I dont eat fast food.
Ive had 1 mcds in 1.5 years.
I eat beef maybe once a month
I eat pork fish and chicken yes lots as that is in my lunch.

By cutting back you are asking a very many people to become vegans or damn close to it. My point is by taking away one sector of agriculture you will just add more too it in another way. Thus the footprint will in effect not really change. Do you really think people will eat 50% less meat? What would happen to the depleted fish stocks? Many people are becoming allergic to soy, wheat, nuts and rice. What do they get to eat in this grand plan?

Supply and demand, lets look at it for a second. You raise the price of meat. That price rises and people either except the price or they dont. If demand goes down so does the price. Only when the price gets too low will you see meat production fall off. You need the farmers to loose money before they can give up or cut back on farming. In fact, your grand plan more than likely not change. farmers geared towards meat production will switch to milk. Thus your gas and etc from the cows will not really go down. Switching a food source is not as easy as you make it seem mate.

Trends in GHG emissions in the agricultural sector depend
mainly on the level and rate of socio-economic development,
human population growth, and diet, application of adequate
technologies, climate and non-climate policies, and future
climate change. Consequently, mitigation potentials in the
agricultural sector are uncertain, making a consensus difficult
to achieve and hindering policy making. However, agriculture
is a significant contributor to GHG emissions (Section 8.2).
Mitigation is unlikely to occur without action, and higher
emissions are projected in the future if current trends are left
unconstrained. According to current projections, the global
population will reach 9 billion by 2050, an increase of about
50% over current levels (Lutz et al., 2001; Cohen, 2003).
Because of these increases and changing consumption patterns,
some analyses estimate that the production of cereals will need
to roughly double in coming decades (Tilman et al., 2001; Roy
et al., 2002; Green et al., 2005). Achieving these increases in
food production may require more use of N fertilizer, leading
to possible increases in N2O emissions, unless more efficient
fertilization techniques and products can be found (Galloway,
2003; Mosier, 2002).

Americans eat about the same amount of meat as we have for some time, about eight ounces a day, roughly twice the global average.

Carl Wunsch 11 March 2007

I believe that climate change is real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component. But I have tried to stay out of the `climate wars' because all nuance tends to be lost, and the distinction between what we know firmly, as scientists, and what we suspect is happening, is so difficult to maintain in the presence of rhetorical excess. In the long run, our credibility as scientists rests on being very careful of, and protective of, our authority and expertise.


The science of climate change remains incomplete. Some elements are so firmly based on well-understood principles, or for which the observational record is so clear, that most scientists would agree that they are almost surely true (adding CO2 to the atmosphere is dangerous; sea level will continue to rise,�). Other elements remain more uncertain, but we as scientists in our roles as informed citizens believe society should be deeply concerned about their possibility: failure of US midwestern precipitation in 100 years in a mega-drought; melting of a large part of the Greenland ice sheet, among many other examples.

I am on record in a number of places complaining about the over-dramatization and unwarranted extrapolation of scientific facts. Thus the notion that the Gulf Stream would or could "shut off" or that with global warming Britain would go into a "new ice age" are either scientifically impossible or so unlikely as to threaten our credibility as a scientific discipline if we proclaim their reality [i.e. see this previous RC post]. They also are huge distractions from more immediate and realistic threats. I've paid more attention to the extreme claims in the literature warning of coming catastrophe, both because I regard the scientists there as more serious, and because I am very sympathetic to the goals of my colleagues who sometimes seem, however, to be confusing their specific scientific knowledge with their worries about the future.

When approached by WAGTV, on behalf of Channel 4, known to me as one of the main UK independent broadcasters, I was led to believe that I would be given an opportunity to explain why I, like some others, find the statements at both extremes of the global change debate distasteful. I am, after all a teacher, and this seemed like a good opportunity to explain why, for example, I thought more attention should be paid to sea level rise, which is ongoing and unstoppable and carries a real threat of acceleration, than to the unsupportable claims that the ocean circulation was undergoing shutdown (Nature, December 2005).

I wanted to explain why observing the ocean was so difficult, and why it is so tricky to predict with any degree of confidence such important climate elements as its heat and carbon storage and transports in 10 or 100 years. I am distrustful of prediction scenarios for details of the ocean circulation that rely on extremely complicated coupled models that run out for decades to thousands of years. The science is not sufficiently mature to say which of the many complex elements of such forecasts are skillful. Nonetheless, and contrary to the impression given in the film, I firmly believe there is a great deal to be learned from models. With effort, all of this is explicable in terms the public can understand.

In the part of the "Swindle" film where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous�because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important � diametrically opposite to the point I was making � which is that global warming is both real and threatening in many different ways, some unexpected.

Many of us feel an obligation to talk to the media�it's part of our role as scientists, citizens, and educators. The subjects are complicated, and it is easy to be misquoted or quoted out context. My experience in the past is that these things do happen, but usually inadvertently � most reporters really do want to get it right.

Channel 4 now says they were making a film in a series of "polemics". There is nothing in the communication we had (much of it on the telephone or with the film crew on the day they were in Boston) that suggested they were making a film that was one-sided, anti-educational, and misleading. I took them at face value�clearly a great error. I knew I had no control over the actual content, but it never occurred to me that I was dealing with people who already had a reputation for distortion and exaggeration.

The letter I sent them as soon as I heard about the actual program is below. [available here]

As a society, we need to take out insurance against catastrophe in the same way we take out homeowner's protection against fire. I buy fire insurance, but I also take the precaution of having the wiring in the house checked, keeping the heating system up to date, etc., all the while hoping that I won't need the insurance. Will any of these precautions work? Unexpected things still happen (lightning strike? plumber's torch igniting the woodwork?). How large a fire insurance premium is it worth paying? How much is it worth paying for rewiring the house? $10,000 but perhaps not $100,000? There are no simple answers even at this mundane level.

How much is it worth to society to restrain CO2 emissions � will that guarantee protection against global warming? Is it sensible to subsidize insurance for people who wish to build in regions strongly susceptible to coastal flooding? These and others are truly complicated questions where often the science is not mature enough give definitive answers, much as we would like to be able to provide them. Scientifically, we can recognize the reality of the threat, and much of what society needs to insure against. Statements of concern do not need to imply that we have all the answers. Channel 4 had an opportunity to elucidate some of this. The outcome is sad.