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2012-10-15, 09:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
You are being a touch overly pedantic. When people talk about the 'fate of the Earth', they generally* mean the biosphere. And that, that we can, have, and do, <expletive redacted/> on a pretty regular basis to greater and lesser extents.
Frankly, I want humanity to last as long as possible.
*Though admittedly not always.Last edited by Ravens_cry; 2012-10-15 at 09:20 PM.
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2012-10-15, 09:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-10-15, 10:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
Just to reiterate; the line between man and nature is, at best, extremely blurry. Nature didn't give us gills or wings, but it did give us the intellience and the posable thumbs necessary to develop tool-use and eventually build those devices that allow us to fly and navigate even the stars. (We can navigate them already, we just don't have any way fast enough to make actually travelling them practical as of yet.) Saying that nature didn't build us to use the things we've built can ultimately be an argument that tool-use is unnatural, but that's countered by the fact that we're not the only species that has tool-use; see several species of primates, particularly chimpanzees, and sea otters for example.
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2012-10-15, 10:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
Tool use being natural doesn't make the tools built part of nature depending on how you define Nature. However, my main issue here is that Nature didn't -BUILD-us. Evolution doesn't select for things. It selects against things. So to offer forth "Nature didn't build us to fly etc etc" is an utterly fatuous statement from the get go. The human species didn't need to fly. So we didn't develop that particular talent.
Last edited by Tebryn; 2012-10-15 at 10:49 PM.
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2012-10-15, 11:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
Avatar Credit: the very talented PseudoStraw. Full image:Spoiler
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2012-10-15, 11:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
I'm sorry, but this hypothesis is based on some rather dubious assumptions and one scientific principle.
This isn't a simple thermodynamics issue. It's a complex interplay between macro-economics, bio-chemistry, thermodynamics, ecology, and politics. To ignore that makes your assertion, at best, disingenious, and quite possibly flat wrong.
I can't say for certain whether your assertion is true or not any more than you can, because I haven't done the necessary research either, but I simply can't accept it as fact as it stands now.I am not seaweed. That's a B.
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2012-10-15, 11:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
The International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management has come to the same conclusion.
Last edited by Tebryn; 2012-10-16 at 12:03 AM.
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2012-10-15, 11:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
My point here, is that supporting the industrial slaughter of animals for food requires the growing of more crops than a vegetarian focused society. It's not really negotiable when the science is there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_pyramidAvatar Credit: the very talented PseudoStraw. Full image:Spoiler
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2012-10-16, 01:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
This is helpful. Thank you. Though I'm suspicious of any news organization's retelling of findings.
Does anyone know where I can see a copy of the actuall IPSRM report?Nevermind, found the pdf's on the IRM's website. I'll have to hit the public library and get a good look at them.
This is decidedly not helpful however. This is primary school science with a fancy suit, and says nothing at all about the associated production, transportation, or political costs.Last edited by Kelb_Panthera; 2012-10-16 at 01:55 AM.
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2012-10-16, 01:29 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
But... It's even possible to cook something veggy without resorting to pasta or salads. You shoudl check out the indian and japanese kitchen. Along the use of proteins from animals (like meat and fish) they have really explored cooking without them (think about simosas, soups, tofu shizzle and much more). Just becuase you are a vegetarian (or even vegan) shouldn't mean you can't enjoy a broad scala of foods
Personally, I have never eaten something tofu I did likethe reason for that is (to quote Psyren out of context)Originally Posted by PsyrenWarlock Poetry?
Or ways to use me in game?
Better grab a drink...
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2012-10-16, 01:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
I am not seaweed. That's a B.
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2012-10-16, 02:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
Avatar Credit: the very talented PseudoStraw. Full image:Spoiler
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2012-10-16, 03:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
I'm sure someone ought to point out that, at least from an ecological standpoint, Soylent Green is actually a terrific idea...
...while in real-life, err, maybe not. Although I'm sure that PETA would love that one... I'm surprised they ain't campaigning for it already.
