Golf Clap:

[theweaselking]

Exhibit A, paragraph 1:

a New Zealand study that claims a medium-size dog leaves a larger ecological footprint than an SUV.

Exhibit B, paragraph 2:

The study apparently didn't take into account the emissions of either the SUV or the dogs.

Prosecution rests, your honour.

EDIT: It helps if I include the source article, doesn't it. Wow.

Comments

[eatsoylentgreen.livejournal.com]

nobody likes those dog emissions

[waterspyder.livejournal.com]

It's the cows you have to watch out for: http://jas.fass.org/cgi/content/abstract/73/8/2483

[eatsoylentgreen.livejournal.com]

:) I've heard about the cow methane emissions, but I've never had to smell them.

[waterspyder.livejournal.com]

According to one of my university professors several years ago, cows worldwide produce more gases which contribute to global warming than SUVs.

[gothpanda.livejournal.com]

another reason why vegetarianism would save the world.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

you are assuming vegetarianism == no cows.

Why?

[gothpanda.livejournal.com]

There would be cows, just not in the appallingly enormous numbers there are now. We wouldn't need 'em.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

ah, so are you assuming there will be a huge cow cull, or just no active breeding so they kinda die out?

I've heard this argument many times, it fascinates me :-)

[gothpanda.livejournal.com]

Less active breeding. Millions of cows are bred purely for their meet, and we wouldn't need 'em anymore. It's possible that culling would be necessary, because if we all very suddenly became veggies we would have millions of beef cows eating food and farting up the atmosphere for no reason. But, let's assume that those are made into dog food or fed to animals in zoos, and then those slaughterhouses close down, and the farms that bred cattle either focus only on producing dairy or change their focus (presumably to growing something), suddenly we would be down millions of cows...and thousands of pounds of methane. And we'd be up on available food for humans, because each cow eats an enormous amount of grain to produce a handful of steaks, and all the land formerly used to graze cows could now be used for human food sources.

[eatsoylentgreen.livejournal.com]

you fail to mention the people who need to kill cows for recreational reasons

[gothpanda.livejournal.com]

Bwahahaha!

[eatsoylentgreen.livejournal.com]

I was trying to think of other things, like killing cows for experimental or non-food reasons, but we actually do kill cows for those reasons...

[gothpanda.livejournal.com]

For recreation? I've never heard of that (thank goodness).

[eatsoylentgreen.livejournal.com]

yes that's just silliness of course

[gothpanda.livejournal.com]

Yes if that exists I will now be pretending that it doesn't. ^___^

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

It's actually their belches where most of the methane comes from, not their farts. Just so you know if you ever meet a cow.

[kierthos.livejournal.com]

buh.... wha.....

THE STUDY IS POINTLESS IF THEY DIDN'T STUDY THE FUCKING EMISSIONS!!!!

*brain esplodes*

[reyl.livejournal.com]

In other news, broccoli worse for you than french fries, if you don't count the fat!

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of wondering what they did consider. I mean, food eaten by a dog versus gas "eaten" by the SUV? Even that strikes me as "larger ecological footprint of the SUV."

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Food eaten by the dog in its lifetime, assuming a dog that eats twice as much as a human of equivalent weight and lives twice as long as dogs of that size normally do, versus material cost to construct the SUV.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

...but not the cost of the fuel that the SUV "eats"?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Or the emissions of the SUV.

There's a reason the article is so snide.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Wow, I didn't include the link until now. Whoops!

[kierthos.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't killing all the large dogs be even more beneficial for the earth? (It's weird... I have very little problem with small dogs, or most medium dogs, but large dogs start setting off panic signals in my brain.)

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

Funny ... I look askance at the small ones (because despite the obvious greater potential harm a large dog could do, my personal experience has been with well-behaved large dogs, ill-behaved small dogs, and a mix of well-behaved and over-enthusiastically friendly medium-sized dogs ... and like most humans I make my gut-level assessments of risk by extrapolating from my relatively small personal sample rather than an objective analysis of broader data ...)

[eatsoylentgreen.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much energy and resources it takes to make a new SUV versus a puppy dog.

you gotta imagine those dogs must be burning some calories, going at it...

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Great. Now you've got the image into my head of a pair of Escalades fucking, and it WON'T LEAVE.

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

Is that as noisy in your head as it is in mine?

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

There's a gif for that, but I can't find it again. :\

[athelind.livejournal.com]

And in another, similar study, nuclear power plants do more damage to the environment than fossil fuel plants -- when you calculate the carbon footprint of a nuclear war.

Of course, you have to ignore the carbon footprint of fossil-fuel-based warfare to really get those numbers right.

[faeriemuriel.livejournal.com]

...Isn't that like saying that mustard makes a bigger impact when you take into account combat weaponry of the same name?