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Cats and Dogs Contribute Significantly To Climate Change, Says UCLA Study (patch.com)
New submitter Zorro shares a report from Patch.com: When it comes to global warming, Fido and Fluffy are part of the problem, a new study by UCLA indicates. Pet ownership in the United States creates about 64 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, UCLA researchers found. That's the equivalent of driving 13.6 million cars for a year. The problem lies with the meat-filled diets of kitties and pooches, according to the study by UCLA geography professor Gregory Okin. Dogs and cats are responsible for 25 to 30 percent of the impacts of meat production in the United States, said Orkin. Compared to a plant-based diet, meat production "requires more energy, land and water and has greater environmental consequences in terms of erosion, pesticides and waste," the study found. And what goes in, must come out. In terms of waste, Okin noted, feeding pets also leads to about 5.1 million tons of feces every year, roughly equivalent to the total trash production of Massachusetts. The study has been published in the journal PLOS One.
How much CO2 does an average person produce, compared to a dog ?
according to the Univ of Washington. That is one reason people treat large dog owners so badly here in Seattle. People that own those things are terrible people.
Animal breathe! They eat! They poop!
the animals were here first? creations favorites (besides us),, everybody needs backup.. cease fire stand down.. we're driven to repair mode...
Pets used to eat mostly left-overs from their owner's plates. Then we started producing food specially for them, which is one of the main reasons hat they live about twice as long as they used to.
Having said that, the stuff in cat and dog food tens to be the stuff that humans don't want. Mechanically recovered head meat, the kind of stuff that only KFC would try to feed you out of one of their buckets.
And my cat loves fruit and vegetables. Western cat food seems to be mostly meat, but Japanese cat food has a lot more fruit, vegetables and seafood in it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
64 million tons eh? That sounds like a big scary number. Oooh scary. That should get the panic merchants panicking. Of course since the atmosphere contains 2.996×10^12 tonnes already, one might imagine that an additional 0.002% is really not going to make much odds.
"In terms of waste, Okin noted, feeding pets also leads to about 5.1 million tons of feces every year, roughly equivalent to the total trash production of Massachusetts."
But how many Libraries of Congress does that correspond to? If we only count the shitty books...
Flingez-moi tout ça.
...someone wants to invent to worry about?
To hear other doomsday sayers talk, the cats only eat wild birds. But anyway, nobody can or would want to do anything about this, so its not worth considering. We'll either live or die with our cats and dogs, and these "studies" aren't going to change a thing.
& the sun of course.. cut down on all the digging? bury the wmd on credit tommyhawk franchise in the holes it says in the manuals.. see you there.. convert the weapons factories into community centers,, solar powered home appliance & gardening shops... something less fatal..
Perhaps that this story will cause the SJWs to start unsuccessfully trying to retrain their little obligate carnivore companions to go vegan. While the rest of the world is laughing their heads off at Brooklyn and Berkeley, perhaps the rest of us can get caught up on our vaccinating.
Now u greens have gone too far, to show m displeasure, I'm going to drive my car to a steakhouse and give the leftovers to my pets!
a worthless big mouthed college liberal produce?
Can't we just get rid of Massachusetts instead?
Ok so, in order to save the plant for their kids, all rational, liberal people will not have kids because it increases their footprint like nothing else and now won't have pets...
I sense an oncoming wave of depression driven suicide attempts culling the herd to make way for Idiocracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
When it comes to global warming, Fido and Fluffy are part of the problem, a new study by UCLA indicates. Pet ownership in the United States creates about 64 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, UCLA researchers found.
That's a weird definition of "significant" given that fossil fuel emissions of CO2 alone are around 10 billion tons per year. Even if we take the numbers given at face value (and we should not) that's substantially less than 1% of all CO2 emissions.
Dogs and cats are responsible for 25 to 30 percent of the impacts of meat production in the United States, said Orkin.
Yeah they eat a lot of the nasty stuff we turn our noses up at. What? You thought Fluffy was getting top sirloin?
Compared to a plant-based diet, meat production "requires more energy, land and water and has greater environmental consequences in terms of erosion, pesticides and waste," the study found. And what goes in, must come out. In terms of waste, Okin noted, feeding pets also leads to about 5.1 million tons of feces every year, roughly equivalent to the total trash production of Massachusetts.
Evidently they are unaware that while cats are obligate carnivores dogs actually are omnivores and can eat and thrive on most of the same foods you do. They prefer meat (like a lot of humans) and its and important part of their diet when available but dogs can and sometimes do live without meat just fine. Furthermore most dog food sold contains substantial amounts of grains, vegatables and even fruit. So a lot of that poop comes from plants. Pets are little different from any other animal and we are hardly stressing the earth's carrying capacity with a few million dogs.
And this is why conservatives hate liberals.
And my cat loves fruit and vegetables. Western cat food seems to be mostly meat, but Japanese cat food has a lot more fruit, vegetables and seafood in it.
