Posted on 07/21/2010 7:49:38 PM PDT by sinanju
"..But the larger question is: Why does anyone bother to hunt whales anymore? The economics of whale hunting are simply dismal. No whaling nation profits from it. Japan’s annual, much-criticized Antarctic hunt hasn’t involved private capital for years. As Leape notes: “Japan’s is a very small industry, employing less than 1,000 people, catching many more whales than they can sell. They try to promote it with school children and free-whale-meat days and it’s not catching on.”
In Norway, although government-subsidized coastal whalers have missed their annual quota nine times in the last decade, blubber stockpiles mount as consumers ignore state-backed ad campaigns for burgers, ham, and pastrami made of whale. The government cut off subsidies that paid for the whalers’ inspection program, leaving only an electronic system that the IWC deems unacceptable, according to “Sink or Swim: The Economics of Whaling today,” a 2009 study by the Whale & Dolphin Conservation Society.
That came weeks after Iceland’s Ministry for Fisheries & Agriculture announced that a report it had commissioned from the University of Iceland’s Institute of Economic Studies (neither the institute nor the ministry have posted it) said that the economically devastated country could benefit from killing 300 whales annually. Conceding that direct whaling profits were not quantifiable, the study attributed most of the projected gain to $94 million in additional fish that it estimated would be caught if some whales were killed, according to Iceland Review online."
(Excerpt) Read more at thebigmoney.com ...
>> the industry, such as it is, is being kept alive on taxpayer life support
If that’s the criteria for shutting down an industry, then the solar power/wind power/wave power industries all need to go bye-bye.
Add in the ethanol fuel industry. No taxpayer subsidy, no profit in ethanol, no ethanol industry.
I bet you could run a diesel engine on whale oil.
Well, under Obama's energy program electricity prices have "necessarily sky-rocketed" so I've converted to whale oil for heat and light. It saves me a bundle.
Whales must be destroyed.
All else is irrelevant.
The point being that synthetic substitutes replaced whale oil and all that was made from it long, long ago. Not to mention baleen.
Unless there is a significant number of people who actually want to eat the stuff, why bother killing the damn things? And if there ARE people who like it, can’t whalers do the job without govt’ largesse?
It looks like we’re talking buggy whips here.
>> I bet you could run a diesel engine on whale oil.
Yeah, it sounds like this:
“blubberblubberblubberblubberblubberblubberblubberblubberblubberblubberblubber...”
Some people eat whale blubber.
There’s absolutely no point in fighting the lefties in the vanishingly rare situations in which they’re right and the whole concept of whaling in today’s world is idiotic and indefensible.
“the whole concept of whaling in today’s world is idiotic and indefensible.”
Why? They aren’t killing endangered whales. How is it any different than killing a cow?
“If that’s the criteria for shutting down an industry, then the solar power/wind power/wave power industries all need to go bye-bye.
Add in the ethanol fuel industry. No taxpayer subsidy, no profit in ethanol, no ethanol industry.”
They can’t be killed quick enough!
As far as the whales, they are stinking, literally, useless sacks of blubber !!!
Yes but it’s such fun watching hippies getting their asses handed to them.
In the 60s, Japan exported canned whale to the USA. My dad used to buy it all the time. In BBQ sauce. Very tasty.
The damn whales pollute the pristine oceans with their waste. Has a whale ever built a sewage plant???? They can’t be too smart putting waste into where they swim and drink. Whales...an animal that needs to go.
‘Minke whale kebabs are a common dish in Reykjavik.’
I am wondering about that photo. I mean what is the chance that you would be taking a picture just at the instance a whale jumped out of the water and onto a boat?
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