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Norway's Army Battles Global Warming By Going Vegetarian
cold fjord writes "It looks like no more spam, spam, spam for Norway's warriors... at least on Mondays. The Daily Caller reports, 'Norway's military is taking drastic steps to ramp up its war against global warming. The Scandinavian country announced its soldiers would be put on a vegetarian diet once a week to reduce the military's carbon footprint. "Meatless Monday's" has already been introduced at one of Norway's main military bases and will soon be rolled out to others, including overseas bases. It is estimated that the new vegetarian diet will cut meat consumption by 150 tons per year. "It's a step to protect our climate," military spokesman Eystein Kvarving told AFP. "The idea is to serve food that's respectful of the environment." ... The United Nations says that livestock farming is responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Cutting meat consumption, environmentalists argue, would help stem global warming and improve the environment." — The Manchester Journal reports, "The meatless Monday campaign launched in 2003 as a global non-profit initiative in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University to promote personal and environmental health by reducing meat consumption.'"
If Norway was really going to make a dent in Global Warming, they would stop pumping up oil.
cannibalism
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Sweden annexed Norway without fighting after shelling Norwegian formations with cans of corned beef.
Maybe just on Monday...
The impact on global climate would be NOTHING MEASURABLE whatsoever. Several years ago I read China is about to launch 700+ coal power stations by 2020. Sure, China will decommission other stations in that period, but the overall trend is obvious. Even if the whole Norway, not just the army, stops eating anything and even stops breathing to reduce the so called carbon footprint, the impact would be ... nothing. China alone will more than compensate :)
Vegetarianism is a great threat to the environment precisely because it is more efficient at providing food. The argument is a bit counter-intuitive, but bear with me.
Being more efficient, it allows to feed more people with the same land. Alternatively, one could feed the same number of people with less land.
The problem is that in whole human history, any increase in efficiency has not been used to reduce the human footprint, but simply to increase the number of people until any advantage created by the increased efficiency is lost. A larger number of people don't just need the same land as before, but, they also need more water, more metals, cause more emissions and generally consume a lot more. Therefore, the final effect, just for the increase of people, will be a worsening of environmental conditions.
This is exactly what has happened quite recently. The book "The population bomb" is often derided for inaccurately predicting mass starvation.
This wasn't so much because the calculations were wrong but, rather, because a massive increase in efficiency of food production, the so called Green Revolution.
The Green Revolution would have allowed the same number of people to live with a much smaller footprint but, guess what happened ?
The population grew instead to match the new capability and the environment is in more in trouble than ever. Plus we now have a much bigger population to maintain, with ever growing expectations.
This is applies to any increase in efficiency, not just food and vegetarianism. When you are urged to save more water, food or energy, whatever is saved never goes to a better environment (it might, temporarily, until the population grows to match the new limit), it just goes to grow more people and make matter worse.
So, please, waste more, it is very damaging to the environment, but the alternative is far worse.
Mass release of methane from eating all those beans.
You may want to try reading this year :)
You must have missed it but China recently made an announcement about not building any more coal fired power stations. That's a very major change and completely pulls the rug out from under your argument - so what may have been a good point in July just makes no sense at all now.
Off the top of my head I can't think of a whole lot of options for locally-produced protein in Norway. If you eliminate the animal proteins, what's left? How much carbon is Norway saving if they have to ship more nuts and beans in from overseas, particularly if the alternative is wild-caught fish?
Norway doesn't have any warriors. That was a long time ago in the age of blood and glory. Today Norway's army consists of young boys, bored out of there minds that can't wait to get back home, sit in the couch to play Call of Duty and enjoy the highest standard of living in the world.
How did you get to be so shit at trolling?
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Yeah, but most of the soya is fed to animals. 70% of corn grown in the USA is fed to animals. For every kilo of meat you eat, 10 kilos of feedstock went into an animal.
So you could eat less meat, and devote more land to growing plants, which is the essence of carbon capture. And all those animal farts contribute to global warming as well (methane is a greenhouse gas).
