Global Warming: White Man's Problem

http://www.reason.com/news/show/134832.html

Global Warming: White Man's Problem
Why poor countries won't commit to binding emissions cuts

Shikha Dalmia
Reason
July 17, 2009

If I were an environmental activist, I would be despairing right around now about ever getting meaningful action on global warming. Over the last eight years, eco-warriors had managed to convince themselves that the main obstacle to their grand designs to recalibrate the Earth's thermostat was a stupid and callow U.S. president unwilling to lead the rest of the world.

But with Barack Obama in office they no longer have that problem. In fact, they have a charismatic and savvy spokesman who combines a deep commitment to their cause with considerable powers of persuasion. Yet his call to action at last week's G-8 summit in Italy yielded little more than polite applause, and that only when he issued a mea culpa. "I know that in the past, the United States has sometimes fallen short of meeting our responsibilities," he said amid cheers. "So let me be clear: Those days are over."

What did this brave self-flagellation yield? To be sure, he got the attendees to collectively declare that they would never ever let the Earth's temperature rise two degrees centigrade from pre-industrial levels. This is supposedly a prelude to the real horse-trading over emissions cuts that will begin in a Copenhagen, Denmark, meeting this December.

But the depressing thing for climate warriors was that Obama could not get developing countries, without whose cooperation there is simply no way to avert climate change, to accept—even just in theory—the idea of binding emissions cuts. India's prime minister took the occasion to position his country as a major victim of a problem not of its making. "What we are witnessing today is the consequence [of] over two centuries of industrial activity and high-consumption lifestyles in the developed world," he lectured. "They have to bear this historical responsibility." And even before the summit began, China declared the West had "no right" to ask it to limit its economic growth.

Rather than engage with the issues, eco-pundits are grasping for all kinds of fanciful pseudo-scientific theories to explain why Obama's sweet-talking ways are leaving the rest of the world cold. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, for instance, recently blamed the lack of progress on the faulty circuitry evolution has wired into the human brain. According to Kristof, evolution has programmed us to be alert to immediate threats, such as snakes, or enemies with clubs, but not for vastly greater but less imminent dangers that require forethought. If this sounds like a warmed-over, 21st-century version of the Calvinistic crooked-timber view of human nature, that's because it is.

Not to be outdone, Kristof's Nobel Prize-winning colleague at the Times, Paul Krugman, pulled out the folk story about the frog and the boiling pot in his latest column to explain our collective torpor over climate change. Just as the proverbial frog wasn't able to feel the gradually rising temperature before he boiled to death, so too, in Krugman's telling, human beings are not equipped to comprehend the dangers of an overheating planet before they fry to death.

But this psychologizing only exposes the inability of climate activists to take seriously the rational case for inaction. In fact, there is a perfectly good reason developing countries are unwilling to act on climate change: What they are being asked to do is more awful than climate change's implications--even if one accepts all the alarmist predictions.

Consider what would be necessary to slash global greenhouse-gas emissions just 50% below 2000 levels by 2050—a far less aggressive goal than what the enviros say is necessary to avert climate catastrophe. According to U.S. Chamber of Commerce calculations, even if the West reduced its emissions by 80% below 2000 levels, developing countries would still have to return their emissions to 2000 levels to meet the 50% target. However, Indians currently consume roughly 15 times less energy per capita than Americans—and Chinese consume seven times less. Asking them, along with the rest of the developing world, to go back to 2000 emission levels with a 2050 population would mean putting them on a very drastic energy diet.

The human toll of this is unfathomable: It would require these countries to abandon plans to ever conquer poverty, of course. But beyond that it would require a major scaling back of living standards under which their middle classes—for whom three square meals, cars and air-conditioning are only now beginning to come within reach—would have to go back to subsistence living, and the hundreds of millions who are at subsistence would have to accept starvation.

In short, the choice for developing countries is between mass death due to the consequences of an overheated planet sometime in the distant future, and mass suicide due to imposed instant starvation right now. Is it any surprise that they are reluctant to jump on the global-warming bandwagon?

The Waxman-Markey climate change bill that just passed the U.S. House of Representatives wants to force developing countries to accept this fate by resorting to the old and tired method of protectionism. Should this monstrosity become law, starting in 2020 the United States will impose carbon tariffs on goods from any country that does not accept binding reductions. But this is a path to mutually assured economic destruction—not to combating climate change.

For starters, by 2020, when these tariffs go into effect, India and China—with GDPs projected to grow anywhere from 6% to 10% annually—will have much bigger economies with huge domestic markets that they are increasingly opening to each other. Thus they might well be better off forgoing access to the U.S. market than accepting crippling restrictions on their growth.

Also, by then they will have more economic clout on the world stage to enforce their own ideas of who ought to take moral responsibility for climate change. The West's case for restricting Indian and Chinese exports rests on the claim that these countries' total emissions will exceed those from the West within the next few decades. (China's emissions are already at par with those of the U.S., the biggest emitter).

But these countries have, and will continue to have, far lower emissions on a per-capita basis, given that China's are now around one-fifth those of the United States and India's one-twentieth. Thus they would have an equally valid case for imposing countervailing restrictions on American exports based on per-capita emissions. The West might well be the bigger loser in this economic warfare if it is barred from accessing new, growing markets.

Obama obviously understands this—which is why he has condemned the House's turn down the protectionist path. So what should climate warriors do? Right now the only certain way to save lives is by calling off this misguided war on climate change. If and when climate change promises to claim more casualties than poverty and starvation, the world will begin heeding their calls. If, however, these climate-change casualties don't materialize, there would have been no need to act in the first place. Either way, the world has far more immediate and scarier problems than climate change to address right now.

Shikha Dalmia is a senior analyst at Reason Foundation and a columnist for Forbes. This article originally appeared at Forbes.

Quote:

---

"What we are witnessing today is the consequence [of] over two centuries of industrial activity and high-consumption lifestyles in the developed world," he lectured. "They have to bear this historical responsibility." And even before the summit began, China declared the West had "no right" to ask it to limit its economic growth.

---

They're damned right. Industrialization is dirty, and we accomplished it largely without regulatory guidelines on emissions.

Fuckers are going to have to pry my air conditioner from my cold dead hands...

Brilliant article. Thanks for posting it.

Good article. The frog example was particularly meaningful. It would be even more accurate if you added in that all of his frog friends were telling him that he was slowly dying, and the frog replied "nah. it's all a sham." I am especially interested with Kristof's evolutionary theory. However, I ask this: the move of homo ergaster from Africa to other parts of the world could have very well been brought on by a notable decrease in food that moves (aka meat). I doubt our early human ancestors were reluctant to move until a few days passed where there was no food - they had realized early that food was becoming more scarce each day and finally decided to do something about it. Of course, that's assuming following food is the reason for the Out of Africa hypothesis.

People have no problem investing. Portfolios, stocks, education. You would think the survival of our planet would galvanize people into doing the same. China and India's response to the resolution was sickening, but the problem starts at home. I have friends who leave lights on, never turn off their computers and leave the showers running for 10 minutes before they even get in. Disgusting

Does anyone think vegetarianism could be a potent partial solution to the earth vs starvation now debate? I have been a vegetarian for a year now, and I find the benefits to be outstanding for my personal health and for the world. Wikipedia has some good information on it. I didn't believe going vegetarian for a year could possibly be greener than driving a Prius for a year.

