And believe me, that respect increases when you find out that you did not split enough wood in summer and have to grab your axe and do some chopping in the freezing cold, as I found out last week. Ok, I wouldn't have had to, since I got oil heating to, but given the relative cost of oil and wood, I very much prefer to run the oil burner at a minimum. Also, a huge-ass tiled stove in the living room simply rocks.

I can't imagine the amount of foaming mouths and mad screeching from the right wingnutters should that ever happen. Would probably amount to straight-out political suicide.

Indeed. I have been living in the US while working on a project for my PhD for about 6 months. Wasn't really convinced by the quality of the beef either. Then again, I am somewhat lucky to get beef from pastures in the foothills of the alps right around the corner - or at least I was. Moved a bit farther north by now.

Not cost effective, because the externalities are not priced in...

You know, when a lie is so discredited that even Watts isn't using it any more, you should probably stop doing so, too. Makes you look like an idiot.

Beef or no beef is also a false dichotomy. I love beef. But I only eat it roughly every two weeks. Sourced locally, from a farmer that pastures his cows on a piece of land only marginally useful for other agricultural purposes. I guess you could get a higher biomass to meat conversion by pasturing goats there, but, heck, while I like goat, I wouldn't want to make it my staple meat source either. Looks pretty sustainable to me. I just avoid the high intensity feedlot crap. That's indeed the stuff that has to go if you think about sustainability.

Lol, I am a fascist now, sure. Dude, from an US perspective, I am so far to the left that you'd shit your pants.

Addendum for fairness - actually I can't afford the snark. We have the same shit in Europe under the Schengen treaty.

Lol. That 2nd amendment bullcrap sure has saved you from tyranny and kept up the freedom right there, no?

That article should have been from the thank-you-captain-obvious department.

As they say, squirrels are rats with a better PR department.

Al Jauza is the old arabic name for the constellation Orion, making Betelgeuse quite correctly the "Hand of Orion". The etymology of Al Jauza itself is unclear, at least I have nothing at hand regarding that matter.

Moreover, ecosystems often do not reach stable equilibria, but can exhibit wildly fluctuating boom-bust cycles in which a predator population explodes in response to an abundance of prey, then crashes after eating most of the prey, leading to an explosion of the prey population due to a lack of predators and so on - see the Lotka-Volterra equation for a simple model. It's not the kind of dynamics I particularly prefer in my economic system

Meh. Not enough oomph. Twin 40 mm Bofors for every roof, world war style. Now excuse me while I get to a safe distance to watch the fireworks....

Hehe, you got a point there. Perhaps we just need some cleric to cast Magic Vestment for us....