Unpopular opinions.

[Miguel Sanchez]

6 minutes ago, GordonS said:

Cows and sheep don't fart greenhouses gases. They burp them. Methane is produced in their rumen by microorganisms called archaea and gets breathed or burped out.

Their poo also produces nitrous oxide, which is nearly 300 times worse than carbon dioxide.

You have to micro-analyse every aspect of life to this degree, because that's exactly where you find the sources of emissions that need to be cut. There is no easy answer to reducing emissions, no dominant source, no dominant country, no stand-out activity. Also, it's far too late to say "this doesn't produce all that much emissions so we can just ignore it". Meeting the Paris commitments requires us to tackle everything except the truly trivial - and the footprint of pets is far from trivial.

It takes an area of agricultural land twice the size of the UK to produce meat for the world's pet cats and dogs alone. The emissions from pet food production is higher than the emissions from the Philippines, a country of 110 million people.

This is not a small issue.

https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2020/area-twice-size-of-uk-needed-to-feed-worlds-pets 

You also seem to be missing the point. What difference is limiting pet ownership (as an example) going to do when there are literally billions of people in developing and growing economies in Africa, India or China? None of the environmentally harmful things happening in these parts of the worlds is going to stop.

[GordonS]

14 minutes ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

You also seem to be missing the point. What difference is limiting pet ownership (as an example) going to do when there are literally billions of people in developing and growing economies in Africa, India or China? None of the environmentally harmful things happening in these parts of the worlds is going to stop.

It's a cop-out to say "I'm not doing action x when there are so many people in the world." Until China switches 100% to renewables are you just going to say "sod it" and keep making the problem worse? Should we all do that and if we did, what would the consequence be?

The environmentally harmful things in developing countries are going to stop, or at least, they're allowed a certain amount for a time under the Paris agreement to let them catch up. To balance that, and to reflect that the developed world caused the mess, has more room for reductions and got all the financial rewards from a century of fossil fuels, we have to take on more of the burden. It's pretty ridiculous for any of us in the west to point the finger at India like they're causing the problem. Your footprint is 3 times more than the average Indian person and your pets are part of that.

Besides, we can have 10 billion humans living in a net zero world. Overpopulation is an utter red herring.

Nobody is saying we can't have pets btw, but we need to do some serious work really fast on more sustainable food for them. This is entirely achievable with dogs but cats are more difficult. And we should probably think about sustainability when we're choosing pets - a rabbit is much better than a cat, for instance. 

[Miguel Sanchez]

12 minutes ago, GordonS said:

Besides, we can have 10 billion humans living in a net zero world. Overpopulation is an utter red herring.

I look forward to quoting this post in 40 years when billions of environmental refugees are having food riots in tropical Helsinki

I'm not trying to say I go around killing the planet for fun but none of this stuff is going to make a difference.

[Guest TheJTS98]

3 hours ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

I look forward to quoting this post in 40 years when billions of environmental refugees are having food riots in tropical Helsinki

I'm not trying to say I go around killing the planet for fun but none of this stuff is going to make a difference.

If everybody says 'it's not going to make a difference', then nothing will change. That's the point.

One person ditching a cat and getting a rabbit instead makes no odds, obviously. But cultural change adding together lots of these wise decisions can make a difference. But I think this will never happen, basically because we all (me included) make so many decisions in life that we know are environmentally harmful because it's easy to say that one call I make makes no difference.

Loads of people who drive will feel a level of environmental guilt about it. I've got plenty of friends who do. But hardly anybody gives it up. Because 'What difference will it make?'. What if all these folk did give it up and were prepared to pay some of the money they spend every year on a car in tax for improved public transport?

The world is made up of individual decisions.

Edited March 22, 2021 by TheJTS98

[Theroadlesstravelled]

13 hours ago, DiegoDiego said:

Facebook messenger is better than WhatsApp.

Ok boomer

[Melanius Mullarkey]

7 hours ago, BFTD said:

I do get the urge to do Mr Blonde's wee shuffle when that comes on. I'd never cut off someone's ear, though.

Huey Lewis and the News does make me want to kill a lot of people, however.

There was a bloke wandering around Morrison’s yesterday singing Mysterious Girl by Peter Andre as it was playing in the tannoy. He must have been about 75.

[BFTD]

46 minutes ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

There was a bloke wandering around Morrison’s yesterday singing Mysterious Girl by Peter Andre as it was playing in the tannoy. He must have been about 75.

His daughter probably had it on repeat for months back in the Nineties, and now he's too gaga to remember that he hated that song with a passion.

Our future writ large.