:lmao

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by v2freak

Good article. The frog example was particularly meaningful. It would be even more accurate if you added in that all of his frog friends were telling him that he was slowly dying, and the frog replied "nah. it's all a sham." I am especially interested with Kristof's evolutionary theory. However, I ask this: the move of homo ergaster from Africa to other parts of the world could have very well been brought on by a notable decrease in food that moves (aka meat). I doubt our early human ancestors were reluctant to move until a few days passed where there was no food - they had realized early that food was becoming more scarce each day and finally decided to do something about it. Of course, that's assuming following food is the reason for the Out of Africa hypothesis.

People have no problem investing. Portfolios, stocks, education. You would think the survival of our planet would galvanize people into doing the same. China and India's response to the resolution was sickening, but the problem starts at home. I have friends who leave lights on, never turn off their computers and leave the showers running for 10 minutes before they even get in. Disgusting

Does anyone think vegetarianism could be a potent partial solution to the earth vs starvation now debate? I have been a vegetarian for a year now, and I find the benefits to be outstanding for my personal health and for the world. Wikipedia has some good information on it. I didn't believe going vegetarian for a year could possibly be greener than driving a Prius for a year.

---

:lmao


Here's a video you'd probably enjoy.

Do something good for yourself and the earth. Haha, hilarious.

...and not for the poor.

Therein lies the problem. Global warming is a rich man's concern; the man who views more people on this Earth not as a blessing, but rather a curse.

Going vegetarian helps out a great deal, because you're lowering yourself on the food chain, thereby saving resources. Alot more people could be fed on algae than on beef. Every step up the food chain energy gets wasted.

Additionally, there are moral benefits, as many animals bred for food are raised in pretty horrific conditions.

Here's the surest way to "help out":

http://www.traintohell.com/misc/gun%20to%20head.jpg

I'm not up for radically changing my lifestyle just because some nut feels guilty about being a human and wanting to live in something other than a hut. Plus spare me the fucking sanctimony. You fuckers are worse than if Falwell could've fucked Swaggart in the ass and produced a child, though, yeah, you jump on any sign of intolerant fundamentalism...save for your own.

Pull the trigger or shut up.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Marcus Bryant

Here's the surest way to "help out":

http://www.traintohell.com/misc/gun%20to%20head.jpg

I'm not up for radically changing my lifestyle just because some nut feels guilty about being a human and wanting to live in something other than a hut. Plus spare me the fucking sanctimony. You fuckers are worse than if Falwell could've fucked Swaggart in the ass and produced a child, though, yeah, you jump on any sign of intolerant fundamentalism...save for your own.

Pull the trigger or shut up.

---

Who are you talking to here Marcus? I don't think any of the posters said YOU had to go vegetarian.

You're going to have to pry my filet mignon from my cold dead hands...

:rollin

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by v2freak

I didn't believe going vegetarian for a year could possibly be greener than driving a Prius for a year.

---

You should put Michael Pollan on your *to read* list if you haven't already, v2freak.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Marcus Bryant

...and not for the poor.

Therein lies the problem. Global warming is a rich man's concern; the man who views more people on this Earth not as a blessing, but rather a curse.

---

This is going to offend a lot of people, but if you had to choose the life of a human and a cow, which would you choose?

First, determine which is undisputably more destructive to its surroundings. Cows fart for sure; they contribute to the nitrogen cycle too but a lot of that flatulence can't be good for the environment.

However, a random human probably eats meat, drives a car that gets under 40 mpg and uses energy to power his or her house.

I'm majoring in anthropology right now (or misanthropology if you prefer) and one thing anthropologists stress is that one should not be ethnocentric, that is, one should not assume that a culture is superior to another's. It would be kind of hypocritical to be species-centric too, from that point of view, and that's what a shit load of humans are. There was a flood not too long ago in Houston in which 10,000 species of animals died in the basement. They were put there by humans.

On a side note, I don't believe eating meat is evolutionary. Early man actually had very little of it and was a scavenger. We have evolved to choose for ourselves, even if our instincts seek to force our hand.

No one has to become vegetarian. I'm presenting a side of the argument that is often overlooked, but in the end, I know the best thing for me to do is state my case and let people decide for themselves. But I do honestly believe going vegetarian could help out so much. For anyone with time, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environ..._vegetarianism. There is a criticism section as well, to be fair.

Anyway, I didn't mean to make a public service announcement. For the record, I'm not PETA member and I don't agree with a lot of their beliefs. I don't equate havings pets to slavery, and I think they go about their marketing incorrectly. But I have very little sympathy for people who are starving and won't make the switch. What was the saying? "Beggars can't be choosers."

Global warming is a serious problem, but it's not our only threat. Nuclear weapons (designed by man), sentient technology, chemical warfare and last but not least, overpopulation are ever-present threats. Valenzetti equation, anyone?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LnGrrrR

Going vegetarian helps out a great deal, because you're lowering yourself on the food chain, thereby saving resources. Alot more people could be fed on algae than on beef. Every step up the food chain energy gets wasted.

Additionally, there are moral benefits, as many animals bred for food are raised in pretty horrific conditions.

---

:tu for sure


Winehole, I will be sure to look into it. Thank you. I have about a month left of freedom, so this should be more than a worthy endeavor.

The US just feels too engaged in the global issues, as she always does. Sometimes her sense of responsibility may even drive her to do some extreme fulfillment like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which led to the down-turn of the reputation US has in the world. The world is a whole body and no country lives separate from the rest, so it's the job of all the 300+ countries to keep our earth a livable place. US cannot and shouldn't take the whole burden onto her own shoulder.

However, the critics are not totally political tricks. Most American car producers haven't ever given enough care to the market demand or the climate change, consequently seldom of the cars they have been producing are energy-economical. With fuel prize sky-high and our pockets shriveled, we have no other choice but to purchase those Japanese cars which run almost double distance with the same amount of fuel cost as American cars do. Therefore, it's not a big surprise, in fact it's actually an inevitable result for GM and Crysler to fall into bankruptcy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by v2freak

This is going to offend a lot of people, but if you had to choose the life of a human and a cow, which would you choose?

First, determine which is undisputably more destructive to its surroundings. Cows fart for sure; they contribute to the nitrogen cycle too but a lot of that flatulence can't be good for the environment.

However, a random human probably eats meat, drives a car that gets under 40 mpg and uses energy to power his or her house.

I'm majoring in anthropology right now (or misanthropology if you prefer) and one thing anthropologists stress is that one should not be ethnocentric, that is, one should not assume that a culture is superior to another's. It would be kind of hypocritical to be species-centric too, from that point of view, and that's what a shit load of humans are. There was a flood not too long ago in Houston in which 10,000 species of animals died in the basement. They were put there by humans.

On a side note, I don't believe eating meat is evolutionary. Early man actually had very little of it and was a scavenger. We have evolved to choose for ourselves, even if our instincts seek to force our hand.

