Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The alternative is to spend all day every day - during the growing season - on your hands and knees pulling every weed out of the garden/field.
In a garden, that is certainly feasible. In a field, it is not.
Hey by the way - just yesterday I deep-tilled our new garden plot, tilling in loads of dried cattle manure from my folks' farm. Now we're getting gentle thunderstorms. I can't wait to get back into the garden and get everything planted. How cool is that!?
What was actually suggesting was that a a next generation GM corn that would control weeds on its own would be really something.
I suspect my garden's a bit smaller than yours, but I've got tomatoes, peppers, and cilantro planted.
Perhaps most people didn't really think it was worth responding to, or refuting.
A couple nice quotes:
"Excrement produced by chickens, pigs, and other farm animals: 16.6 billion tons per year - more than a million pounds per second (that's 60 times as much as is produced by the world's human population - farmed animals produce more waste in one day than the U.S. human population produces in 3½ years)." So what? It's called FERTILIZER. Spread it around in your garden - if you bother to raise a garden. Farmers around the world spread it on their fields. It's called FERTILIZER, and it works GREAT!
"Water used for farmed animals and irrigating feed crops: 240 trillion gallons per year- 7.5 million gallons per second (that's enough for every human to take 8 showers a day, or as much as is used by Europe, Africa, and South America combined).
Not true. According to American Water Works Association Research Foundation (http://aquacraft.com/Publications/resident.htm - broken link) about 56 percent of total water used in the US is for residential consumption. Furthermore, 57 percent of residential water goes to watering the yard.
If selfish American suburbanites would just stop wasting water on their lawns, our water problem would be solved. Period. This is NOT an agricultural (meat) problem. This is a "city folks" problem!
In fact, I'd bet $100 that Kathy Freston has a nicely manicured AND WATERED lawn around her house. THAT is what is called BLATANT HYPOCRISY.
"Emissions of greenhouse gases from raising animals for food: The equivalent of 7.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to the UN report. Concludes the UN: "The livestock sector is... responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions." That's about 40 percent more than all the cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships in the world combined (transport is 13%)." Absolute hogwash. That is ONLY true if you believe everything the United Nations says is included in raising farm animals for food. Their report has been discredited, but is still being pushed by environmental nut-job alarmists in Europe and the US.
Maybe you ought to do some reading here: According to an EPA report (Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2005; www.epa.gov), total GGE in the U.S. (2005 data) were 7,260 Tg (teragram, or 1012 g) CO2 equivalent (CO2 Eq ) with CO2 accounting for over 84% of the emissions, methane (CH4) for about 7%, and N2O for 6%. By far, the biggest source of GGE in the U.S. is theof the total GGE, or 6,201 Tg of CO2 Eq. As a whole, agriculture accounted for only 7.4% (or 536 Tg of CO2 Eq.) of all GGE in the U.S. Proportionally, GGE from agriculture decreased since 1990 (when it was 9% of all GGE) primarily due to increased non-agricultural emissions. Over 69% of the total agricultural GGE came from agricultural soil management (primarily N2O; only 1.7% from manure management) and 21% (or 112 Tg of CO2 Eq.) from enteric fermentation (i.e., rumen and gut fermentation) as CH4. By comparison, CH4 emissions from landfills (i.e., non-agricultural activities) were 132 Tg of CO2 Eq., or 18% more than emissions from enteric fermentation. Again by comparison, total GGE from the transportation sector exceeded 1,900 Tg of CO2 Eq. in 2005. energy sector – 85% This is 3.5 times more than total emissions from agriculture. The main GGE from livestock production agriculture, CH4 and N2O (enteric fermentation and manure management), amounted to a total of 163 Tg of CO2 Eq., which is only a fraction (8.5%) of the GGE from transportation in the U.S. Overall, according to the EPA report, livestock GGE (CH4 and N2O) account for only 2.2% of the total GGE in the U.S. in 2005. Thus, the society has to look much harder into conserving energy through reducing driving (particularly low-efficiency SUVs and pick-up trucks), building excessively large homes, unnecessary illumination of office buildings, continuous heating and air conditioning of office and residential buildings, maintaining golf courses and lawns (which, according to some, is a huge source ofthese measures will have a much larger impact on GGE than reducing livestock population, respectively meat and milk production (and then, we won’t have to reach for an extra dime for our morning latte). Livestock Contribution to U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions — DAS
"It takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie of animal protein as it does to make one calorie of plant protein." First of all, Kathy Freston does NOT back up this claim with ONE IOTA OF EVIDENCE. She might as well be claiming that animal production was responsible for the Cold War.
