Posted on 10/26/2009 8:51:16 AM PDT by Callahan
New book -- "Time to Eat the Dog" -- claims golden retrievers have the same carbon footprint as SUVs
As provocative titles go, "Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living," is a doozy, guaranteed to ensure outrage and oodles of provocative blog post headlines. As summarized in The Telegraph, New Zealand-based authors Robert and Brenda Vale have calculated the carbon footprint of pet-ownership and arrived at some disturbing conclusions.
A medium-sized dog has the same impact as a Toyota Land Cruiser driven 6,000 miles a year, while a cat is equivalent to a Volkswagen Golf....
[The authors] base their findings on the amount of land needed to grow food for pets ranging from budgerigars to cats and dogs.
They say an average Collie eats 164kg of meat and 95kg of cereals a year, giving it a high impact on the planet.
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
I have two dogs now. I think I’ll go out and buy another.
My dog weighs 5 pounds. I have to assume that she has the same carbon footprint as a lawn mower. And I’m not giving her up.
Holly Cow! Oh better watch my use of Cow, I might get sued by one. :)
What is happening to our Country?
I didn’t know the planet was alive.
Planet-killers. ;-)
My dog has the same carbon footprint as an 18 wheel semi, minimum.
I think I’d like your dog!
These people need to get a job and find something to do. I just purchased a GSD and I ain’t giving her up. She’s almost as good as a gun, only with a personality.
I feed my dog Enviro-Nuts.
Crunchy, beefy flavored, full of protein Enviro-Nuts.
Marmaduke!
What is wrong with these people?
‘Rats continue to kill Planet.
Well, I don’t recommend a mastiff to a novice dog owner, but they are very lovable.
A dog makes a pretty good fire control officer.
I was in New Zealand last year.If I would have known the authors then,I would have killed and eaten them. I could
then claim their carbon offsets!
No, not a Great Dane, although they resemble them, when they’re young. A mastiff. As adult dogs they look more like tanks.
1 in 10 Dog Owners Infected with their pets worms ...
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/87767.php
They’ve got their 15 minutes of fame and by the way it’s not their conclusions that are disturbing - it’s them.
My 120 lb rottweilers both crapped at least 15 pounds in the corn field earlier today....thats gotta be helping the planet....somehow :)
My dogs do more to improve life on this planet than these two fools from New Zealand. Imagine the irony if someones large dog attacks these idots and chews them to shreds. Now that’s recycling!
"To offset the carbon wasted on his failed attempt to win the Olympics for Chicago, Obama will put X thousand Golden Retrievers down."
What is the average cabon footprint of a whining enviro-wacko?
These idiots need to get real.
This just gave me a great idea for a new tagline.
There is this wholly made up number “350”, which I suppose is meant to refer to “350 parts per million” of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Brief aside note: Plants begin to starve, and consume their own tissues, when the concentration of CO2 falls below 200 PPM. Worse, they begin to compete with animal life forms (humans included) for the available oxygen.
But this is a self-correcting situation, because as the plants go the respiratory consumption of oxygen they produce - CO2. Thus restoring the previous balance.
The atmospheric content of CO2 could go to ten times, its present level, to 3,500 to 4,000 PPM, with absolutely NO ill effects on any animal life, but plant life? It would literally EXPLODE with growth, forming new variations of carbohydrates and more importantly, much more oxygen. The heat absorption of CO2 as an atmospheric gas, is much overrated, as it has about the same rate of heat absorption potential as water vapor. Water vapor combines with CO2, to form a weakly ionized acidic compound, carbonic acid (the “fizz” in your Pepsi), and the heat absorbed by the carbon dioxide is readily given up to the water molecule.
The REAL heat pump in the atmosphere is water vapor, which has a heat carrying capability that far exceeds most of the other atmospheric gases, and for that matter, greatly exceeds that of most other elements. Which is why they use water as a coolant in internal combustion engines, and as the medium of exchange in hot-water heating of homes and offices. Water vapor performs exactly the same way in the atmosphere, conducting heat from lower levels up to the tops of clouds at 60,000 feet, where the heat is radiated off into space, and the cooled crystals of vaporous ice descend and melt, reforming into water droplets, and fall to earth as rain. For those who may not follow this line of reasoning, didn’t they teach you ANYTHING in the sixth grade?
Runaway overheating of the atmosphere, and the earth as a whole, is impossible so long as we have our hydrosphere that lies beneath the atmosphere and above the rocky mantle of the planet. And that is not going away anytime soon.
So, if the environmental whack-a-doos don’t want to have pets, there’s nothing stopping them.
The rest of us will own the dog or cat of our choice, and we will continue to pay for their care.
I’d rather put down 2 environmentalist greenies than any dog or cat.
Personally, and just speaking for me, I think all enviro-nutjobs should just kill themselves. This solves problems on many levels.
The authors can follow-up this book with something like “Veganism for Dogs.”
To make up for the dog and 2 cats I think I’ll go out and shoot 5 spotted owls, a couple of wolves and one or two polar bears. Oh yeah, a few clubbings for some seals. After all, wild animals are no different than pets when it comes to carbon feetsprints.
Oh, maybe a whale. What the heck, I live on the coast. Might as well do everything I can for the en-viro-mint.

HOWS THIS FOR A CARBON FOOTPRINT?

What a bunch of maroons!
And each envirowacko pollutes as much as a pick up truck. Each envirowacko then should walk into a restaurant and offer him/her/itself up as dinner. Rids the planet of a big polluter.
As always, ty you for the ping hon. :)
The carbon footprint of the liberal population is shocking. I can’t understand how they can go on living, with the knowledge of what they’re doing to the environment.
My German Sheperd made a couple of Jehovas Witnesses crap more poundage than that...
Always a pleasure.
“I have two dogs now. I think Ill go out and buy another.”
Buy a dog, plant a tree... it all evens out.
I have a sixty pound Lab/Collie/?? Mix and a 40 pound Cocker-Blue Heeler Mix, AND a Cat.
And I drive my 1995 Ford Escort with 303,000 miles on it, approximately 22,000 miles a year, give or take. I also get 35-39 mpg unless I need a tune-up, in which case I get 30 mpg.
I recycle what the transfer station accepts.
And I don’t give a Democrat’s @ss what my ‘carbon footprint’ is. The Earth Is Doing Just Fine!
We need to use our brains and the Earth’s Resources to promote Capitalism! Do you think for a minute that Islam would survive a strong Middle Class of Entrepreneurs? Have you given thought to how Capitalism supports democracy and individual freedom and liberty?
Capitalism and Entrepreneurship has a symbiotic relationshiop with Freedom and Liberty. And these create a Middle Class. And the Middle Class is the foundation for a democracy. Preferably a Republic, which is better than mob-rule democracy.
Environuts are worshiping Nature at the expense of Humanity. And this is insane. But then, Environuts are Liberals and by definition, mentally ill.
Yesterday my wife made a pot of beans with bacon, and handmade tortillas. Last night I think I could have brought down the walls of Jericho by myself. Does that mean I have a carbon footprint Saturn 3 rocket? Do I have to kill me?
We never get any Jehovah’s witness’s out here.
ROFL! As if you could compete with my mastiff, after he eats chili!
Save yourself! Blame my dog!
That’s not a dog, that’s a BEAR! Oy!
don’t buy one, rescue one... a lot of good dogs need good homes.
Mike
Time to get my yellow lab a couple of new buddies.
The resident Scythian verminphobe has hit the thread with his “your dog is giving you worms!” crap.
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