While you can feed cats vegetation successfully, they are in actuality obligate carnivores. Their digestive systems are really designed to break down cellulose, they lack the proper teeth for mastication, and their metabolisms are unable to synthesize certain nutrients which are only found in animal flesh unless you are really breaking out the chemistry set. Your cat might willingly eat fruits or veggies but for the most part they aren't especially good for them. One of my cats years ago loved Doritos but it isn't something I made a diet staple for her.
Dogs have a higher tolerance for carbohydrates, but really, this is an accident of domestication.
Not true. Dogs are not obligate carnivores. Even wolves routinely supplement their diet with fruits and vegetables in the wild.
In any wild setting, all canine species would eat a diet almost entirely of meat because that's what's available.
Also not true. All wolf subspecies (including dogs, coyotes, dingoes) have an evolutionary preference for meat but will voluntarily eat vegetation in substantial amounts and if necessary can live without meat indefinitely. The Maned Wolf has a diet that is approximately 50% vegetation. With certain exceptions most of what you eat is also readily digestible by your dog too. Dogs are omnivores in actuality.
Pets aren't the problem, people are the problem.
That's some kind of pitiful argument. No wonder they're losing.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
The meat we feed to animals are cut-offs that don't make it into hotdogs. It has its own separate grade, "canning grade".
Meat is not grown *for* pets, although I'm sure there's some fru-fru company that does it. As such, the pets are eating waste, and the CO2 budget is zero.
Did they come across the fact that both dogs and cats are carnivores. Both can eat plant based foods but it causes them long term health problems..
When it comes to global warming, Fido and Fluffy are part of the problem, a new study by UCLA indicates. Pet ownership in the United States creates about 64 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, UCLA researchers found.
That's a weird definition of "significant" given that fossil fuel emissions of CO2 alone are around 10 billion tons per year.
That's ten billion tons of carbon, which comes out to about 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide. (Increased to about 40 billion (metric) tons now.)
https://www.livescience.com/47...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
No kidding.
Limiting people to a bland, tasteless nutrient-rich food paste of exactly the right quantity and monitoring them 24/7 so they don't take risks or do anything "wrong" would also help prolong life, but it would also be a living-hell not worth living in....
By that, I mean the scraps that the meat processing plant cannot pass off as Grade C: roadkill, diseased, and spoiled meat (from protein rendering companies), scraps, crushed bone meal, that sort of thing.
Very little if any commercial pet food is made from meat that could otherwise be eaten by humans, regardless of what the tv ads say.
So my point is, if pets suddenly disappeared, there would be little impact on CO2 production, because that material is going to be produced anyway, as are the animals that produce it. About all that would be saved is from transporting the finished product.
Nobody has succeeded in restraining population growth, even China full out repressive regime didn't manage it.
No sir I dont like it.
And the purpose of telling us this is? Cats must eat meat, exclusively. They are true carnivores. And if humans weren't around, there would probably be just as many in the wild (plus tons and tons and tons more animals of every species). I am not giving up my pets nor going to force them to die young by feeding them food that they can't digest. And I don't plan on "offing" myself, either.
When it comes to dogs and cats - he's never owned any.
Tweets coming 3.. 2.. 1..
This study is completely wrong. Cat and dog food are made with the offal, the meat by products that humans don't want to eat. Thus the cat and dog food contribute 0% to the impacts of meat production in the United States.
When you use a waste stream you don't contribute to the problem, you contribute to the solution.
This study reads like propaganda. Unfortunately ill-informed people will believe it.
Basically saying there is over population of animals/pets.
But wont consider over population of humans...
What's next? Carbon footprints of refugees and illegal immigrants?
Its not like a truck full of cows shows up at the typical pet food factory. Pet food tends to be made from human food byproducts.
"The raw ingredients used in rendering are generally just leftovers of the meat, poultry and fishing industries."
- http://www.petmd.com/dog/nutri...
There is no additional impact from cow farts by using animal already raised for human consumption to begin with. If the study got the manufacturing of the food this wrong, how badly was the rest botched?
Yep, so we're basically fucked. Therefore I'm not going to worry about it, I will do like every other human and ignore the problem, offloading the burden to my kids and grandkids. Hey if we can do that with debt, we can do it with other things too.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I once heard a comedian put it this way: People from Massachusetts are the French of America. They think they're better than everyone, but nobody else can see why.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Wasting money determining what cause climate change also causing climate change. This is getting to be paranoia for some who think the World will end. How incredible that we not only think we can solve or reverse this. But that if we don't life will end as we know it.
What a surprise, here on Slashdot. Sorry - 'Climatedot'.
Enough people already commented that pet food is mostly made from waste from human food production, so the only thing I have to add is that I'd also read that the manufacturers said they'd hardly even know what to do with all of the waste they turn into pet food otherwise. Which means it'd probably get burned or landfilled. Feeding it to pets is probably the most environmentally friendly way to dispose of it.
Everything creates carbon! We are all doomed! Pulllleeezzzeee! Ever hear of the law of conservation of matter? Nothing exists here that wasn't here before. Everything will eventually return to a balanced state. Giving up all of your modern comforts while your idols fly around in private jets isn't going to change anything other than your standard of living.
Can't we just get rid of Massachusetts instead?