[Aufc]

It's a cop-out to say "I'm not doing action x when there are so many people in the world." Until China switches 100% to renewables are you just going to say "sod it" and keep making the problem worse? Should we all do that and if we did, what would the consequence be?
The environmentally harmful things in developing countries are going to stop, or at least, they're allowed a certain amount for a time under the Paris agreement to let them catch up. To balance that, and to reflect that the developed world caused the mess, has more room for reductions and got all the financial rewards from a century of fossil fuels, we have to take on more of the burden. It's pretty ridiculous for any of us in the west to point the finger at India like they're causing the problem. Your footprint is 3 times more than the average Indian person and your pets are part of that.
Besides, we can have 10 billion humans living in a net zero world. Overpopulation is an utter red herring.
Nobody is saying we can't have pets btw, but we need to do some serious work really fast on more sustainable food for them. This is entirely achievable with dogs but cats are more difficult. And we should probably think about sustainability when we're choosing pets - a rabbit is much better than a cat, for instance. 

I think the most ironic thing about the whole climate change conversation is being lectured to by billionaire bill gates who will be one of the biggest individual contributor to greenhouse gases as be flies around on private jets alongside his general lifestyle.

[Melanius Mullarkey]

1 hour ago, BFTD said:

His daughter probably had it on repeat for months back in the Nineties, and now he's too gaga to remember that he hated that song with a passion.

Our future writ large.

Looking forward to being kicked out of Lidl in 20 years time for singing Dan TDM's Minecraft Parody of 7 Years by Luke Graham.

[ICTChris]

I appreciate this has gone in a different direction but I do think a lot of people buying dogs are doing it for reasons of fashion.  Several people in my work have spent literally thousands of pounds on pedigree dogs in the last year, I think a lot of people who might have wanted a dog who are now working from home have decided to get one but they seem to be going for purebreeds rather than going to rehome a dog from a home.  A friend of one of my colleagues drove to England last summer and paid nearly £10,000 for a purebreed English bulldog.

You also see dog walking vans everywhere now - clearly even though people are in the house more they are still relying on others to walk and take care of their dogs.  A colleague of mine pays someone to take his dog for a big walk a couple of times a week (he's got quite a breed that needs a big walk) and my next door neighbours, who have a bulldog, have someone who comes in every day to give it some care.

[GordonS]

10 hours ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

I look forward to quoting this post in 40 years when billions of environmental refugees are having food riots in tropical Helsinki

I'm not trying to say I go around killing the planet for fun but none of this stuff is going to make a difference.

Great. Climate change scientists and activists are increasingly calling out the overpopulation argument for what it is. It's never too many of us, always too many of them, even when our carbon footprint is vastly higher. If there are food riots it will be because of a combination of two things - failure to act on climate change now, because that's by far the biggest risk to food production, and inequality. It's been at least centuries since anyone on this planet went hungry because there wasn't enough food.

This stuff going to make a difference, because this ocean is going to get emptied one drop at a time. The biggest source of emissions is fossil fuels, and within that the biggest contributor is cars. But there are over a trillion individual car journeys in the world every year, so the only way that gets fixed is to reduced it by one journey at a time.

It's all a drop in the ocean but oceans are made one drop at a time.

It's a bit like voting, Everyone knows their vote is close to worthless, but they know that all those votes added together makes a lot. But in the case of climate change, us in the developed world have much more power than others. The richest 10% are responsible for 50% of emissions.

So to get back to the point of the thread, my really unpopular opinion - we should stop flying to football games, especially if it's just one match. If we can't get there less harmfully then we should watch on the telly. I last flew for sport (or any reason) 5 years ago and I'm not going to do it again.

[GordonS]

2 hours ago, Aufc said:

 

I think the most ironic thing about the whole climate change conversation is being lectured to by billionaire bill gates who will be one of the biggest individual contributor to greenhouse gases as be flies around on private jets alongside his general lifestyle.

 

Definitely. Climate change scientists like Michael Mann and campaigners are very critical of him. The only people listening to him are the media and those who want to be told that tech can fix everything and they won't need to alter their high consumptions lifestyles at all. Bill Gates praised Greta Thunberg but she had no praise for him.

The guy owns a private jet company FFS.

[101]

7 minutes ago, GordonS said:

Great. Climate change scientists and activists are increasingly calling out the overpopulation argument for what it is. It's never too many of us, always too many of them, even when our carbon footprint is vastly higher. If there are food riots it will be because of a combination of two things - failure to act on climate change now, because that's by far the biggest risk to food production, and inequality. It's been at least centuries since anyone on this planet went hungry because there wasn't enough food.

This stuff going to make a difference, because this ocean is going to get emptied one drop at a time. The biggest source of emissions is fossil fuels, and within that the biggest contributor is cars. But there are over a trillion individual car journeys in the world every year, so the only way that gets fixed is to reduced it by one journey at a time.

