[alancalverd]

No-one can stop you committing voluntary euthanasia, if you want to do it.

True in my case and right now, but the perverts who sell religion have continually prevented Parliament from decriminalising assisted suicide, so causing unlimited pain and suffering to those who want to end their lives but are too crippled or institutionally restricted to kill themselves.

I'm happy to be counselled. Indeed I've been a counsellor for those contemplating suicide, and never lost a client. But stopping anyone from ending his own intractable and inevitable suffering simply because you like to interfere in other people's lives is pernicious, officious and vicious, and prosecuting those who help is utterly inhumane.

There's no justification for throwing in your towel prematurely.

There's every justification for throwing in the towel when you are getting beaten to a pulp with no hope of recovery.

Don't quit too soon.

Rubbish. A successful gambler quits when he is winning. Only a fool chases his losses.

My curse is sincere. May the parasites who preach Hell and Damnation to the suffering, experience it.

[Zer0]

220px-Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movement_logo (1).png (62.97 kB . 220x220 - viewed 6579 times)


P.S. - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movement

[acsinuk (OP)]

Thanks Zero,
Well, we obviously agree that global warming is caused by world population increases  https://www.google.com/search?q=worldometer+population&oq=world&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j69i59j35i39j0i131i433j0i433j46i433j0i131i433j0i433j0i131i433j0i433.7234j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

1.05% each year is 78 million extra mouths to feed and keep warm.

[Bored chemist]

10% of anthropogenic CO2 comes from humans breathing. 25% comes from the animals we farm to feed ourselves. Reducing the human population is a zero-cost way to improve practically everything about our lives and the future of the planet, and incidentally to test the hypothesis that CO2 is an important greenhouse gas.

So why not?

And once again, we have Alan pretending that he doesn't know what the real problem is.

The CO2 that  my cattle and I breathe out was CO2 earlier this year when I grew the plants my cattle and I ate.
It does not contribute to an increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2.
The problem is the CO2 from my tractor- which had been sequestered as oil for millennia.

Alan keeps trying to ignore the distinction.

[alancalverd]

The CO2 your cattle breathe out would otherwise have been sequestered in the plants and eventually as peat or coal. Farm animals are not a natural part of the environment but entirely "man-made", and disturb the pre-agricultural equilibrium. A fair bit of the CO2 emitted by your tractor, grain dryer, trucks, refrigerators etc is required to raise, feed, slaughter, process and preserve said cattle meat.

Anyway it's kind of you to  refer to a paper I wrote about 16 years ago that has formed the basis of  United Nations policy. Current thinking at UNFAO is that farming animals and distributing the products accounts for up to 50% of anthropogenic CO2. What a bunch of deluded idiots, eh?

[acsinuk (OP)]

If population grows at 1% per year then when your baby reaches 75 years old there will be twice as many people living on this planet and twice as much CO^2.  Not 7.7 billion but 15 billion people to fed and nurture.     
Sounds unsustainable unless we can capture the carbon dioxide and bubble it through calcium water to turn it into chalk.  There could have been an ancient human civilisation 60 million years ago that formed the chalk downs but how??

[alancalverd]

All the chalk and limestone represents once-atmospheric CO2, which is another reason not to knot one's underwear too tightly  about the stuff - it won't be the end of the world, just a very uncomfortable few millennia for homo sapiens.

The only significant source of calcium hydroxide is....er.....chalk. Or limestone if you are desperate. If you heat it, it releases carbon dioxide.....Don't waste your time trying to disprove the most fundamental  principles of chemistry!

[Bored chemist]

The CO2 your cattle breathe out would otherwise have been sequestered in the plants and eventually as peat or coal.

Which is why burning coal is a problem.

Anyway it's kind of you to  refer to a paper I wrote about 16 years ago that has formed the basis of  United Nations policy.

I wasn't aware that anyone had.

Farm animals are not a natural part of the environment but entirely "man-made", and disturb the pre-agricultural equilibrium

Previously, wild animals did the same thing.

[Bored chemist]

A fair bit of the CO2 emitted by your tractor, grain dryer, trucks, refrigerators etc is required to raise, feed, slaughter, process and preserve said cattle meat.

