Timothy Birdnow

Publicly funded Global Warming researchers have made a serious discovery; spaghetti with meat increases the dangers of climate change!

Here is the story:

"Fight global warming by reducing CO2 emissions from your spaghetti bolognaise! This is the recommendation of two academics associated with Melbourne’s RMIT University whohave found that the farm-to-fork "Global Warming Potential” (GWP) of pasta with meat sauce can be significantly reduced by eliminating beef and substituting kangaroo. They recommend that for an even greater impact on global heat, rising seas, coral bleaching, tempests, bushfires and ocean acidification, you should dispense with the kangaroo too, and make your spagbol topping with lentils and kidney beans.

The Journal of Cleaner Production study, reprised at The Conversation, is by RMIT Principal Research Fellow Karli Verghese and Stephen Clune, senior lecturer in sustainable design, Lancaster University and formerly an RMIT Research Fellow. The authors say, "We hope that chefs, caterers and everyday foodies will use this information to cook meals
without cooking the planet.”

End excerpt.

First, the U.S. still has 'roo on the endangered species list and does not allow the importation of kangaroo meat, so I doubt I'll be switching from beef to marsupial anytime soon. Granted, it should be possible to substitute deer meat, so Bambi may wind up joining his mother as a head on a wall and the rest in a cook pot, but somehow I suspect the animal rights people won't be pleased with that outcome.

Also, it takes 704 gallons of water to produce one pound of lentils, so that idea isn't going to be the best either. But the real showstopper for these likely halitosis-laden researchers is the onion:

"The true hero of RMIT’s spaghetti bolognaise-led crusade against global warming is not Skippy the Kangaroo but Oscar the Onion. The carbon footprint of onions, say the researchers, is so low it would take 50 medium onions (5.8kg) to generate 1kg of greenhouse gases. By contrast, a mere 44gm of premium beef spagbol topping generates a similar 1kg carbon footprint.

The authors, who are clearly not silly, stop short of recommending 50 medium onions for dinner. "Due to different culinary and dietary requirements,” they explain, "it is hard to argue that you can replace beef with onions.” (Insert flatulence jokes here.) A commenter, possibly a Scot, remarks that he would much rather eat 2.6kg of oats than 5.8kg of onions for the same greenhouse emissions.

From the paper, we discover that the five cloves of garlic in a spagbol recipe generate a mere 10 grams of harmful emissions, and the grated zucchini only 20 grams. There seems no need for either the Turnbull federal or Andrews state government to include garlic and zucchini emissions in their CO2 reduction targets. Nor do garlic and zucchini emissions bulk large in the global annual emissions tally of 42 billion tonnes."

End excerpt.

No doubt the authors are looking at human population growth as well, which is likely to decline as our diet becomes ever richer in garlic and onion and deficient in amore'.

Actually, there is quite a bit of feeding going on here, and not onions or lentils or kangaroo; these shysters are feeding at the public trough, feeding well, and likewise feeding us a lot of male beef excrement.

Ciao!

Hat tip: Helen Dyer

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:19 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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