I was thinking Massachusetts is an equivalent of 5.1 million tons of faeces
My corgi approves.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Pretty sure the same cow that's being made into steaks for human consumption is being counted twice for the impact here as they also use some "other parts" of said cow that humans generally don't eat, for animal food.
Those animals would've been grown and breed anyway for human consumption, they aren't raised just to a cat or dog can have prime ribs or whatever.
TFS mostly compares CO2 output caused by diet.
From that point of view :
- cats are strict carnivore. They can't skip meat in their meat (they'll miss tons of stuff). They can't do anything but eat other animals.
(Well for now. By the time the "million-dollar-bugger" process can be perfected and be scaled industrially, they will be also able to eat food that was grown in a VAT).
Humans have a very variable diet,
- ranging from only eating plants (lots of traditionnally mostly-vegan diest accross culture + the current latest "vegan trend") as long as you compensate for the few amino acids that some plant lack (basically : don't only eat green leaf salad, eat legume too)
- all the way to nearly as meat-centric as a cat (happens in some traditionnal diet in most arid regions) as long as you pay attention to get enough vitamins and micronutrients.
- the former (plant) tend to be rather on the lower range of CO2 production (most of the CO2 is basically produced by the farmer that make your food, by transport, etc.) and varies mostly depending on the production methods and the transport distance (eating local foods lower significantly energy requirement) (eating plants that don't need to be grown in complex industrial greenhouses to compensate for bad local environment also helps).
- the later (mostly meat) will be more or less the same range of CO2 as cats. Because you need to constantly grow plants (see above mention) to get enough food to feed the meat-producing animal, until that animal is big enough to provide enough meat, at which point you butcher it for meat. Various animal species will produce more or less CO2 (chicken - i think, i might remember wrong - require less food than beef), transport wil have a huge impact.
In short :
- A: sun -> plant -> transport -> food in your plate
- B: sun -> plant -> transport -> forage -> animal -> transport -> food in your plate (or in kitty's bowl)
Method B has more steps and loses more energy at each inefficient step.
Hence the interests in method to grow meat in a vat, the same way you could grow algae (cf. million-dollar-burger) :
- it has the potential to be much more efficient by short cutting the extra steps
(In addition to being less cruel toward an algae-like culture vs. living animals, which is beside the point of this discussion)
so TL;DR:
we're somewhere between "as bad as them" and "more efficient" depending on what we eat and where/how it is produced.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
TFS mostly compares CO2 output caused by diet.
...for the very obvious reason that cats and dogs don't drive cars.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
That must smell real bad.
So I can tell the dog the real reason he cannot fart in the living room--he is affecting the whole planet, combined with my own private efforts to bring about change on this planet
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Except that developing countries tend to, you know, develop {...} Better to control the population growth while the development is happening,
Except that demographic transition IS A THING.
And as the countries are developing, the birth rate is getting lower.
So better control of the population is auto-happening and has been measured everywhere.
(Basically, as society develops, children aren't an advantage - helping hands in the farm - but are a burden - need education, etc.
So overtime parent have less incentives to have as many as possible,
which in turn compensate the fact that modern medicine is having less of the them dying of diseases.
That's an actually observed phenomenon)
So "one child policies" aren't the best method.
Having them access education, better jobs, even better farming equipment will accelerate the transition.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I am long a supporter of making positive changes to combat climate change. But after reading this all I can conclude is some researching the topic are grasping for anything to keep the grant money cash flow going while making a serious problem look ridiculous to the average person.
If this is best we've got to convince people, we lost the battle and the deniers have won. If they won't believe real climate science, they certainly won't believe this burning tire fire of a research paper.
If we weren’t feeding our beloved pets with all those undesirable animal byproducts, we could easily use it to keep school cafeterias and Taco Bell supplied.
Economics 101: every penny matters. Yes, the good meant sells for $100, and the cut-offs sell for $5. But that last $5 is the difference between profit and loss. The pet food keeps the industry alive.
Newsflash, In the wild catching prey is hard. wolves will eat fruit and veggies as a 'desperation move' they biologically get very little nutrition out of it. this doesn't mean you should feed fido your strict vegan diet.
Who said anything about feeding a dog a vegan diet? Certainty not me. All I said is that it is a proven fact that dogs (and evidently wolves) can live healthfully without eating animal flesh if necessary. Nobody is recommending this as something anyone ought to do as a routine matter. Wolves are apparently able to do so too and some types of wolves like the Maned Wolf eat nearly 50% of their diet from plant matter. They are well evolved to live on meat but unlike cats they can actually digest plant matter and derive meaningful nutrition from it. Most dog food sold has substantial amounts of plant matter so odds are that your dog is getting a lot of their nutrients from plants. Meat is expensive so dog food manufacturers put in as much vegetation as they can get away with. Don't take my word for it, look on the ingredients label sometime.
Wolves are not dogs and dogs are not wolves. What applies to one does not necessarily apply to the other despite their shared genetic heritage. They are similar but one has to be careful of the differences which are not trivial. There is a lot of idiotic and debunked animal behavior theory based on assuming dog behavior should track closely with wolf behavior when it in actuality does not. For example a lot of pack and dominance theory ("be the alpha in your pack", etc) is demonstrably nonsense but it has held on for years based on long since debunked early studies of wolf behavior that assumed dogs = wolves.