Regardless of whether vegetarianism / veganism is better for animals or your health, they require less energy and produce less CO2.
You're outer category delusional.
The projected sea level rise is up to about a meter by the year 2100. Not in the form of a sudden tidal wave arriving next tuesday, but a few milimeters per decade.
Think of the world 100 years ago. Think how different agriculture was then, how different cities were. A century is a very long time on the scale of a human life and culture.
Let's adapt to a potentially global and humankind-annihiliating catastrophy once the methane under ice in Siberia starts to melt and gets released to the atmosphere. It's already bubbling out, you can see it with your eyes.
Earth will go on, some life possibly will also go on but humans are facing the business end of a shotgun at the moment.
(...)
You're harming your cause with such extreme and patently ridiculous alarmism. Did you know that up to the start of the Pleistocene, there were no permanent ice caps on either pole? Was the earth in the Pliocene an uninhabitable wasteland? We are living in the Holocene interglacial stage of an ice age today. Today's climate isn't the norm, it isn't the only climate in which life is possible. In fact, every species alive today, except for perhaps a handful of human domesticated crops, already existed during the last ice age, and lived through the transition. Before you bring up the standard response about the rate of climate change being completely unique in the history of the earth, this too is false. The transition from the last glacial to the Holocene interglacial was just as sudden. Vast subarctic tundras, built up over a period of 100,000 years (the duration of the last glaciation) thawed and became exposed (in fact, some of it is still frozen deep under the surface in central Europe!).
The environment is facing a number of terrible human induced crises - primarily habitat loss, over-fishing, and pollution. Yes, many species will disappear by the end of the century, even if the climate stops changing today, even if the climate goes back to the way it was before the industrial revolution. If you live long enough, you will find that a slight increase in temperature will have been a minor influence compared to these things.
Challenge accepted.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The projected sea level rise is up to about a meter by the year 2100. Not in the form of a sudden tidal wave arriving next tuesday, but a few milimeters per decade.
1m = 1000mm. Assuming that by "a few" you mean 5mm per decade that's only 50mm/century.
To get a 1m rise we are looking at 100mm/decade, or 10mm/year. It doesn't sound like a lot but the cost of dealing with it is going to be huge.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Also, the sort of grand experiment with our food chain is something I'm not a fan of. Original Nations who ate meat and fat (all grass fed), and were to some accounts quite healthy, good teeth, good bones, compared to the high carb, high sugar, highly processed foods, high soy, low fat yoghurts packed with hidden sugar, etc. etc. substitutes which, according to some reports, we're starting to see the outcome in how even children now get diabetes, whilst still in the womb. It takes a few generations to see the results.
I would much rather save energy on other stuff than on foods, which leads to massive health costs. I would rather continue to get the bus to work, never own a car (have never owned a car), not have too many kids (actually have no kids), and to appease the CO2 people, never fly (I fly once in 10 years), and keep the heating low and wear furry fleeces around the house. I'd insulate but the house is way too old for that, so I settle for better glazing. But food? Mess with that and may as well not be living in a first world country.
I don't think the proof is in the waist lines, considering protein doesn't have that many calories, and even when you include fatty cuts of meat that's not that many calories. Protein and fat satisfy your appetite better than carbs too. If you pay attention, you'll notice that people with large waist lines eat lots of empty carbs and "low fat" shit.
which is totally what she said
That is the WORST day to enforce this on. The only thing that prevents me from aborting the Monday morning mission is Bacon.
In a pinch, a fried Spam sandwich will do. No meat at all on Mondays? They are trying to start World War 3!
No, Christianity does NOT have similar rules for non-Christians. Some who have claimed to follow Christianity may have, but they have to make it up. (creative excuses for discrimination seems all too common for most humans through history.)
Ghettos started as segregation of Jews, in places they were not treated well, in other gettos they were treated VERY well, encouraged to settle, and left alone to practice Judaism without restraint.