No one has to become vegetarian. I'm presenting a side of the argument that is often overlooked, but in the end, I know the best thing for me to do is state my case and let people decide for themselves. But I do honestly believe going vegetarian could help out so much. For anyone with time, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environ..._vegetarianism. There is a criticism section as well, to be fair.

Anyway, I didn't mean to make a public service announcement. For the record, I'm not PETA member and I don't agree with a lot of their beliefs. I don't equate havings pets to slavery, and I think they go about their marketing incorrectly. But I have very little sympathy for people who are starving and won't make the switch. What was the saying? "Beggars can't be choosers."

Global warming is a serious problem, but it's not our only threat. Nuclear weapons (designed by man), sentient technology, chemical warfare and last but not least, overpopulation are ever-present threats. Valenzetti equation, anyone?

---

From an evolutionary standpoint, no species has the right to exist.

And while eating vegetables may be more energy efficient, vegetables are much harder to raise for developing countries than raising meat animals. A cow is more likely to survive a drought or storm than a plant crop, and the cow, even if it dies, will still provide food, unlike a crop.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by v2freak

This is going to offend a lot of people, but if you had to choose the life of a human and a cow, which would you choose?

First, determine which is undisputably more destructive to its surroundings. Cows fart for sure; they contribute to the nitrogen cycle too but a lot of that flatulence can't be good for the environment.

However, a random human probably eats meat, drives a car that gets under 40 mpg and uses energy to power his or her house.

I'm majoring in anthropology right now (or misanthropology if you prefer) and one thing anthropologists stress is that one should not be ethnocentric, that is, one should not assume that a culture is superior to another's. It would be kind of hypocritical to be species-centric too, from that point of view, and that's what a shit load of humans are. There was a flood not too long ago in Houston in which 10,000 species of animals died in the basement. They were put there by humans.

On a side note, I don't believe eating meat is evolutionary. Early man actually had very little of it and was a scavenger. We have evolved to choose for ourselves, even if our instincts seek to force our hand.

No one has to become vegetarian. I'm presenting a side of the argument that is often overlooked, but in the end, I know the best thing for me to do is state my case and let people decide for themselves. But I do honestly believe going vegetarian could help out so much. For anyone with time, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environ..._vegetarianism. There is a criticism section as well, to be fair.

Anyway, I didn't mean to make a public service announcement. For the record, I'm not PETA member and I don't agree with a lot of their beliefs. I don't equate havings pets to slavery, and I think they go about their marketing incorrectly. But I have very little sympathy for people who are starving and won't make the switch. What was the saying? "Beggars can't be choosers."

Global warming is a serious problem, but it's not our only threat. Nuclear weapons (designed by man), sentient technology, chemical warfare and last but not least, overpopulation are ever-present threats. Valenzetti equation, anyone?



:tu for sure


Winehole, I will be sure to look into it. Thank you. I have about a month left of freedom, so this should be more than a worthy endeavor.

---

^ Great example of what's "wrong" with the far left.


Answer me this? Do you get upset when animals are killed by other animals for food? Or only when humans kill animals for food? Do you get upset when animals die because of natural disasters? Or only when domesticated animals die in natural disasters?

Do you think other omnivorous animals should go vegan? Or just humans?

By the way, you stated that you don't think eating meat is evolutionary. Why do we have incisors and canines?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DarrinS

By the way, you stated that you don't think eating meat is evolutionary. Why do we have incisors and canines?

---

Lets not go there...

He is clearly wrong in his entire position. To value animal life over human life is grounds for a complete dismissal of his argument.

Oblige me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DarkReign

Lets not go there...

He is clearly wrong in his entire position. To value animal life over human life is grounds for a complete dismissal of his argument.

Oblige me.

---

While I think he is wrong too, he is looking at this from a ultra high level. As a student of anthropology, you are taught to not be biased towards behaviors or cultures, as you shouldn't let it color your study, and he was extending this to include animals (I don't know why).

My contention is, at that level, who the fuck cares? If we are all animals, then you can't complain when I behave poorly. Unlike his arguement, which seems to say that since we are animals, we should feel empathy with them, and from that empathy, treat them like we treat ourselves (which in reality, is pretty shitty anyways).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sam1617

While I think he is wrong too, he is looking at this from a ultra high level. As a student of anthropology, you are taught to not be biased towards behaviors or cultures, as you shouldn't let it color your study, and he was extending this to include animals (I don't know why).

---

When life reflects the same reality of an anthropology class, we will have already lost.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DarkReign

Lets not go there...

He is clearly wrong in his entire position. To value animal life over human life is grounds for a complete dismissal of his argument.

Oblige me.

---

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-animal or anti-environment. I'm just pro-human.


In the mind of your typical environmental zealot, there exists a mythical utopia called "the balance of nature". They seem to believe that there is some optimal state of climate, flora, fauna, etc. which CLEARLY doesn't exist. Species of animals have come and gone LONG before the existence of humans. We've had wildly changing climates, extreme hot and cold, long before humans were driving pickups and SUVs.


The alarmist AGW community will tell you we have to do something now before we hit the so-called "tipping point". I'm always a bit puzzled by these mythical "tipping points". If there was a period of time in the geologic history that was much hotter and when the atmosphere contained much higher levels of CO2, why didn't the Earth reach a tipping point then? Hmmm.

Life feeds on life.

/debate really

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DarkReign

Lets not go there...

He is clearly wrong in his entire position. To value animal life over human life is grounds for a complete dismissal of his argument.

Oblige me.

---

I wouldn't flat-out say he's 'wrong'. I mean, he has the freedom to value what he wishes, doesn't he?

I wuld agree that I definitely value human life over the lives of animals. (Well... most, anyways.)

As long as he's not demanding I value the same things he values, or that I change my lifestyle to his beliefs, he can choose to live however he wants.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LnGrrrR

I wouldn't flat-out say he's 'wrong'. I mean, he has the freedom to value what he wishes, doesn't he?

I wuld agree that I definitely value human life over the lives of animals. (Well... most, anyways.)

As long as he's not demanding I value the same things he values, or that I change my lifestyle to his beliefs, he can choose to live however he wants.

---

Well, it was assumed that I always respect someone's right to express their opinion.

But when youre wrong, youre wrong.

We only care about humans because they are close to us, not because they are more important on some moral scale. :stirpot:

If you by on a train track and you had to divert a runaway train onto your pet dog 5 feet away or a random person 10 miles down the tracks, most people would pick their pet. If no one was looking (i.e. no society to judge them), people would probably choose their pet in any scenario. :stirpot:

It becomes clear that this is the case when you lower the human and the thing. If you have a stray mutt on the tracks and a serial killing rapist, who do you value more?

By the way, when arguing animal rights people should not compare humans and animals. Mostly because one is sentient and logical while the other is not. This is wrong:

Animals eat meat, so humans can eat meat

Because it implies logic such as:

Animals rape animals, so humans can rape humans

Animals kill their own kind, so humans can murder humans

Animals cannibalize their young, so humans can cannibalize their young

This on the other hand is a real argument:

It is rational to want to avoid pain, so we should not cause animals pain

It is rational to want to avoid death, so we should not cause animals death

Sentience makes you aware of your own life, you must have sentience to have a right to life

Animals have no sentience, hence no right to life, so we can eat animals as long as we don't cause them pain, as causing pain is immoral

So on and so forth.

