TimesOnline:Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes.
Transportation and food handling are constantly getting more efficient so this is unlikely to change. Maybe we can even get so efficient that biofuels become energy positive.
18 comments:
FIRST!!
Not that it has the same cachet, but it has been SO long!!
SEE?
Casey wasn't lazy, he was just doing his part to combat global warming! As if considering sleeping in a VW Van instead of cooling one of his houses wasn't already proof enough!
@Dawg,
You are trolling like Casey with that one. Times Online is not a reliable news source.
Hey guyz, check out my sweet porn!
BTW, I shall repeat Prop 13 is a piece of shit.
Very funny Alpha Dawg.
Times Online is not a reliable news source.
Eh? It's the online version of one of the UK's major newspapers.
One of the UK's major right-wing newspapers, admittedly, but still: The Times is about as credible as UK media gets. Although ISTR that Dominic Kennedy is somewhat of an arse...
Their Cricket World cup coverage was accurate, if a little delayed.
I shall repeat my stance: SAVE THE PLANET BY _NOT_ DRIVING!
Well, it has been going for 200 + years and at least until it was bought by Murdoch in 198x, it would have been the newspaper of record for the establishment - neither of those characteristics save it from errors of course - most notable ones being their silence ( almost support) over the rise of Hitler in Germany in the '30s and by their sister newspaper ( The Sunday Times), along with Stern, being hoaxed by the fake Hitler diaries.
But I read it online most nights though I also read the Torygraph and the grauniad many times, both of which are also venerable British newspapers.
-K
Does driving hard into Liz count towards 'saving the planet'?
Scum,
Have a heart, the poor girl is obvious cold.
Akubi, there is a serious point to this. Energy balance equations are not as clear as you might wish. There's even a secondary effect that is often overlooked; the energy cost of spending money. Sure it seems like spending an extra $3k for the hybrid model has a payback and uses less energy but what if you are a coal seller and you earn the extra $3k by selling more coal? If the world were a simple place Casey would be a millionare. In fact ever since the survivors of the Golgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B switched to leaves as currency we all are millionares.
Here is an interesting link:
http://rypweb.com/home.aspx?cat=42320
The Miracle of Touch
Aleksey Serin
Massage Therapist
A movie that is coming out in 2002 claiming that both Jesus
and his
disciples were gay..sign to
stop the movie from showing in America....
Serin signed #301 and #302
http://www.vpg.sulinet.hu/pipermail/vpg2005/2002-June/000140.html
The Miracle of Touch
Aleksey Serin
Massage Therapist
.....
Ok, now where are all the "happy ending" jokes?
aaack!!
S_t_C
Your Jedi mind tricks do not work on me, young Padawan.
"The figure was based on Japanese methods of industrial beef production but Mr Goodall says that farming techniques are similar throughout the West."
No they aren't, and I suspect Mr Goodall knows that perfectly well. Much of the beef in the West is raised on open range, where the marginal cost is the cost of occasional winter feed and of slaughtering the animal. Japanese industrial beef production is quite possibly THE most energy-intensive food production source I am aware of. Not only is industrial meat production very energy-inefficient, as total calories are dramatically reduced in converting commercial feed to meat, but the Japanese are famous/notorious for extraordinarily strict food standards that require unusually high levels of maintenance and care.
And of course, none of that takes into account higher caloric efficiency of grains, or of local production of foods that require less transport and storage, or of individual production of foods in gardens, or of local energy sources (e.g. wind) used by farmers, or of composting of food waste that returns energy, etc.
I think "How to Lie With Statistics" should be a must-read at the college level.
PV, I saw that too and thought it an incredibly stupid generalization. That said google some of the analyses of the buy local food energy calculations that have been done in light of the recent tangerine boycott.
Rob, my diet could be described as pretty much the average American diet (as in, not ideal), only with smaller quantities, so I'm not innocent when it comes to energy efficiencies of food. Even so, I am a big fan of the buy local concept, and I'm happy to buy local when I can, especially for dairy and meat--my experience with local products has been very positive. In addition, local food tends to be from more natural, traditional farming techniques, where you end up with a more nutritional product.
What it appears they're talking about isn't really CO2 emissions (or energy intensity) it's equivalent CO2 emissions. This is a significant difference because a given amount of methane causes 21 times the amount of warming that the same amount of CO2 would cause. This means that if you burn the methane you reduce equivalent CO2 emissions while increasing real CO2 emissions.
Interestingly, California is starting to require farmers with large herds to collect the methane from their manure piles and burn it to reduce smog-forming VOC emissions (which are a big problem in most dairy farming areas of California). Installing manure digesters and gas turbines to burn the resulting gas produces enough electricity to make the investment worthwhile (although only barely) AND reduces global warming emissions.
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