As much as well all hate to say it, and hate to talk about it, we humans are the biggest contributor to CO2. The other problems is we take down more trees that absorb CO2. We know all this of course. But the biggest 2 parts oft his equation are probably that while the birth rates of 1st world major nations (Especially Japan) are low, the nation of the poor sections or large countries (India, and rural areas of China due to farmland and some parts of Africa, which is one of the largest continents in the world, (Look up the Gall-Peter's Projection world map if you think it's not) have higher birth rates, and have for years. Which is why we are now at 7.5 billion people and counting.
We probably need to be talking about that issue rather than ignoring it because talking about it means having to ask what we should do. I'm not advocating anything like ignoring human rights, or mass population "adjustments", but we do need to talk about it. It's not going away because we remain relatively silent compared to all the other green house gas sources that make it to the media. And food waste from that 7.5 billion going to landfills where it rots, generating huge greenhouse gas emissions. And why? Because people make more money throwing leftover food from groceries away than giving it away. So when we talk about world hunger, or even starting people due to food banks being empty, I look at and my mind reels. That also needs to change as western society at least is a food disposable society now. Kind of like Japan's disposable economy in the 80-90's before their long recession: They were throwing away working appliances/tools because new ones were out and going to a used goods shop was socially low class and companies made more money when people threw their old goods away. (Foreigners living there could get free home furnishings as long as they were discrete about it).
Anyway, we've got lots of reasons for CO2, and pets for me are low on my radar of greenhouse gas sources in light of things like this. We need to plant a lot more trees and stop deforestation immediate (to eat of the CO2) and then stop richer societies from being so wasteful on food. Easiest thing to tackle because taking on the big 7.5 'B' problem..
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
See Subject. Who cares. Pets keep people sane. Without pets there would be a lot more homicide I imagine.
OK, I see 13.6 million cars for a year and I immediately go for gas/cat equivalence.
There are 78 million dogs and 86 million cats.
The average cat weighs 8.4 pounds and (I'm pulling a number out of my a$$ because the only I could find is breed related) the average dog weighs 40 pounds.
457 million cats/13.6 million cars translates into about 33 cats per car.
The average US car drives 13474 miles per year. This means we get 408 mpc (miles per cat!)
> Limiting people to a bland, tasteless nutrient-rich food paste of exactly the right quantity and monitoring them 24/7 so they don't take risks or do anything "wrong" would also help prolong life, but it would also be a living-hell not worth living in....
Yet so many subscribe to Facebook....
... or, more precisely, dog shit? :)
Arguing about global warming is like picking at a scab. It does nothing to solve the problem which is too many people.
Arguing about overpopulation is senseless. When people are better educated and have time to think about doing other things, they decrease their own birth rates. We should be arguing about in equality, which is what leads to some people being undereducated, which is what leads to overpopulation.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
animals playing with matches? explosive gases from greener grasses? cease fire stand down.. give ourselves some time to come around...
just cats and dogs? study check.. well............... Need a hacker for general ethical hacks? specialized hacks, hack into email accounts(gmail, yahoo, aol etc.), gain access to various social networks (such as facebook, twitter, instagram, badoo etc.), specialized and experienced hacking into educational institutions, change of grades, clearing of criminal records, hack blogs, clear credit card debts, drop money into credit cards, smartphone hacks, hack into banks accounts in various countries etc. contact us via magicfinder217@gmail.com
Give me a break.
If dogs and cats really do contribute this much to climate disruption, perhaps we ought to start a conversation about curtailing pet ownership. Perhaps we could have nationwide confiscation and euthanasia of pets to reduce the impact, and allow hunters to kill stray dogs and cats.
Maybe we could poison stray dogs with Tylenol like they do in India and Russia so they can die slow, painful deaths as their livers fail.
Just brainstorming, though.
While I have no doubt that this is true, this is an attempt by the Koch Octupus to get Cat and Dog people angry at attempts to fight climate change.
And it will work. Well played nihilistic self destructive tycoons.
Well played.
We don't have much to worry about until they start living together, we have human sacrifices and mass hysteria.
Would be interesting to put that in comparison to what comes out of cows. I would say the "green" byproducts that come from the posterior of our bovines eclipses what the family pets produce
40 years ago, it was unheard of for a cat to live beyond 10 years, today 20 is not too unusual - and that's down to diet.
We have an outside cat, she had a series of shots when she was about a year old, same time she was "fixed" - that was in 2006, and she's still looking healthy.
And "dog years" being 7x "human years" is also starting to see some dogs reaching "150" in "dog years".
So we should destroy all animal life to save the planet.
I know, how about we murder all the hippies and liberals and anyone with a liberal arts degree How much CO2 will that save? Then we can keep Fido and Fluffy.
Waits for all the people who pretend to be indignant over purported "liberal" violence, to voice their opprobrium.
*crickets*
Hmm. Guess they don't care about you.