For the curious:
1. I eat meat
2. I'm pro animal rights
3. As long as animals are raised well and killed humanely, they live a better and longer life than they would have in the wild not raised for butcher. More good is brought into the world from eating meat than bad is from the slaughter process.
4. I think pollution control only hurts us in the global scope to stay on topic
5. When we kill fossil fuels through subsidies, will the government ban exporting them to countries that burn them gladly? :stirpot:

What does killing an animal humanely entail?

Personally, with pets that have had to be "put down" in the past, a .22 to the back of the head seemed to work pretty well, as they died pretty damn instantly, but I have been told by some people that it isn't humane, and I should take them to a vet for a shot.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by v2freak

This is going to offend a lot of people, but if you had to choose the life of a human and a cow, which would you choose?

First, determine which is undisputably more destructive to its surroundings. Cows fart for sure; they contribute to the nitrogen cycle too but a lot of that flatulence can't be good for the environment.

However, a random human probably eats meat, drives a car that gets under 40 mpg and uses energy to power his or her house.

---

So you would choose the life of the cow. No, actually you will claim that is not what you are saying at all, although clearly that is what you are implying. I know that game.

So the human is destructive to the environment and therefore his life has less value than that of the cow. Now, that implies that the condition of the environment matters. There has to be a reason why the condition of the environment matters. What is it? Is it because life in general has to be preserved? I hardly think over the scope of millions of years that anything we do is going to snuff out life. It's fairly likely that Earth has experienced both its crust being seared by asteroid impact so that rock was vaporized into the atmosphere, and its being totally enveloped in ice. Yet life perseveres.

So then the condition of the environment right now or at least in the short to medium term matters, then? Well, why would that be? Is it because we must place supreme value on plant and animal life currently in existence, so much so that the value of a cow exceeds that of a human being?

Did your professor really mean that the environment must be protected in order to preserve humanity in general, which would imply that human beings have some inherent value that we should care about?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by v2freak

I'm majoring in anthropology right now (or misanthropology if you prefer) and one thing anthropologists stress is that one should not be ethnocentric, that is, one should not assume that a culture is superior to another's.

---

And you just take that for granted like it is a given. There is such a thing as being so open-minded that one's brains fall out. This is one of those cases.

In the past, Westerners took it for granted that theirs was the greatest, most advanced, most civilized culture and everyone less was either in some lesser form of civilization or outright savage. Repudiating this kind of chauvinism seems now to an obvious requirement for dispassionate study of people groups. Starting off with the assumption that civilization X is a bunch of barbaric godless heathens tends to color one's conclusions.

But to take that kind of scientific discipline and generalize it like it is some kind of moral axiom is ridiculous. Everyone has values and beliefs and evaluates the world around them in terms of those values and beliefs. For example, if a person believes in human rights, it would be ridiculous to say that he could not evaluate this society or that one in terms of its respect for human rights. If one person looks and says, "Hey, the Sudan commits mass slaughter against its minority groups and Sweden doesn't, so in terms of treatment of minorities Sudan is worse," and you respond, "You can't say that because that is being ethnocentric" that doesn't make you a enlightened bright -- it makes you an incoherent moron.

It doesn't make much sense to measure something like a Human Development Index if one cannot go so far as to say that a higher number is better, much less that trying to raise the number is a worthwhile goal.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by v2freak

It would be kind of hypocritical to be species-centric too, from that point of view, and that's what a shit load of humans are. There was a flood not too long ago in Houston in which 10,000 species of animals died in the basement. They were put there by humans.

---

And see, here's what happens when you start off with a stupid assumption. You took for granted that it is an indisputable moral axiom that no culture is better or worse than another, and now extend that to claim that is an indisputable moral axiom that no species has greater or lesser value than another. Non sequitur.

So if animal life is the same as human life, then if I see a cheetah run down an impala in order to eat it, has the cheetah committed a crime? Of course not, you'll say, that's part of the natural order. OK, so if humans should avoid being species-centric, then shouldn't we consider ourselves part of the natural order? Well, no, you'll say, we're different because we're sentient beings, accountable to morals and ethics, whose rational faculties have allowed us such technology as to have moved beyond the natural order. Oh, so then are we fundamentally different or are we not?

You might want to give a few more details about your flood story, for it is tremendously misleading. People might tend to think you are talking about residents who placed their poor helpless pets in the basement to die while they fled from the flood, which of course is absolutely not what happened. But I see your simplistic thinking -- animals put someplace by humans died, therefore humans bad.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by v2freak

On a side note, I don't believe eating meat is evolutionary. Early man actually had very little of it and was a scavenger. We have evolved to choose for ourselves, even if our instincts seek to force our hand.

---

Really? There are no prehistoric people who were hunters? When the term "hunter-gatherers" was coined, was it referring to how early humans "hunted" for berries before they gathered them?

How exactly did human beings come to be omnivrous if they didn't evolve that way? Can I really eat anything I want? Can I eat leaves off a tree like a giraffe? Can I eat a 2x4 like a termite? Hey, why is it that Europeans can drink cow's milk while most other people groups are lactose-intolerant? Is it because Europeans through the sheer force of will chose to drink cow's milk?

You are doing a great job of convincing me of the enormous difference between the pure sciences like biology, chemistry, physics, and the like and studies like anthropology, history, economics, which have a teensy bit of evidentiary science mixed together with large helpings of groundless conjecture and untethered ideology masquerading as "science."

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by v2freak

Valenzetti equation, anyone?

---

Please tell me you did not just use the storyline from a prime-time science-fiction drama to make a serious point about the end of civilization. The Valenzetti equation is not, um, real.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sam1617

What does killing an animal humanely entail?

Personally, with pets that have had to be "put down" in the past, a .22 to the back of the head seemed to work pretty well, as they died pretty damn instantly, but I have been told by some people that it isn't humane, and I should take them to a vet for a shot.

---

There was a thread in the club with a Youtube video of a slaughter house here in the states.

Let me say this as a person who would never try and pass himself off as an engineer...I could design a cheaper, more efficent machine to kill than this atrocity.

It is not humane.

Cliff notes: Cows are herded into a single-file line in a pen, first in line steps into a giant, cow-sized revolving chamber (think of the cow as a "bullet" being put into a revolver), the revolver spins the cow upside down where it is chuted down a set of rails on its back about 6'-8' (2-2.5m), at this point some guy with a curved blade comes over to service the cow by cutting its and tearing out its esophagus in one deft move. The cow is then dumped into a separate pen sans its esophagus to kick around, stand up, fall down, mule and generally create a giant disturbing image of which will never leave my mind.

Its a troubling video, to be sure, but a necessary view for those who wish to know where packaged meat comes from.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sam1617

And while eating vegetables may be more energy efficient, vegetables are much harder to raise for developing countries than raising meat animals. A cow is more likely to survive a drought or storm than a plant crop, and the cow, even if it dies, will still provide food, unlike a crop.

---

So let me get this straight:

Option 1: Raise food crops for subsistence.

Option 2: Raise meat animals. Raise food crops both for subsistence and for the meat animals.

