and are getting better yields for less money than the Chinese.

EDIT: These 'studies' always seem to ignore the incalculable cost of removing all the natural food pollinated by bees, and the collapse of many food webs caused by the loss of that food base. If people are spending cash to do the pollination work, you can be certain they'll go to great lengths to NOT share that produce with any wildlife.

Also, human hand pollination doesn't work for crops like certain grains and smaller vegetables and nuts, main human food sources. It only works for foods where a single pollinated flower will produce something worth the cost of pollination...grains simply don't, and neither do most vegetables, fruits, or nuts. Only large fruits or vegetables could use this economically. So while you're correct, it CAN be done, doing it across the board would probably quadruple the cost of average foods, if not worse.

WIKI-" If humans were to replace bees as pollinators in the United States, the annual cost would be estimated to be $90,000,000,000.[4]"

http://www.wired.com/2014/05/will-we-still-have-fruit-if-bees-die-off/

So, we just need to put 1/2 of America on a dry kibble diet, and in a year they could drop 2/3 of the weight! Awesome! Obesity epidemic solved, just quit eating 'human' food. Thanks Obie.

Yeah, humans = food is really not an association you want to be enforcing in bears.

You need to stop consuming human foods bro.

Yeah, to be honest I was being a bit of a troll, I thought that obvious enough considering what you quoted from my spiel. Human food production creates just as much of an impact when we ship oranges from asia, and eat too much meat and so on. In my defense I remind you that I did say "Personally, I think you should get rid of your car before your pet." I read the article you linked and it definitely sets the record straight. Sort of, of course he makes his own errors like assuming that all dog food comes from American farmland... anyways, you have my permission to keep your pets and get rid of your car.

But as for citing quantitative evidence? Hah, I didn't claim anything that requires citation. Instead I'd like you to prove that dog food isn't transported by truck, or that our beef isn't corn fed.

>> ^dag:
Humans can get by just fine without animal proteins. And as the literature at my local Hari Krishna restaurant says- you could feed the entire world 7 times over if the crops devoted to livestock feed were instead used for human food production.


True, however, animal proteins taste fucking awesome.

>> ^dag:
Humans can get by just fine without animal proteins. And as the literature at my local Hari Krishna restaurant says- you could feed the entire world 7 times over if the crops devoted to livestock feed were instead used for human food production.


I already referenced the Least Harm Principle. "So, every time the tractor goes through the field to plow, disc, cultivate, apply fertilizer and/or pesticide, harvest, etc., animals are killed. And, intensive agriculture such as corn and soybeans (products central to a vegan diet) kills far more animals of the field than would extensive agriculture like forage production, particularly if the forage was harvested by ruminant animals instead of machines."

The conclusions of the LHP are that we should stop eating poultry and eat ruminant animals (cow, goat, sheep, deer, etc.). Reasonable estimates are that we would kill about 0.982 billion animals per year. Less than in the vegan alternative of 1.2 billion. (See: Davis, Steven L. "The Least Harm Principle May Require that Humans Consume a Diet Containing Large Herbivores, Not a Vegan Diet" in Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Vol. 16 No 4 July 2003.)

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Humans can get by just fine without animal proteins. And as the literature at my local Hari Krishna restaurant says- you could feed the entire world 7 times over if the crops devoted to livestock feed were instead used for human food production.

>> ^xxovercastxx:
Thank you, Zonbie, for being a voice of reason in this thread. The European hornet is not aggressive unless defending a nest and the males are not even equipped with a stinger.
Spoco, the European wasp and hornet are not the same animal. The wasp is as you describe: aggressive, frail and interested in human food. The hornet is none of these.
Excluding those with allergies, I don't get the terror people have of bees/wasps/hornets/etc. Being stung is really not a big deal. Certainly no reason to call for a hunt to extinction.


Thanks for the clarification overcast, that does clear things up a bit. I don't dislike bees at all, they leave us alone, it's the aggressiveness of the European wasps I hate, they damn well chase you around (and the kids, I predominantly am trying to keep them from the kids, I'd rather not have a screaming kid on my hands). If they just left us alone I'd be fine with them, but they really are aggressive bastards, and their sting hurts enough that I'd rather them not be around.

Plus they're introduced to this country, so we should be able to eradicate them with impunity... (ok, don't extend that too far else all people in this country other than Aboriginals fit in the same basket)

Thank you, Zonbie, for being a voice of reason in this thread. The European hornet is not aggressive unless defending a nest and the males are not even equipped with a stinger.

Spoco, the European wasp and hornet are not the same animal. The wasp is as you describe: aggressive, frail and interested in human food. The hornet is none of these.

Excluding those with allergies, I don't get the terror people have of bees/wasps/hornets/etc. Being stung is really not a big deal. Certainly no reason to call for a hunt to extinction.