That said, it seems to me that the only logical thing to do is to annihilate every single animal in the world. We NEED to in order to cut down on the greenhouse gases they produce!
You REALLY need to find some better sources for your information than Kathy Freston! She is an expert in ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
I didn't know who Kathy Freston was. So I just googled her. Turns out she writes self-help books about relationships. And pushes veganism except when she doesn't push it enough for some of the Vegan sites.
Moderator cut: No personal attacks, insults, or flaming
That should be refutation enough right there.
I didn't know who Kathy Freston was. So I just googled her. Turns out she writes self-help books about relationships. And pushes veganism except when she doesn't push it enough for some of the Vegan sites.
Moderator cut: No personal attacks, insults, or flaming
That should be refutation enough right there.
And that right there is one of the biggest problems with all this stuff.
You get some uneducated, ill-informed vegetarian - who knows NOTHING about the environment and EVEN LESS about agriculture - who writes and article for the Huffington Post. Said article is sheer nonsense that is filled with utter lies and falsehoods.
But suddenly you have thousands of equally naive people who are copy & pasting that article, acting as though it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, and you've seen the birth of an urban myth.
I am appalled at how gullible and ill-informed people are. But hey - Kathy Freston has appeared on Oprah!!!!!
Newsflash: There's a Swine Flu outbreak in all of Mexico.
Perhaps we ought to eliminate Mexico?
Moderator cut: No personal attacks, insults, or flaming
So you're saying you can't refute the facts they present and instead tell us to ignore them? LOL!
Also, I note you've seen the separate thread on the likely source of the swine flu - a Smithfield subsidiary in Mexico.
Moderator cut: No personal attacks, insults, or flaming
I didn't know who Kathy Freston was. So I just googled her. Turns out she writes self-help books about relationships. And pushes veganism except when she doesn't push it enough for some of the Vegan sites.
Moderator cut: No personal attacks, insults, or flaming
That should be refutation enough right there.
LOL!
So the various sources she cites in her article are not worth even looking at since she is (shock, horror!) vegan? And isn't a bit hypocritical that the meat industry sources a few others have cited don't even seem worthy of your scrutiny?
Moderator cut: No personal attacks, insults, or flaming
Just saying a writer is wrong without actually reading it and looking at the sub-sources and facts presented is intellectually lazy.
No, has nothing to do with her being vegan (except that apparently, looking at some vegan sites, she doesn't even do that well). Has to do with her main qualification being that she's an author of self-help books about relationships.
I seriously doubt that you can call the people that have been producing information that contradicts what you'd like to believe "intellectually lazy".
Intellectually lazy is using as your primary source someone who lacks credibility in the field in which you are trying to push your agenda, just because they say what you want to hear.
No, has nothing to do with her being vegan (except that apparently, looking at some vegan sites, she doesn't even do that well). Has to do with her main qualification being that she's an author of self-help books about relationships.
I seriously doubt that you can call the people that have been producing information that contradicts what you'd like to believe "intellectually lazy".
Intellectually lazy is using as your primary source someone who lacks credibility in the field in which you are trying to push your agenda, just because they say what you want to hear.
LOL again!
She cites several sources which were then provided in links
Moderator cut: No personal attacks, insults, or flaming
Several sources have been provided in addition to back up these claims (from scientists, government, etc)
Moderator cut: No personal attacks, insults, or flaming
. I've provided lots of sources -
Moderator cut: No personal attacks, insults, or flaming
.
Last edited by vec101; 04-27-2009 at 09:44 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