Arguing about global warming is like picking at a scab. It does nothing to solve the problem which is too many people. In the meantime we keep breeding, or better still - importing people to breed for us transitioning them from a low CO2 production lifestyle to a 1st world max CO2 and pollution lifestyle. Well done, us.
Yes, yes, now you're the one proposing everybody live in grass huts like paupers, well, except for yourself, because obviously you can't give up a thing.
Buy a bicycle, can't have it all.
Just an excuse to Tax having pets ... of any kind. $10 carbon tax per year for cat/dog. $100 for a horse. etc.
Sigh!
I'm not originally from Massachusetts, and I've lived in a whole bunch of states (Alabama, Connecticut, Maine and now Iowa), and I can see why people from Mass have this attitude about environmental issues. It is very clear that on environmental issues both large and small, not only is Mass better than they in terms of regulations but also in terms of people simply being willing to do minor things in their day-to-day lives like reusing things rather than throwing them out, or keeping their heating and air conditioning at temperatures that reduce use, etc.
Since they've found methane is a far more significant to climate change, how much methane do the animals and their associated food production cause?
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
It actually boils down to an even simpler statement, "Just Die. For the good of the planet, just die."
If I feed him the wrong stuff, my dog contributes significantly to climate change in my house.
Try living next to Connecticut and not developing a sense of superiority.
Once they convince you to eat your kids to save the planet, they will have total control over you. The pet thing is just a test.
What? Who is losing? What are they losing? Researchers tried to quantify the impact of pet ownership on climate change and published their findings, and thus someone is losing? Who are you, Trump?
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
To single out poor Fido and Kitty for our ills when there are so many other larger contributors to global warming.
People would have us not enjoying ourselves at all....
The simple fact is there are just too many people on the planet. But no one really wants to talk or tackle the population growth problem.
This
You can't take my fluffy unless you pry her out of my dead carbon rich fingers. Climate change and carbon be damned, you can't take fluffy.
Would that make Maryland the Garden of Eden since they are next to Delaware?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Wow you are insane.
The berry fruit and so forth (and grass !) is msotly used to get some supplement like vitamine and so forth. teh part you lniked quite make clear that their die is protein (big ungulate, if none found small animals, eggs etc...). bladded wolf in this manner are the notable exception. Try to feed too much fruit or vegetable to most dog species, and you will get a dog with digestion and intestine problems. This has to be a case by case but dog and wolf mostly need meat, while not 100% obligate they are near enough in most cases.
I recommend a sustained saturation bombing of the entire planet for at least a few decades. It'll take some serious dedication, but I bet that if we can eliminate all life on earth it would put an end to the consumption of resources and production of waste once and for all.
I assume that the goal here is to put the earth into a steady state where nothing ever changes. It seems that change always upsets someone, so we might as well get it over with once and be done with it rather than listening to constant complaining any time anything changes anything else.
On the other hand, if finding stuff to complain about is a hobby that some people enjoy then disregard this post and continue your regularly scheduled griping about whatever your latest object of rage is.
What? Who is losing? What are they losing? Researchers tried to quantify the impact of pet ownership on climate change and published their findings, and thus someone is losing? Who are you, Trump?
I think they're referring to the fact that most people on the street think Climate Change / Global Warming is a joke.
They base their opinion of it on the fact that it isn't any hotter and the sea isn't rising (please don't point out random places where the land is sinking). This is made worse by ridiculous predictions from a decade or more ago that have not come true.
On top of all that, there is the fact that they don't care if it does get .1 degree hotter.
like reusing things rather than throwing them out
Hey, how about me? I've rebuilt and kept four pre-emmissions control cars running rather than continually buying new models. Where's my environmentalists love?
Have gnu, will travel.
Awareness of the facts is not an argument in of itself. Conversely I could twist your post to read "Have lots of kids that generate megatons of carbon and ignore the fact their children will live a desperate life as the biosphere disappears and civilization collapses!"
I think it's a little closer to "Don't have kids, don't have pets, just kill yourself now."
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
I wonder how the climatards would react to the notion of having their precious pets taken away. That also means no new cat videos or photos.
I suppose a small few might realize that they are attacking their own interests rather than just those of the dirty polluters, but most would probably just curl up in a corner and cry.
Can't we just get rid of Massachusetts instead?
Now yer talkin'! Why can't more people think outside the box like you? The solution was right there, embedded in the problem!
haha people like you are why i voted for Trump!
Looking at what is actually in the food my dog gets, it is all the stuff I will not consume.
I can see large chunks of blood vessels and other parts that I will not touch. I don't have a problem with that. I get the prime cuts and my dog gets the left overs which do contain vitamins and minerals she needs.
Funny thing though is the "pure chicken breast" treat, which is 100% pure chicken breast. It is imported from Asian countries because they won't eat that tasteless crap which our wannabe health nuts love so much. That part is a bit sad but still better then disposing it some other way.
Now shut up about my dog, I am going to throw a big as steak on the grill and fart while doing it :)
Ohh and there is a simple solution to it all. We need WW3 to weed out some of those pesky, earth polluting humans.
It makes me happy when I read comments from others who also see what's really going on. Pretty rare on this site...
He catches birds and mice sometimes, but never eats them.