And you're saying Option 2 is easier. Methinks you did not think your argument through.

Oh, to be clear, a .22 to the back of the head is quite humane. Its instant, man or animal.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Extra Stout

Please tell me you did not just use the storyline from a prime-time science-fiction drama to make a serious point about the end of civilization. The Valenzetti equation is not, um, real.

---

I LOL'ed at that too. My reaction was like..

http://www.scienceblogs.de/frischer-...d-facepalm.jpg

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DarrinS

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-animal or anti-environment. I'm just pro-human.


In the mind of your typical environmental zealot, there exists a mythical utopia called "the balance of nature". They seem to believe that there is some optimal state of climate, flora, fauna, etc. which CLEARLY doesn't exist. Species of animals have come and gone LONG before the existence of humans. We've had wildly changing climates, extreme hot and cold, long before humans were driving pickups and SUVs.


The alarmist AGW community will tell you we have to do something now before we hit the so-called "tipping point". I'm always a bit puzzled by these mythical "tipping points". If there was a period of time in the geologic history that was much hotter and when the atmosphere contained much higher levels of CO2, why didn't the Earth reach a tipping point then? Hmmm.

---

I think the whole point of concern is that life right now seems optimal for humanity.

There's no disagreement that the earth has varied wildly throughout its lifetime, and many species have passed on. However, if things were to change NOW, it might also affect the way humanity lives. It hasn't so far, but there's always the chance that it could.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LnGrrrR

I think the whole point of concern is that life right now seems optimal for humanity.

---

Apparently some in the third world disagree.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LnGrrrR

There's no disagreement that the earth has varied wildly throughout its lifetime, and many species have passed on. However, if things were to change NOW, it might also affect the way humanity lives. It hasn't so far, but there's always the chance that it could.

---

To the third world, the argument looks like this:

For most people, life sucks. Rich people far away claim that if poor people don't stop trying to improve their lives, life at some point in the future might suck. So the choices are between life definitely sucking for the forseeable future, or life potentially sucking at some point in the future.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Extra Stout

Apparently some in the third world disagree.


To the third world, the argument looks like this:

For most people, life sucks. Rich people far away claim that if poor people don't stop trying to improve their lives, life at some point in the future might suck. So the choices are between life definitely sucking for the forseeable future, or life potentially sucking at some point in the future.

---

Yes, of course. But is it any surprise? Those who have polluted to get on top see the folly of their mistake, and try to warn others. The others though, look at them as hypocrites, and continue on.

It's the same story that parents and children have been playing out for millenia. Parents make mistakes, and impart this wisdom onto their children. The children then, seeing that their parents made it out ok, or thinking they are smarter than their parents, make the same bad mistakes. The parents then scold/guilt/punish the children, and the children note truthfully that the parents did the same thing as a child, labeling them hypocrites.

It's the circle of life! :lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sam1617

What does killing an animal humanely entail?

Personally, with pets that have had to be "put down" in the past, a .22 to the back of the head seemed to work pretty well, as they died pretty damn instantly, but I have been told by some people that it isn't humane, and I should take them to a vet for a shot.

---

Eh, to me, it's not the killing, but the life they live before their death. They're usually jammed into filthy cages, eating filthy food.

If only the "climate warriors" shifted their focus to viable solutions instead of lofty ideals engendered by bad science... I mean if they are going to classify CO2 as a pollutant why not H2O? After all, it is a more potent greenhouse promoter.

Now, fields like waste management, and the search for more efficient energy sources... those right there are worthy of our attention...

Anyone who doesn't think man was meant to eat meat has never had good venison.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Extra Stout

To the third world, the argument looks like this:

For most people, life sucks. Rich people far away claim that if poor people don't stop trying to improve their lives, life at some point in the future might suck. So the choices are between life definitely sucking for the forseeable future, or life potentially sucking at some point in the future.

---

Essentially. A not too small number of rich people proclaim to care about improving the lives of the poor, until that begins to ruin the view.

Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO's) are industrialized farming. Engineers have calculated the absolute minimum amount of space animals need not to keel over dead. The animals are fed the cheapest food possible, much of which contains leftover matter from animals already processed (cannibalism-yay!). The conditions are so unhealthy that the animals have to pumped full of antibiotics in order not to get sick and die in the short time it takes for them to grow to processible size. Oh, the time it takes for them to grow has been scientifically reduced through the generous administration of artificial hormones.

The animal waste is diverted to large tailing ponds where it is left to "digest" (i.e., decompose). These ponds account for much of the pervasive stench in the Texas Panhandle. The ponds are contained in a cheap plastic liner, which sometimes fails, causing the waste either to seep into groundwater, or simply overflow into the nearest lake or river.

The government has done a reasonably good job of concealing public health issues related to CAFO's. When Farmer Bob's entire crop dies because a tsunami of shit flows into his fields, it's out in the middle of nowhere, so nobody hears about it unless they talk to Farmer Bob.

The practice of feeding cows with meal made in part from ground-up cow brains might seem like a potential way to spread Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which of course we never had in the United States. One way we contain CJD ,should prions spread throughout the food supply, is by lying and saying that the people in the hospitals died of something else.

It might seem like the rampant use of antibiotics might have something to do with the rise of antiobiotic-restraint bacteria strains, but most people will never make the connection and just blame it on doctors overprescribing things.

And the rampant use of hormones in the meat supply to make animals bigger, or to stimulate milk production on the dairy farm, might have something to do with various biological changes in American citizens in recent years (no, I am not going to blame my gut on bovine growth hormone, but rather my lack of self-control combined with my wife's elite culinary skills).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by v2freak

if you had to choose the life of a human and a cow, which would you choose?

---

Depends on who the human is. Does the human think it's inhumane to kill a cow?

Eco-warriors want to grandfather our motto... "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..." to apply only to the citizens of countries that have already attained that exclusive 1st-world status - nations not quite there won't get the chance to enter anymore... at least not at the risk of 'depriving the lives' of the citizens from the former list... by *gasp* having to endure the consequences of a 2-degree shift in global temperature...

Then again one could argue that countries like China and India haven't fought to improve the lives of their citizens on a more important arena such as "human rights" and so they aren't quite ready to handle the superfluous excesses of Western civilization... Why then should we care that their economic progress is stiffled if they are imposing a much harsher limitation on themselves already??? Do we really want a world in which Communist China is the world's leading superpower? A nation with the power to dictate, and influence the weaker nations around her, based solely on her economic might even though the plight and the condition of her common citizen is deplorable? But I digress, I doubt the typical 'eco-warrior' has given it that much thought to begin with...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DarkReign

There was a thread in the club with a Youtube video of a slaughter house here in the states.

Let me say this as a person who would never try and pass himself off as an engineer...I could design a cheaper, more efficent machine to kill than this atrocity.

It is not humane.

Cliff notes: Cows are herded into a single-file line in a pen, first in line steps into a giant, cow-sized revolving chamber (think of the cow as a "bullet" being put into a revolver), the revolver spins the cow upside down where it is chuted down a set of rails on its back about 6'-8' (2-2.5m), at this point some guy with a curved blade comes over to service the cow by cutting its and tearing out its esophagus in one deft move. The cow is then dumped into a separate pen sans its esophagus to kick around, stand up, fall down, mule and generally create a giant disturbing image of which will never leave my mind.