And, if all that energy was supplied by  solar power, we wouldn't have a net gain in CO2.
The tractor was just an example.

[alancalverd]

from: alancalverd on 06/06/2021 15:52:49
Farm animals are not a natural part of the environment but entirely "man-made", and disturb the pre-agricultural equilibrium

Previously, wild animals did the same thing.

Not to the same extent.Wild herbivores are not bred to fatten quickly and their numbers are kept in check by wild carnivores. We have got rid of most of the latter and vastly increased the mass of herbivores, clearing forests and draining swamps in order to feed them.

However, in 2002, the United Nations FAO estimates that there were 19 billion chickens in the world, with China having the largest number, followed by the US, Indonesia, and Brazil. By this calculation, for every person in the world, there were three chickens. By 2009 the global chicken population was estimated to have climbed to 50 billion.

and 8000 years ago, there were just a few scrawny birds scratching about on forest floors. Add a billion sheep, a similar number of cows, and around 800,000,000 pigs, and you have a lot of man-made animals exhaling CO2 where once were trees, shrubs and tall grasses inhaling it.

Compare these numbers with 1.2  million wildebeeste and a maximum of about 5 million caribou, and you might get the point that the plant/animal mass ratio has changed rather sharply with the expansion of meat farming, and that ratio, along with burning both fossil and wood fuels, is what determines the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

The politically important point is that humans can live perfectly well - and many would argue better - without farming meat, so it is an expanding source of CO2 that is not essential to our standard of living, unlike burning fuel.

[Bored chemist]

Not to the same extent.Wild herbivores are not bred to fatten quickly and their numbers are kept in check by wild carnivores. We have got rid of most of the latter and vastly increased the mass of herbivores,

All that means is that we are turning over the carbon faster. Essentially, all the "extra" people are breathing out CO2 so we have to grow plants that absorb it- or we would run out of food to oxidise.

The draining swamps etc is, of course, a double whammy.

[alancalverd]

Imagine a world with plants but no animals. What happens to the atmospheric CO2 level?

Imagine a world where there are no living plants but plenty of animals eating dead plant material. What happens to the atmospheric CO2 level?

So what do you think happens if you increase the number of herbivores from N to 1000 N?

[Bored chemist]

Imagine a world with plants but no animals.

The fungi will fill the gap.

Imagine a world where there are no living plants but plenty of animals eating dead plant material. What happens to the atmospheric CO2 level?

It rises to roughly the same as the initial O2 concentration, because all the animals die and rot.

So what?

The point remains that people eating plants does not remove long-buried carbon from the depths of the earth, but fossil fuel use does.

When you have finished arguing, that will still be true.

[alancalverd]

The point remains that people eating plants does not remove long-buried carbon from the depths of the earth, but fossil fuel use does.

Undeniable but irrelevant.

[acsinuk (OP)]

If we become vegetarians that would help but without some sort of fuel we are likely to freeze to death. 

[Bored chemist]

The point remains that people eating plants does not remove long-buried carbon from the depths of the earth, but fossil fuel use does.

Undeniable but irrelevant.

Well, you are half right.

[alancalverd]

Here's a fun fact. The peak wavelength of infrared emission from human bodies is around 10 - 11 microns. So if you believe that infrared absorption by carbon dioxide is the cause of all our woes to come, reducing the human population will give you a double advantage - less CO2 produced, and less IR for it to absorb!

[hamdani yusuf]

Here's a fun fact. The peak wavelength of infrared emission from human bodies is around 10 - 11 microns. So if you believe that infrared absorption by carbon dioxide is the cause of all our woes to come, reducing the human population will give you a double advantage - less CO2 produced, and less IR for it to absorb!

What do you propose to reduce human population?
Is releasing more deadly and infectious virus an option?
What about gene drive?

[alancalverd]

Pay women not to have babies. Then wait. The passage of time is very effective at culling the population, with no human intervention required.

[hamdani yusuf]

Pay women not to have babies. Then wait. The passage of time is very effective at culling the population, with no human intervention required.

How much?
For how long?