My cat leaves half of a bird or mouse outside the back door to be stepped upon. The other half gets barfed up in a random place throughout the house.
wow, BeauHd,
is it possible 4 u to show us how fucking stoopid ur trying to make this place?
fucking goober.
People are still going to continue ignoring the glaring fact that HUMAN OVERPOPULATION is the root cause of practically every major issue that is facing humanity, including this one. It doesn't take a rocket engineer to realize why so many cats and dogs exist in the world.
Soylent Green meets 1984.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
"Dogs and cats, farting together, MASS HYSTERIA!"
Lets just eject all mammals into space! Problem solved!
Amazing that so many people still believe in this myth of man caused "global warming" (whoops, sorry, Climate change). The climate has changed many times over the BILLIONS of years Earth has been around. Sometimes hotter, sometimes colder. The "Earth first" morons latched onto the data during the "modern maximum" sunspot cycle to push their globalst agenda of man caused global change, using the fact that people are ignorant of what goes on in the universe. By crippling free thinking in the schools from the late 70's on, they've created a couple of generations of non thinkers that believe what the government tells them without question. (as long as it is from a liberal/socialist point of view). One good burp from a volcano wrecks more problems with the climate, than anything man has done. All this global warming panic is, is another lame attempt at control.
How many cars of carbon does Facebook take?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Have researchers quantified how much global warming can be attributed to scientist studying global warming? The contributions of their meals, their feces, and the travel they embark on to take measurements in various parts of the world would all need to be looked at.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
We have to shut down Massachusetts. Sorry guys. It's for the good of the planet.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I think it's more due to the fact that the elites who lecture us about our carbon footprints do so from their private jets.
A lot of pet food is no longer meat based, meat has been replaced with free corn protein left over from the fermentation of Ethanol
Rick B.
studies have shown that professors are the worst polutants of any lifeform .
It's always been my issue with climate change stuff. Show me a solution that doesn't put us back into the dark ages and I'll buy right in.
Doesn't exist yet. You can't dismantle what we have _hoping_ the green-friendly methods will handle it.
This 'study' sounds an awful lot like Vegan trolling.Tell people "Feeding your pets is destroying the planet because you're feeding them filthy murder-meat! You should feed your pets only a PLANT-BASED Vegan diet!" then sit back and watch the completely outraged comments about peoples beloved pets dying of malnutrition.
As a few others have pointed out: They're not raising and slaughtering cattle specifically to make dog and cat food. They're using the leftovers that aren't appetizing to humans but that is still perfectly edible and nutritious for animals.
What's really going on here is a recurring theme: someone wants to attract attention so maybe they get some research grant money.
most dog and cat foods are not using purpose grown meats, but rather 'byproducts' so meat grown for human consumption, then 'trimmings' and 'excess' used for dog and cat food.
They're serving "special" Kool-aid at the university garden patio. You know, for the good of the planet.
no, just die. You see, in their eyes, HUMANS are the problem.
Pets emit CO2, plants absorb CO2 to form cellulose, cows eat cellulose, pets eat cows. The only way you can change CO2 levels via this cycle is if the ratio of CO2 consumers (plants) to CO2 emitters (animals) changes appreciably. It's self-stabilizing because if excess CO2 is emitted, it encourages more plant growth. If CO2 levels drop, it discourages plant growth.
Climate change due to CO2 happens because we're digging up carbon which is buried deep underground, converting it to CO2 by burning it, and releasing it into the atmosphere. This is increasing atmospheric CO2 levels far faster than new plants can remove it (and even if they remove it, it mostly gets released again as the dead plant is decomposes or is eaten). That buried carbon (oil, coal, gas) comes from ancient plants which died and were buried. Hence the term "fossil" fuels. They removed the CO2 from an atmosphere which had almost no oxygen and was very high in CO2, eventually converting it into the (relatively) oxygen-rich atmosphere we enjoy today. So burning fossil fuels drives the atmosphere back towards that ancient state where only plants could live and animals couldn't.
This whole "study" is part of a disturbing trend I'm seeing where people (either deliberately or ignorantly) analyze only part of the system to try to make something look good or bad, instead of properly analyzing the entire system. e.g. So-called zero emissions vehicles, which aren't really zero emissions. They just move the emissions from the tailpipe to the power plant which generates the electricity or hydrogen. Since their overall energy efficiency is only about 30% better than that of ICE vehicles (their operating cost is lower because coal is about 10x cheaper than gasoline per MJ), they're still causing a lot of CO2 emissions as opposed to carpooling or public transportation.
How much carbon dioxide do Researchers produce on a yearly basis?
And how, one must ask, is this guy anymore qualified to discuss climate than Al Gore. "Geography professor" has zero, and I do mean zero, science background to discuss climate. Much less biological contributions to climate.
What a waste have a study. Why not research what to do about the problem? Wee aren't going to give up our pets. They're our family members. There are many worse causes of pollution.
It's FOR YOUR OWN GOOD, citizen. Now back to work before we send your parents to the camps!
Wolves cannot live healthily without meat. There is literally no supporting evidence for your position.