Carbohydrates (the macronutrient most plants provide) surely have a place in the food chain (carb reloading sounds like an interesting resource), but I don't buy it that they're that good... Suffice to say that while humans can live ok without eating plants (though that'll result in the need for the consumption of other animals' organs), they don't do good without essential amino acids or essential fatty acids.
I'm not sure you can get those on a straight-up vegetarian diet without supplementation or food choices that wouldn't be available without modern supply chains, as in, food was hauled across the country, which also happens to not be very healthy.
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2012-10-16, 03:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
it is when you consider all the other factors that come into farming, animal rearing/breeding, and how they affect the soil/economy/politics/education/development of countries etc etc..it is not just a matter of grow so much stuff, burn so much other stuff and so on.
that doesn't make it right though..
I don't know much about the science behind such analysis.. but..something quite basic strikes me...
people keep saying (and the quoted article has said they're wrong already) that animals eat plenty more than we'd eat if we removed them from the equation..but.. wouldn't we eat a lot more crops if we took the meat out of the equation?
put very very roughly..say a chicken eats x units of corn during it's life before it's slaughtered and eaten by me..
say I don't eat the chicken..wouldn't I have to eat at least the greatest part of those units of corn to make up for the lack of meat..plus a few units of other stuff to make up for the lack of proteine?
I really don't see that big of an advantage in it...
the whole "we'd eat much less than a chicken eats" seems over-simplicistic to me.. and I agree with others who have said this.. it cannot simply be reduced to thermodynamics.. not without putting into the equation how this fundamental shift in production, farming etc affects the biosphere, the soil.. the economic impact..entire countries would be severely affected by the changes in the employement market..
we simply cannot reduce it all to "less cows around means less greenhouse effect by a number of x" because we have no way to tell that it would actually work out that way.
also, if the whole idea is to make it more sustainable in the long run for us humans..at the expense of entire species of animals (once again..which makes the morality of this yet again rather debatable) I wonder why we should bother..we'll all just live a little healthier thus longer, thus needing more supplies. in the long run we might end up having to basically almost exterminate entire species of animals who depend on us for survival.. all for a rather dubious outcome..quite a gamble, if what you have kinda works already.
like so?
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2012-10-16, 04:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
Yes, we couldn't just eat the grain produce consumed by chickens. What sustains a chicken will not sustain a human being. We would have to grow different crops, but we would not have to grow as much food if we cut out livestock from the equation. That is fact. Not only that but we wouldn't have to transport as many goods from point a to point b, as we wouldn't have to worry about transporting food to the chickens. On top of all this, livestock themselves emit copious amounts of greenhouse gasses and take up a lot of space that could be other wise used or restored to nature (in the not civilization sense.)
It's really quite simple, all of the energy spent by the chicken during its lifetime is energy that would have gone directly to humans had we consumed the produce directly.
And it's not at the expense of the end of all cows. I'm not suggesting we cut out domestication of livestock altogether, just that lowering the numbers and using meat as a supplementary part of our diets (as opposed to the main course) would have a positive effect on the global ecosystem. I'd also suggest eating locally grown foods to reduce the carbon footprint of transporting goods over vast distances as well as supporting local farmers, and trying to eat organically as much as possible because the food is better for you, and the environment.
Does not doing those things make you a bad person? Absolutely not. But that doesn't stop them from being good ideas.
Edit: and what we have is not sustainable long term. Then again, it is possible nothing will be sustainable long term. That however remains to be seen.Last edited by Xondoure; 2012-10-16 at 04:04 AM.
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2012-10-16, 04:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-10-16, 04:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
There are plant sources that are high in protein, and you can get both amino and fatty acids from a number of legumes, particularly the soybean, which are also plants. Don't downplay the importance of carbs though. They play a major role in providing the energy necessary to keep the brain running at peak performance, as I understand it.
I've made my point about the complexity of determining how removing or reducing the number of meat animals in production will impact the global biosphere, so I'll leave it alone until after I've had a chance to read that UN report. Stupid wii can't open pdf's. For the moment though, I still have my doubts.Last edited by Kelb_Panthera; 2012-10-16 at 04:26 AM.