Its a troubling video, to be sure, but a necessary view for those who wish to know where packaged meat comes from.

---

I need to find that; not sure what slaughter house that was; I've got a buddy who actually shoots the .22 in a local establishment.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Extra Stout

So you would choose the life of the cow. No, actually you will claim that is not what you are saying at all, although clearly that is what you are implying. I know that game.

So the human is destructive to the environment and therefore his life has less value than that of the cow. Now, that implies that the condition of the environment matters. There has to be a reason why the condition of the environment matters. What is it? Is it because life in general has to be preserved? I hardly think over the scope of millions of years that anything we do is going to snuff out life. It's fairly likely that Earth has experienced both its crust being seared by asteroid impact so that rock was vaporized into the atmosphere, and its being totally enveloped in ice. Yet life perseveres.

So then the condition of the environment right now or at least in the short to medium term matters, then? Well, why would that be? Is it because we must place supreme value on plant and animal life currently in existence, so much so that the value of a cow exceeds that of a human being?

Did your professor really mean that the environment must be protected in order to preserve humanity in general, which would imply that human beings have some inherent value that we should care about?


And you just take that for granted like it is a given. There is such a thing as being so open-minded that one's brains fall out. This is one of those cases.

In the past, Westerners took it for granted that theirs was the greatest, most advanced, most civilized culture and everyone less was either in some lesser form of civilization or outright savage. Repudiating this kind of chauvinism seems now to an obvious requirement for dispassionate study of people groups. Starting off with the assumption that civilization X is a bunch of barbaric godless heathens tends to color one's conclusions.

But to take that kind of scientific discipline and generalize it like it is some kind of moral axiom is ridiculous. Everyone has values and beliefs and evaluates the world around them in terms of those values and beliefs. For example, if a person believes in human rights, it would be ridiculous to say that he could not evaluate this society or that one in terms of its respect for human rights. If one person looks and says, "Hey, the Sudan commits mass slaughter against its minority groups and Sweden doesn't, so in terms of treatment of minorities Sudan is worse," and you respond, "You can't say that because that is being ethnocentric" that doesn't make you a enlightened bright -- it makes you an incoherent moron.

It doesn't make much sense to measure something like a Human Development Index if one cannot go so far as to say that a higher number is better, much less that trying to raise the number is a worthwhile goal.


And see, here's what happens when you start off with a stupid assumption. You took for granted that it is an indisputable moral axiom that no culture is better or worse than another, and now extend that to claim that is an indisputable moral axiom that no species has greater or lesser value than another. Non sequitur.

So if animal life is the same as human life, then if I see a cheetah run down an impala in order to eat it, has the cheetah committed a crime? Of course not, you'll say, that's part of the natural order. OK, so if humans should avoid being species-centric, then shouldn't we consider ourselves part of the natural order? Well, no, you'll say, we're different because we're sentient beings, accountable to morals and ethics, whose rational faculties have allowed us such technology as to have moved beyond the natural order. Oh, so then are we fundamentally different or are we not?

You might want to give a few more details about your flood story, for it is tremendously misleading. People might tend to think you are talking about residents who placed their poor helpless pets in the basement to die while they fled from the flood, which of course is absolutely not what happened. But I see your simplistic thinking -- animals put someplace by humans died, therefore humans bad.

Really? There are no prehistoric people who were hunters? When the term "hunter-gatherers" was coined, was it referring to how early humans "hunted" for berries before they gathered them?

How exactly did human beings come to be omnivrous if they didn't evolve that way? Can I really eat anything I want? Can I eat leaves off a tree like a giraffe? Can I eat a 2x4 like a termite? Hey, why is it that Europeans can drink cow's milk while most other people groups are lactose-intolerant? Is it because Europeans through the sheer force of will chose to drink cow's milk?

You are doing a great job of convincing me of the enormous difference between the pure sciences like biology, chemistry, physics, and the like and studies like anthropology, history, economics, which have a teensy bit of evidentiary science mixed together with large helpings of groundless conjecture and untethered ideology masquerading as "science."


Please tell me you did not just use the storyline from a prime-time science-fiction drama to make a serious point about the end of civilization. The Valenzetti equation is not, um, real.

---

Oh holy crap, not sure V2freak will ever post again after that shellacking. Wow.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Extra Stout

It might seem like the rampant use of antibiotics might have something to do with the rise of antiobiotic-restraint bacteria strains, but most people will never make the connection and just blame it on doctors overprescribing things.

---

People are getting taller; titties are getting bigger.

It's true.

My boy (15 - and working out with his wrestling and football teams) was told to drink half a gallon of whole milk a day: "it's like taking Human Growth Hormone!" Probably because it IS taking growth hormone.

btw: he's 6'2" 220 lbs - no fat.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Extra Stout

Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO's) are industrialized farming. Engineers have calculated the absolute minimum amount of space animals need not to keel over dead. The animals are fed the cheapest food possible, much of which contains leftover matter from animals already processed (cannibalism-yay!). The conditions are so unhealthy that the animals have to pumped full of antibiotics in order not to get sick and die in the short time it takes for them to grow to processible size. Oh, the time it takes for them to grow has been scientifically reduced through the generous administration of artificial hormones.

The animal waste is diverted to large tailing ponds where it is left to "digest" (i.e., decompose). These ponds account for much of the pervasive stench in the Texas Panhandle. The ponds are contained in a cheap plastic liner, which sometimes fails, causing the waste either to seep into groundwater, or simply overflow into the nearest lake or river.

The government has done a reasonably good job of concealing public health issues related to CAFO's. When Farmer Bob's entire crop dies because a tsunami of shit flows into his fields, it's out in the middle of nowhere, so nobody hears about it unless they talk to Farmer Bob.

The practice of feeding cows with meal made in part from ground-up cow brains might seem like a potential way to spread Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which of course we never had in the United States. One way we contain CJD ,should prions spread throughout the food supply, is by lying and saying that the people in the hospitals died of something else.

It might seem like the rampant use of antibiotics might have something to do with the rise of antiobiotic-restraint bacteria strains, but most people will never make the connection and just blame it on doctors overprescribing things.

And the rampant use of hormones in the meat supply to make animals bigger, or to stimulate milk production on the dairy farm, might have something to do with various biological changes in American citizens in recent years (no, I am not going to blame my gut on bovine growth hormone, but rather my lack of self-control combined with my wife's elite culinary skills).

---

:tu

Edit: Maybe that's why 16 year old girls in high school look like they're 21 and older :lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LnGrrrR

:tu

Edit: Maybe that's why 16 year old girls in high school look like they're 21 and older :lol

---

Note to self: Keep young daughter away from LnGrrrR.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dimsah

Note to self: Keep young daughter away from LnGrrrR.

---

LOL

Coming from someone with a picture of Quagmire as their avatar, I found that highly amusing. :lmao

Anyways, I'm a bit too old NOW to think of that, but I remember being 19 once and hitting on a female, only to find out she was 15. I was flabbergasted.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LnGrrrR

LOL

Coming from someone with a picture of Quagmire as their avatar, I found that highly amusing. :lmao

Anyways, I'm a bit too old NOW to think of that, but I remember being 19 once and hitting on a female, only to find out she was 15. I was flabbergasted.