Not true. We know for a demonstrated fact that wolves are not obligate carnivores which means by definition they can survive without animal protein. Wolves share strong similarities to dogs in their digestive systems. For them to live without animal protein for extended periods obviously takes careful control of their diet to accomplish and would be difficult in the wild but it can be done. There is no particular purpose to doing so but that doesn't mean it cannot be done. It's actually been done for cats which are obligate carnivores (some crazy vegans) so it's quite reasonable to believe it could be done for wolves as well.
Anyway you're kind of missing the point. Dogs and wolves are basically omnivores. If you want to call them carnivores, fine, but with the understanding that they are not obligate carnivores. They are well adapted to consume meat and evolutionarily prefer it but strictly speaking they can survive without it.
Na just means war and famine will be the methods to keep the population in check.
No sir I dont like it.
Been-there done-that. You know there have been wars fought over byrd poop. Mostly because byrd poop (aka guano) was very helpful in making bombs (as well as being fertilizer for food)
Fortunately (unfortunately?), we discovered how to industrialize a process to fix nitrogen straight from the air (haber-bosch), so we don't need to annex and dig up islands for byrd poop anymore. We just need to burn natural gas...
I think it's more due to the fact that the elites who lecture us about our carbon footprints do so from their private jets.
That, along with nearly every major prediction made by climate alarmists having turned out to not be accurate, and in fact in most instances turning out to be *wildly* inaccurate.
Also contributing to the public's general dismissal of AGW is that all those highly-touted computer climate models they reference to scare people are incapable of modeling *past* climate changes when given the known climate-related data for the period in question.
Why are we even talking about making enormous political, ideological, economic, and societal changes based on what climate models say which cannot even somewhat-accurately reproduce *past* climate changes with known data, FFS!?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Here's a guess, from 3 seconds (literally) not reading the article entirely, just 3 seconds spent in total.
If dogs and cats are responsible for 30% of meat production, then 70% of meat production is from not cats and dogs. Since we don't have a huge alternative carnivore culture, most of that would be us.
Since this was about how cats and dogs could be a significant factor, this simple maths should have been clearly possible to anyone who read. Either you're not reading or you are crap at maths.
"With Folder Hands" if I remember correctly.
For Democrats, PETA, Greenies and Progressives, one simple costless step cuts climate change and CO2 emissions by over 50%; simply stop emitting CO2. Not exhaling CO2, any one can do. Not exhaling CO2, eliminates pet emissions, auto emissions, all emissions associated with the person not exhaling CO2. 50% US population reduction would reduce pollution and climate influences more than 50%.
For sane people a better solution is taught by people of Friendly Aqauponics (FA). At friendlyaquaponics.com, you can learn all you need to build a home system that can produce all the plants you need to eat, or want to eat, sans artificial light and heat. FA does not sell tanks, chemicals & stuff. FA does live nicely selling produce. Study, build the system, plant it, eat well and sans all the pollution of our farm system. Eat organic, non GMO, picked minutes ago food, sans ships, refrigeration, chemicals, trucks & green grocers.
I have and use a aquaponic system designed by FA, built by me at home. FA will not know I wrote this, no profit to me.
I specifically came here to say that my cat is considerably more important to me than other people's cars. Or other people, for that matter.
We are not paying any carbon tax so get it through your god damn heads.
I did my part. I decided our world has too many problems that needs fixed and so I decided not to have kids, but to commit my life to fixing these issues.
Right now we need to drain the swamp in Washington D.C.
Ah puny earthlings, soon the cats shall rise, then nap, then do cute things for about 4 minutes, then hunt, and then nap... Welcome to you're DOOM!!?
You want the general public to start taking climate change seriously? Then stop publishing articles like this one. You aren't wrong, just distracting.
"Most" people absolutely do not think that it's a joke. Even worse are the ones who know it's not a joke and still have pets / kids / cars / hobbies etc. Sort of the point here.
I actually AM from Massachusetts, and having worked all around the country it's not really a mystery to me. It's educational attainment. Over 40% of residents here have a bachelor's degree, and 18% have a graduate degree. We also have -- going by test scores -- the best K-12 schools. Consequently a lot of things just work better here because people are somewhat better prepared for their jobs.
Which is not to say an educated person in Massachusetts is better than an educated person in Arkansas. Or even that an educated person is somehow *morally* better than an uneducated one. But things do run better when a higher proportion of workers can read instructions and do basic math.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
In recent decades, cats and dogs have been the only exposure people - especially children - get to non-human animals on a regular basic.
Even sadder, fewer and fewer children have any exposure to non-human animals. One big reason for this is that more and more children are being over scheduled into organised activities, leaving too little time to engage with a pet.
Call us "crazy cat people" if you insist, My girlfriend, daughter and I feel more human for having our feline friends. And most of our relatives and (human) friends have similar feelings about their pets.
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
I only had two with my first wife and got a vasectomy. My second wife has never had kids. So all I did was replace.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'm trying to come to terms with why the OP is modded funny and the GP is modded troll.
Is it okay to hate on Massachusetts but comparing them to the French is one step too far? Or are there French people with modpoints here that don't get the joke :-).