It's all a drop in the ocean but oceans are made one drop at a time.

It's a bit like voting, Everyone knows their vote is close to worthless, but they know that all those votes added together makes a lot. But in the case of climate change, us in the developed world have much more power than others. The richest 10% are responsible for 50% of emissions.

So to get back to the point of the thread, my really unpopular opinion - we should stop flying to football games, especially if it's just one match. If we can't get there less harmfully then we should watch on the telly. I last flew for sport (or any reason) 5 years ago and I'm not going to do it again.

Domestically I agree with you it's ridiculous that teams in England fly between games when high speed trains can get them there nearly as quickly and with far less effect on the climate. But can't see this ever being possible with international competition, I don't think you could get from say Manchester to Kiev and back within a 3/4 days using methods other than flying.

[hearthammer]

10 hours ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

I look forward to quoting this post in 40 years when billions of environmental refugees are having food riots in tropical Helsinki

I'm not trying to say I go around killing the planet for fun but none of this stuff is going to make a difference.

Will wifi advancements be that good that most of us will be able to read the post and judge the outcome from our places in hell ??

[GordonS]

7 hours ago, TheJTS98 said:

If everybody says 'it's not going to make a difference', then nothing will change. That's the point.

One person ditching a cat and getting a rabbit instead makes no odds, obviously. But cultural change adding together lots of these wise decisions can make a difference. But I think this will never happen, basically because we all (me included) make so many decisions in life that we know are environmentally harmful because it's easy to say that one call I make makes no difference.

Loads of people who drive will feel a level of environmental guilt about it. I've got plenty of friends who do. But hardly anybody gives it up. Because 'What difference will it make?'. What if all these folk did give it up and were prepared to pay some of the money they spend every year on a car in tax for improved public transport?

The world is made up of individual decisions.

That's why it needs government regulation, unfortunately. We'll accept making the sacrifices and changes if everyone has to do them and if we feel it's part of making a difference. But left to do it ourselves it won't happen. How much tax would we pay if it were voluntary? We'd all know paying more would give us a great health service and all the rest, but individually we'd know our own contribution would achieve nothing so why bother?

I don't want more regulations but I don't see how else it gets done. Within a decade every gas cooker and boiler in the country is going to have to be torn out. That's never happening voluntarily.

[GordonS]

1 minute ago, 101 said:

Domestically I agree with you it's ridiculous that teams in England fly between games when high speed trains can get them there nearly as quickly and with far less effect on the climate. But can't see this ever being possible with international competition, I don't think you could get from say Manchester to Kiev and back within a 3/4 days using methods other than flying.

Ah sorry, I don't mean the teams, I mean the fans. One flight is no biggie, but 5,000 Scotland fans flying to Vienna is another matter.

[DiegoDiego]

Ok boomer

I'm far from being a boomer.

My main gripe with WhatsApp is that it's mobile only. Its a right pain in the arse to send something from my desktop/laptop via WhatsApp. There are other obvious advantages to having a web based version, too.

WhatsApp also encourages sending voice messages which are the exact opposite of everything good about messaging services; you often receive a three minute rambling monologue to listen to when "can you grab some bread while you're out, please?" would suffice.

[101]

13 minutes ago, DiegoDiego said:

I'm far from being a boomer.

My main gripe with WhatsApp is that it's mobile only. Its a right pain in the arse to send something from my desktop/laptop via WhatsApp. There are other obvious advantages to having a web based version, too.

WhatsApp also encourages sending voice messages which are the exact opposite of everything good about messaging services; you often receive a three minute rambling monologue to listen to when "can you grab some bread while you're out, please?" would suffice.

You can get WhatsApp on a browser and have been able to for ages type in web.whatsapp.com

[GordonS]

18 minutes ago, DiegoDiego said:

I'm far from being a boomer.

My main gripe with WhatsApp is that it's mobile only. Its a right pain in the arse to send something from my desktop/laptop via WhatsApp. There are other obvious advantages to having a web based version, too.

WhatsApp also encourages sending voice messages which are the exact opposite of everything good about messaging services; you often receive a three minute rambling monologue to listen to when "can you grab some bread while you're out, please?" would suffice.

I've got WhatsApp on my laptop.

Agree about voice messages, I just don't listen to them.

[NotThePars]

11 hours ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

I look forward to quoting this post in 40 years when billions of environmental refugees are having food riots in tropical Helsinki

I'm not trying to say I go around killing the planet for fun but none of this stuff is going to make a difference.

It's dangerous talk to blame the incoming climate catastrophe and migrations on overpopulation.