---

Just messing with you. I get it though.

I didn't know if it was me that was not able to tell the age of these girls anymore because I'm older now or if they were just maturing more rapidly than I remembered from my youth.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DarrinS

^ Great example of what's "wrong" with the far left.


Answer me this? Do you get upset when animals are killed by other animals for food? Or only when humans kill animals for food? Do you get upset when animals die because of natural disasters? Or only when domesticated animals die in natural disasters?

Do you think other omnivorous animals should go vegan? Or just humans?

By the way, you stated that you don't think eating meat is evolutionary. Why do we have incisors and canines?

---

If you are actually asking me a question, the incisors are for tearing, while the molars are for chewing. If eating meat were evolutionary, vegetarianism wouldn't be possible for humans, and yet many humans are able to live long, healthy (healthier, in many supported studies) lives. My point is, it is not mandatory to eat meat. For me, it's not a matter of succumbing to natural urges, but being able to choose for oneself. Humans are sentient, as one person pointed out, even though the same person believes animals, for some reason, are not.

I am also not 'far left' so there isn't really a reason to throw a punch in the air. You'll have to look elsewhere for your anti-liberal tendencies.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DarkReign

Lets not go there...

He is clearly wrong in his entire position. To value animal life over human life is grounds for a complete dismissal of his argument.

Oblige me.

---

I won't be so arrogant and presumptuous as to paint any opinion right or wrong. You're entitled to yours.

Under your avatar, your quote reads "live by what you speak." I really like this. Gandhi once said 'you must be the change you wish to see in the world' and I will assure you, I will do right by your quote.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Extra Stout

So you would choose the life of the cow. No, actually you will claim that is not what you are saying at all, although clearly that is what you are implying. I know that game.

So the human is destructive to the environment and therefore his life has less value than that of the cow. Now, that implies that the condition of the environment matters. There has to be a reason why the condition of the environment matters. What is it? Is it because life in general has to be preserved? I hardly think over the scope of millions of years that anything we do is going to snuff out life. It's fairly likely that Earth has experienced both its crust being seared by asteroid impact so that rock was vaporized into the atmosphere, and its being totally enveloped in ice. Yet life perseveres.

So then the condition of the environment right now or at least in the short to medium term matters, then? Well, why would that be? Is it because we must place supreme value on plant and animal life currently in existence, so much so that the value of a cow exceeds that of a human being?

Did your professor really mean that the environment must be protected in order to preserve humanity in general, which would imply that human beings have some inherent value that we should care about?

---

I think what you're asking is "do we really need a planet in order to survive." And I don't think I will justify that question by answering. If this is a strawman fallacy, by all means, please reiterate what you are saying. I would love to understand your counter point.

Quote:

---

And you just take that for granted like it is a given. There is such a thing as being so open-minded that one's brains fall out. This is one of those cases.

In the past, Westerners took it for granted that theirs was the greatest, most advanced, most civilized culture and everyone less was either in some lesser form of civilization or outright savage. Repudiating this kind of chauvinism seems now to an obvious requirement for dispassionate study of people groups. Starting off with the assumption that civilization X is a bunch of barbaric godless heathens tends to color one's conclusions.

But to take that kind of scientific discipline and generalize it like it is some kind of moral axiom is ridiculous. Everyone has values and beliefs and evaluates the world around them in terms of those values and beliefs. For example, if a person believes in human rights, it would be ridiculous to say that he could not evaluate this society or that one in terms of its respect for human rights. If one person looks and says, "Hey, the Sudan commits mass slaughter against its minority groups and Sweden doesn't, so in terms of treatment of minorities Sudan is worse," and you respond, "You can't say that because that is being ethnocentric" that doesn't make you a enlightened bright -- it makes you an incoherent moron.

---

I would hate to think genocide has something to do with African or Swedish culture, as you seem to be implying. Don't confuse politics with culture. The caveat that ethnocentrism can destroy an objective analysis of a culture is based on looking at one culture without making judgements, not looking at what its government has done. I'm not trying to nit pick your analogies, but you're missing a pretty big point here.

Instead you could say "the Aztecs were savages because they did human sacrifices." A lot of these "pro-human" people would probably find that disgusting, as do I. But look at it from an ancient civilization point of view. They were operantly conditioned to do human sacrifices because when they did, more often than not their prayers for rain and good crops would be answered. To say they were savages however, would be ethnocentric.

Quote:

---

It doesn't make much sense to measure something like a Human Development Index if one cannot go so far as to say that a higher number is better, much less that trying to raise the number is a worthwhile goal.


And see, here's what happens when you start off with a stupid assumption. You took for granted that it is an indisputable moral axiom that no culture is better or worse than another, and now extend that to claim that is an indisputable moral axiom that no species has greater or lesser value than another. Non sequitur.

---

I'm trying really hard to be civil here and I'm also having difficulty just trying to find substance in your argument. You think the idea of not being ethnocentric is stupid, okay I get it. You think that extending its use from application to humans shouldn't be extended to animals, and for what reason? I won't even try to guess what reason that is, but it probably has something to do with your belief that animals aren't sentient and shouldn't be granted the same rights. You believe it to be non sequitur, but I believe a good principle can be applied across multiple subjects. Occam's razor, for example, is a practical principle that is meant to be applied to the scientific process. But why shouldn't it be applied to everyday life as well? I don't see how it's non sequitur, or why you think it's completely unrelated. As someone else pointed out, all humans and animals share this world, we fall under the kingdoms together and we are a part of nature.

Quote:

---

So if animal life is the same as human life, then if I see a cheetah run down an impala in order to eat it, has the cheetah committed a crime? Of course not, you'll say, that's part of the natural order. OK, so if humans should avoid being species-centric, then shouldn't we consider ourselves part of the natural order? Well, no, you'll say, we're different because we're sentient beings, accountable to morals and ethics, whose rational faculties have allowed us such technology as to have moved beyond the natural order. Oh, so then are we fundamentally different or are we not?

---

You're right, I wasn't clear enough on my stance for this. "If humans should avoid being species-centric, then they should consider themselves part of the natural order." This is a really interesting idea. I believe animals are sentient, but they unable to change their habits, at least willingly. Farmers that feed their cows meat and bone meals for example, is completely unnatural (and a cause of disease) and not good at all for the cow. Cheetahs are the other hand, must eat meat. But what makes humans so great? They're omnivores, meaning they can swing either way, and in addition to that, they have almost total control over their lives. I believe humans are one of the only species who is no longer subject to evolution, because they have become humane, and technology has eliminated the need for our species to breed the strongest, fastest, smartest person. Now who has ever become an animal and lived to tell about it? NO ONE. I believe animals to be sentient because it's clear they feel pain and pleasure, some animals can recognize their reflections in the mirror and most are able to communicate. But I don't know if they have the discipline to be able to perform a task. That may very well be specific to humans. As the famous saying goes, "God has made man sufficient to stand but free to fall." Whatever your beliefs on how man came about, I find the second part of the saying to be absolutely true. I find humans to be naturally full of vices, as it used to be advantageous for Homo erectus to be manipulative in order to gather more food, for example. But I also believe that they, as Obama puts it, can change, and as such, are so special. However, you will almost certainly find this answer to be unsatisfactory, as your opening sentence, "I know that game" seems to imply your love of black and white thinking. Yep, I can play the assumption game too.