That, along with nearly every major prediction made by climate alarmists having turned out to not be accurate, and in fact in most instances turning out to be *wildly* inaccurate.
Name them. Besides "Rain Follows the Plow" and the "Imminent Freeze" which were from other, actually.
Also contributing to the public's general dismissal of AGW is that all those highly-touted computer climate models they reference to scare people are incapable of modeling *past* climate changes when given the known climate-related data for the period in question.
Let me guess, you think the honeybee can't fly too, right?
Why are we even talking about making enormous political, ideological, economic, and societal changes based on what climate models say which cannot even somewhat-accurately reproduce *past* climate changes with known data, FFS!?
If you refuse to talk about questions, how can you have answers? Seem to me your refusal to have a discussion is a serious problem on your part, is because you are afraid. Your fear is that you will lose.
The new cult-religion called global warming. 99% of man-made run-away global warming THEORY supporters (yes, it is a theory) have done NO research into it and only spew what their leaders tell them to repeat (from their jets, yes).
Just like a religion, GW is being used to lead the sheeple by their nose, take their money and control their lives.
WTF are you even talking about??...honeybees?...wth?
OP simply pointed out how most people feel and he's right, and nobody on any side is disputing that the majority of regular folks feel pretty much as he described them. Hell, changing exactly this public attitude dismissing the severity/impact and urgency of AGW and mitigation efforts is why metric shit-tons of money is being spent every day to convince the public to believe in AGW enough so they can move forwards with their agendas.
Your entire post is a mixture of incoherent babble and statements easily disproven by casual observation or Google search.
You need better talking-points.
Because it's a religion.
Let me lay a few things out.
People Change Their Environment.
That's a given.
The Climate's Been Changing Without People.
THAT'S a given.
The big disagreement is on how much of current climate change is due to people - and how much is not.
RwP
SJWs please go fuck yourselves.
Dear cat: you have been with us 16 years
We love you dearly
But we are green loving people in this house
There you go to the sleep place
Where there is no return
That does it! I have a crazy boxer, I am going to trade him in on two pet cows, The study also totally missed a major green house gas, you know, the waste equal to the output of Massachewshits, its called METHANE! I guess PETA will just have to keep driving to shelters in their 1970's van, filling them up with rescue animals and route the exhaust through the window, they love that trick! If they would just throw in a few Politicians with each load, the world would be a much better place! Lets not forget what the Dinosaurs did to the Earth, they alone brought on the ice age!
Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks
I'll give up my global warming cat as soon as every last fucking snowflake millennial agrees to have their pathetic yappy emotional support dog euthanized.
I work at a 2,000 megawatt 2-reactor nuclear power plant. So what this article implies is that my cats pollute more than the power plant. Cool.
Apparently Bill Murray was right all along. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Obligate does not and never has meant that the species cannot eat both meat and plant-based foods. The term for that is 'exclusively,' and there's a really short list of species that are exclusively carnivorous...or exclusively herbivorous, for that matter. Species that get too picky about the source of their calories and nutrients tend to go extinct.
Basically, what determines if a species could be said to be 'obligate' here is what nutrients they must get in their diets--internal recycling doesn't count, if nothing else because it's not perfectly efficient so all it does is delay the need for more--and it varies by species. Not all species have even the same set of genes for internally producing and/or absorbing certain nutrients--and certain nutrients can only be found in animal or plant sources. (It doesn't help that the commonly-used lists of dietary sources for nutrients lumps in things which don't actually contain that nutrient, but rather those precursors for it that humans can get it for. This adds to the difficulty when trying to supplement the diet of a non-human species.)
Don't spend your money on overpriced reduced-lactose milk. Just buy a vial of lactase online. A few drops will break down the lactose in a regular gallon of milk in 24-48 hours.
One thing the article doesn't seem to touch on much is how much the environmental impact of cats and dogs could vary with what we feed them.
They're obligate carnivores, but not all meat sources have the same CO2e footprint. Chicken is several times better than beef, and other sources like mussels are better than chicken. Insects could be a useful source of protein in cat food; cats in the wild often have insect rich diets and house cats don't seem to mind eating them.
Orin's imprint in the planet is the real problem.
To what end? I've lived long enough to see the fear mongering evolve finally into the catch-all climate change. Those involved in it are now so invested in it, that if you followed the money trail, you'll see ultimately what a hoax it is. Living creatures consume and pollute. Who knew. People are worried about climate change as if the weather in and of itself occurring is a sign of it. On a 4.5 billion year trek in our solar system, I'm not particularly concerned with the effects of weather and the fear mongering associated with. At least not as a function of government wanting to tax me and mine to stop something that is naturally occurring.
At this stage, anyone who is a climate change proponent is nothing more than a tool of the system perpetuating foolishness in the face of a clear and present fraud. Since no one seems to know what they want the mean global surface temperature to be and how much money it will take to get there, then the whole thing is a farce and even if they do know what they want it to be, it would cost so many trillions that getting there is nothing more than a cottage industry to milk off of it. The goal wouldn't even be about reducing 'warming' but rather keeping the long game going for a century or more trying to get there in the name of progress.