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Comment: What makes meat eating a global warming disaster? (Score 1) 495

by hellopolly (#45489615) Attached to: Norway's Army Battles Global Warming By Going Vegetarian

Seriously, what is the basis for this idea?

AFIAK, live stock are not fed coal or petrol. So any carbon that they emit must come from the CO2 that was stored in te plants that they eat during there lifetime. So how does that add to global warming? If the plant material was not eaten by the live stock, it would have been eaten by other animals (like humans) or would have rotted away.

Humans can't directly digest most plant material so we have to burn fuel to cook it, thus producing CO2. Also raw plant material has less calories/kg then most meats, we would have to transport more to feed all people in the world. If other animals animals ate the plants I don't see why the would not produce the same amount of gasses compared to live stock. If it was rotting away, some of the material would eventually become coal, but most of it would enter the atmosphere as methane.

So how am I wrong here?

   

Earth

Why Earth Hour Is a Waste of Time and Energy 466

Posted by Soulskill
from the 'like'-this-if-you-want-to-seem-like-you-care-but-are-too-lazy-to-do-anything dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Next Saturday from 8:30PM to 9:30PM EST is 'Earth Hour' (0:30 to 1:30 UTC on Sunday). Millions of people will be participating by shutting off their lights for an hour to show they care about the environment. However, according to this article in Slate, Earth Hour is simply 'vain symbolism,' and it won't actually save any energy — quite the opposite. Quoting: 'Notice that you have not been asked to switch off anything really inconvenient, like your heating or air-conditioning, television, computer, mobile phone, or any of the myriad technologies that depend on affordable, plentiful energy electricity and make modern life possible. If switching off the lights for one hour per year really were beneficial, why would we not do it for the other 8,759? Hypothetically, switching off the lights for an hour would cut CO2 emissions from power plants around the world. But, even if everyone in the entire world cut all residential lighting, and this translated entirely into CO2 reduction, it would be the equivalent of China pausing its CO2 emissions for less than four minutes. In fact, Earth Hour will cause emissions to increase. As the United Kingdom's National Grid operators have found, a small decline in electricity consumption does not translate into less energy being pumped into the grid, and therefore will not reduce emissions. Moreover, during Earth Hour, any significant drop in electricity demand will entail a reduction in CO2 emissions during the hour, but it will be offset by the surge from firing up coal or gas stations to restore electricity supplies afterward.'"
Government

+ - Feds Recruiting ISPs to Combat Cyber Threats->

Submitted by ygslash
ygslash writes "The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have established a pilot program with leading private defense contractors and ISPs called DIB Cyber Pilot in an attempt to strengthen each others' knowledge base regarding growing security threats in cyberspace. The new program was triggered by recent high-profile hacks of the International Monetary Fund and many others. But don't worry — Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn promises that the new program will not involve "monitoring, intercepting, or storing any private sector communications" by the DOD and DHS."
Link to Original Source
Debian

+ - Debian 6.0 Released->

Submitted by Tubal-Cain
Tubal-Cain writes "The Debian Project has announced the release of version 6.0 (codenamed "Squeeze") of their popular operating system. This version, the first first since they adopted a release schedule a year and a half ago, features KDE 4.4.5, Gnome 2.30, X.org 2.7, and the Linux 2.6.32 kernel. They are also introducing a port to a FreeBSD kernel on x86 and x86_64 platforms. Accompanying this new version is an updated layout for their websites, bringing a bit of consitency between their home page, wiki, package search, etc."
Link to Original Source

1 Angstrom: measure of computer anxiety = 1000 nail-bytes

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