Sunday, November 23, 2008

Bitter Taste Of A 100-Mile Diet

Some environmentalist groups recommend that in order to cut back on transportation needs (and - to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions) we should all try to eat food raised within 100 miles of where we lived. Ever wondered what such a diet would be like?
If I tried to feed my family a 100-mile diet in Edmonton, there would be plenty of meat (until some activist protested that the methane produced by flatulent livestock was just as harmful to the climate as trucking up mangos from Mexico). There would be some fish, until we realized shallow prairie lakes cannot sustain schools of walleye, pike or trout large enough to feed a population of nearly two million.

There would be no coffee, of course (here or anywhere else in the country). Mmm, smell the aroma of that lovely roasted poplar-bark beverage.
Here in New Brunswick the 100-mile diet wouldn't be much different. Except we'd have more fish than meat. And lots of potatoes. Would we have any sugar or would it be just honey and even that - mostly in the summer?

In fact, the very same "Gaia-conscious" couple from Edmonton, which tried to set an example by living on a 100-mile diet for a year, ended up seeking permissions to break their own rules. They needed salt, but the nearest source of salt is about 110 miles away. The green cult is sure merciless to its disciples.
With a diet of soybeans and a wigwam for shelter, individuals would leave a tiny carbon footprint. They would also have a life expectancy of less than 50 years, which is still the case in sub-Saharan Africa. There would be no ecological waste, just wasted lives.

Man not only has needs, he also has preferences. “Waste” has no meaning outside of these preferences. Merely surviving is not the goal. Most people want fun too.
Try telling that to an environmental fanatic. He'll respond with a lecture about sacrifices that must be made to avert a "man-made" climate change. But is are the recent climatic trends really man-made?
An analytical chemist who works in spectroscopy and atmospheric sensing, Michael J. Myers of Hilton Head, S. C., declared, "Man-made global warming is junk science," explaining that worldwide manmade CO2 emission each year "equals about 0.0168% of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration ? This results in a 0.00064% increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number."

Other international scientists have called the manmade warming theory a "hoax," a "fraud" and simply "not credible."
...
For nearly 30 years, Professor Christy has been in charge of NASA's eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily around the globe. In a paper co-written with Dr. Douglass, he concludes that while manmade emissions may be having a slight impact, "variations in global temperatures since 1978 - cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide."

Moreover, while the chart above was not produced by Douglass and Christy, it was produced using their data and it clearly shows that in the past four years -- the period corresponding to reduced solar activity -- all of the rise in global temperatures since 1979 has disappeared.
So there's no need to confine ourselves to a 100-mile diet. All the money which the government is planning to waste on carbon scams better be spent on helping our troubled economy get back on its feet.

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