Quote:

---

You might want to give a few more details about your flood story, for it is tremendously misleading. People might tend to think you are talking about residents who placed their poor helpless pets in the basement to die while they fled from the flood, which of course is absolutely not what happened. But I see your simplistic thinking -- animals put someplace by humans died, therefore humans bad.

---

Certainly. Wikipedia forces its editors to give sources, so why should I be excluded? The storm in question was Tropical Storm Allison (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Storm_Allison) back in 2001, for anyone who might remember. The animals died in the basement and they were put there for scientific research. I don't believe the people that put them there were so callous that they intended for the animals to die so horrifically, but they were not there by natural means and were not rescued either. It may ease your conscience to know that while many animals did die in that basement, only a few humans - the death toll under 50 - died from the flood. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston#cite_note-27

Quote:

---

Really? There are no prehistoric people who were hunters? When the term "hunter-gatherers" was coined, was it referring to how early humans "hunted" for berries before they gathered them?

How exactly did human beings come to be omnivrous if they didn't evolve that way? Can I really eat anything I want? Can I eat leaves off a tree like a giraffe? Can I eat a 2x4 like a termite? Hey, why is it that Europeans can drink cow's milk while most other people groups are lactose-intolerant? Is it because Europeans through the sheer force of will chose to drink cow's milk?

---

Excellent questions, sort of. Hunter-gatherers was a term coined before there was scientific evidence to suggest early man up until Neanderthalensis, which had a more advanced tool complex, was primarily a scavanger. Caves that were littered with the bones of early humans were once thought to be hearths, but they bite marks in human skulls instead suggest early man was a meal of an ancient predatory cat. I'm sure if humans weren't at the top of the food chain, a lot of you would be singing a different tune. So why did they start to eat meat? Here's my theory. Early man, around Homo ergaster or earlier, could not find the vegetation that it needed, and happened to come across carion. Unknowingly he or she ingested it and soon spread the news that it was good (let's be honest, meat does taste good IMO) spread until humans developed the necessarily skills to move to the top of the food chain. There is no evidence however, to suggest that all early humans ate meat or that it was necessary for survival. Again, vegetarians today are able to live long, wholesome lives.

Quote:

---

You are doing a great job of convincing me of the enormous difference between the pure sciences like biology, chemistry, physics, and the like and studies like anthropology, history, economics, which have a teensy bit of evidentiary science mixed together with large helpings of groundless conjecture and untethered ideology masquerading as "science."

---

Someone once told me, the difference between stating and convincing is this: stating is simply saying something once for people to hear, while convincing requires knowledge of the opposition's stance and takes it into account while presenting an argument. I have answered your questions despite your hostility, because you asked for my opinions, and because you seem to have a desire to be more well-versed in a groundless conjecture-based subject anthropology. By the way, evolution is cross listed as a subset of biology, a "pure science". However, I'm no expert in english. If your whole post was a satire littered with rhetorical questions, then I half-heartedly apologize.

Quote:

---

Please tell me you did not just use the storyline from a prime-time science-fiction drama to make a serious point about the end of civilization. The Valenzetti equation is not, um, real.

---

I'm glad you at least know what it is, but I believe it to be extremely close-minded to dismiss a "prime-time science fiction drama." Disciplines like english and literature exist because they offer real life insights into the world we live in. I would tread carefully. Many people consider the contents of The Bible to be hard to believe, but an accusation such as "IT'S NOT REAL" could end in disaster.

I posted a long response to v2freak, which was lost when ST logged me out, so I will summarize it.

1) Of course we need a planet to survive -- but that implies that humans are worth surviving -- which implies that human life matters. And devaluing the lives of human beings below those of cows in order to save the lives of human beings is incoherent.

2) Politics and culture and closely intertwined, and to claim otherwise is either ignorance or obscurantism.

3) Starting with a misapplication of the idea of ethnocentrism, claiming that misapplication to be a generalizable axiom like Occam's Razor (which is not so generalizable, by the way), and therefore asserting that denying the animals the same rights as humans is "species-ism" is ridiculous.

4) A cursory look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and thoughts of trying to apply those rights to various kinds of animals, quickly descends into absurdity.

5) It does not require the sorts of outrageous mental gymnastics you have indulged to make something akin to your point. Through clear thinking and common sense it suffices to say, "Do not be cruel."

6) You do not understand evolution at all.

7) Whether humans started hunting 2 million years ago or 20,000 years ago is irrelevant. The human behavior of hunting began in prehistory.

8) Whether or not humans need meat to survive has nothing to do with whether meat-eating "evolved."

9) A theory is a robust analytical framework that explains copious empirical observations. It is not a wild conjecture.

10) Comparing LOST to English literature is ridiculous.

11) Your arguments, rather than being convincing, make me wonder what the hell is wrong with you.

I like your responses, Extra Stout, but I don't need to read too many of them. They usually kinda go like this

1.) This is my opinion, if you don't agree then you are wrong
2.) This is ridiculous, and there's nothing else to say about it. Or rather, there's nothing else I can say about it because I don't know how to put my thoughts into words. So i'll continue to say this is ridiculous, which you WILL accept as an axiom
3.) Random insult added for insurance
4.) Nitpick an analogy and miss the point completely. Comparing Lost to literature is not the point, but rather you can gain insight by reading things that "aren't real", and a science fiction show does not make its contributions to society any less relevant. I don't recall saying Jack Shepard is like a modern day MacBeth.
5.) See 1-4
6.) Red herring

Let's cut to the chase here. I already told you I am not trying to convince anyone of anything, I stated my stance and you asked questions, to which I took the time to craft an answer that you may find comprehendable. I was the first to state that vegetarianism could provide answers to starvation, in relation to global warming. By the way, sorry to hijack your thread MB. Not my intention.

So while your last "point" and I use the term loosely, claims that my arguments are not convincing, I must ask. In accordance with the discrepency between "convince" and "state" that I had wrote earlier, it would appear that the only one here trying to convince anyone of anything is you. What is your purpose? You know my stance on things, and you continue to go on and on but for what? What is the real purpose of your posts? Are you trying to convince me of something? Let's be honest here, I'm not going to convince you of anything - and I haven't tried to - and you aren't going to convince me that my beliefs aren't worth having. This is not a "let's agree to disagree" cop out resolution. I am telling you this because I cannot stand people who try to tell others how to live their lives. My girlfriend said she believes most of the problems on earth are caused by people trying to force their ways on others. You apparently do not have the same conviction. One reason I'm fiscally conservative is that I believe everyone making their own money is the fairest course of action, with the rich not taking from the poor and vice versa.

I suspect it's because you're argumentative, but if I called you out on it, I have a feeling you would say 'no I'm not. you're being ridiculous/absurd/ludicrous'.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Extra Stout

I posted a long response to v2freak, which was lost when ST logged me out, so I will summarize it.

---

I hate it when that happens... I can relate... :bang