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2012-10-16, 04:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
I agree with you on most things..except for the conclusion that some people (not you, I think) seem to draw from this statement:
which is that
a+b>b+c
where
a= energy and resources spent or depleted rearing livestock
b= energy and resources spent or depleted growing crops we eat
c= energy and resources spent or depleted growing crops to replace said lifestock
and that that's all there is to it.
Farming doesn't just mean plant a seed, water it and wait until it grows.. When you do that, you deplete salts and other minerals that are in the soil and that need time to be replaced by new ones.. so..farming more intensively because you need more crops means you deplete those resources faster..and need to tear down more forest in order to extend the fields.. that too causes greenhouse effect..
It means modifying the lay of the land drastically..we've done it forever, ever since the egyptians started trying to regulate the floods of the Nile to favour their crops.. ever since we dug the first irrigation channel...
Hell...even the bible tells us about resting on the seventh day and about how that translates in years when farming is involved..if I remember my studies well, according to scriptures, we're supposed to let a piece of land rest every 7th year, so that it can rebuild it's nutrients for when we go back to planting stuff on it.
Whoever did put the bible together knew this even back then, at a time when farming was difficult and uncertain at best..and still very much not as intensive as it is today...
There are too many unfathomable variables that come into play for us to reduce it to a mere thermodynamic equation.
The whole idea that stopping to eat meat would solve certain issues, which is what some of the preachy vegetarians or vegans try to push down our throats is just so full of bull that someone should tell them
P.S. I'm not quoting the bible to spread any word or talk about theology.. far from it..definitely not the right guy for that..
I'm just saying, hell..they knew this about farming even back then, several thousand years ago (we're talking old testament, if memory serves me well).
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2012-10-16, 05:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
This isn't a discussion I'm particularly interested in getting involved in (for all it's interesting to watch), but I'd like to point out one almost-always-missed flaw in the "we feed crops to food animals we could be eating ourselves" argument: Animals can eat stuff we don't, and also not all meat is fed on food crops. In Australia, for starters, our sheep and cattle aren't, or are rarely, grain-fed. They're grass-fed. We can't eat grass, and much of the land here can support grass but not much else. Basically, a lot of the time, animals are raised for food in areas that are just no good for raising crops.
And then take, for instance, kangaroos. They eat crappy grass even sheep can't manage. They can survive way out in the desert where you couldn't farm dirt. The argument that "all of the energy spent by the [animal] during its lifetime is energy that would have gone directly to humans had we consumed the produce directly" just simply flat-out does not, cannot, apply to kangaroo meat.
Incidentally, a whole lot of the other arguments against meat-eating don't apply to kangaroos, too: they're all free-range, they don't produce methane, it's an extremely healthy low-fat meat, their feet don't trample the landscape, they don't consume crops nor take up land that could be put to other uses...Last edited by Serpentine; 2012-10-16 at 05:48 AM.
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2012-10-16, 05:50 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
Serpentine is right.
Here in Australia, most of our grazing land can't support crops without heavy irrigation.Mauve Shirt, Savannah, Gnomish Wanderer, Cuthalion and Smuchmuch get cookies for making me avatars. (::)
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2012-10-16, 05:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
And also a crap-load of fertiliser, which has its own environmental problems.
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2012-10-16, 05:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
let's all eat kangaroos
but yeah..there are plenty of animals that are bred on grounds where it would be impossible, impractical, not viable economically, to grow crops..
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2012-10-16, 06:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-10-16, 06:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
I'm now more than a little curious what kangaroo tastes like. I wonder if it would be expensive to import a few pounds.
Er.... a killogram I guess.I am not seaweed. That's a B.
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2012-10-16, 06:16 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
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Oooh, and that's a bad miss.
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2012-10-16, 06:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
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2012-10-16, 06:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
I am not seaweed. That's a B.
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2012-10-16, 06:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
Are they edible? By humans, I mean?
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Oooh, and that's a bad miss.
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2012-10-16, 06:28 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon
They're poisonous...
Although the poison's on their backs, so I suppose cane toad legs might be a possible food source.The Iron Avatarist Hall of Fame!
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2012-10-16, 06:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: PETA releases statement opposing Pokemon